Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - God's Unrelenting Love | Historical Books | 1 Samuel 19

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

Can we undo God's purposes and plans? How does life come from death? Do you trust God beyond what you see? In today's episode, Jeff shares how 1 Samuel 19 encourages us to build our lives on God's unrelenting love. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 Samuel 19

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. There's a peculiar variety of plants in the wild that confounds our expectations of how life can and should work. After these plants endure a significant amount of time without water, they appear exactly like you'd expect. They slowly dry up and shrivel. They look and feel completely dead. as if life has been extinguished, death through desiccation.

But that's where things get interesting. Months and months of this dried out decay can persist. But once this variety of plant is given water again, it seems to come back to life, even within a day. Photosynthesis continues, and life begins to flourish the way it was before. Just as it seemed like life was extinguished, it emerges again. It's no surprise that scientists give this category of plant life the moniker resurrection plants.

It's quite a nickname. And of course, in the truest sense, these plants don't truly and fully resurrect, since they don't actually die. They only appear to be dead. But that nickname sticks because of how incredibly relentless these plants are. They seem to beat all the odds that normally functioned in the natural world. They can go from looking and feeling as if life is completely cut off, only to find that it very much continues.

It's the relentless continuation of life in the face of death. That relentless nature of those resurrection plants, it reminds me of the events in 1st Samuel 19. In this chapter of the Bible, David's 6th, status as the anointed one of Israel is tested. It's tested in a dramatic way. And it raises a question for God's people. What hope can we possibly have when the odds are against God's anointed one? When the odds are against us. As we explore this chapter in the Bible, we'll see that it not only poses this honest question. It also provides a hopeful answer. As we get ready to encounter God's

word together. Let's pause and ask for His grace to move through our time. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath today. We thank you for the gift of your word. We bring before you every part of who we are, every part of the things we're experiencing, our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety, our excitement, our calendars, our contingencies, everything happening within our stories, God, we bring them to you. Just ask that you'd meet us here in this space. Jesus, help us abide in you and remain in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in First Samuel. And as we read these words of yours, we ask that you would use them to read us and restore us in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, now chapter 18 of First Samuel

ends on a celebratory note for David. In light of his military victories, his name is highly esteemed, but in the eyes of the current king of Israel, Saul, that high estimation of David comes at the expense of his own personal sense of greatness. Saul is sensing this threat in his life, and it propels us into the dramatic movements of 1 Samuel 19. This chapter begins with Saul's explicit intention to kill David out of the gate in verse 1. And throughout the chapter, it seems like David's life is going to be extinguished by Saul, not just once, but six times within the scope of this chapter. You could even say seven times if you include a plan to kill David that's suppressed by Jonathan early on in chapter 19. First, in verses 9 through 10, there's this harmful spirit that comes upon Saul, and he tries to

skewer David with his spear for the second time in this book of the Bible. After losing his little game of pinned the David to the wall, Saul decides that he's going to kill David by infiltrating his home. Verses 11 through 17 detail the cleverness and wit of David and his wife Mikal, who also happens to be Saul's daughter. They both elude Saul's attempt on David's life. It's an awesome, interesting scene that's worth reading in detail on your own. After escaping from Saul, David heads to a settlement called Nyoth to be with the prophet Samuel. Now the drama picks up even more here. This is awesome.

When Saul finds out where David is, he sends some of his henchmen to finish the job, to finally take David out, to extinguish his life. But in verse 20, we read that when Saul's henchmen come upon Samuel and the other prophets prophesying, they don't try to kill David. Instead, the spirit of God comes upon them and they join the prophets in prophets. They were supposed to go there to kill the Lord's anointed, but they end up praising the Lord. Saul sends some of this henchmen not just once, but twice over, two more times after this. And the same thing happens. There's a threefold pattern at play. Every time Saul tries to defy the purposes of God, his efforts end up contributing to the purposes of God. And now the icing on the cake comes in verses 23 through 20.

We read this. So Saul himself went to Nyoth at Ramah. But the spirit of God came even on him. And he walked along prophesying until he came to Nyoth. He stripped off his garments and he too prophesied in Samuel's presence. He lay naked all day and all night. This is why people say, is Saul also among the prophets? All right, this is so wild.

In the seventh attempt on David's life in chapter 19, Saul himself, the villain king, he is drawn into praising God and participating in the purposes of God. One detail that makes this especially interesting, this location of Ramah, is the same place where Saul himself was anointed king by Samuel. The text doesn't make this explicit, it, but if we take this setting of this scene seriously, it sure seems like God is making a point

by bringing Saul back here, back to Ramah, to the place where he was anointed, to highlight God's power and God's protection over the newly anointed king. I just love it. This is an awesome scene. The narrative flow of 1st Samuel 19 is carried along by Saul's relentless attempt to destroy David and maintain his own sense of power and control. But at every turn, Saul's relentless efforts to overturn God's plans are themselves overturned by God's greater relentless power. And here at the end,

Saul is completely exposed and humbled before God. The overarching point is made emphatic at the end. Nobody, nobody, can undo the purposes of God. even the attempts to compromise his plans will actually contribute to his plans. And that gets us to the heart of this passage, the so what? What difference does this make? This passage is not primarily telling us something about the folly of Saul or the saviveness of David in eluding Saul. It's telling us something about God. Even when it seems like the life of God's anointed is cut off, we find that it very,

much continues. This is all about God relentlessly continuing life in the face of death. Now just think about the weight of this chapter and what kind of weight it would carry when generations of God's people lived under unjust and foolish kings, just like Saul. What does this passage say to them as they suffer under the reign of tyrannical rulers? whether those rulers are Israelites and the wicked kings that they have or the enforcers of exile and oppression. 1 Samuel 19 tells them that even when the oppression, the injustice, the desiccation of human rulers seems so relentless, there is a bigger and truer ruler who is even more relentless. Even when the power of sin, of suffering, of doubt, and uncertainty seem to cut off our lives,

with God, God himself has the power to continue life. And oftentimes, just as in the drama of 1 Samuel 19, even in the attempts to compromise the reign of God will only serve to complete his reign in the end. This chapter is meant to cultivate a kind of trust that extends beyond what you and I can see, beyond what you and I can experience. A kind of trust that runs deeper than what we feel and what we think in any given moment. That's the kind of trust that God causes people to have, a trust that's founded on his relentless, steadfast love, and a trust that's forged in all of our circumstances. How might God be stirring your heart and your mind to embrace him and his purposes with that kind of trust? How are you today or this week faced with the threat of

life being extinguished. Maybe even it feels like extinguished for good. Maybe it's something in your story or in the life story of someone you love. Maybe it's something happening in our world that's making you wonder, man, is this too relentless for God? First Samuel 19 is God's invitation for you to trust him, for us as a people to trust him with a faith that extends beyond what we can see and a faith that runs deeper than what we feel or think, to have a faith that's rooted in his relentless love. Now, with the persistence of God's purposes through his anointed king at play here in chapter 19,

we would be stopping way too short if we failed to see the biblical connection to God's relentless love playing out in the fullest sense because later in the biblical story, there comes a moment when it seems as if life is totally cut off for good as if hope is lost forever. When Jesus gave up his life on a Roman cross, many wondered if that was the moment when the power of sin, death, and evil proved to be too relentless for the Creator King. And yet, the moment that seemed to compromise God's purposes

only worked to complete his purposes. Because the cross of Jesus leads to the vacant tomb of Jesus. His death and resurrection show us that when life seems to be extinguished forever, it emerges forever in him. This is the good news that there is a power that exceeds the power of death. It's the power of God's steadfast love that creates life. Because the relentless king reigns, we can entrust everything to him and his love. God, we thank you for your steadfast love that's demonstrated in Jesus' cross and in his empty tomb. Help us live with your life creating power and love before us today so that we can trust you with every moment, with every decision, with every breath.

Help us do this by your grace for your glory in your story. In Jesus' name, amen.