“And Samuel said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart.'” (ESV – Read the chapter)
There are two ways to understand this verse, both of them are important. One of them is contextually anchored, and one takes what Israel would have understood and applies it forward to something that is an encouragement to us. Read the rest…
“Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, ‘Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.'” (ESV – Read the chapter)
These two verses mark the end of the era of the judges in the history of Israel and the beginning of the era of the monarchy. This is both a sad and an interesting transition. It gives us an object lesson in how God can use our failings and still accomplish His plans in spite of them. In fact, He can even incorporate our failures into His plans such that it appears later they were always part of them even though they weren’t. Let’s look at how this is. Read the rest…
“And Saul said to Samuel, “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.””
(ESV – Read the chapter)
Have you ever tried to confront someone with the truth and they just wouldn’t see it. Saul had been caught not doing what God had commanded. God send Samuel to confront him about not doing what He had commanded. But Saul just wouldn’t see it. And now that Samuel was getting more insistent with his charge, Saul was trying to deflect and point the blame other places. Read the rest…
“It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known it before.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
I read this verse for the first time in a long time the other day and it got my attention as it hasn’t any of the previous times I’ve read it. I honestly have struggled with it some. This is the fifth reason we are given that the nations of Canaan were left in the Promised Land. Which one are we supposed to take as true? Read the rest…
“When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery. And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. And I said to you, “I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.” But you have not obeyed my voice.'” (ESV – Read the chapter)
The people of Israel were hurting and broken and desperate. They were starving. The Midianites were taking everything. They were keeping them weak and unable to mount any kind of a meaningful resistance to their reign of terror. The Israelites were but a couple of generations into the land God had provided for them and it looked like he had abandoned them to this enemy for good. Now, the reality was that it had only been like this for a few years, but when you’re trapped in misery, a few years can seem like a lifetime. They did the only thing they could: Scrape together a meager survival and cry out to the Lord. Read the rest…
The Nexus 