In this blog, I will attempt to help with one of these. In our sermon on Sunday, I will attempt to deal with some of the others. The issue I want to tackle in this chapter is one I might regret by the time I finish. The first 10 verses detail another situation where Saul does not fully obey God's commandment. And, in verse 11, God says to Samuel that He regrets making Saul king...it could be translated another way...God is sorry...or another...God is repenting. This statement is one that pastors often like skirting past. Can God make a mistake? Can God really regret a decision He made? Tough questions to think about.
Samuel doesn't accept God's thoughts. The Scripture says that he was angry and cried out to God all night long. As the story goes along, we run into another nugget in verse 29. It says that "the Glory of Israel will not lie or repent; for He is not a man, that He should repent. Ok...so God repented, regretted, was sorry...and now He can't be any of those things. I am pretty sure that I regret tackling this subject, but what about God? Just to make things more complicated, when the story is over, at the end of the chapter, we see AGAIN that God regrets making Saul king. Maybe the narrator of the story is regretting that he mentioned God WASN'T sorry and repented on his earlier statement? Not likely.
This chapter is really tough for Presbyterians! We believe in a sovereign God who has predestined everything that happens. This kind of hurts our assertions. The Hebrew word is naham. It actually occurs nearly 30 times in the Old Testament. Dale Ralph Davis, a great OT theologian, points out that when used, naham never loses its emotional element. You can see it in its first use:
"The LORD was grieved (naham) that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain." - Genesis 6:6.
Davis also makes a very interesting point. Often times we try to dismiss these kind of verses by either minimizing its impact (skimming past it with nary a mention) or just claim it as an anthropomorphic reference. That is when the Bible describes God using human characteristics (i.e. the "hand" of God or God "saw" something). Obviously, God is a Spirit and has no body, but Biblical writers will reference God's hand or back or whatever to describe what was going on. Man regrets...God regrets...unfortunately, that explanation just doesn't happen here.
So, how should we approach this issue? The Genesis 6 verse actually sheds some light. Let's, for a moment, focus on the reason for the regret rather than the regret. Why does God regret/feel sorry? The previous verse (Genesis 6:5) says that man intention was on evil continually. Man's sin causes God's regret and pain. Here, in 1 Samuel, the full verse says: "I am sorry that I made Saul king, because he has turned back from following Me." Interesting...before, it was all of man's sin. Here, it is one man's sin. But, in both cases, sin is the catalyst. The Westminster Confession states (2.1) that God is without passions. Davis, who supports the Confession, says that might be true, but it doesn't mean God is devoid of feelings. In other words, God is surprised by the sin of many or the failure of one...but it doesn't mean that our sin has no impact on Him. The story tells us that Samuel mourned and God repented. It is possible that the best explanation of God's repenting is the expression of God's attitude towards sin against Him.
When Samuel tells Saul that God DOESN'T repent, this apparent contradiction isn't really one at all. What Samuel is saying is that God made a decision to take the kingdom away from Saul, and on that, He will NOT change His mind. So, at this point, God regrets making Saul king, and He won't repent from the decision to remove him. This isn't a threat. It is real. So, we are left with a plausible, but maybe not satisfying explanation. But we can rest in this. Our God has serious reactions to our sin. It pains Him. He is not indifferent to our rebellion. Davis says: He has both feelings and firmness. In the end, this chapter reveals God's consistency towards Saul...and therefore, towards us. The sermon will try to tackle some of the other issues of this amazing chapter.
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