1 Samuel 22:1-23:29, John 10:1-21, Psalms 115:1-18, Proverbs 15:18-19
Today is the 18th day of May welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you around this Global Campfire that is always burning. And no matter what time of day or night it is, whenever we come around the Global Campfire we are not alone. It is…there’s never a time that somebody else isn’t here at the campfire just listening to God’s Word and allowing it to be a part of the day or the evening, to be a part of our lives. So, it is wonderful, it is a joy to be here with you as we prepare to take the next step. We’ve been working our way through the book of first Samuel. We are firmly now in the story of David, but we are also firmly in the story of Israel’s first king, Saul. And we learned about…a lot about Saul as we were getting to know him, his fear of man, his instability. We’ve witnessed things. We’ve even looked at those things in our own lives. But now David has emerged, and he is a very threatening figure to Saul even though David’s not personally threatening Saul or even trying to do anything disloyal to Saul. Saul has become increasingly paranoid about David, plotting to kill him, trying to find a way to assassinate him, being angry with anyone who would protect him. Like he’s really paranoid. And that’s kinda where we’re gonna pick up the story today. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. First Samuel chapter 22 and 23.
Commentary:
Okay. So, when we met Saul, he wasn’t a king yet. He was not a major player in his family or in his clan. He was looking for donkeys, right? Like, that’s where we started this story. But even as we’ve moved on from there, we’ve…we’ve watched Saul and some of his Achilles heels, basically, some of the things that are like fatal to his leadership. And the primary one would be he’s completely motivated by what people think about him, which doesn’t leave him with much of a core. And, so, we’ve watch him kinda swaying back-and-forth in all these kinds of situations because he…he seems to be more afraid about how he…how he looks to people than how we actually is. And we knew all that about Saul before this guy David ever entered the picture, but of course David did enter the picture. And again, we met him before he was famous about anything. He is also a lower person on the totem pole in his clan and family. He’s a shepherd who ends up on the battle lines to try to see about his brothers so he can report back to his father and ends up on the battlefield slaying the giant Goliath and achieving a tremendous national victory for the Israel…Israelite people over the Philistines. So, David go…goes from nothing to superhero, like national treasure, national hero and that has significant impact on Saul. And we’ve kind of watched that but at the same time we’ve watched David kind of with this confused look on his face almost like, “I’m just lucky to be here. I don’t know how this happened. I’m not trying to do anybody any wrong. I’m just trying to do what I’m told.” Like, he’s loyal to the King and we will watch that even though the king, King Saul, David’s father-in-law at this point is indeed trying to assassinate him. David isn’t trying to get rid of Saul he’s trying to remain faithful and loyal to Saul the best that he can while running for his life. And the contrasts are pretty stark in this story when we overlay them in our own lives and begin to examine our own hearts posture, our own motives for doing the things that we do. So, Saul…things have gotten so out of hand. Like he has gotten so paranoid that he needs music to calm him down, he is throwing spears, even at his own son Jonathan and in today’s reading he kills 80 innocent priests of God, right? So, David had gone to Ahimelech the priest, but Ahimelech didn’t know anything about what was going on at all. He’s completely innocent in the matter, and his whole family and the whole town, everything in it is wiped out because of Saul’s paranoia. Let us watch this. That’s what we’re intended to do here. That’s why the story’s in the Bible. We’re watching a path. We’re watching a systematic path in King Saul’s life and this is where when you’re swaying around in life trying to find an identity by trying to find whoever is going to give you the affirmation, whoever’s gonna to tell you what you want to hear, then it becomes very unstable and it becomes incredibly unstable when you’re in a leadership position. So, let’s watch this continue to play out. At the same time, we should be watching David. We’re gonna get to know David well, but at this point in David’s life he's…he’s got everything he needs. He’s a good-looking guy. He’s had to learn to become very cunning because he’s trying to stay alive. So, he’s had to fit inside into all kinds of situations just…just to stay alive but at the same time we see a different kind of core. Like David is being pursued to be snuffed out and his only hope for survival is in God and that is a different path than the one Saul is taking. And, so, we have these two stories that are intertwined with their two different paths that show us an awful lot…an awful lot about ourselves.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, we invite You into this continually because this a point in the Bible, yes, where the era is changing, and things are changing. We've…we’ve navigated thousands of years since we started this story. So, this is where we are now and even as the era is changing in the Bible this interaction between King Saul and David is important for us in knowing not only how the story moves forward, but also this is a very rich moment in the year that we start to examine the interior life that we’re living and what is motivating it. So, come Holy Spirit we pray into all that we’ve read and into all that we will contemplate today we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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