Thurs.’s Devo - Saul’s Impatience

Read: 1 Samuel 12:1-13:23; John 7:1-30; Psalm 108:1-13; Proverbs 15:4 Samuel stood before the people and proclaimed his own innocence. They had chosen a king and God would give them a king. Samuel took Israel through their history of rebellion against the Lord and told them to fear and worship the Lord and stop rebelling. Samuel told them that God was going to manifest his disapproval of what they were doing by asking for a king by sending rain and thunder during their wheat harvest when it usually didn’t rain. It terrified the people to where they cried out in fear but Samuel told them not to be afraid. They had done wrong but God would not abandon them. He warned them against returning to their idol worship and promised to pray for them as long as he had breath. Saul was thirty years old when he became king. He ruled for 42 years. Saul took 2,000 warriors with him to fight the Philistines in the north and gave his son, Jonathan 1,000 warriors to fight in the south. As the war got heavier Saul petitioned for more men to fight with him. The Philistines came out in hordes with chariots and scared the Israelites into caves. Saul had gone to Gilgal where Samuel had told him to wait for him 7 days. His men were frightened and leaving him. When the seventh day came and Samuel hadn’t showed up, out of desperation, Saul offered the sacrifice himself. As soon as he had finished, Samuel appeared and was very upset with what Saul had done. He told him that if he had waited, God would have established his kingdom forever but since he didn’t, God had already chosen his replacement. He would be a man after God’s own heart. Saul left with his troops though 600 had defected out of fear. The Philistines sent out three raiding parties to the north, west and south. The Philistines had made sure there were no blacksmiths in Israel so that they had to go to the Philistines to have any of their plows or instruments sharpened. It cost them so much they couldn’t afford weapons. Only Saul and Jonathan had weapons. How do you fight without weapons? In John, Jesus stayed in Galilee and avoided going to Judea where they were plotting his death. The Feast of Tabernacles was coming and everyone would be going to Judea. Jesus sent his disciples ahead of him and told them he would come later. He came secretly and stayed hidden till the middle of the festival when he went to the Temple and began teaching. The ones listening were surprised that he wasn’t a teacher of the synagogue and yet he knew so much about God. Jesus told them that he was speaking God’s words and not his own. The people who want to know God’s will will hear his words and believe they came from God. Those who don’t only speak for themselves and want all the glory for themselves. He told them that Moses gave them the Law, but none of them obeyed or they wouldn’t be wanting to kill him. The people wouldn’t believe that anyone wanted to kill Jesus. Jesus went on to explain that they would circumcise their sons on the eighth day, even if the day fell on the Sabbath and yet they condemned him for healing on the Sabbath. The people had a hard time believing he was the Messiah because of their preconceived ideas about the Messiah. Jesus was trying to get them to discern spiritually what the truth was, not with their heads. The religious leaders wanted to arrest Jesus but God didn’t allow them to succeed because it was not the right time. Lord, help us to discern spiritually instead of trying to understand spiritual things with our heads.