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Welcome to week three together of our Look Through, first and second Samuel, day
one of this third week. We're going to look at chapters nine and ten today. In
chapters nine and ten, Saul is anointed as king.

Remember at the end of last week the people wanted a king, God said they could
have a king and Saul here is anointed as king. It's one of the strangest
coronations you're ever going to see. So what I'd like to do today is just walk
through this story and as we walk through it we're going to see truths about
Saul, we're going to see truths about us.

Beginning in verse one of chapter nine, there was a Benjamite, a man of standing
whose name was Kish, son of Abel, the son of Zeror, the son of Bekoroth, the son
of Afiah, the son of Benjamin. Now remember my little tip, whenever you're
reading these many, many names, you just read them with great confidence and
people will believe you know how to pronounce them. So now beginning in verse
two, he had a son named Saul, an impressive young man without equal among the
Israelites, a head taller than any of the others.

Now the donkeys belonging to Saul's father Kish were lost and Kish said to his
son Saul, take one of the servants with you and go look for the donkeys. So he
passed through the hill country of Ephraim and through the area around Shashila
and they could not find him. And so they went on to the district of Shalim and
the donkeys were not there and then they passed through the territory of
Benjamin but they did not find them.

So here's how this coronation of a king begins. He's out looking for donkeys.
Sometimes extraordinary things are happening when it all looks ordinary to us.

I want you to notice that Saul here is said to be taller than anyone in Israel,
a head taller. We're going to see as we walk through this story that beginning
in this calling to be king, Saul struggles with a life-long and life-ruining
sense of inferiority. Even though he's taller than anybody in the country,
sometimes those with the greatest outward gifts struggle with the most severe
sense of inadequacy, of inferiority.

We're going to talk about dealing with that as we walk through this today. So
they're looking for the donkeys, Saul and this servant, and they hear there's a
prophet and they head into town to ask him about the donkeys. Now Saul wasn't
even going to talk to Samuel but his servant convinces him, "We've got to go
find this prophet.

We've got to find these donkeys. " God had prepared Samuel's heart to know what
would happen and it took Samuel, who'd heard from God, to cause Saul to see that
when he thought he was just looking for donkeys, instead God was looking to
anoint him to be the king of Israel. Verse 17, listen to what happens.

"When Samuel caught sight of Saul, the Lord said to him, 'This is the man that I
spoke to you about. He will govern my people. ' And Saul approached Samuel in
the gateway and asked, 'Would you please tell me where the seer's house is?

' 'I am the seer,' Samuel replied. 'Go up ahead of me to the high place, for
today you are to eat with me and in the morning I will let you go and I will
tell you all that is in your heart. As for the donkeys that you lost three days
ago, don't worry about them.

They've been found. And to whom is all the desire of Israel turned, if not to
you and all your father's family? ' Saul answered, 'But am I not a Benjamite
from the smallest tribe of Israel and is not my clan the least of all the clans
of the tribe of Benjamin?

Why do you say such a thing to me? ' So there it is at the end, there's that
inferiority, a smallest tribe. How could you say something like this to me?

This inferiority, it has to be dealt with in all of our lives. I found that
everyone struggles with some sense of inferiority. It's more hidden in some than
others, but we all struggle with it because, guess what, we are inferior.

We're living in a world where we can't live up to all the opportunities. We're
living in a world that's fallen and we know our own sinful hearts. We are
inferior.

So how do I deal with it? If we deal with it well, this sense of inferiority, it
results in a greater dependence on God. But if we deal with it badly, it results
in a life that usually swings between self-dependence and self-doubt, just back
and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

Chapter 10 verse 1, Samuel meets with Saul and listen to what happens, "Samuel
took a flask of oil and he poured it on Saul's head and he kissed him, saying,
'Has not the Lord anointed you as leader over his inheritance? ' And when you
leave me today, you will meet two men near Rachel's tomb at Zelzah on the border
of Benjamin, and they will say to you, 'The donkeys you set out to look for have
been found. ' And now your father has stopped thinking about them and is worried
about you.

He's asking, 'What shall I do about my son? ' And then you will go up from there
until you reach the great tree at Tabor. Three men going up to God at Bethel
will meet you there.

One will be carrying three young goats, another three loaves of bread, and
another skin of wine. They will greet you and offer you two loaves of bread,
which you will accept from them. And after that, you will go to Gibeah of God,
and there is a Philistine outpost.

As you approach the town, you will meet a procession of prophets coming down
from the high place with lyres and tambourines and flutes and harps being played
before them, and they will be prophesying. The Spirit of the Lord will come upon
you in power, and you will prophesy with them, and you will be changed into a
different person. Once these signs are fulfilled, do whatever your heart finds
to do, for God is with you.

" So Samuel anoints Saul to be king. He puts an anointing oil on his head, and
then he gives him three things to assure him of his call. What is God doing in
these verses?

He is assuring Saul of the call in his life. Three things. First, he said, "Some
men are going to tell you that the donkeys have been found, and that your father
is concerned about you now.

" Then he says, "Three men are going to meet you at Tabor, and they are going to
offer you two loaves of bread out of all these things that they have. " And then
he says, "You're going to meet, number three, a procession of prophets going
into Gibeah. You're going to prophesy by God's Spirit with them.

" So from simple assurances to spiritual experiences, God is telling him, "I am
in this. I'm the one who's anointing you. All these things are going to happen
as an assurance that this anointing is real.

" Now, I want you to look more closely with me at this, these three things that
happened, because as you look at them more closely, I don't want to extend this
too far, but it's pretty obvious that this is an example to Saul. God's saying,
"I'm going to meet your needs. I'm going to meet your emotional needs.

I'm going to meet your physical needs. I'm going to meet your spiritual needs,
your emotional needs. " Some men are going to meet you that say, "Your dad's
looking for you.

He cares about you. He doesn't just care about the donkeys. Your dad cares about
you.

I'm going to meet your emotional needs," God says. "I'm going to meet your
physical needs. " Some other men are going to meet you.

They have all these things. They're going to offer you a couple of loaves of
bread. God's going to meet your needs, and number three, I'm going to meet your
spiritual needs.

God's going to fill you with His Spirit. You're going to prophesy with these
people. In the affirmation of His call, Saul was learning that God would meet
his needs as he accepted that call.

That's what you and I need to know too. He's going to meet your emotional and
physical and spiritual needs. It's the kind of assurance that Jesus gives us in
the Sermon on the Mount.

You have a Father who loves you. If He loves the birds of the air, He certainly
is going to love you. You have a Father who cares about you.

You have a Father who, when you speak to Him in prayer, is going to be there
with you. The Sermon on the Mount is the kind of affirmation that you're seeing
here that Saul got that day. The Lord wants to do the same for you through
conversations and experiences and assurances in prayer.

He wants to assure us of His specific call for our lives. How does this work in
practical ways? Let's suppose you're praying about what school you should go to.

You're headed off to school, headed off to college, "Which school should I go
to? " And you go out and you check out several of them. God in some way is going
to bring experiences into your life that give you a sense of assurance about
God's direction in your life.

There's nowhere in the Bible where it says go to this school or to go to that
school, but through the people you meet, through the ways that God says He'll
meet your needs in that place, through the open doors He gives to meet financial
needs, like one college is paid for and another isn't, through the ways that He
says, "I'm going to build relationships in this college and maybe not in that
one," through all these different ways. God is assuring you of His call. He
still works in this way today.

So Saul does all this. He gets assured of God's call and then he goes home and
look at what he tells his family. Verse 14, "Now Saul's uncle asked him and his
servant, 'Where have you been?

' Looking for the donkeys, he said. But when we saw they were not to be found,
we went to Samuel. And Saul's uncle said, 'Tell me what Samuel said to you.

' Saul replied, 'He assured me that the donkeys had been found. ' But he did not
tell his uncle what Samuel had said about the kingship. " The donkeys, no
mention of God's call, no mention of God's anointing, just the donkeys.

Let me just tell you, you might be stuck on the donkeys of life. I call them the
detailed donkeys, unwilling to accept God's call because I got this donkey to
take care of. The question isn't the donkeys.

The question is God's call in your life. Saul was stuck. He wasn't talking about
the kingship.

So because of his inferiority, because he's stuck, look at what happened next
beginning in verse 17. "Samuel summoned the people of Israel to the Lord at
Mizpah and he said to them," listen to this buildup, "This is what the Lord, the
God of Israel says, 'I brought Israel up out of Egypt and I delivered you from
the power of Egypt and all the kingdoms that oppressed you but you have now
rejected your God who saves you out of all your calamities and distresses and
you've said, 'No, set a king over us. ' So now present yourselves before the
Lord by your tribes and clans.

And when Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near, the tribe of Benjamin was
chosen. And then he brought forward the tribe of Benjamin clan by clan and
Matre's clan was chosen. Finally Saul, son of Kish, was chosen.

But when they looked for him, he was not to be found. So they inquired further
of the Lord, 'Has the man come here yet? ' But the Lord said, 'Yes, he has
hidden himself among the baggage.

' So they ran and they brought him out. And as he stood among the people, he was
a head taller than all the others. And Samuel said to all the people, 'Do you
see the man that the Lord has chosen?

There's no one like him among all the people. ' And the people shouted, 'Long
live the king. '" And that last part, "Long live the king," that's the only part
that sounds like a coronation.

All the rest of this story is about donkeys and now hiding in the baggage. Saul
hides from the truth of what God is doing in his life. Talking about donkeys,
hiding in the baggage.

What a picture. What a picture of those times when I want to hide from the
responsibility or the sacrifice or the challenge of what the Lord is asking of
me. Lord, let me just talk about the detailed donkeys.

Let me just hide in the baggage. This idea of hiding in the baggage, it just
captures my heart. It is so apt for many of the struggles that you and I have.

We hide in the baggage of our past, of our fears, of our selfishness, of our
doubts, and we miss God's call. So I want to invite you today, get your eyes off
the donkeys. Come out from behind the baggage.

Accept what God wants to do in your life because he has great and awesome plans
for you. It may not be the anointing to be a king, it's the anointing to be a
servant, the anointing to make a difference with your life. Would you pray with
me?

And just say, Lord Jesus, instead of hiding from the work that you're doing in
my life, instead of hiding from the work that you want to do in my life, my
deepest desire is to embrace all that you're doing. So instead of getting stuck
on the donkeys, hiding in the baggage, I want to come out from behind all that
and stand before you and say, yes, yes, I want to do what you've given me to do.
I say this, yes, in Jesus' name, amen, amen.

Well tomorrow we're going to begin to look at what caused Saul's greatest
distresses, his greatest sins.