Verse 16 sounds a great deal like Exodus 2.24-25, "God
heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac,
and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew." Samuel had gotten a word from the Lord about
Saul before he ever met him and when he did see him, the Lord confirmed that
this was the one. God said he would be
the one to restrain the people. What
does that mean? A good king indeed does
restrain the people from going astray, he is not restrained by the people but
by God Himself. The work for which Saul
was particularly called was delivering the people from the yoke of oppression
of the Philistines. Samuel is quite coy
with Saul, feeding him, lodging him, then sending him off before sending the
servant away so that he could make the word of God known to him. It is a private anointing then of this man as
king. There was no prescribed ceremony
for the anointing of a king, only a priest.
Remember that yesterday in our reading Peter was told that
after he was restored his task was to strengthen his brothers. Today, an angel appears to Jesus as He prays
and the disciples sleep in order to strengthen Him. This mission of strengthening was only
possible for someone other than flesh and blood, flesh was failing and flesh
didn't want to see this happen, they were sleeping for sorrow. That is indeed a heavy sleep and while they
sleep Jesus struggles with His fleshly desire to avoid this suffering, He was
both God and man and the manly part of Him wanted no part of what comes next. The angel then was a great mercy sent to encourage
Him and prepare Him for this hour. Even
though Jesus knew what Judas was going to do, it was still a betrayal, not a
determined thing, Judas acted on his own in betraying Jesus. Satan had a way into Judas' heart and Judas,
like Cain, failed to master the temptation that was crouching at his door.
Stephen recounts the story of Moses when God used the same
verbs we saw in that first lesson and its parallel in Exodus. God saw the affliction of His people, heard
their groaning and came down to help them.
He helped them by sending Moses to them.
Moses could answer the question of who made him ruler and judge this
time, God had done it! This was
authenticated by signs and wonders done in Egypt. In Exodus 20, after the giving of the Ten
Commandments, the people beg Moses to receive the rest of the Law on their
behalf, they are afraid to come near to God, they delegate that work to Moses
but when Moses doesn't return when they think he will, they give up and ask for
other gods to be made. Wouldn't it have
been better if they had remained and heard the Law for themselves? They had put their trust in Moses and not
God. It is amazing and a testament to
God's lovingkindness and faithfulness that the nation lived beyond that
day. His covenant, however, is
everlasting and dependent only on His faithfulness to endure. He is always king whether recognized as such
or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment