10th June 2026

10th June 2026


Pray (ACts)


Read (1 Samuel 31 focus 7-10)


Message (Alan Burke)


Have you seen the news today? Terrible, isn’t it!? I should be honest, I wrote this devotion a week ago, so I don’t know what has happened as you’re reading this because I’m not a prophet who can tell the future. Yet I often come across people lamenting how the world that we live in is going to the dogs, and of course, I don’t mean that in a literal sense. If I’d said that in Strabane, you’d be going to the greyhound track in Lifford, but that it is not what I’m referring to. It is a descent into ruin; things are getting worse. It seems like we spend our lives hearing of what is going on in the world, and we despair. We get bombarded with bad news, we hear how the church is declining. I’ve people I know who are glad they aren’t my age because of how much the UK has fallen. They look at former meetinghouses where the LORD our God was worshipped being turned into Islamic centres and they lament. Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that the LORD is on his throne, and we need to stop lamenting and rejoice that indeed the LORD is on his throne, and one day the LORD Jesus will return, and all his enemies, all of them, will be put under his feet. 


We pick up today, and it is important to know that because of Israel at the death of Saul and what happened to his body, they would have lost all hope; their king was dead. After the victory, the Philistines came and stripped the dead. This might seem shocking to us, but it was common. Armies would often strip the dead, acquiring weapons, clothing, and personal belongings, which could be used to rearm themselves or for personal gain. As they do so, they find Saul and what he had feared they would do to him in life; the Philistines do to him in death. 


While details of the battle are sparse, the details of what happens to Saul in death and defeat are graphic. His head is cut off, he is stripped of his armour, messengers are sent throughout the land with the gospel. Of course, it is not the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ; instead, to them, it is a gospel of a defeated foe, and it is good news which they proclaim, with messengers sent out to the temples of their idols and among their people. For Israel, in hearing what happened to their king, would have further demoralised them in defeat. What we may miss though is that in all of this, the LORD himself is being mocked. Yet the LORD was at work, he had brought this judgement on Saul, but for the people of God, they would have known very little of the LORD’s will in all that was unfolding. In that moment, it would have been utter darkness, hopelessness in the land of Israel, the LORD’s anointed is dead, hung on the wall, humiliated. 


Even in what seemed like defeat, the LORD’s will was being done, he was at work. For after Saul, David, the LORD’s anointed, would reign, but he too was a man like Saul and he would die, like we all will die. But there is another to whom came from David’s line, the LORD Jesus Christ. For his disciples, it seems like defeat as Jesus hung on that cross, crying out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Then he breathed his last. It was defeat, but even as he hung there on the cross, lifeless, the LORD was at work even in apparent defeat. And we now rejoice each resurrection day, each LORD’s day, celebrating that through his death, death has been swallowed up in victory, we have life through his death for he is the resurrection and the life (see 1 Cor 15:54). Whoever believes in him, though he die, yet shall he live (Jn 11:25).


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q90 How is the Word to be read and heard, that it may become effectual to salvation?
A. That the Word may become effectual to salvation, we must attend thereunto with diligence, preparation, and prayer; receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practice it in our lives.
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