EXTRACT

Well now, Samuel is still mourning for Saul, and that is what I want you to see. The verse I read says, “Samuel saw Saul no more until the day of his death”. He is not going to visit that brother any more; that is a settled matter. He has the right principle, the matter is settled, the mind of God is clear—he is a rejected man. But still I am hankering after that man; there is something there, there is a link between him and me, am not going to visit him, but I am mourning about him. The Lord says, ‘I am repenting about him; you are different from Me’. I am not with God. I am with God as to the principle, but not as to my feelings, and God says, ‘I want you to be right in your feelings—I want you. I do not want a man mourning for a man I have rejected, I want you to be with Me in My feelings’. Well, that is how the matter stood.

God says, I am repenting about it; when God says that, there is something very peculiar, it is a question of His feelings. He did not like to give up Saul, but He did give up Saul, and it is a finished matter; He will never have recourse to him again. These finished matters are very rare amongst us, dear brethren. Finishing things is a great idea in Scripture. So the next

chapter opens with this, “How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?”. He says, ‘You know you are not with Me in this’. How God must have felt that, speaking to such an honoured servant of His. But it is a voice to the most outstanding brother there is, how we may be out of accord with God because of personal predilections in regard of brethren, some personal link that holds us together, and we are not with God in it. Now He says, “Go”. He must be obedient, for he had already established the principle of obedience in chapter 15. Obedience is a mark of the new man, and Samuel had the principle; he had put off the old and put on the new, in that sense, but not in his feelings.

God says, “Fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse, the Bethlehemite; for I have provided me a king among his sons”. The Lord says, as it were, ‘I will tell you who he is when you get there’. Now that is a very humbling thing, that God does not trust you now.

He says, ‘I cannot trust you to go by yourself and get the king I want; you have not come to the new man in your feelings; I will go with you, it is too important to be left to you’. I am referring to Samuel, dear brethren, because he sets out an example for us from God. He has to suffer for me that I might learn, not only right principles, but right feelings, that the new man should be entirely embraced by me, so that I know him when I see him in whomsoever it may be; in whomsoever it may be, I know the new man, if my feelings are right. Samuel went to the house of Jesse, and presently the sons of Jesse come up, and, sure enough, he made a mistake at once. He thought Eliab was the new man; but there was not a trait of the new man in him. God had said, ‘I will not let you go alone; you are not the one to go and see a brother or sister to be included amongst the people of God, your feelings are not right, you cannot be trusted’. Now I want to be trustworthy—we need to be trustworthy, dear brethren, in the carrying out of the divine administration. Times are difficult; Scripture says, “Difficult times shall be there”, and they have come, and

it is a question whether I can discern the new man, not only the principles but the feelings and the practical concrete characteristics of the new man. I have them in myself and I discern them in another. It is as sure as possible, if I have any special friendships or personal links with the brethren, I shall miss it; I shall be apt to be governed by these in visiting that person.

I need to be free of that. God says here, ‘I cannot trust you, I shall have to go with you’. Of course He goes with us at all times; but He cannot trust Samuel. He says, ‘Do not name him, I will name him—it is an important matter’. This matter of kingship is too important to be left in the hands of a man who is held in his affections by the man God has rejected. So Samuel says, “Surely Jehovah’s anointed is before him”. Jehovah says, ‘He is not before Me; you are making a mistake, and the secret is you have been held in your affections by the man I have rejected’. And all seven sons pass before him, and the word as to each is, “Neither has Jehovah chosen this one”. Samuel is adjustable, thank God! and it is very beautiful how readily he comes in for adjustment. He is gradually coming into the idea of the new man, and presently the new man appears before him, the most beautiful man as the Spirit of God presents him to us; he is ruddy, of beautiful appearance, and he is beloved—there he is.

Samuel knows him, but still God says, I do not trust you with that—“Arise, anoint him; for this is he”. So, dear brethren, it is a most important thing to learn to keep the right man before us in the administration of the things of God. Not only that the person is nominally Christian, or even a true Christian, but can I see the characteristics of the new man? That is how the matter stands. And it says, “The Spirit of Jehovah came upon David”; that means, that kind of man, he is beloved. God says, ‘I commit Myself to a man who is spiritually lovely’. Samuel had not been doing this, but he will do it hereafter—and he did, he stood by David.

J. Taylor (Vol. 84, pp.345–347)

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