1 Samuel 12:1-13:23, John 7:1-30, Psalms 108:1-13, Proverbs 15:4
Today is the 12th day of May welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you. One month ago, today was Easter Sunday. Can you believe it? And here we are a month later continuing to move forward in the Scriptures and in life and together in community. So, what a joy it is to be here with you today taking that next step. This week we’re reading from the New International Version and we are working our way through the book of first Samuel. And, so, we reached the place where King Saul who was coronated, became the king, the first king of Israel. And, so, we’re getting to know Saul and we had a chance to get to know him a little bit as a person, but now we are going to get to know him as the king of Israel. And even as we do that, we’re preparing to say goodbye to the prophet, to the last judge, to the priest Samuel. So, today from the New International Version. First Samuel 12 and 13.
Commentary:
Okay. So, here’s the…here’s the scenario that is shaped up in the first Samuel. Obviously, Samuel had some things to say to the people about this new king and he reminded them that they…that God was supposed to be their king and he testified against them, but he basically said that if they and their king would follow God then God would be in the midst of them and protect them and be their God, right? So, Saul begins to reign. The Philistines, so the enemies of Israel, encamp against them, right? So, they’re like drawing up battle lines. Saul does the same. And Saul is supposed to wait for Samuel to come and offer a sacrifice and give further instructions about this ensuing battle, but while they’re waiting people are getting a little jittery about the fact that they’re waiting to go into battle and they could die. And, so, people are kind of slinking away here and there and it’s like Saul’s trying to keep his game face while he’s waiting for Samuel and Samuel still doesn’t show up. And a week goes by and Samuel still doesn’t show up. And, so, Saul decides, “okay, the people, the army is deserting me, and I have an encamped army against me, and the people are losing heart.” And, so, he decided to offer the sacrifice to God himself. In other words, to take matters into his own hand. And the reason that he wanted to take matters into his own hand was because of the fact that people were deserting him. So, he does this sacrifice and at the end of it, Samuel shows up and it’s not a good scene. Basically, what Samuel tells Saul is that his kingdom is coming to an end, even as its basically just beginning, that the kingdom has already been stripped away from him and God has selected another. So, when we saw Saul’s coronation that was in yesterday’s reading, we saw Saul was hiding, like hiding out at his own coronation. He’s afraid of man and what people think and we get the first clues of that. In today’s reading we see it on full display and it’s such a big deal, like it’s such a fatal flaw that God is going to select somebody else because this wasn’t really about ultimate and deep reverence for God, this was about Saul’s fear of being deserted by the army and Saul’s fear of what people were saying about him and what they were going to say about him. So, you know, where this kind of starts getting personal is when we start thinking about how we are swayed by the opinion of other people, like this…the swirl of it all, how we are trying to curate and fit ourselves into a certain mold so that good things, right, good things, so people say good things…not…not that that…that’s a bad thing to have people speak well of you. The point is the motivator, like what’s going on in your heart. What are you motivated to do this? And maybe we’ve been in these circumstances where we felt the leading of the Lord and we began to do what we were told, which led us to a period of waiting. Because this is what happened with Saul. He assembled the Army. They’re all lined up but he’s in a season or a time of waiting for the prophet to come and give further instructions. So, we can all find those kind of scenarios in our lives, where we’re told to do something, we’re prepared to do it and then there’s a period of waiting. And it’s like everybody is just kind of slinking away and maybe doing some talking or whatever. And, so, we try to take matters into our own hands to try to hold the whole thing together as if God can’t hold it together. But really what’s going on inside of us is that we fear whether or not God’s come through. It’s that we fear what others are gonna say. So, Saul is showing us in vivid detail this path of life and we’re nowhere near the end of our learning. But even as we get to know Saul, this first king, it’s like every day there’s something else to learn about the fear of man and where that road will ultimately lead when we’re trying to get an identity from the opinions, the ever-changing opinions of people instead of getting the opinion from our Creator who isn’t continually changing His mind about us based on the winds of change or culture or based even upon our performance. This is leading Saul down a treacherous path. It will lead us down the same treacherous path.
Prayer:
Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit to remind us of who we are, children of the most-high God. What else can be said about that? What kind of social media post can we post today that will make us look so great that will outdo that? And in knowing that this is who we are, like there’s nothing else above that, that we are Your children. So, we don’t need to prop ourselves up in some kind of smaller way. We’ve already won it all, it’s already all ours. You are our Father. And, so, Lord, even as we go through this story in first Samuel, we see these roads that Saul is gonna walk down. Show us how we get off the path and walk down the same roads so that we learn here, and we walk through this assured of who we are and where we’re going and who You are and where You’re leading. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus name we ask. Amen.
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