First Samuel 12:1

The Bible says in First Samuel 12:1-5, “ And Samuel said unto all Israel, Behold, I have hearkened unto your voice in all that ye said unto me, and have made a king over you.[2] And now, behold, the king walketh before you: and I am old and grayheaded; and, behold, my sons are with you: and I have walked before you from my childhood unto this day.[3] Behold, here I am: witness against me before the LORD, and before his anointed: whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith? and I will restore it you.[4] And they said, Thou hast not defrauded us, nor oppressed us, neither hast thou taken ought of any man's hand.[5] And he said unto them, The LORD is witness against you, and his anointed is witness this day, that ye have not found ought in my hand. And they answered, He is witness.” What a tremendous ministry that Samuel had. Why did he have such a ministry and service for the Lord? Notice verse one: “I have walked before you from my childhood unto this day.” He started learning about the Lord from his earliest childhood. That was key. It happened because of his mother and what the Lord put on her heart to dedicate Samuel to the Lord. She knew that Samuel was a gift from God and an answer to prayer. What evidence was there that Samuel was such a great prophet? In these verses Samuel emphasizes just one thing: he had not “defrauded” anyone. He did not use his position to get money from people. Ministry should always be performed with as little money as possible involved. That is what Jesus did. That is what Paul the Apostle did.

The Bible says in First Samuel 12:6-7, “And Samuel said unto the people, It is the LORD that advanced Moses and Aaron, and that brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt.[7] Now therefore stand still, that I may reason with you before the LORD of all the righteous acts of the LORD, which he did to you and to your fathers.” Verse six has a beautiful phrase in it: “It is the LORD that advanced Moses and Aaron…” The word that is translated “advanced” comes from the basic word “to make.” And so the verse means, “It is the LORD that made Moses and Aaron…” The Lord is involved in everyone’s life even from birth and childhood. He chooses the parents. He chooses all the circumstances of childhood to form us even before we are saved by Christ. The Lord makes us who we are so that once we give our lives to Christ and dedicate our lives to Him, we are just what we ought to be as we grow in the knowledge of the Lord. He made us for a purpose. One of the benefits of knowing Christ is that He keeps working in our lives to transform us into the image of Christ. It says in Second Corinthians 3:18 that we “are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

God made Moses and Aaron just at the right time when they would be needed. And so Samuel spoke to the people to remind them that all the things in their history were the hand of God and the work of God. That is why Samuel said in verse seven, “that I may reason with you before the LORD of all the righteous acts of the LORD.” Notice the word “reason.” Sometimes people just are not thinking right. They are not remembering what they should remember, or they are not interpreting events from the light of scripture. A preacher is not always telling people new things. A preacher reminds people of the truths of scripture that the people should already know, and he is just reminding them.

The Bible says in First Samuel 12:8, “When Jacob was come into Egypt, and your fathers cried unto the LORD, then the LORD sent Moses and Aaron, which brought forth your fathers out of Egypt, and made them dwell in this place.” In verse seven we are told that the Lord “advanced” or “made” Moses and Aaron. Now we are told in verse eight that the Lord “sent Moses and Aaron.” If you understand the Spirit, then you know that God creates a new life in you through Christ. He prepares you to accept Jesus, and then He prepares you to serve Jesus in this life. There is a place where He will send you. That is true for every believer. To go to that place and to stay there, you must be willing. God has given to us a free will. He does not take away that free will when we are saved. The selfish flesh is the will of man. Your greatest enemy sometimes is your own will. Look at the things that God did through Moses and Aaron in leading the children of Israel out of Egypt with so many miracles. How did all that happen? They went where they were sent. At the judgment seat of Christ Christians will see all that God did through some believers. We will talk about it in heaven. What made the difference? Why did some Christians accomplish what they accomplished? They simply went where God led them. They surrendered their will and went where they were sent and stayed there. After all, it is God’s work.

The Bible says in First Samuel 12:8, “When Jacob was come into Egypt, and your fathers cried unto the LORD, then the LORD sent Moses and Aaron, which brought forth your fathers out of Egypt, and made them dwell in this place.” Notice also that God sent Moses and Aaron after the children of Israel “cried unto the LORD.” God answers prayer. Jesus promised in John 15:16, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” You become one of the chosen when you surrender to His desire to choose you to believe in Jesus. To ordain means “to appoint.” You find God’s appointment for you when you surrender your life to Him. Then you can live a life of seeing the fruit that God brings forth through you, and you can live a life of prayer, and you can see all the answers to prayer one after another as the years go by. And then when you breathe your last and go to be with Jesus, the judgment seat of Christ will be more rewarding for you.

The Bible says in First Samuel 12:9, “And when they forgat the LORD their God, he sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the host of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab, and they fought against them.” This verse speaks of a spiritual principle that is still in effect today. The Lord chastises His children if they turn away from Him. The Bible says in Hebrews 12:6, “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” If you can turn away from the Lord Jesus and not be chastised, that is a very good evidence that you are not saved. Judgment begins at the house of God. Thankfully, Christians have a means to avoid such judgment in their lives. It says in First Corinthians 11:30-32, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.[31] For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.[32] But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.” It is very important that a Christian takes a close look at his or her life daily and repents and confesses any sins. It is a great sin to forget God at any time during the day. We are commanded to love the Lord with all of our mind. Once you recognize lack of love for the Lord or any other sin, quickly turn to Him and ask for forgiveness. If you do this, you will stay in fellowship with Him, and you will avoid His chastisement and judgment. That is the message of First John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Live by this verse and believe it, and you will continue to follow the Lord Jesus. If you do not live by this verse, the next time you sin in even the smallest way, you will stop serving Christ.

The Bible says in First Samuel 12:10-11, “And they cried unto the LORD, and said, We have sinned, because we have forsaken the LORD, and have served Baalim and Ashtaroth: but now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, and we will serve thee.
[11] And the LORD sent Jerubbaal, and Bedan, and Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and ye dwelled safe.” The people definitely had the right response. They confessed their sins of forsaking the Lord and having turned to other gods. Even though in our culture we do not have the same types of idols, there still are idols that can turn Christians away from the Lord. Anything or anyone can become an idol and turn you away from the Lord if you love that thing or that person more than the Lord. John warns us in the last verse of First John in I John 5:25, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.” It is about priorities and it is about love: who and what you love. It is about the greatest commandment as stated in Mark 12:30, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” With this high standard it seems like we all might have some confessing to do every day. Just loving Him with all the mind is a great challenge, and it is easy to fail at any moment.

The Bible says in First Samuel 12:12-13, “ And when ye saw that Nahash the king of the children of Ammon came against you, ye said unto me, Nay; but a king shall reign over us: when the LORD your God was your king.[13] Now therefore behold the king whom ye have chosen, and whom ye have desired! and, behold, the LORD hath set a king over you.” This is a review of what we already know from the book of First Samuel. The mercy and patience of God is amazing. The people should not have wanted a king other than God, but the gracious Lord gave it to them anyway. One of the worse things that can happen to you is to get what you want instead of what God wants. If you are determined, the Lord will let you do that, He will bless you as much as He can because He still loves you, and He will give you a learning experience from it. And one more thing: God will still bring to pass His original purpose. As we will see, King Saul gets replaced by King David. And then God makes a covenant with king David and God tells David that David’s throne will abide forever. Of course, we know that the promise to David gets fulfilled when King Jesus rules from the throne in Jerusalem. When Jesus returns, the great mistake made by the people of Israel in demanding a king will finally and forever be fixed. Jesus is King.

The Bible says in First Samuel 12:14-15, “If ye will fear the LORD, and serve him, and obey his voice, and not rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then shall both ye and also the king that reigneth over you continue following the LORD your God:[15] But if ye will not obey the voice of the LORD, but rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then shall the hand of the LORD be against you, as it was against your fathers.” Notice the phrase at the end of verse fourteen, “continue following the LORD your God.” Once you are saved through faith in Christ, it is the goal to continue following the Lord. As it says in Second Corinthians 6:1, we do not want to receive the grace of God in vain, that is, to not bear fruit or not see results for His glory. The goal is to get to the end of your life and to look back and be able to say, “I continued to follow Jesus from the day I was saved.” No doubt in order to do that, you will need to rely on First John 1:9 frequently, but you will also need the four things listed at the start of verse fourteen. First is to “fear the LORD.” I have read in some commentaries where supposed Bible teachers have said that fear does not mean fear in such passages. It means respect. Perhaps “fear” includes the idea of respect, but “fear” means “fear.” God is loving and merciful and patient and kind. We should experience all these wonderful qualities of Jesus and enjoy them, but fear means fear. God is holy. God is Judge. He punishes sin. Your sin will find you out. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Every Christian needs to have the right amount of the fear of God in them. They just might continue to follow Jesus if they have some fear.

Samuel told the children of Israel to “serve him.” In other words, to serve the Lord. We were born to serve the Lord. That is why every Christian has a ministry. The word ministry refers to service. It is a question of what does the Lord want you to do. He gave you a few short years on this beautiful globe for a reason: to serve Him. Whatever your occupation, and wherever you are: serve Him. Dedicate what you do to the Lord and His glory. Seek to be a testimony for Christ. Do it in little things and in big things.

In order to serve God, we must “obey his voice.” Of course, we do not hear the audible voice of God, but we have God’s Word, the Bible, and we have the Spirit of God who teaches us the Word of God and speaks to our hearts. No one can over-state the importance of the Bible in a Christian’s life. Read the Bible, memorize important verses, listen to good sermons, and learn everything you can about the Book to put it into practice. Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word of God.” Of course, we read the Bible for the purpose of obeying it, and outing its wonderful principles into action in our lives.

To obey His voice requires the surrender of our will to His will. And so we are told to “not rebel against the commandment of the LORD.” For the Christian, the commandment of the Lord refers to the Word of God and how God’s Word is applied to an individual’s heart by the indwelling Spirit. Listen to the Spirit. Follow the Spirit’s leading. If you do not, then you are in rebellion against God. Do not be an unwise Christian. Listen to what the Spirit says to the churches, and listen to what He says to your heart. Do not rebel, and do not go your own way or you will learn a hard lesson about what it means to continue following the Lord.

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