In our passage this morning, 1 Samuel 16, Samuel expresses fear when God commands him to go to Bethlehem to anoint a new king for Israel. Samuel is afraid that the current king, Saul, will kill him.
Rather than simply promising to protect Samuel, God seems to offer Samuel a ruse to hide his true intentions from Saul. “Take a heifer with you,” the Lord says. “And tell the people that you are there for a sacrifice.”
Is God being deceitful? Is it proper for him to suggest this course of action?
This biblical account poses an interesting ethical dilemma. If you are planning a surprise birthday party for your friend, is it ethical to deceive your friend in order for the birthday to be a surprise? Most of us would say yes. This is an allowable deception.
But why? Withholding information from someone who does not have a moral right to the information is not actually deceitful. If a stranger asks me for my bank account number, I am not obligated to share it with him, nor am I being deceitful if I try to hide it with passwords. He simply doesn’t have a right to know.
But in Saul’s situation, doesn’t the king have a right to know if another person is being anointed king? Plausibly, yes. But, it can also be countered that God does not have an obligation to reveal information.
Still, the hypothetical possibility of Saul having a right to know opens the door for the more important point here: Even those who might have a right to know can forfeit that right through immoral behavior.
For example, Christians like Corrie Ten Boom who hid Jews in their homes during WWII were under no obligation to reveal this information to Nazi police as the police searched their homes. On one level, authority figures have a right to truthful answers to their questions. However, the Nazis’ immoral behavior toward Jews nullified any right they had to information such as where the Jews were hiding.
In Saul’s case, his rebellion against God nullifies any claim he had to know about the coronation of another king.
On an even bigger scale, God exercises this same practice of withholding information from those who are morally disqualified. Jesus refuses to speak to those who rejected him except in parables, whose meaning was purposefully hidden. Likewise, God hid from Satan and his demonic forces his true intentions with the cross (1 Cor. 2:7-8). God had every right to do so because their rebellion against him nullified any claim they might have had to understand what God was doing.
There is a warning here for us. If we turn away from God and rebel against Christ’s Lordship, God’s plans and actions can be hidden from us until we repent and are restored.
It is another example of obedience preceding sight.
Blessings,
Jim