We think of the day of reckoning as somewhere in the distant future, at the end of all things. It’s a dramatic, never to be repeated, awesome event.

That day is coming, and it is awesome, because that’s when the sentence is carried out. But the actual reckoning is going on now, in this life.

When a person is not after God’s own heart, he is not like-minded with God, and he works against God. Saul greatly diminishes all that Jonathan sets in motion, to where he is ready to put his own son Jonathan to death.

This week we get to see what happens when a man does work with God, when he is a man after God’s own heart. He is like minded with God, he thinks and feels and chooses like God.

Saul’s kingdom won’t last because he can’t obey God. He can’t obey God because he doesn’t believe God. Saul is afraid that God is going to let him die.

Now, Saul is an impressive guy. Everyone sees it. But “impressive” isn’t what makes him effective in his first big emergency. It’s what the Holy Spirit does in him that makes him effective as king.

In 1 Samuel 9 and 10 we see God working in a complicated, roundabout way to call Saul. God reveals His man sovereignly, with power and confirmations so that the king himself will know: “I am God’s man. I am responsible to God first.”

Samuel in his lifetime saw Israel enter into a golden age. They learned by experience that everything good in life comes from being in right relationship with God.

He also lived to see Israel walk away from all that they learned to go back into darkness and misery.