January 20, 2025 • 19 mins
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Welcome to the Westside church’s special Monday Morning Coffee podcast with Mark Roberts. Mark is a disciple, a husband, father and grand dad, as well as a certified coffee geek, fan of CS Lewis’ writings and he loves his big red Jeep. He’s also the preacher for Westside church.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to the Westside churches
special Monday Morning Coffeepodcast on this podcast, our
preacher Mark Roberts will helpyou get your week started
right. With look back atyesterday's sermon so that we
can think through it furtherand better work the
applications into our dailylives . Mark will then look
(00:28):
forward into this week's Biblereading so that we can know
what to expect and watch for.
And, he may have some extrabonus thoughts from time to
time. So grab a cup of coffeeas we start the week together
on Monday Morning Coffee withMark.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday
Morning Coffee podcast forMonday, January the 20th. I'm
Mark. I'm holding a great cupof coffee and, and I'm on my
way home from California. I waswith the Studebaker Road
congregation in Long Beach,California for a weekend
meeting. And as you'relistening to this, I'm on an
airplane headed home, which ofcourse is my favorite
(01:13):
destination. Can't wait to getthere. And of course that means
I'm wearing some Scarlet todayand I'm hoping to get home in
time to get the ball game ontonight and watch the Ohio
State Buckeyes win the nationalchampionship. But we've gotten
more important things todiscuss than whether my
Buckeyes can win thechampionship since I wasn't
home in preaching. This podcastis all about daily Bible
(01:36):
reading. Grab your Bible. Let'shead over to First Samuel. Pour
that cup of coffee, get ready,get set. Let's go. Our reading
for Monday is First Samuelchapter 10, verses seven to 27.
This is where we left off onThursday and it was hard just
to close the Bible and moveover to the book of Psalms,
(01:57):
wasn't it? We wanna see what'sgoing to happen with Saul here.
Now, Samuel calls the peopletogether verse 17, to the Lord
at mpa . And the key here asone scholar noted is that only
the Lord and Samuel knew thatthe king had already been
selected and anointed, butSamuel wanted the tribes to
realize that Jehovah was incharge of the selection
process. And do underline inyour Bible, verse 19, today
(02:19):
you've rejected your God whosaves you from all your
calamities and your distress.
That's what this king is about,isn't it? That's what they
want. They want a militaryleader, they want someone out
in front. When they go intobattle, they have rejected
God's way of delivering them infavor of what nations around
them use, which is a powerfulwarrior king. So now we cast
(02:40):
some lots. Verse 20, and thetribe of Benjamin is taken by
lot. And the next thing youknow, it's all about Saul. And
then we get another troublingnote about Saul. All along the
way, there's just stuff thatmakes you say, wait a minute
there, Saul, what exactly areyou doing? And verse 22 says,
(03:00):
he's hiding. He is hiding. Andit just doesn't seem to me like
when you've been anointed byGod and you've received the
signs that show in chapter 10that you've been anointed by
God, that the thing for you todo is to run away from the
responsibility that God hascalled you to not happy about
this at all his size. Verse 23is highlighted here. I think he
(03:22):
is the ideal choice. If youwant a big warrior king, he's
the Israelite version ofGoliath. And then the whole
thing ends kind of strangely.
There's no crown, there's nocourt, there's no palace. SA
just goes home and and goesback to work as a farmer. We'll
see that in tomorrow's reading.
And some people don't even likehim being selected in verse 27.
(03:43):
People are complaining aboutthat and there's some
translation issues there, butSaul held his peace . Saul can
be patient and wise,unfortunately, he's not always
patient and wise. Keep your eyeon that. Our reading then for
Monday is First Samuel chapter10, verses 17 to 27. Welcome to
(04:04):
Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday.
Today we read First Samuelchapter 11, all 15 verses. That
is our reading for Tuesday. Andthis is the moment that Saul
needs. It gives us our firstchance to see the new king in
action. And it gives him theopportunity to get into the
action and show that he can bethe leader of the people of
Israel. If you watch carefullyin First Samuel chapter 11, it
(04:27):
will remind you a ton of thebook of judges. There's a lot
of judges stuff happening inthe text here as we transition
from judges to kings. Andyou'll see some very judgy
sorts of stuff. Is that, isthat a word? Some judgy stuff.
See some very judgy kinds ofthings here. Let me grab some
coffee. We'll get some veryjudgy stuff going on here and
(04:50):
we will see a change though,something different from in the
book of Judges. So Nahash verseone, the ammonite goes up and
sieges jbs Gilead. And what hesays is, I'm taking you over
and there's nothing that youcan do about it. So the men of
Jesh say, we are gonna make atreaty. And Nahash imposes the
harshest kinds of treaty termsupon them. I'm gonna gouge out
(05:14):
your right eye, and tonight inZoom I'll talk with you a
little bit about why he's goingto gouge out the right eye,
what that does and why that'simportant and share with you as
well. There's some material inthe Dead Sea scrolls that that
will shed some additional lightupon this little story here.
It's not scripture, but it doeshelp us understand the history
(05:35):
of what's happening. Maybe theimportant thing to notice here
is that the elders of J Bs sayverse three. Okay, we're gonna
gonna think about it for sevendays and see if anybody will
help us out. But it's clearthey don't expect any help. And
notice no one says send for thenew king, he will save us. No,
(05:56):
nobody is thinking in that kindof way at all, but the spirit
of God, verse six, rushes uponSaul in the Old Testament, the
spirit of God comes upon peopleto empower them to do God's
will. He's overtaken by thisterrible affront to the
Israelites. And here's the newthing. He sends out messengers
throughout all the nation andunites the nation. In the book
(06:20):
of Judges, there are variousregional conflicts that go on
and the tribe in that arearesponds to the threat and the
judge shows up and leads theminto battle and they toss the
midianite yoke off or they getrid of the amite or whoever it
is that's bothering them. Butthe nation doesn't fight as a
nation. Other parts of thecountry, they're not even
involved in that. They don'tcare that Benjamin is being
(06:40):
subjugated or that in the northsomething terrible is happening
to the E rites. But here we geta United Israel all acting
together and working togetherand they're working together
under King Saul. Verse 11, thenext day Saul put the people in
three companies. So he acts asthe leader and he leads the
people and they do triumph. Godgives them the victory. And
(07:03):
Saul is very aware of that.
Verse 13, today the Lord hasworked salvation in Israel.
This is a rare moment, a raremoment for King Saul. Maybe
this is something we ought tohold onto . We think of all the
terrible things he did everynow and then He can get it
right every now and then he canget it right. So they go to
(07:24):
Gilgal , which is theappropriate place to go.
Covenant renewal ceremonieshave been done there before,
like in Joshua chapter four, inJoshua chapter five, and Saul
meets Samuel here severaltimes. So Saul here is leading
with God in mind. That seems tobe a good sign for things to
come. And when we get done withchapter 11, maybe I'm thinking,
(07:47):
hey, this king thing, thiscould, this could work out.
This guy seems like the rightkind of king. We we, we got
this, we had a military threat.
He's a military leader. It'sall good. Is it? Maybe that's
something that we can exploretonight on the zoom call West
Siders, everyone else see youtomorrow on the podcast, our
(08:08):
reading for Tuesday. FirstSamuel chapter 11. Welcome to
Wednesday, saddle up your cameland let's do this on hump day.
It's First Samuel chapter 13that we are reading. Today we
are reading all of First Samuelchapter 1323 verses . So let's
get right to it. And maybe Ishould start right away with
the textual difficulties inverse one. This verse is full
(08:32):
of translation issues thatreally are far outside of
anything I can treat in apodcast. But you can see that
from the different versions inthe way they translate Verse
one. If you have an olderversion of the ESV, then it
will say Saul was do , do , do, do . Years old when he began
to reign and he reigned, do ,do , do . And two years over
Israel, the newer ESV after2011 says he lived for one
(08:56):
year, then became king. Andwhen he had reigned for two
years, the New Americanstandard has , Saul was 40
years old when he began toreign. He reigned 32 years over
Israel. There's just a ton oftroubles here when you're
trying to translate the Hebrew.
And Hebrew has lots ofdifficulties and issues,
translating numbers just ingeneral in this text. This
verse is just fraught withtroubles. Maybe the thing to
(09:18):
say here is that we're notgonna let some uncertainty
about exactly how many yearsSaul reigned or how old he was
when he became king, upset ourfaith. That's not what our
faith is based on. Our faith isnot built on first Samuel 13,
one . Our faith is built on theempty tomb. And yes, we would
like to translate first Samuel13, one correctly, and we'd
(09:40):
like to understand what that issaying and all the things that
go with all of that. But howlong Saul reigned actually Acts
1321 tells us he reigned 40years. So that settles that
issue. But how long you reignedand all the things that go with
that, that's not the basis ofyour Christianity. So let's
keep translation issues withnumbers and and , and we're
gonna talk about that a lot allthrough the year, how long this
guy reigned and when hereigned. That's gonna come up
(10:02):
all this year as we seek God'sheart and we read about kings,
but we're not gonna let thatdestroy our faith. So in verse
two, please notice we finallyhave a standing army and there
is trouble here with thePhilistines. There's lots of
trouble here with thePhilistines. Look at verse six,
when the men of Israel saw thatthey were in trouble for the
people who are hard pressedsomehow, trouble is the word of
(10:23):
the day today, isn't it? Thepeople hid themselves in caves
and holes and rocks and tombsand sisters . Why ? That just
sounds like something straightout of the book of judges. And
now Saul fails in the middle ofthis crisis. We wanna be
careful. Verse eight, this doesnot seem to be the meeting of
chapter 10, that was some timeago. But what is significant
here is that Saul is rejectedat Gilgal, the very place where
(10:47):
he had been made king. And whathappens is Saul reveals himself
to be a coward. Verse nine. Hejust gets nervous because
people are deserting him. Andso he goes on without God. Now,
sometimes people have said thathis sin was offering the
offering because he's not apriest and he can't do that.
(11:09):
And that could be right.
However, the the language herejust may be accommodative.
There are a couple of timesthat David Solomon, others are
said to have offered theoffering. And it doesn't mean
that they usurped the place ofthe priest. What it means is
they arranged for the offeringand they looked at a priest and
said, you do the offering likeyou're supposed to. In our
family, we call thatexecutively producing
(11:31):
something. If there's awonderful gift and somebody
opens and says , oh, this isamazing, did you make this
yourself? The answer is no. Iexecutively produced it, which
means I ordered it from Etsy.
Well, it may be that Saul isexecutively producing the
sacrifice here, but what hemost certainly is doing is
failing to obey the prophet.
The prophet told him to wait.
(11:53):
He did not wait. He did not dowhat Samuel told him to do.
That is a sin that he willcommit again in chapter 15. So
it is obvious here that Saulthinks he can go on into battle
without the counsel andassistance of God. He's not
waiting on Samuel. That is thebig issue. And then the rest of
(12:16):
the chapter just details howthe crisis just gets worse and
worse and worse. And we evenhear that the Israelites don't
have weaponry. And that's agood place to learn something
about reading the Bible. Why isthis here? What is that doing
in the story? What is thatdoing to you and me the reader?
And the answer is, it heightensthe tension. There is no way
(12:37):
Israel's gonna win. They don'teven have enough weapons. So we
close chapter 13, seeing Israelin terrible straits and their
new king is not the leader thatwe need him to be. Our reading
for Wednesday is one Samuelchapter 13. It is Thursday. It
(12:58):
is Thursday. And today ourreading is one Samuel 14, one
to 23. And we meet one of thestars of one Samuel. Today we
meet Jonathan . He's actuallybeen in the text before in
yesterday's reading in chapter13. And in verse three , uh,
verses two and three, we heardabout Jonathan . But today we
see who he is and he is a starin every sense of the word,
(13:20):
particularly if you want totalk about starring in faith
and courage. I really have somequestions here about why verse
two. Saul is staying in theoutskirts of GI Youa . He's
supposed to be attacking. He'sbeen called by God to push the
Philistines out. Rememberchapter nine and verse 16, but
he's not doing that. And thereis an EOD available in verse
(13:41):
three that becomes important injust a moment. But the theme of
the act of the theme of thesection here is that this is a
time of action and thatJonathan is a man of action
because verse six, nothing canhinder the Lord from saving by
many or by few. Jonathan trustin God. Jonathan says, we're
the people of God. God will bewith us. Let's go. And in fact,
(14:04):
his armor bearer backs him. I'mwith you, it's risky, but let's
go. God will be with yousometimes. Sometimes you need
to be a Jonathan , butsometimes you just need to be
Jonathan's armor bearer andsupport and encourage the
Jonathan who's going forward.
So they do a little fleecinghere, verse 11, which kind of
(14:26):
sounds like Gideon, kind of ,yeah , gotta be pretty careful
about that fleece business. ButJonathan does use a sign to
decide whether or not they cango forward and they attack. And
the result versus 14 and 15 isthat there is a panic and
probably that probably thatpanic is happening because the
Philistines are thinking Howmany more like this would be
(14:46):
coming? How many more guys havethey got like this? Only fools
would come alone. There has tobe more behind them. So then we
get this uncertain note, verse18, where SALs says , bring the
arc of God here. Sometranslations have the EFI here,
which was mentioned in versethree, not the arc, but the
point is Saul is ready toconsult. God, thank you.
(15:10):
Finally, Saul is ready to seewhat God wants him to do. But
while he's doing that, verse19, then there is this tumult
and everything is going on andSaul says, stop talking to God.
Oh no, no. What are youthinking? You don't stop
consulting God and just jumpinto the battle. Why? Maybe the
(15:31):
question to ask is why hasn'tSaul consulted God before? This
is a disaster. One scholarsaid, Saul is a person who
prays when he should act andacts when he should pray. And
that is consistently Saul'scharacteristic way of acting.
So even though we know that theIsraelites don't have enough
weapons, notice that Goddoesn't need weapons because he
(15:53):
uses Philistine swords Verse 20against the Philistines. And
the result of that is a greatbattle. Verse 23, A great
victory in battle. So the Lordsaved Israel that day. The
Philistines are defeated, butSaul is not the leader that
leads them into that kind ofvictory. It's really more about
(16:15):
Jonathan , and it is certainlyabout what God has done. Saul
shows a strange ability here toturn victory into failure. And
we'll see more of that when werejoin this reading on Monday.
But for tomorrow, we're headedto the Book of Psalms. Our
reading for Thursday is oneSamuel 14, verses one to 23. It
(16:37):
is Friday. It is Friday. And weare reading in the Psalms. Our
reading today is Psalm five.
And in contrast to our readinglast week in Psalm four, which
was an evening prayer, this isa morning prayer, verse three,
oh Lord, in the morning youhear my voice. And again, we
always ask What kind of psalmis this? And the answer is,
it's a lament. It's a cry forhelp. Remember, lament here
(17:01):
does not mean weeping andcrying and grieving.
Lamentations, Jeremiah kind oflament. Lament means a cry to
God for help. However, as weread along in Psalm five,
you'll notice that this is aPsalm expressing great
confidence in God. The Psalmcelebrates the joy of being
numbered with those who canserve God and who know God and
(17:25):
who worship God. And that isparticularly highlighted in
verses four, five and six. Theemphasis here is that God does
not take any pleasure in thewicked. So he's not gonna allow
or tolerate the wicked to beinto his presence. That's not
gonna happen, that's not gonnahappen. It will not happen. And
I think there is some movementhere from the quietness of
verse four to expressions ofdivine wrath. In verse six,
(17:46):
several of these verses are ingreen for me. Just love verse
eight, lead me, oh Lord, inyour righteousness because of
my enemies. Make your waystraight before me. And then
verse 11, that those who loveyour name may exalt in you. And
do note verse nine, open tombis quoted in Romans three,
verse 13. Imagine an open tombin the hot Mediterranean
(18:07):
climate. Woo . That would benasty. That'd just be terrible.
And then verse 10, make thembear their guilt of God. Let
them fall by their owncounsels. One of the common
themes in biblical wisdomliterature is that sin defeats
itself. Sinners are defeated bytheir own sins. I think you see
some of that in Psalm chapterfive. The reading for Friday is
(18:31):
the fifth Psalm. Thank you thenfor listening to the podcast.
If it's helping you, of courseI know you'll want to tell
somebody else about the podcastand encourage them to listen
and read their Bible as well.
Don't forget to leave us arating or review that makes a
big difference in the algorithmdetermining whether or not it's
going to show this podcast orsomeone some other podcast if
(18:51):
someone is seeking someinformation, a podcast about
the Bible. So until next weekwhen we'll open the Bible
together again, I'm MarkRoberts and I want to go to
heaven, and I want you to cometo I'll see you on Monday with
a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Thanks for listening to the Westside church of
Christ podcast. Monday morningcoffee with mark . For more
information about Westside ,you can connect with us through
our website, justchristians.com and our Facebook
page. Our music is fromupbeat.is that's upbeat with
(19:34):
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Please share our podcast withothers. And we look forward to
seeing you again with a companycoffee, of course, on next
Monday.
Hello, and welcome to the Westside churches
special Monday Morning Coffeepodcast on this podcast, our
preacher Mark Roberts will helpyou get your week started
right. With look back atyesterday's sermon so that we
can think through it furtherand better work the
applications into our dailylives . Mark will then look
(00:28):
forward into this week's Biblereading so that we can know
what to expect and watch for.
And, he may have some extrabonus thoughts from time to
time. So grab a cup of coffeeas we start the week together
on Monday Morning Coffee withMark.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday
Morning Coffee podcast forMonday, January the 20th. I'm
Mark. I'm holding a great cupof coffee and, and I'm on my
way home from California. I waswith the Studebaker Road
congregation in Long Beach,California for a weekend
meeting. And as you'relistening to this, I'm on an
airplane headed home, which ofcourse is my favorite
(01:13):
destination. Can't wait to getthere. And of course that means
I'm wearing some Scarlet todayand I'm hoping to get home in
time to get the ball game ontonight and watch the Ohio
State Buckeyes win the nationalchampionship. But we've gotten
more important things todiscuss than whether my
Buckeyes can win thechampionship since I wasn't
home in preaching. This podcastis all about daily Bible
(01:36):
reading. Grab your Bible. Let'shead over to First Samuel. Pour
that cup of coffee, get ready,get set. Let's go. Our reading
for Monday is First Samuelchapter 10, verses seven to 27.
This is where we left off onThursday and it was hard just
to close the Bible and moveover to the book of Psalms,
(01:57):
wasn't it? We wanna see what'sgoing to happen with Saul here.
Now, Samuel calls the peopletogether verse 17, to the Lord
at mpa . And the key here asone scholar noted is that only
the Lord and Samuel knew thatthe king had already been
selected and anointed, butSamuel wanted the tribes to
realize that Jehovah was incharge of the selection
process. And do underline inyour Bible, verse 19, today
(02:19):
you've rejected your God whosaves you from all your
calamities and your distress.
That's what this king is about,isn't it? That's what they
want. They want a militaryleader, they want someone out
in front. When they go intobattle, they have rejected
God's way of delivering them infavor of what nations around
them use, which is a powerfulwarrior king. So now we cast
(02:40):
some lots. Verse 20, and thetribe of Benjamin is taken by
lot. And the next thing youknow, it's all about Saul. And
then we get another troublingnote about Saul. All along the
way, there's just stuff thatmakes you say, wait a minute
there, Saul, what exactly areyou doing? And verse 22 says,
(03:00):
he's hiding. He is hiding. Andit just doesn't seem to me like
when you've been anointed byGod and you've received the
signs that show in chapter 10that you've been anointed by
God, that the thing for you todo is to run away from the
responsibility that God hascalled you to not happy about
this at all his size. Verse 23is highlighted here. I think he
(03:22):
is the ideal choice. If youwant a big warrior king, he's
the Israelite version ofGoliath. And then the whole
thing ends kind of strangely.
There's no crown, there's nocourt, there's no palace. SA
just goes home and and goesback to work as a farmer. We'll
see that in tomorrow's reading.
And some people don't even likehim being selected in verse 27.
(03:43):
People are complaining aboutthat and there's some
translation issues there, butSaul held his peace . Saul can
be patient and wise,unfortunately, he's not always
patient and wise. Keep your eyeon that. Our reading then for
Monday is First Samuel chapter10, verses 17 to 27. Welcome to
(04:04):
Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday.
Today we read First Samuelchapter 11, all 15 verses. That
is our reading for Tuesday. Andthis is the moment that Saul
needs. It gives us our firstchance to see the new king in
action. And it gives him theopportunity to get into the
action and show that he can bethe leader of the people of
Israel. If you watch carefullyin First Samuel chapter 11, it
(04:27):
will remind you a ton of thebook of judges. There's a lot
of judges stuff happening inthe text here as we transition
from judges to kings. Andyou'll see some very judgy
sorts of stuff. Is that, isthat a word? Some judgy stuff.
See some very judgy kinds ofthings here. Let me grab some
coffee. We'll get some veryjudgy stuff going on here and
(04:50):
we will see a change though,something different from in the
book of Judges. So Nahash verseone, the ammonite goes up and
sieges jbs Gilead. And what hesays is, I'm taking you over
and there's nothing that youcan do about it. So the men of
Jesh say, we are gonna make atreaty. And Nahash imposes the
harshest kinds of treaty termsupon them. I'm gonna gouge out
(05:14):
your right eye, and tonight inZoom I'll talk with you a
little bit about why he's goingto gouge out the right eye,
what that does and why that'simportant and share with you as
well. There's some material inthe Dead Sea scrolls that that
will shed some additional lightupon this little story here.
It's not scripture, but it doeshelp us understand the history
(05:35):
of what's happening. Maybe theimportant thing to notice here
is that the elders of J Bs sayverse three. Okay, we're gonna
gonna think about it for sevendays and see if anybody will
help us out. But it's clearthey don't expect any help. And
notice no one says send for thenew king, he will save us. No,
(05:56):
nobody is thinking in that kindof way at all, but the spirit
of God, verse six, rushes uponSaul in the Old Testament, the
spirit of God comes upon peopleto empower them to do God's
will. He's overtaken by thisterrible affront to the
Israelites. And here's the newthing. He sends out messengers
throughout all the nation andunites the nation. In the book
(06:20):
of Judges, there are variousregional conflicts that go on
and the tribe in that arearesponds to the threat and the
judge shows up and leads theminto battle and they toss the
midianite yoke off or they getrid of the amite or whoever it
is that's bothering them. Butthe nation doesn't fight as a
nation. Other parts of thecountry, they're not even
involved in that. They don'tcare that Benjamin is being
(06:40):
subjugated or that in the northsomething terrible is happening
to the E rites. But here we geta United Israel all acting
together and working togetherand they're working together
under King Saul. Verse 11, thenext day Saul put the people in
three companies. So he acts asthe leader and he leads the
people and they do triumph. Godgives them the victory. And
(07:03):
Saul is very aware of that.
Verse 13, today the Lord hasworked salvation in Israel.
This is a rare moment, a raremoment for King Saul. Maybe
this is something we ought tohold onto . We think of all the
terrible things he did everynow and then He can get it
right every now and then he canget it right. So they go to
(07:24):
Gilgal , which is theappropriate place to go.
Covenant renewal ceremonieshave been done there before,
like in Joshua chapter four, inJoshua chapter five, and Saul
meets Samuel here severaltimes. So Saul here is leading
with God in mind. That seems tobe a good sign for things to
come. And when we get done withchapter 11, maybe I'm thinking,
(07:47):
hey, this king thing, thiscould, this could work out.
This guy seems like the rightkind of king. We we, we got
this, we had a military threat.
He's a military leader. It'sall good. Is it? Maybe that's
something that we can exploretonight on the zoom call West
Siders, everyone else see youtomorrow on the podcast, our
(08:08):
reading for Tuesday. FirstSamuel chapter 11. Welcome to
Wednesday, saddle up your cameland let's do this on hump day.
It's First Samuel chapter 13that we are reading. Today we
are reading all of First Samuelchapter 1323 verses . So let's
get right to it. And maybe Ishould start right away with
the textual difficulties inverse one. This verse is full
(08:32):
of translation issues thatreally are far outside of
anything I can treat in apodcast. But you can see that
from the different versions inthe way they translate Verse
one. If you have an olderversion of the ESV, then it
will say Saul was do , do , do, do . Years old when he began
to reign and he reigned, do ,do , do . And two years over
Israel, the newer ESV after2011 says he lived for one
(08:56):
year, then became king. Andwhen he had reigned for two
years, the New Americanstandard has , Saul was 40
years old when he began toreign. He reigned 32 years over
Israel. There's just a ton oftroubles here when you're
trying to translate the Hebrew.
And Hebrew has lots ofdifficulties and issues,
translating numbers just ingeneral in this text. This
verse is just fraught withtroubles. Maybe the thing to
(09:18):
say here is that we're notgonna let some uncertainty
about exactly how many yearsSaul reigned or how old he was
when he became king, upset ourfaith. That's not what our
faith is based on. Our faith isnot built on first Samuel 13,
one . Our faith is built on theempty tomb. And yes, we would
like to translate first Samuel13, one correctly, and we'd
(09:40):
like to understand what that issaying and all the things that
go with all of that. But howlong Saul reigned actually Acts
1321 tells us he reigned 40years. So that settles that
issue. But how long you reignedand all the things that go with
that, that's not the basis ofyour Christianity. So let's
keep translation issues withnumbers and and , and we're
gonna talk about that a lot allthrough the year, how long this
guy reigned and when hereigned. That's gonna come up
(10:02):
all this year as we seek God'sheart and we read about kings,
but we're not gonna let thatdestroy our faith. So in verse
two, please notice we finallyhave a standing army and there
is trouble here with thePhilistines. There's lots of
trouble here with thePhilistines. Look at verse six,
when the men of Israel saw thatthey were in trouble for the
people who are hard pressedsomehow, trouble is the word of
(10:23):
the day today, isn't it? Thepeople hid themselves in caves
and holes and rocks and tombsand sisters . Why ? That just
sounds like something straightout of the book of judges. And
now Saul fails in the middle ofthis crisis. We wanna be
careful. Verse eight, this doesnot seem to be the meeting of
chapter 10, that was some timeago. But what is significant
here is that Saul is rejectedat Gilgal, the very place where
(10:47):
he had been made king. And whathappens is Saul reveals himself
to be a coward. Verse nine. Hejust gets nervous because
people are deserting him. Andso he goes on without God. Now,
sometimes people have said thathis sin was offering the
offering because he's not apriest and he can't do that.
(11:09):
And that could be right.
However, the the language herejust may be accommodative.
There are a couple of timesthat David Solomon, others are
said to have offered theoffering. And it doesn't mean
that they usurped the place ofthe priest. What it means is
they arranged for the offeringand they looked at a priest and
said, you do the offering likeyou're supposed to. In our
family, we call thatexecutively producing
(11:31):
something. If there's awonderful gift and somebody
opens and says , oh, this isamazing, did you make this
yourself? The answer is no. Iexecutively produced it, which
means I ordered it from Etsy.
Well, it may be that Saul isexecutively producing the
sacrifice here, but what hemost certainly is doing is
failing to obey the prophet.
The prophet told him to wait.
(11:53):
He did not wait. He did not dowhat Samuel told him to do.
That is a sin that he willcommit again in chapter 15. So
it is obvious here that Saulthinks he can go on into battle
without the counsel andassistance of God. He's not
waiting on Samuel. That is thebig issue. And then the rest of
(12:16):
the chapter just details howthe crisis just gets worse and
worse and worse. And we evenhear that the Israelites don't
have weaponry. And that's agood place to learn something
about reading the Bible. Why isthis here? What is that doing
in the story? What is thatdoing to you and me the reader?
And the answer is, it heightensthe tension. There is no way
(12:37):
Israel's gonna win. They don'teven have enough weapons. So we
close chapter 13, seeing Israelin terrible straits and their
new king is not the leader thatwe need him to be. Our reading
for Wednesday is one Samuelchapter 13. It is Thursday. It
(12:58):
is Thursday. And today ourreading is one Samuel 14, one
to 23. And we meet one of thestars of one Samuel. Today we
meet Jonathan . He's actuallybeen in the text before in
yesterday's reading in chapter13. And in verse three , uh,
verses two and three, we heardabout Jonathan . But today we
see who he is and he is a starin every sense of the word,
(13:20):
particularly if you want totalk about starring in faith
and courage. I really have somequestions here about why verse
two. Saul is staying in theoutskirts of GI Youa . He's
supposed to be attacking. He'sbeen called by God to push the
Philistines out. Rememberchapter nine and verse 16, but
he's not doing that. And thereis an EOD available in verse
(13:41):
three that becomes important injust a moment. But the theme of
the act of the theme of thesection here is that this is a
time of action and thatJonathan is a man of action
because verse six, nothing canhinder the Lord from saving by
many or by few. Jonathan trustin God. Jonathan says, we're
the people of God. God will bewith us. Let's go. And in fact,
(14:04):
his armor bearer backs him. I'mwith you, it's risky, but let's
go. God will be with yousometimes. Sometimes you need
to be a Jonathan , butsometimes you just need to be
Jonathan's armor bearer andsupport and encourage the
Jonathan who's going forward.
So they do a little fleecinghere, verse 11, which kind of
(14:26):
sounds like Gideon, kind of ,yeah , gotta be pretty careful
about that fleece business. ButJonathan does use a sign to
decide whether or not they cango forward and they attack. And
the result versus 14 and 15 isthat there is a panic and
probably that probably thatpanic is happening because the
Philistines are thinking Howmany more like this would be
(14:46):
coming? How many more guys havethey got like this? Only fools
would come alone. There has tobe more behind them. So then we
get this uncertain note, verse18, where SALs says , bring the
arc of God here. Sometranslations have the EFI here,
which was mentioned in versethree, not the arc, but the
point is Saul is ready toconsult. God, thank you.
(15:10):
Finally, Saul is ready to seewhat God wants him to do. But
while he's doing that, verse19, then there is this tumult
and everything is going on andSaul says, stop talking to God.
Oh no, no. What are youthinking? You don't stop
consulting God and just jumpinto the battle. Why? Maybe the
(15:31):
question to ask is why hasn'tSaul consulted God before? This
is a disaster. One scholarsaid, Saul is a person who
prays when he should act andacts when he should pray. And
that is consistently Saul'scharacteristic way of acting.
So even though we know that theIsraelites don't have enough
weapons, notice that Goddoesn't need weapons because he
(15:53):
uses Philistine swords Verse 20against the Philistines. And
the result of that is a greatbattle. Verse 23, A great
victory in battle. So the Lordsaved Israel that day. The
Philistines are defeated, butSaul is not the leader that
leads them into that kind ofvictory. It's really more about
(16:15):
Jonathan , and it is certainlyabout what God has done. Saul
shows a strange ability here toturn victory into failure. And
we'll see more of that when werejoin this reading on Monday.
But for tomorrow, we're headedto the Book of Psalms. Our
reading for Thursday is oneSamuel 14, verses one to 23. It
(16:37):
is Friday. It is Friday. And weare reading in the Psalms. Our
reading today is Psalm five.
And in contrast to our readinglast week in Psalm four, which
was an evening prayer, this isa morning prayer, verse three,
oh Lord, in the morning youhear my voice. And again, we
always ask What kind of psalmis this? And the answer is,
it's a lament. It's a cry forhelp. Remember, lament here
(17:01):
does not mean weeping andcrying and grieving.
Lamentations, Jeremiah kind oflament. Lament means a cry to
God for help. However, as weread along in Psalm five,
you'll notice that this is aPsalm expressing great
confidence in God. The Psalmcelebrates the joy of being
numbered with those who canserve God and who know God and
(17:25):
who worship God. And that isparticularly highlighted in
verses four, five and six. Theemphasis here is that God does
not take any pleasure in thewicked. So he's not gonna allow
or tolerate the wicked to beinto his presence. That's not
gonna happen, that's not gonnahappen. It will not happen. And
I think there is some movementhere from the quietness of
verse four to expressions ofdivine wrath. In verse six,
(17:46):
several of these verses are ingreen for me. Just love verse
eight, lead me, oh Lord, inyour righteousness because of
my enemies. Make your waystraight before me. And then
verse 11, that those who loveyour name may exalt in you. And
do note verse nine, open tombis quoted in Romans three,
verse 13. Imagine an open tombin the hot Mediterranean
(18:07):
climate. Woo . That would benasty. That'd just be terrible.
And then verse 10, make thembear their guilt of God. Let
them fall by their owncounsels. One of the common
themes in biblical wisdomliterature is that sin defeats
itself. Sinners are defeated bytheir own sins. I think you see
some of that in Psalm chapterfive. The reading for Friday is
(18:31):
the fifth Psalm. Thank you thenfor listening to the podcast.
If it's helping you, of courseI know you'll want to tell
somebody else about the podcastand encourage them to listen
and read their Bible as well.
Don't forget to leave us arating or review that makes a
big difference in the algorithmdetermining whether or not it's
going to show this podcast orsomeone some other podcast if
(18:51):
someone is seeking someinformation, a podcast about
the Bible. So until next weekwhen we'll open the Bible
together again, I'm MarkRoberts and I want to go to
heaven, and I want you to cometo I'll see you on Monday with
a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Thanks for listening to the Westside church of
Christ podcast. Monday morningcoffee with mark . For more
information about Westside ,you can connect with us through
our website, justchristians.com and our Facebook
page. Our music is fromupbeat.is that's upbeat with
(19:34):
two P'S UPP , B E A T , wherecreators can get free music.
Please share our podcast withothers. And we look forward to
seeing you again with a companycoffee, of course, on next
Monday.
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