Sometimes what at first seems to be humility is actually an unwillingness to be God’s man in the moment.
Samuel had been forewarned that he would soon meet a Benjamite who was to be the first human king of Israel, the “King eternal” (1 Tim 1:17) having been rejected by the people. Not the man after God’s heart, but after their own hearts—a big man. When we are insistent, the Lord may give us what we demand, and we only later discover it’s the last thing we really wanted. “Tomorrow about this time,” said the Lord, “I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him commander over My people Israel, that he may save My people from the hand of the Philistines; for I have looked upon My people, because their cry has come to Me” (1 Sam 9:16). The first man Saul meets in town, he asks where the seer might live; the man is Samuel himself. Samuel invites him to “the high place,” where the sacrifice is to be made, and Samuel informs him that the lost donkeys have been found. Then the prophet asks, “And on whom is all the desire of Israel? Is it not on you and on all your father’s house?” (v 20), an oblique way of saying that the king which Israel has been wanting has been found, and Saul is the man. Saul’s response is similar to Gideon’s when God selects him: “Am I not a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel, and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin?” (v 21). The humility is commendable, but the inference is wrong. Hannah’s prayer at Samuel’s birth gets it right. “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the ash heap, to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory” (2:8). God is not looking for great people; He uses few of them (1 Cor 1:26). Instead, He is seeking ordinary people willing for God to reveal His greatness through them.