How true! Where often our Reprobate Mind reduces matters down to where it feels more in control, Where when that level of control is outside our grasp we limit God's control down to levels that we are more comfortable with, we like Jonathan need to allow God to be the truer image - the much larger God that He needs to be.
Wasn't it that when Samuel protested there being a king over Israel initially that this very thing was part of his argument? The taking of Israel's sons and daughters for whatever the king saw fit?
Repented God? When there is an apparent contradiction (see: kjv@1Samuel:15:29) the Spirit is not hiding the truth of the matter from us, He is beckoning us to consider how that the two things might be mutually and emphatically true at the same time. These are underlined highlights meant to foster a deeper searching/understanding. If we trust that there is an spiritual answer from the start, diligence will eventually prove to be much more fruitful than if we let it slip by.
Doing what is right is not simply performing the action, it is also in performing it in the right manner. Saul did obtain what he saw to be the objective; defeat the Amalekites. God's objective was further into proving the obedience of Israel; Saul being chief.
Old Testament accounts such as these are hard for modern audiences to fathom. Our image of God's nature and God's intentions are much more docile. We must remember that God is establishing a key peace in His argument; the depiction of man's sinful nature and His case for a incarnate/redemptive Christ. What is spirit is spirit, what is flesh is flesh, and the two minds are at complete enmity with each other. Spiritual God is having to use fleshly matters to convince the fleshy mind of the accuracy of a hated spiritual message; not only for the Israel of that time but, also us who are reading this now as well.
The awkwardness of these difficult passages may also arise from the fact that modern readers are trying the Bible from a self help viewpoint. One then must ask how does this difficult portrayal of God's nature help me? We thereby exclude the grander contexts of what God had to get us to a point where He could help us, what He had to stick to, what He had to insist upon, what He had to battle through to get us to a point of realizing our truly reprobate sinful nature. Difficulty here does not reveal so much about difficulty with God as it reveals difficulty with us.
The Lord was with David and had gone ahead of Him in the battle, but, David knew that he would have to go out and in obedience and adaptability physically claim the victory. We don't see that the Lord had spoken to him directly, but, that His anointing had emboldened the lad along with the prior experience fighting lion and bear. Others had tried to outfit him as they saw fit to protect him, in this particular case their armor was a hinderence.
Surely, God could have removed Saul at anytime; that is not the question. Did God not pull the trigger yet because David was not yet ready? Israel? Saul's obtaining the throne was nearly immediate; it was new, it was the first of it's kind in Israel. Now however, allegiances have been made, deals struck, coalitions working behind the scenes towards their own interest and gain. The next king would have to be well prepared and established to be ahead of this game. David is obviously not at that point right now. It does not appear that his eye is solely on the Lord.
2012 - pBiblx2 Field Wise Bible System Version 2.0.9d - GPL3
