Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Letting the Bible Read You | Historical Books | 1 Samuel 13

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Do you let the Bible read you? Do you make excuses for disobedience? Have you let your circumstances determine your actions? In today's episode, Jeff shares how 1 Samuel 13 forces us to evaluate our own tendency to make excuses before God. If you're listening on Spotify, comment below one takeaway from today's episode! 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 13

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 are two fundamentally different ways we can encounter the Bible. One approach is to treat reading scripture like a one-way street. A one-way street where we grasp the words cognitively, I mean, we're reading them on the page, but we maintain our own sense of authority over the encounter, over the experience. In this unidirectional engagement with the Bible, we take what we want to hear and we ignore or even reject what we don't want to hear. On this one-way street of encountering God's word, we kind of act like picky eaters in a cafeteria line.

Yes, I'd like that encouragement. Give me more of that reassurance, please. But hey, I'm on a strict conviction-free diet. So if there's anything in here that would make me feel like I'm not okay right now, if it's going to make me feel like I need to change my life, just know that I'm allergic to it. On the one-way street, we are the final arbiters of what is true and good. And the Bible is just an instrument that we use to affirm what we already want to believe about God, about ourselves, and the world around us. But of course, there's another kind of road we can take when journeying through the Bible. And that's the two-way street.

Encountering the Bible this way still involves our effort and our intellect while intaking new information. We're still reading the words on the page. But on the two-way street, we're not simply encountering the Bible. We're letting the Bible encounter us. On the two-way street, we're not in a cafeteria line as picky eaters. No, instead, we're sitting down to a feast and we're trusting the master chef to bring out the food that we really need. We're open to whatever God has for us. We let him be the final arbiter of what's true and good. And in that way, we open our lives to being taught, corrected, convicted,

trained, and nourished by God who works through his word. The Bible itself assumes that we're meant to engage with it on a two-way street relationship. Hebrews 4 12 through 13 says it this way. the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the hearts. No creature is hidden from him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of him, to whom we must give an account. Did you catch what Hebrews is saying? The Bible isn't a dead word. It's not just letters on a page. It's alive. It's active. It's working in us. Reading the Bible isn't just about us digging into God's word. It's about his word digging into us. It's like a sword

that penetrates the deepest desires and fears of our hearts. We're exposed by it. We so often want to have our way with the Bible when the whole point is to let the Bible have its way with us. more precisely the point is to let God have his way with us through the Bible that's why every time we pray together on Fridays on 10 minute Bible talks we ask that we wouldn't simply read God's word we ask that his word would read us expose us that we be on the two-way street with the Bible that the Bible would show us what we really want what we really love and fear and that it would reorient us toward God and his purposes. And that matters. That reorientation is meant to restore us, to wake us up, to help us see God and ourselves as we really are and cause us to live

differently in every part of our lives. If reading the Bible is meant to be a two-way street where we read it and it reads us, then we should always be open to considering not only the information it gives us, but the transformation it's trying to create in us. We see that kind of dynamic here in 1 Samuel 13. This chapter in the Bible gives us a window into the earliest days of Saul's formal reign as king over Israel. Here in this chapter, we're going to see how Saul himself is exposed by the Bible. But as we examine his life together, we're also going to let the Bible read us and expose us so that it can restore us. Now, as always, as we approach God's word,

let's pause and ask for His grace, for his steadfast love to work through our time together. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath in this new day. We thank you for the gift of your word as a gift from your grace. We bring before you our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety, our excitement, our calendars and our contingent. the things we can't even plan for, God.

We bring all of it before you. And we do ask that in your kindness, you would meet us in the space. Jesus, would you help us abide in you as we engage with your truth? And Holy Spirit, we ask you to move, to powerfully move in and through this time and 1st Samuel.

And as we read these words, God, by your grace, out of your abundant love, we ask that you would let these words read us and expose us. so that they can restore us. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so as we get into chapter 13 of 1 Samuel, we see Saul beginning his reign as king over Israel. And it sure seems promising at first. Verses 1 through 4 detail his early victory against the Philistines. Seems like things are going well. But once we get to verse 5, the Philistines respond to their defeat with even greater military might against Israel.

I mean, they have so many troops that the text says that it's like the sand on the seashore in multitude. The men of Israel see this power of the Philistines and respond by running and hiding. And all of this sets the table for what follows in verses 8 through 23. Saul and his troops wait in the region of Gilgall for the prophet Samuel to arrive to offer sacrifices and communicate the word of the Lord. But when Samuel takes longer than Saul was prepared to wait, He takes matters into his own hands. He takes over Samuel's role of offering sacrifices, only for Samuel to arrive just as he finishes making the sacrifices.

The timing here is hilarious. It's a classic caught in the act scene. Samuel asks Saul the big question after Saul makes the sacrifices that he shouldn't have made. Samuel asks, what have you done? And his question is met with Saul's excuses. The people were scattering away from him. It seemed like Samuel was running late. The Philistines were gathering.

I mean, what was he supposed to do? Verse 12 is really telling here. Saul says to Samuel, I thought, now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgall, and I have not sought the Lord's favor. So I forced myself to offer the burnt offering. Those words are big. I mean, this is exposing for Saul.

He says, I forced myself. I knew the right thing to do was to wait, but I forced myself to go through with it. I mean, just look at my circumstances, Samuel. I just had to do it. What else was I supposed to do? I was forced into this disobedience. He knew that he should trust God and wait. But instead, he chooses to trust himself and take matters into his own hands with his own power, his own timing.

Instead of being moved by God's steadfast love, Saul is moved by his own circumstances. And that's what's really behind his statement. I forced myself. My circumstances made it seem like this was my only option. I mean, I know it's disobedience, but I forced myself to do it. What was I supposed to do? Trust God? It'd be so tempting here to just rail on Saul, to make him out to be the complete bad guy and mock him, to simply read this story as a one-way street. But what if we let the Bible read us here? What's it exposing? Aren't there ways that you and I know what we should do to love God and love others, but we make excuses and do what we wanted to do all along? Aren't there ways that you and I let our circumstances move us instead of trusting God's steadfast love to meet us and move us? If the Bible is reading you here, what's it exposing in your life right now?

Are there circumstances that are driving your life? life? Are there decisions or areas of distrust where you're taking matters into your own hands and bypassing a robust faith in God? If you're like me, there are usually some deep-seated fears or desires underneath that choice to trust myself instead of trusting God. What are those desires? What are those fears for you? When the Bible reads us here, it exposes the human tendency to make excuses to know what we should do but disobey anyway, make excuses as if we're forced into disobedience, when all the while we're really just making decisions out of a distrust of God's faithfulness. The truth is, this exposes me more than I'm comfortable with.

But remember, the exposure isn't meant to ruin us. It's meant to restore us, to correct us, but also give us hope. and that hope shows up even in the midst of Samuel's word of judgment against Saul in verses 13 and 14 we read this you have done a foolish thing samuel said you have not kept the command the lord your god gave you if you had he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time but now your kingdom will not endure okay that's the hard news but here now is the hope the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people because you have not kept the Lord's command. So verse 14 is showing us that God is bringing another king who will be the ruler of his people. Historically, we know that the most direct and near fulfillment of this hope for Saul and Samuel's time, that nearest and most direct fulfillment is King David, who will meet a little bit later. But theology, across the story of the Bible, when we read this, this passage, this hope,

it reads into our hearts deepest longing for a true king, for King Jesus. Even as we let our circumstances move us more than we should, we see God's steadfast love moving toward us in the rain and in the love of King Jesus. That is the two-way street that 1st Samuel 13 is trying to meet us on, the two-way street where we're encountered by the truth and love of the God who pursues us. Heavenly Father, we confess the ways that we let our circumstances drive our lives in the place of your steadfast love. Help us name the ways that we make excuses for our disobedience and free us to be faithful to you. Jesus, we praise you as the king who was and is and always will be perfectly faithful.

Would your faithfulness spur us on to be faithful to you? Holy Spirit, would you graciously work to expose and reorient and restore us as we continue to read and be read by the Word of God? In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.