1st September 2023

1st September 2023


Pray (ACts)


Read - 1 Samuel 11


Message Alan Burke 


It’s always hard to know what to pull out of these passages in the devotions, so far we’ve thought about Jabesh-Gilead’s failure to look for help in God or his King and how the only right response for all people is to look to God and the true King Jesus Christ. Then on Wednesday we focused on the response of Saul at the news of what is happening to the people of Jabesh-Gilead, how the Spirit of God rushed upon him and he burned with anger, learning how not all anger is sinful, how our Lord and Saviour got angry, anger can be righteous and the wrath of God that Jesus received on the cross was because of our sin. Today we focus on the result of what unfold. 


Isreal musters, three hundred thousand and the men of Judah thirty thousand, this is a massive fighting force that have gathered at the call of Saul, the messengers of Jabesh-Gilead take the news back and the city are glad, elated, deliverance is coming for them. The Ammonites are slaughtered, the detail that we are given, the completeness of the defeat is total, no two of them are left together, in contrast to the Israelites who turned out as one man we are told at the end of v7. Our modern sensitivities mean that often we recoil at this idea, How could God have sent his Spirit on Saul for this task, how could he have allowed his people to do such a thing, to kill so many. It even seems to some that it is contradictory to the New Testaments ‘God of love’. God before, the God of the Old Testament is all about the wrath, God now is all about the love, but God warns the judgement that will come upon all those who do not repent and believe. 


Jesus was clear about the fait that awaits all who do not put their faith in him, while many who refuse to handle such passages, say they believe that Jesus never said anything about judgement or hell and they imagine the Lord to be always loving and gracious. Indeed some even go so far as to say that there will be nobody sent to hell and there will be some sort of universal salvation. Scripture clearly rejects all of this. History comes to a close with Christ on the judgement seat giving heaven to His sheep and hell to the goats. Here the completeness of the defeat foreshadows what we will see at the end of history, of those who are not on God’s side.


With the victory won, Samuel calls the people to go to Gilgal to reaffirm the kingship, they go as the united people, and they worshipped the Lord their God at Gilgal, they made sacrifices and offerings and their was a great celebration. This marks the starting point of Sauls reign and it started so so well for him, God has given Saul everything he needs to be a good king, to rule the people well, God had called him, anointed him, equips him, he had everything he needed, he was set up for success, but Saul would eventually fail. The failure of Saul as the King over God’s people rests on his own shoulders. 


We will see his failures before very long, this is the high point of his reign and this acts as a warning to all who lead, or who have been called, or equipped by God and our it is our own hearts that are deceitful above all else. For all of us we need not look to earthly leaders, we should not follow personality, we need to look to the true king Jesus Christ who obeyed the law of God perfectly on our behalf so that we might be forgiven. You know the thing that marked out the next king that followed Saul, King David? It wasn’t that King David was any less sinful it was that David was a man who knew the necessity of repentance in his life and as a result was a ‘man after God’s own heart’ (1 Sam 13:14, Acts 13:22).


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q33 What is justification?
Justification is an act of God’ s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, (Rom. 3:24–25, Rom. 4:6–8) and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, (2 Cor. 5:19,21) only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, (Rom. 5:17–19) and received by faith alone. (Gal. 2:16, Phil. 3:9)
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