1 Samuel 15:1-16:23, John 8:1-20, Psalms 110:1-7, Proverbs 15:8-10
Today is the 14th day of April…no it’s not…why would you even say that when we’re halfway into this month? I don’t know…I can’t…I’m not the only one who’s ever done that before. Today is the 14th day of May, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible it is an honor to be here with you as we spend the next couple of days moving through the center of this month, the fifth month of this year. So, in the Old Testament we’ve been working our way through the first book of Samuel and we are firmly moving our way through the life of Israel’s first king, His name is Saul and we’ve been getting to know a lot about Saul because there’s a lot of Saul in us and there’s much to learn. And, of course, in the New Testament we’re reading through the final gospel, the gospel of John. So, this week we’re reading from the New International Version. Today, first Samuel 15 and 16.
Commentary:
Okay. Some pretty big movements in the book of first Samuel today. We met somebody today, somebody very, very famous, somebody that will really kind of accompany us in one way or another through the rest of the Bible and who has been with us since the beginning. And this is a man named David. And the reason that he’s kind of been with us somewhat from the beginning is that we’ve been reading a lot of his poetry, a lot of the lyrics to his songs along the way because he penned a good portion of the Psalms, including the Psalm that we just read. So, we’re just like meeting him for the first time. He’s the youngest boy in his family. He’s like a shepherd boy but he’s also a skilled musician as we learned in first Samuel today. Saul, being troubled, would bring David in to play the lyre, play soft music that would calm him down. He was obviously an expert musician because his songs are preserved in the Psalms. David is gonna have a significant impact on Saul. He’s gonna have a significant impact on everything that happens in the story going forward. His son which isn’t born yet, but his son, one of his sons will be named Solomon and we are enjoying some of that collected wisdom from Solomon in the book of Proverbs. So, we just have a little spot here where we can kind of look out…like this is almost like a mountaintop, where we can kind of look out over where we’re going. Meanwhile, with Saul in our reading today basically drove the final nail into his own proverbial coffin, at least as far as being the king goes, at least in the eyes of God. So, Saul was instructed to go to battle against the Amalekites and destroy everything. Once again he did not do what he was instructed to do and this is an ongoing thing and it seems as if the motivator, like the deep motivation for this is that he…it’s the fear of man, that he is afraid of what people think of him. So, his actions are confused and clouded because of it and basically we get this from Saul’s own mouth today. So, Samuel confronts Saul about why he did not completely obey the word of the Lord. Saul has all kinds of excuses, but when he runs out of excuses he says, “I have sinned. I violated the Lord’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the men and so I gave into them. Now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me so that I may worship the Lord.” Like, even as he’s confessing what he did he’s asking Samuel to come back with him so he can worship the Lord in front of these people because if Samuel won’t go back with him what’s that gonna look like. So, like this runs very, very deep in Saul. The thing that makes this helpful for us is that one way or another this runs very deep in us too. But what we get here in the Scriptures is the roadmap. Like we can watch in Saul’s life where this is going and then understand that’s where it will take us too.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You. We thank You for Your word. We thank You for the way that it will penetrate deep into our hearts, it will absolutely go to the root of our motivations, the “why” we do the things that we do, even when we don’t even understand why we do the things that we do. So, we are thankful for the counsel of Your word in our lives and we are thankful for the ability to just day by day step-by-step move through the Scriptures seeing how all of the characters emerge and how it all fits together in the comprehensive view that it is showing us, giving us the guidance we need for our lives. And, so, we are grateful, and we are thankful, and we invite Your Holy Spirit to help us see the things that we need to see and hear the things that we need to hear. Come Holy Spirit into all of this we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.