Saul, a Good King

     I've just finished reading 1Samuel recently and it struck me how the people respected Saul in his death; so much so that they were willing to risk their lives in order to get his body and deal with it properly. I ended up going through and looking at his life as a whole and really seeing how he wasn't that bad of a king.
     The story of King Saul is such an interesting story. Here is a man who at first was scared and hiding among the baggage during the "presenting" ceremony where Samuel would proclaim him king of all of Israel. (If I was in his shoes I would probably be scared too.) He was a good king. He genuinely wanted to protect the people of Israel from their enemies he just didn't always do it exactly the way that God wanted him to. Here is a man who might have been considered a good man he just had this thing against one guy who happened to have God's favor.
     We see the same thing in the relationship between Cain and Able where Cain is jealous of his brother because God has given Able favor and not him. So often I read the Bible and just read over it quickly and don't really pay attention to the stories. When you pay attention you see so much more and the people become real people, not just some person who lived a long time ago and did things that happened to get into the Bible. You can come to know who this person was and not just what they did. That's something that a normal history book just doesn't seem to be able to do (at least not as effectively).
     Saul is a man who started out as a really good king. To the people of Israel he seems to truly want to be a good king for them. He looked pretty good before men but before God his heart was not right. We see in 1 Samuel 13 that he was afraid that he would lose too many troops and so instead of waiting and trusting that God's timing was the best timing he went ahead and offered a sacrifice that he wasn't supposed to offer.
     In the circumstance it makes sense from man's perspective because if you lose too many men then you are guaranteeing your defeat but from Gods perspective it doesn't matter how many troops you have because His army is so much greater and so much more powerful than what we even know (2 Kings 6:8-19) (Genesis 19:1-25).
     Being a king though you would feel responsible if the people were attacked and you had sat by and done nothing. Saul may have been feeling the weight of his position and instead of seeking God he decided to do things his own way. He thought that if he offered the sacrifice and led people in worship his way that somehow that was ok. And instead of repenting of what he had done and recognizing that he hadn't put his trust in God for the victory instead he makes an excuse for what he did to make it sound like what he did was ok. How often are we guilty of the same thing? Maybe we don't have a whole kingdom to protect but how often do we excuse the "minor sins" that we do just because we want to feel better about what we do? In Saul's case it got his kingdom taken away. From man's perspective what Saul did probably wouldn't have been considered such a big deal but from God's perspective it was a really big deal.
     Throughout Saul's life he is fighting the enemies of Israel and trying to protect the people. He seems to genuinely want to help Israel, he only has one wife, he has a great son in Jonathan (we don't know very much about his other two sons except for the fact that they die with him, 1 Samuel 31:2,8, and that they are mentioned in 14:49). Saul seems to be one of the better kings of Israel from what we know about him he just had this jealously against David because he first saw God's favor on him and then figured that he was going to be king after Saul instead of his own son.
     The funny thing is if he hadn't messed around and gotten so jealous of David he may have been able to have one of his grandsons on the throne. He may have been able to help David to make better choices when it came to women and been able to encourage him to only have one wife. As it was he couldn't see past his own nose and was allowing his power and jealously to corrupt his relationship with his son-in-law making it impossible for him to speak into David's life. I don't know that this would have happened for sure but it would have been more likely had he not allowed himself to be overcome by himself.
     Now I know that some of what he went through had to do with this evil spirit who would torment him and the reason he even became Saul's son-in-law was due in part to his jealousy and wanting him to die at the hands of the Philistines but still if he hadn't been so jealous it would have only been a matter of time before Michael and David came to him telling him of their love for each other. Things would have probably worked out better but we as humans tend to let things get in the way and even though God's way is the best we tend to do things our own way because we are so shortsighted.
    Seeing past ourselves is so hard to do in the moment. It is so easy for us to be like Saul and so hard to be David where we look good and are good to most people there is just that one person who we don't like. Or maybe we are scared that our whole vision of how things are supposed to happen is falling apart and we end up doing things our way instead of seeking God and desiring to do things his way even if its hard.
     Anyway I just saw these things and thought I would pass these thoughts along. (The whole thing between David and not having other wives is all purely speculation. I don't actually know if this is true it's just the place that my mind wandered to.)