Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Saul is famous for all the wrong reasons, and whenever you read his story you’re never quite sure whether he was a good guy or a bad guy.
I like that, you know.
I often get the feeling that if anyone was to bother looking back at my life a hundred years from now, they wouldn’t be able to work out whether I was a good guy, or a bad guy.
Perhaps the same is true of you, too.
Sometimes, I love to be at church, to worship God, to pray, to talk to my friends about Jesus.
At other times, I’d much rather be in bed, play computer games and hide in the corner.
If you’re like that too, then we can learn an awful lot from the life of this man.
Now there are two Saul’s in the Bible, and this story is not going to make much sense if we get them mixed up.
One Saul lived in the time of Jesus, persecuted the church, was converted on the Damascus road and changed his name to Paul.
That is /not/ the Saul we read about today.
Our Saul, lived about 1100 years /before/ Jesus, and became the first king of Israel.
As we look at Saul’s story, I want to give you two coins.
My first coin is a big coin, and it tells us about God’s people.
It’s got two sides, but like all coins you can only look at one side at once.
But to know about the coin properly, you have to look at both sides thoroughly.
My second coin is a small coin, and it tells us about God Himself.
It’s also got two sides, and we’re going to make sure we look at both sides of that coin, too.
Let me show you the first coin, then.
Here’s the side with the head on it, and there’s some writing around the side.
It says:
!
God’s people are ordinary people
I want you to imagine a young man named Saul sitting in his kitchen one morning, halfway through eating his cornflakes when suddenly the door opens, and dad comes in.
He’s looking rather flustered, and more than a little worried.
Why?
Well, his donkeys have gone missing.
It’s almost comical, isn’t it?
All that fuss over a few donkeys.
But donkeys were very valuable in those days, each one worth over a month’s wages.
And it’s not as if Kish was concerned only about loosing his no claims bonus on his donkey insurance.
If his donkeys could not be found, he would be seriously out of pocket, something that could take many years to put right.
So Saul sets off through the hill country of Ephraim, they pass through the land of Shalisha, but there was no sign of the donkeys.
So they crossed through the land of Shaalim, but they were not there either.
They try the land of Benjamin, but still have no luck.
They eventually end up in Zuph, but, you’ve guessed it, no donkeys there either.
But the man who is wandering around the Judean countryside, in a forlorn search for his father’s missing donkeys, is about to be revealed as God’s chosen king.
It’s not a very auspicious start, is it?
Imagine Saul applying for the job of King of Israel.
He comes up before the panel for interview, and one of the personnel officers says:
{{{"
‘Well, Saul, we’ve had lots of applications for this job, and we just want to ask you a few questions before we make any decisions.
I wonder perhaps if you can tell us what makes you the right person for the job.
/‘Erm... I’m quite resourceful./
What do you mean?
/Well, the other day, I didn’t have any money, but I managed to borrow some of a friend... well, my servant actually./
Oh… I see.
Was that a large sum of money then?
A thousand shekels, perhaps?
/Urm, not exactly.
It was, urm, a quarter of a shekel./
Oh, that’s /very/ resourceful.
Well, we’ve got another application here, from a young man called David.
It says here, that he’s killed bears and lions that have been attacking his sheep.
Have you ever been able to handle wild animals like that?
/Urm, not wild animals, no… But I did look for some donkeys once!/
Some donkeys… Oh, really.
Did you find them?
/Well actually, they just sort of turned up of their own accord./
And David also says here that he once killed an enormous giant with a single shot.
Ever done anything like that?
/No, I’ve never killed a giant… I am quite tall though!/
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It’s laughable, isn’t it!
I mean this guy is God’s chosen man to be king his chosen people.
The only thing going for him is that he’s quite tall!
The poor chap can’t even manage to find a few donkeys that have wandered off.
He can’t even scrape together a quarter of a shekel to pay a prophet for his advice.
What on earth is God doing with an idiot like that? /And what on earth is God doing with an idiot like you?/
Perhaps you’ve got nothing to offer.
You look back at your life, and it’s full of missed opportunities.
You can count on one hand the number of people you’ve really spoken to about Jesus, but you’d need a calculator to work out how many opportunities you’ve let slip by.
But it’s not just missed opportunities.
It’s also all those times when you feel you’ve completely failed as a Christian.
There’s just been too many times when you haven’t been different.
Too many times when nobody would have been able to tell that you were a Christian.
Perhaps even now you can remember specific instances.
That relationship with a non-Christian, which you knew was wrong, but did it anyway.
That time when you completely lost your rag with your partner, and said horrible things deliberately to try and make them upset.
That weekend when your normal day at work, became a terrible witness.
That day in when you were so spiteful to your neighbour.
There’s not a lot to put on your job application form, really is there?
You see, most of us are just like Saul.
We’re ordinary people.
People without that many talents.
People without much success.
Jesus wants us to become fishers of men, but we’re not even very good at finding donkeys.
But listen to what the apostle Paul says:
{{{"
/Brothers, think of what you were when you were called.
Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth.
But God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, God chose the weak things to shame the strong./
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So, those of you who think that you are just weak fools, with nothing much to offer, I agree with you!
You are!
You /are/ just weak fools.
So’s Neil.
So’s Lanny.
So are your officers, and so am I.
But the wonderful thing about God is that weak fools are exactly what he wants.
So if you’re an ordinary person: nothing much to look at, no special gifts, nothing really to make you stand out from the crowd.
Be encouraged, because God’s people /are/ ordinary people.
Now, do you remember our silver coin.
It had writing on one side: God’s people are ordinary people.
But if we turn the coin over, what is written on the back?
Look, here it is:
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