Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Harmony of Humility | Historical Books | 1 Samuel 9

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Have you ever expected harmony but experienced dissonance? Are you living out of tune with God's design? Are you humble? In today's episode, Jeff shares how 1 Samuel 9 encourages us to alter our pitch to fit God's harmonious humility. 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 9

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. One of the most uncomfortable feelings comes when we expect harmony, but experience dissonance. In my senior year of high school, our choir teacher recruited a group of young men who were not part of the formal choir to participate in a rag-tag group of voices, just to see if we could somehow compete with the real. really good singers, the people who are actually in choir. It was a gracious and ambitious endeavor. Eventually, our brave teacher decided that we were good enough to participate in a local choir competition. It was time to stack us up against the true vocalists and see how we did.

I remember the setting of this competition vividly. We entered the room of a high school full of judges and volunteers. We held our sheet music with tight grips and we started singing together. And that's when everyone in the room started laughing. We somehow managed to sing our entire song for that competition for the judges out of tune. I mean, each guy was belting out his own version of the music on the page. Now, I know you think you can imagine how bad we sounded, but I assure you, it was worse than what you're thinking. We were so out of tune with our dissonance that one of the volunteers in the room had to physically turn away from us so that we couldn't see her tears of laughter. It was honestly such a relief to get out of that room. I know that all of us felt like we

were done with choir performances for good. I'll never forget how uncomfortable and out of place I felt getting through that song. See, the thing is, each one of us carried the potential for harmony with our voices. But we ended up creating nothing but dissonance. there's a good chance that you've been in a situation when you expected harmony but experienced dissonance it's an unsettling a strange and sometimes embarrassing feeling when we hope for harmony but hear chaos our expectations aren't just unmet they're overturned the tension is almost painful whether it's something specific like musical notes or something more general like social situations we have an inbuilt disdain for dissonance when there's an expectation for harmony.

And we want that tension to be resolved. That's the kind of tension that develops in the narrative of 1st Samuel. Getting into chapter 9, we meet the first king of Israel, Saul, who in some ways builds an expectation of potential harmony with God's purposes. Perhaps this will be the king to lead God's people in God's ways. Yet our introduction to Saul's story also gives us a preview of how that hope for harmony will take a dark turn into dissonance. While we get a feel for the building of that tension in 1st Samuel,

will also be forced to recognize a sense of tension in our own lives, a tension that forces us to look ahead to the full resolution that God brings into the dissonance of the world. Now, as we get ready to approach God's word together, let's pause and ask for his grace. ask for his love, his presence to move through our time. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath in this day. Thank you for the gift of your word. We bring every part of our lives before you, the things that cause us joy, the things that cause us sorrow.

We bring before you our real lives, our anxiety, our excitement, our calendars, and our contingencies. God, would you meet us in this space and in this time together? Jesus help us abide in you to remain in you as we engage with and grapple with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in 1st Samuel. And as we read these words, we ask that these words would read us, would interrogate us, would search us, and restore us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Now, 1 Samuel chapter 9 comes after Samuel warns the Israelites. about the kind of king who will reign over them if they choose their own version of a king

in the place of the one true king, God himself. Now, verses 1 through 2 introduce us to this human king who will reign over Israel. He's a man named Saul. We learn that Saul is handsome, that he's tall, comes from a wealthy family. Sounds like a bachelor candidate, right? I mean, details that would sound impressive in the ancient Near East. But they turn out to not be that important in God's economy. We'll explore that later in 1 Samuel.

In verses 3 through 14, we learn how Saul is sent out to find some lost donkeys that belong to his father. On the journey, Saul eventually runs into the prophet Samuel, who's expecting to run into the future king of Israel after hearing a message from God. And after seeing Saul, Samuel tells him this. As for the donkeys you lost three days ago, do not worry about them. They've been found. And to whom is all the desire of Israel turned? if not you and your whole family line.

So Samuel's saying, Saul, you're kind of a big deal now, like Israel's desires turn toward you. But notice Saul's response in verse 21. Saul answered, but am I not a Benjaminite from the smallest tribe of Israel? It is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me? Now, verse 21 here is super interesting. In his origin story here, Saul displayed. a degree of humility that may surprise us if we know how his life plays out later. In this moment,

Saul doesn't suppose that he should be king, that he deserves to be king. Instead, he claims that he's from the smallest tribe and the least of the clans in his tribe. Why would God choose him? Deuteronomy 17, verse 20, outlines how God wants the king over his people to not think that he's better than his fellow Israelites. Now, if it's true that Saul is as humble as he seems here in verse 21 of 1 Samuel 9, then there's potential for him to be the kind of king who's harmonious with God's purposes. I mean, this potential of harmony with God's design for the king, it continues to ramp up in the last verse of the chapter. We read this in verse 27. As they were going down to the outskirts of the city, Samuel said to Saul, tell the servant.

to pass on before us, and when he has passed on, stop here yourself for a while, that I may make known to you the Word of God. Let's focus on that phrase, make known to you the Word of God. There should be like a highlighter over the Word of God here. This is big. This is kind of a teaser statement because it points back to what the king should be like based on God's design in Deuteronomy 17. We read this in Deuteronomy 17, verse 19. The law is to be with him, be with the king. He is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord His God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees. So based on Deuteronomy 17, the king of Israel is meant to have a humble posture before other people and ultimately before God and God's word. we get glimpses of that, hopes for that here in 1 Samuel 9 with Saul.

If only he could harmonize with God's design for the king, these glimpses and hopes matter here because they stand in stark contrast to the dissonance that plays out later in Saul's life. As time progresses, his sense of humility before others falls out of tune badly. The root of his problem is focused on his life. lack of humility before God and God's word. I know we're skipping ahead a bit here to get a sense of

the tension, but we need to see the contrast between how Saul hears the word of God from Samuel here in 1st Samuel 9 and what Samuel will later tell Saul in chapter 15, verse 23. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. So instead of receiving it, later he rejects it. 1 Samuel 9 shows us how Saul carried the potential for creating harmony while he ended up creating nothing but dissonance like the judges before him like the people of God in the wilderness like the messy people in Abraham's family line like Adam and Eve like you and me Saul lives out of tune with the truth and love of God in God's word This passage here is meant to act like a bit of a tuning fork as a gut check for God's people in the days of the kings and the time of exile and for us today.

How are we living out of tune with God's purposes for us? For most of us like Saul, this involves our refusal to be humbled before other people and before God in God's word. So are there ways that your life is making a dissonant noise? There are things that you need to confess, ways that you need to repent and change the direction of your life. How could you change the pitch of your life, whether it's your words, your habits, or your relationships, to better match God's design for you to love him and love others in humility? My friends who are musicians tell me that sometimes dissonance is accidental in music, like the incident at my choir competition in high school.

but sometimes dissonance is intentional. It works to amplify or help us appreciate the resolution that comes when harmony is finally and fully introduced. Musicians will often employ a form of tension and release, the movement from dissonance to harmony or consonants to display the beauty and glory of a song. When you move from dissonance to harmony, the release. the release of that tension is so powerful that some say meeting that harmony is like coming home. When we look at the story of the Bible overall, this interplay between tension and release, dissonance and harmony,

it keeps building until we get to the one true king that Israel needed, the one true king that we need, King Jesus, the king who would be perfectly humble before others with the heart of a servant. the king who would be perfectly humble before God with the heart of sacrifice on his cross. Saul, like the leaders that came before him and after him, is part of a slowly building dissonance and ever-increasing tension as we journey through the biblical story. And that tension meets its final and full release when Jesus turns every note of dissonance into harmony. So while 1 Samuel 9 convicts us of our own dissonance, it also casts our eyes to the one who ends the dissonance through his death and resurrection.

This tension, it amplifies our anticipation for the goodness and the glory of King Jesus. So that as we continue to encounter the stories of Saul and of David and of the kings after them, we also encounter our longing for Jesus, the king who, who brings such harmony out of the dissonance that meeting him feels like finally coming home.