Another chaplain was out of town, and so I was asked if I’d cover down on his lunch-hour Bible study. I absolutely welcomed the opportunity. The biblical texts the group has been going through surround Saul’s imprudence. Saul was definitely guilty of that.

No matter how many times I go through Scripture, I learn so much about leadership from studying Saul and David. Saul was, fundamentally, a judgment upon Israel for the nation’s lack of discernment and their sin.

1 Samuel 8:7 (ESV) reads,

And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.”

There it is in overt terms. God tells His prophet Samuel that the people didn’t want God. Therefore, as a judgment of their rejection of God Himself, God tells His prophet to give the people the human king they desire, and to watch the destruction that flows from that choice.

Samuel, as is typical of prophets and truth-tellers, sees where things are headed, and he is grieved. In fact, Samuel pleaded with the Lord about wicked Saul.

One of the most important sections in the whole saga of Saul is in 1 Samuel 8. Samuel sees what’s coming. He knows Saul’s going to be disastrous:

But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” (1 Sam 8:6-9, ESV)

Did you catch that introductory phrase? “But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us.'” That’s so important. Why? Because that’s exactly what Saul was: judgment. They as a nation had been imprudent and undiscerning, and now Saul was the embodiment of imprudence and obtuseness.

My fellow soldiers will be arriving soon. I will ask them questions:

• What patterns do you see in Saul?
• How should we learn from them?
• Why do you think the people liked Saul initially?
• What does that tell us about the importance of discernment when it comes to leadership?
• In what sense was David a man after God’s own heart?
• What traits do we see in David that were not in Saul, and vice versa?