1 Samuel 10:1-11:15, John 6:43-71, Psalms 107:1-43, Proverbs 15:1-3
Today is the 11th day of May welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s fantastic to be here with you today as we gather and take the next step forward together. I am grateful, grateful that we can take the next step forward together, grateful that we can be together to take the next step. And, so, let’s do that. We’re reading from the New English Translation this week and picking up where we left off yesterday which leads us back into the book of first Samuel. And we are at the precipice of a very different era. We are about to anoint a king over Israel, something they’ve never had before. And, so, let’s dive in. First Samuel 10 and 11.
Commentary:
Okay. So, there are a couple things we need to talk about. First in first Samuel we see Saul ascend to kingship. He is the first monarch over the children of Israel. And we saw the whole way that it happened, right? Samuel’s talking to Sail telling him what he’s going to experience on his way back to home. A prophetic word that comes true. The spirit of the Lord rushes upon Saul. He prophesies and then all the people are called together and the tribe…like, by lot, the tribe of Benjamin is chosen. And we should remember just…just a little bit ago, where back in the book of Judges we see this terrible thing happen in the tribe of Benjamin in the city of Gibea. And I mentioned then that Israel’s first king is going to come out of the ashes of this. So, that’s what’s happening. The people all come together. The tribe of Benjamin is chosen by lot. Then Saul’s family is chosen and then Saul is chosen, and Saul is nowhere to be found. Saul is hiding. He’s literally being called to become the king and he is literally hiding from his calling. And that immediately becomes a mirror. How many times have we hid when we should have stepped forward into what we were being invited into by God? What we’ll see as we get to know Saul a little bit better is that he definitely looks like a king. He looks the part, but he has absolute flaws within him that are debilitating. And we’ll watch that. What we see today is that Saul fears other people. The fear of man is a dominant characteristic in his life as we get to know it here in Samuel. So, his first act, an act of stepping forward into kingship is hiding. He’s dominated by how things look, how he looks over what he is assigned to do and we’re gonna watch this materialize until it turns into a severe amount of paranoia and mental illness, which we will see. So, Saul has plenty to teach us in the days ahead.
Then we turn over into the gospel of John and I just once in a while refer to this as Jesus vampire monologue because what He…what He says today actually clears out the circus atmosphere around Him. He says, “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in yourselves. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food in my blood is true drink.” And I could continue on, but this is what Jesus is saying, and a lot of people are like, what are we talking about here all of the sudden? Like, how does this work? And as this story plays out many of His followers depart away from Him. From the book of John, “after this many of His disciples quit following Him and did not accompany Him any longer.” And Jesus did clarify that He wasn’t saying like somehow He was going to chop off a hand and everybody was going to share it and eat His hand and all the blood that came out of His arm they were going to drink it. Jesus clarified. And I quote Jesus. “The Spirit is the One who gives life. Human nature is of no help. The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and are life.” So, from this we are to understand that what Jesus is saying is spiritual. Christ within us will live eternally. Nevertheless, a lot of people split after this, and Jesus was never looking to be any kind of celebrity. He wasn’t trying to build up some sort of platform for Himself. He didn’t like the circus atmosphere that surrounded Him. He withdrew often. But in this case He kinda cleared the deck. A lot of people abandoned Him at this point, which kind of leads us to one of…one of the most touching scenes in the New Testament for this because all of the people leave and there’s these 12 disciples who are following this rabbi who have heard what He said and have watched the crowds disperse. They’re just kind of standing around and then Jesus looks to His friends, His 12 friends and says, “you don’t want to go away too, do you?” Something about that touches me in my heart. God in the flesh, moving around the countryside speaking the truth, unpacking the truth, trying to show people that they’re living under a cloud, and they need to open their eyes and see what’s really happening here, what God is actually doing, where He is leading. And they abandon Him. And here’s God with his 12 friends saying, are you…are you gonna leave too? Are you taking off too? There’s something pretty sad about that. But then Simon Peter sort of speaks for all of them. “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” And I think that about nails it and I think that’s our point of meditation for today, a place to kind of center ourselves. We have drawn near to the Lord and we have wandered far away and we have walked away at times when we don’t understand what He’s doing and it’s not what we want. We’ve probably shaken our fists at the sky in some sort of way over our circumstances. And if we could just kind of hear the echoes here. You don’t want to go away too, do you? Ahhh…that just hits me in the heart. May we all respond as Peter did. Where would we go? Only You can save us. We believe that You are the Holy One of God. Where else is there to go? So, wherever You’re going we’re going and whatever You say, whether we understand it or not, we believe. May that well up within us today as we navigate the choices, the conversations that will come our way.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, we invite You into that. Lead us deeper into Jesus. Of course we’re not leaving. You would never leave or forsake us. Where else would we go? May this become true. May it become foundational in our hearts today we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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