Tuesday, April 13 - Miriam

Today's reading from the One Year Chronological Reading Plan is 1 Samuel 15-17:31.  Click here to read.

Wow, is there ever a lot in today's reading.  So much stood out to me today that I haven't looked up commentaries.  These are the things that  I saw in today's reading.

1)  Saul's disobedience to God and then trying to "put a good face on it". 
God specifically gave instructions that the Amalekites and everything belonging to them was to be totally destroyed.  Saul disobeyed God's instructions and then tried to make it seem like he had done this in order to make sacrifices to God, which was, of course, a lie.  I come from a family of frugal people, and I fully understand that it seems a shame to let perfectly good and healthy livestock go to waste by killing them just because they belonged to the Amalekites.  It's understandable that they wouldn't have wanted to just needlessly destroy them.  Understandable, but still disobedient.  Consequently, God rejected Saul as king.  

2) Samuel mourned for Saul and God was grieved. 
Parts of this passage make it sound as though God regretted the decision to make Saul king in the first place, however we know that God knew in advance the choices Saul would make and the sins he would commit. Perhaps to demonstrate clearly to Israel their folly in wanting a king in the first place? To show how quickly one can become arrogant and rebellious when one believes he or she knows what the right thing is better than the word of the Lord? Saul started out shrinking away from leading the Israelites as their king, but once he saw what he was able to do (forgetting that it was the Spirit of the Lord that did it through him) he fell into the trap of pride that Tammy talked about in yesterday's post.  As we've said before, we aren't privy to God's plans or reasons for doing things, and as humans we aren't capable of understanding it all anyway, so questioning how everything fits together is often the wrong question to be asking.  I think a better question is what we can learn from the particular story, rather than how it all fit together in the great scheme of things.  There is much to be learned from the story of Saul, even if we don't fully understand why God made him king in the first place when he knew that he would be grieved by Saul's disobedience and sin.

3)  God knows our hearts. 
This is the main reason I find Saul's quick pretense that he'd kept the choicest livestock alive in order to sacrifice them to God so silly.  God knows our motivations.  We can't get away with justifying something we know is wrong by saying it was for a good reason.  The correlation that came to my mind was doing something obviously sinful and claiming it was in order to make more money so you would have more to give to the church.  Selling drugs, for example.  This is a pretty extreme example, I'll admit.  How about working overtime and not spending time with your family?  Not REALLY a sin, per se, but not what you know you should be doing.  "But hey," you think to yourself, "the more money I make, the more I can give to the church or support a missionary or a foster child."  I love 1 Samuel 16:7 - But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."  So often we just look at outward appearance and assume things about people.  Wouldn't life be a lot easier in some ways if appearance reflected character?  But the Lord looks at the heart.  The Lord sees your motivations and He always knows the truth.  He is the only one who has the right to judge us.

4)  David serves the man he will ultimately replace. 
How amazing is it that the very man (or boy) Saul's servants recommend to him to ease his suffering from the evil spirit is the man that was anointed by Samuel to be the next king?  Not to get ahead of the story, but the fact that David was the one who helped him when he was troubled and later became best friends with his son makes it even more onerous the way he treated David later out of jealousy.  But anyway, I found it interesting that it says the evil spirit was from the Lord.  We tend to think that angels to God's bidding and evil spirits do Satan's bidding, but we must always remember that God is omnipotent and controls ALL things.
 
5)  The giants of life.
Goliath was a literal giant, of course.  The text says he was over 9 feet tall!  It's difficult for me to imagine what that would look like.  One of the tallest people I've met in real life is 6'5" or so, and he seemed really tall to me.  I can't fathom what it would be like to look up at someone more than half again as tall as I am.  I imagine it would look something like a little person standing next to an NBA star.  Anyway, we all have things in our lives that seem like they're too big for us to handle.  They seem to mock us, saying "What do you think you're gonna do about me?  Bring it on!"  The best part of this story comes later, of course, but David gives an interesting response here when he first sees Goliath and the way he is defying God and the Israelites.  "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?"  Goliath, giant or not, was not on the side of God.  David, a shepherd and the youngest of his brothers, may have seemed like the "least of these" but he had the Spirit of God with him and he knew that if God was for them, no one could stand against them.
 
Tomorrow's reading is 1 Samuel 17:32-19:17, Psalm 59 and 1 Samuel 19:18-24.  Click here to read.