I SAMUEL 14 Lesson # 14
FAITH VERSUS RELIGION: THE POWER OF OATHS
I. Introduction: Faith Vs. Religion.
Q How many of you have ever coached or played on a soccer team, football team or a basketball team?
Q What if you, as the coach, suggested that you fasted from early morning until late afternoon on the day of the championship game? What would happen?
An = Your chances of winning would dramatically drop down. You need physical nourishment to do a physically challenging task. In ancient warfare, it was hand to hand combat. It was a contact sport. To fast during a day long battle would be quite a blunder.
Note: We are going to read of such a blunder that is covered with the guise of super religious piety. The person making the mistake is very pious, very religious. We are also going to read of faith and sometimes to the outside observer it is hard to tell the difference.
II. Victory Over the Garrison: A Victory of Faith. I Samuel 14:1-15.
A. The situation: I Samuel 14:1-5.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 14:1-5.
Q From just reading 14:1 what sort of picture do you get of Jonathan?
An = He is certainly not afraid of the Philistines and is an aggressive lad. Maybe, he knew his dad would stop him if he told him where he is going. Remember, it was Jonathan’s action in 13:3 that started all this trouble.
Q What is Saul doing?
An = He was staying at the base with six hundred men. He is sitting with his troops and Jonathan is moving out to confront the enemy. Notice also that your author wants you to know that Saul has the priest with him (14:3). Saul is portrayed as very religious. However, so was the priest’s great grand father Eli, and he was not favored by God.
B. Jonathan’s Courage of Faith: I Samuel 14:6-15.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 14:6-10.
Q Is Jonathan over bold?
Q On what is Jonathan’s faith based on according to 14:6?
An = His faith is based on his knowledge of God and his knowledge of God’s ability. He knows if God is with him he can succeed. He does not command or claim anything of God, he just knows that with God in the equation, much can be done.
>>>> Have someone re-read I Samuel 14:7-10
Q Does Jonathan give God the ability to veto his plans?
Q Is Jonathan certain God will bless his plans?
An = No, however, if God is with them they will succeed. Jonathan’s attitude is who knows, who knows what God will do (Davis, p. 138).
Q Would you like to have been the armor-bearer of Jonathan? Would it have been exciting or frightening to have such a boss?
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 14:11-15.
Q Did God bless Jonathan’s efforts? How do we know?
An = Jonathan and his armor-bearer not only polished off 20 Philistines, but God confirmed their action. It is His earthquake that shakes the land, which should remind us of I Samuel 7.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 7:10-11
Q Who was the man of faith in chapter 7?
An = Samuel
Q Who is the man of faith in chapter 14?
An = Jonathan. The last time that the Israelites had beaten the Philistines in a large battle. There was a man of faith.
>>> Have someone re-read I Samuel 14:13
Q Was it hard to get there in order to fight?
An = Jonathan and the armor-bearer had to work hard to get into the situation they were in.
Q What does that tell you?
III. The Resulting Battle: I Samuel 14:16-30.
A. The Battle: I Samuel 14:16-23.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 14:16-23.
Note: This story is told very dramatically. The lookouts can see the people melting away. This huge army is scattering every where.
Q Who is “melting away”? Whose army?
An = It is not the Israelites who are “scattering” but the Philistines. It makes a difference when God’s people have God with them. Notice nothing happened when the Saul and his priest were “sitting” under the pomegranate tree.
Q After Saul ascertains who is there and who is not there what does he do in 14:18?
An = He was trying to get religious and seeks a religious object.
Q When Saul sees that the noise of the confusion gets greater and greater what does he abandon?
An = His religious ceremony right in the middle of it (14:19). This is typical of Saul in these chapters: he is impetuous: 13:9, 14:24 and here.
Q Does Saul join the battle with his men?
An = Yes, Saul is not a coward. However, here he is a follower, where previously in chapter 11 he was a leader, when anointed by the Spirit.
Q Who helps out in the battle?
An = Those Hebrews who had been turn-coats (who turn-coated again) and the neighboring Ephraimites who had been hiding. When fortunes turn so does one’s popularity. Everyone loves a winner.
Q What really gave the Israelites the victory?
An = It was really God’s earthquake. God uses Jonathan and Saul, but it is His earthquake that really gives the victory. It is God who gives the increase, but He does use us to sow and water the seed. God uses men, but ultimately it is He who wins the battle.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 14:24-30.
Q Saul has gotten religious again. What has he done this time?
An = He now puts the entire army under a fast. He seems to want to personalize the whole affair. See 14:24, in that he also wants revenge.
Note: The text says the battle entered the forest where there was honey on honeycombs readily available to the troops.
Q Who is the only person that eats some of the honey? Did he know?
An = Only Jonathan and he does not know about the oath Saul put the army under.
Note: The people greatly feared oaths. They did not eat food. Saul was God’s anointed and he had put the entire people under oath before God and the text says the people were afraid: 14:26.
Q When Jonathan learns of the oath, is he impressed?
An = No he isn’t. He calls his father’s action “trouble” for the nation. The people got so tired that their victory was lessened or mitigated. They had the Philistines on the run and could not capitalize on the situation because of the “oath of fasting”.
IV. The Aftermath to the Battle: A Double Sin. I Samuel 14:31-46.
A. The People Sin: Eating the Blood. I Samuel 14:31-35.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 14:31-35.
Q What religious taboo did the Israelites break?
An = They ate the meat in the hunger without properly draining the blood. This respect of the blood was deeply ingrained in the people’s understanding, because the blood was the fluid of life and belonged to God alone (cf. Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 17:11; Deuteronomy 12:23; see McCarter p. 248). This was a serious sin against a commandment that God had given, as opposed to the oath that Saul decided upon.
Q What did Saul’s religious burdens actually do?
An = It helped the people to truly sin against what God wanted.
Q Have you ever experienced something like this, where someone’s misguided religious fervor hurt people more than helped them be pleasing to God?
Q Does Saul act decisively once he sees the problem his oath has caused?
An = Yes! Saul is a sincerely religious and pious man. The text clearly shows that Saul believes in religions rules and takes them seriously. He brings a rock so that the animals can be slaughtered on it and so that the blood can run down and drain.
B. The Sin of Jonathan: Eating the Honey. I Samuel 14:36-46.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 14:36-37.
Q Are the people willing to follow Saul in his mop-up action?
An = Yes they are.
Q What does Saul do next?
An = He now wants to do more religious activities. The priest maybe was smarting from the stopped ceremony in 14:19 and wanted some input into the victory. God had granted them great victory without the priest’s help. However, Saul seems hesitant and bound by his religious sensibilities and so now listens to the priest. This action has consequences: they lose momentum in the battle that God’s earthquake had provided. He listens to a priest (not Samuel) and loses a great chance to deal the Philistines a strong defeat.
Q How is this different from his son Jonathan?
An = Jonathan is forward looking and practical. Sometimes our religious sensibilities are not concerned with what God Himself really wants. The priest wanted to do all the right rituals; but ritual does not save, God does. Ritual is to lead us to God, not to take the place of God.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 14:38-44.
Note: Now Saul has moved from strong direction (which the people are willing to follow in 14:36) to divisive accusation and the people go along with this too. Leaders can lead in good ways and bad ways, and the people will follow. Saul now, instead of fighting the enemy, is looking to fight his fellow Israelites. He has moved from saving his people to purging, usually not a good sign of positive leadership. It is a lot easier to purge than to fight the evil.
Q Have you ever seen this done in church?
Q How many oaths does Saul take in these few verses of 14:38-44?
An = Saul makes an oath in 39 and another one in 44. The phrase “as the Lord lives” is an ancient oath formula.
Note: The lots that were cast were from the priest’s neck and called the Urim and Thummim. The best scholarship acknowledges that we do not know much about them. They could not be compelled to answer from what the biblical stories indicate. God could refuse to activate them. Remember, it was with such lots that Saul’s reign was partly justified before all Israel. Remember also though, that it was the victory over the Ammonites that truly cemented the legitimization of Saul’s reign.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 14:45-46.
Q Who now takes an oath?
An = the people do in 14:45. Saul is God’s anointed and he has taken three oaths (24,39,44) but the people over-ride Saul with a counter oath of their own and they have better theology. They knew it was through Jonathan that victory had come. They had practical proof of God’s blessing and they seemed to have grown tired of Saul’s over religiosity, when it bordered on injustice. Jonathan had made an innocent mistake and Saul was willing to kill him because of it.
Note: Remember when Saul won his great victory over the Ammonites in 11:13? He was gracious to those who did not come to the battle.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 11:13.
Q What was the reason Saul gave for forgiving those men on that day?
An = For this was the day that God rescued Israel. When His grace is given to us it should be given to others. Saul is not willing to forgive Jonathan for making an innocent mistake, but even willing to kill him, despite the fact that it was his faith that brought about the victory in the first place. Saul has subtlety changed. He is quite religious, but now bordering on being very ungodly with his religious activities. He has the letter of the law, but seems to have lost the spirit.
V. Conclusion. I Samuel 14:47-52.
Q Did God curse Saul because three of his oaths taken on God’s Name where broken and ignored?
An = No. The proof is in what follows.
>>>> Have someone read I Samuel 14:47-52.
Note: God gave Saul a lot of victories. He is presented as a valiant and successful military commander. I think the author placed this little summary here in the text of Saul and his family to let the reader know that the oaths were certainly not the cause of Saul’s downfall.
Note: There has been a change in things. In chapter 11:3,9,13, the word in Hebrew “to save” is used in reference to Saul’s work. In chapter 14 the same root word is used again three times, but this time in connection with Jonathan’s deed (14:6,23,45).
Q Is Saul is treated fairly in these last few verses?
An = Yes, Saul was changing, but still God was using him. We need to be as courageous as the Bible and see the good about people, despite the bad that is there too.