Be sure to trust God

From I Samuel 13-16:

1. From the descriptions given in I Samuel, I can see why Jonathan and David were good friends. They seemed to have the same boldness and fearless nature.

2. Saul's first recorded sin - that of offering the sacrifice instead of waiting for Samuel - was a sin committed out of lack of trust. It was not trusting that God would see him through. I wonder how many times we fail to trust God and hence, sin against Him.

3. It seems strange that the Israelites would go to the Philistines to sharpen their farming implements, did not have a blacksmith, and yet they would go to war against another nation. This might be the definition of crazy!

4. I wonder why Saul made the oath that no one should eat before evening. I mean, it was obvious that the troops were hungry, and everyone knows that an individual is not as productive if they are hungry. A guy I used to work with used to say, "You've got to put fuel in the tank if you want the machine to run". The same is true here. I wonder if the battle might have turned out even better if they had not taken this oath. Additionally, the ultimate outcome was even more disturbing. All of the men were so famished that they began to eat the meat with the lifeblood still in it - in direct disobedience to God. It makes me think that Saul was somewhat of an overbearing type of ruler. It sure is a good thing that the army men stood up for Jonathan, or Saul surely would have killed him.

5. I imagine that Saul was not seeing that he sinned against God the second time he sinned, when he did not kill all the best of the sheep and cattle. I believe he fully intended to sacrifice all of these cattle. However, that is not what God had asked him to do. We need to be very careful to do EXACTLY what God says in the bible. It reminds me of a commercial where they ask if the equipment can do such and such. Each time the brand that is in competition with the one that the commercial is for has a representative who says "Not exactly" when asked if it can do that. When Samuel asked Saul if he had killed all the sheep and cattle, he should have said "Not exactly". The only really obvious direct disobedience was that of leaving the king alive.

6. Samuel mourned for Saul. Since Samuel died before Saul did, that means that Samuel considered Saul to no longer be the one in control of Israel, and almost seems to indicated that Samuel treated him as dead.

7. I wonder how the fact that Samuel anointed David was kept quiet. I mean, all of the people in the town, or at least a number of them, were there when this incident happened. I also bet that David and his family were pretty nervous when Saul called for David to go play the harp for him. I would imagine everyone would be pretty concerned that somehow Saul found out and was planning to kill him.