In 1876, the hymn writer Edgar Stites composed a poem that caught the eye of none other than Dwight L. Moody, who asked his friend Ira Sankey to put it to music. Thus we remember it today:
Simply trusting every day,
Trusting through a stormy way;
Even when my faith is small,
Trusting Jesus, that is all.1
This hymn is a wonderful reminder of the fact that God is trustworthy. Yet there is a challenge represented in that first word: “simply.” “Simply,” of course, does not mean easily. Actually, to trust simply is not only difficult; it is often excruciating. In all the vicissitudes of life, when the right course of action seems to be working against our good, how can we content ourselves to say (to paraphrase Psalm 27:10), “The Lord will care for me”?
This is the challenge that King Saul faced in 1 Samuel 13. As war with the Philistines loomed, prompt action seemed urgent, yet the divine command was to wait. Saul’s folly in the face of these circumstances reminds us that trusting God’s word is crucial, even when doing so seems self-defeating.
The Choice Before Saul
At the time of the events recorded in 1 Samuel 13, Saul was still a new king, fresh off of victory against the Ammonites east of the Jordan (1 Sam. 11). But now the Philistines were on their way with “thirty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen and troops like the sand on the seashore in multitude” (1 Sam. 13:5). Saul’s army was three thousand at its greatest strength, and “there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people with Saul and Jonathan” (v. 22).
In the face of overwhelming force and firepower, the men who followed Saul were “trembling” (v. 7) and “scattering from him” (v. 8). With his small force getting smaller by the day, Saul felt the need to take urgent action.
When Samuel had anointed Saul as king, he’d given him clear instructions about this moment: “Seven days you shall wait, until I come to you and show you what you shall do” (1 Sam. 10:8). This instruction had come along with prophecies and signs that had shown clearly that Samuel was speaking with the authority of God, as a prophet (vv. 9–13). Saul’s task, then, was simply to await the arrival of the prophet and the instruction of the Lord.
Indeed, Saul did not disregard the command, as if to say, “Well, I don’t need to do that.” He believed he did need to do it. He wanted to do it. He trusted and waited while the Philistines approached. He waited the seven days—but Samuel did not come.
So, with the time seemingly up, Saul leaned on his own understanding and took matters into his own hands: “Saul said, ‘Bring the burnt offering here to me, and the peace offerings.’ And he offered the burnt offering” (1 Sam. 13:9)—without Samuel and so against the instruction that the Lord had given.
Simple Trust Abandoned
When Samuel did arrive, in the very moment that the deed was done, Saul offered his excuse:
When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered at Michmash, I said, “Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the favor of the LORD.” So I forced myself, and offered the burnt offering. (vv. 11–12)
We might imagine Saul shifting uncomfortably and essentially saying, “Well, given the circumstances…” Of course, that’s what an excuse is: a set of circumstances that seem to explain an otherwise offensive action. To be sure, there is always an excuse when we seek to disobey God’s word. There is always a set of circumstances that mitigate against simple trust. In this case, Saul had given in to them.
And so the judgment fell:
Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God, with which he commanded you. … Now your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you.” (vv. 13–14)
Saul’s heart was not set on God. Rather, it was moved by fear and misplaced confidence in his own ability. God sought a heart of faith in His king—and in Saul He did not find it.
The Heart of the Matter
Someone might respond, “Wait a minute! We shouldn’t be too hard on Saul. After all, I wouldn’t call his actions foolish. It seems to me that it was the only sensible approach to take: dwindling numbers, attacking force, no-show Samuel. What else could he have done?”
And yet the book of Proverbs challenges us with these words:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths. (Prov. 3:5–6)
In the Bible, the “heart” isn’t just an organ. It’s a metaphor for the epicenter of who and what we are. It involves our minds, our emotions, and our wills. To trust God with “all your heart” is to display a deep, settled confidence in God’s care—a confidence resting at the very core of your being, where desires, anxieties, doubts, and disappointments live.
Psalm 14 tells us, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (v. 1). The essence of folly is not dimwittedness. The essence of folly is disobedience: “You have done foolishly.” The fool is someone who lives as though God does not exist or God doesn’t matter. And what happened to Saul in this circumstance was that he finally said, “It matters more that I take this action than that I obey and trust the God who made me king and brought me safe thus far.”
Saul ought to have remembered the word the Lord had given him, simply trusting that if God said it, it was true. Gideon—after some encouragement with the fleece—trusted God and sent his men away (Judges 7:2–8). But Saul was no Gideon. He was not ready to trust as the men dwindled, to trust in the face of massive opposition, to trust when trust was excruciating.
What Shall We Do?
It’s a mistake to think that obeying God is always or even often easy. Trusting God really can be excruciating. As we consider the challenges that face us, perhaps the last thing we want to hear from the Bible is something like “Well, why don’t you ‘simply trust’?”
Yet if we will not trust God’s word, we have nothing to stand on. If we will not trust—in the face of opposition, persecution, hardship—that God will restore to us what the world takes away, why go on at all? As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). We will run ahead and seek our own good, fight for our own salvation, and find the effort empty.
But God says, “Put your trust in Me.” Without a hope in us that Christ will carry us on and reward us in the end (1 Peter 3:15; Heb. 11:6), the suffering that attends obedience to God’s word will far outweigh any benefit we can imagine. Yet by “simply trusting every day”—even when that trust is excruciating—we can enter into all the promises and benefits of the Lord Jesus.
This article was adapted from the sermon “Saul’s Folly” by Alistair Begg.
Edgar Page Stites, “Trusting Jesus” (1876). ↩︎
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