The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 106: Saul Is Chosen (2023)

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

As we begin the Royal Kingdom period, we hear about the first king of Israel, Saul. We discover that though Saul looks like a fearless warrior, he has a major flaw. Fr. Mike also points out the significance of the readings from Proverbs. Today's readings are 1 Samuel 9-10 and Proverbs 6:23-35. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is day 106, and we just concluded seven days of reading the Gospel of John, which is such a gift. I know at the same time,

reading through the Gospel of John in seven days means that we had quite a lot of content with not a lot of commentary, which is probably okay because the most important part of this podcast is the actual scripture being proclaimed. But this is, as I said, day 106. We're going into the royal kingdom. So we left off with 1 Samuel 6

through 8, and then we took a seven-day break with the gospel of John. Now we're entering into the period of the royal kingdom. We're going to be introduced to Saul today in 1 Samuel 9 and 10. We're also reading from the book of Proverbs, like we did the last couple of days, Proverbs 6, verses 23 through 35. As always, the Bible translation that I'm reading from is the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition. I am using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a Year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year.

You can also subscribe to this podcast by clicking subscribe wherever you're listening to your podcast. As I said, it is day 106, and it is an incredible gift to not only have been given a week, seven days of the gospel of John, but also to come back and to be in this new time period, period of the royal kingdom. As we read first Samuel chapter nine and 10 in Proverbs chapter six verses 23 through 35. First Samuel nine, Saul chosen to be king. There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, son of Zeror, son of Bekaroth, son of Aphia, a Benjaminite, a man of wealth.

And he had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the sons of Israel more handsome than he. From his shoulders upward, he was taller than any of the people. Now the donkeys of Kish, Saul's father, were lost. So Kish said to Saul his son, Take one of the servants with you, and arise, go and look for the donkeys. And they passed through the hill country of Ephraim, and passed through the land of Shalisha, but they did not find them. And they passed through the land of Shaalim, but they were not there. Then they passed through the land of Benjamin, but did not find them. When they came to the land of Shaalim, but they were not there. Then they passed through the land of Benjamin, but did not find them.

When they came to the land of Zoph, Saul said to his servant who was with him, Come, let us go back, lest my father cease to care about the donkeys and become anxious about us. But he said to him, Behold, there is a man of God in this city, and he is a man that is held in honor. All that he says comes true. Let us go there, perhaps he can tell us about is held in honor. All that he says comes true. Let us go there. Perhaps he can tell us about the journey on which we have set out. Then Saul said to his servant, But if we go, what can we bring the man? For the bread in our sacks is gone, and there is no present to bring to the man of God. What have we? The servant answered Saul again, Here, I have with me

the fourth part of a shekel of silver, and I will give it to the man of God to tell us our way. Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he said, Come, let us go to the seer, for he who is now called a prophet was formerly called a seer. And Saul said to his servant, Well said, Come, let us go. So they went to the city where the man of God was. As they went up the hill to the city, they met young maidens coming out to draw water and said to them, Is the seer here? They answered, He is. Behold, he is just ahead of you. Make haste. He has come just now to the city because the people have a sacrifice today on the high place. As soon as you enter the city, you will find him before he goes up to the high place to eat, for the people will not eat till he comes, since he must bless the sacrifice. Afterward, those eat who are invited. Now go up, for you will meet him immediately. So they went up to the city. As they were entering the city, they saw Samuel coming out

toward them on his way up to the high place. Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel, Tomorrow, about this time, I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines, for I have seen the affliction of my people because their cry has come to me. When Samuel saw Saul, the Lord told him, Here is the man of whom I spoke to you. He it is who shall rule over my

people. Then Saul approached Samuel in the gate and said, Tell me, where is the house of the seer? Samuel answered Saul, I am the seer. Go up before me to the high place, for today you shall eat with me, and in the morning I will let you go, and I will tell you all that is on your mind. As for your donkeys that were lost three days ago, do not set your mind on them, for they have been found. And for whom is all that is desirable in Israel? Is it not for you and for all your father's house? Saul answered, Am I not a Benjaminite from the least of the tribes of Israel? And is not my family the humblest of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? Why then have you spoken to me in this way? Then Samuel took Saul and his servant and brought them

into the hall and gave them a place at the head of those who had been invited, who were about 30 persons. And Samuel said to the cook, Bring the portion I gave you, of which I said to you, put it aside. So the cook took up the leg and the upper portion and set them before Saul. And Samuel said, see, what was kept is set before you. Eat, because it was kept for you until the hour appointed that you might eat with the guests. So Saul ate with Samuel that day. And when they came down from the high place into the city, a bed was spread for Saul upon the roof, and he lay down to sleep. Then at the break of dawn, Samuel called to Saul upon the roof, Up, that I may send you on your way. So Saul arose, and both he and Samuel went out into the street. Samuel anoints Saul. 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. Chapter 10 Then Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him and said, Has not the Lord anointed you to be prince over his people Israel? And you shall reign over the people of the Lord, and you will save them from the hand of their enemies round about. And this shall be the sign to you that the Lord has anointed you to be prince over his heritage.

When you depart from me today, you will meet two men by Rachel's tomb in the territory of Benjamin at Zelzah. And they will say to you, The donkeys which you went to seek are found. And now your father has ceased to care about the donkeys and is anxious about you saying, what shall I do about my son? Then you shall go on from there further and come to the Oak of Tabor. Three men going up to God at Bethel will meet you there, one carrying three kids, another carrying three loaves of bread and another carrying a skin of wine. And they will greet you and give you two loaves of bread, which you shall accept from their hand.

After that, you shall come to Gibeath Elohim, where there is a garrison of the Philistines. And there, as you come to the city, you will meet a band of prophets coming down from the high place with harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre before them, prophesying. Then the Spirit of the Lord will come mightily upon you, and you shall prophesy with them and be turned into another man. Now, when these signs meet you, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you. And you shall go down before me to Gilgal, and behold, I am coming to you to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice peace offerings. Seven days you shall wait until I come to you Saul prophesies. came to pass that day, when he came to Gibeah, behold, a band of prophets met him, and the Spirit of God came mightily upon him, and he prophesied among them. And when all who knew him before saw how he prophesied with the prophets, the people said to one another,

What has come over the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets? And a man of the place answered, And who is their father? Therefore it became a proverb, Is Saul also among the prophets? When he had finished prophesying, he came to the high place. Saul's uncle said to him and to his servant, Where did you go? And he said, To seek the donkeys. And when we saw that they were not to be found, we went to Samuel. And Saul's uncle said, Please tell me what Samuel said to you. And Saul said to his uncle, He told us plainly that the donkeys had been found.

But about the matter of the kingdom of which Samuel had spoken, he did not tell him anything. Saul proclaimed king. Now Samuel called the people together to the Lord at Mizpah. And he said to the sons of Israel, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I brought up Israel out of Egypt and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you. But you have this day rejected your God, who saved you from all your calamities and your distresses. And you have said, no, but set a king over us. Now, therefore, present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes and by

your thousands. Then Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken by Lot. And he brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its families, and the family of the Matrites was taken by Lot. Finally, he brought the family of the Matrites near man by man, and Saul, the son of Kish, was taken by Lot. But when they sought him, he could not be found. So they inquired again of the Lord, Did the man come here? And the Lord said, Behold, he has hidden himself among the baggage. Then they ran and fetched him from there. And when he stood among the people, he was taller than any of the people from his shoulders upward. And Samuel said to all the people,

Do you see him whom the Lord has chosen? There is none like him among all the people. And all the people shouted, Long live the king. Then Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the Lord. Then Samuel sent all the people away, each to his own home. Saul also went to his home at Gibeah, and with him went men of valor, whose hearts God had touched. But some worthless fellows said, How can this man save us? And they despised him, and brought him no present. But he held his peace. The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 6, Verses 23-35 For the commandment is a lamp, and the teaching a light,

and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life, to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adventurous. Do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes. For a harlot may be hired for a loaf of bread, but an adulteress stalks a man's very life. Can a man carry fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk upon hot coals and his feet not be scorched? So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife. None who touches her will go unpunished.

Men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his appetite when he is hungry, and if he is caught, he will pay sevenfold, and he will give all the goods of his house. He who commits adultery has no sense. He who does it destroys himself. Wounds and dishonor he will get, and his disgrace will not be wiped away. For jealousy makes a man furious, and he will not spare when he takes revenge. He will accept no compensation, nor be appeased, though you multiply gifts. Father in heaven, we give you praise and thanks. Thank you for this day. Thank you for day 106.

Thank you for leading us by your spirit to hear your word once again, to go into this new stage of the royal kingdom and to see the beginnings of how you not only blessed the 12 tribes of Israel, but you brought them together. And this is the beginning of you bringing them together into a royal kingdom. And you've done this. You've done this in order to bless us. You've done this in order to prefigure the church that you founded in Jesus Christ.

And you gave us your Holy Spirit, that same spirit that came upon Saul, son of Kish, to lead him and to guide him so he could be a prophet, so he could be a king, so he could lead, so he could fight the enemies of the people of Israel, so he could unite the people of Israel. You have given us this same spirit, your same Holy Spirit. So right now, Lord, we just give you thanks. And we ask that you please renew the gift of your spirit in each one of us. Let us always

say yes to you in everything that we are and everything that we do. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So a quick note about Proverbs. This is the last few verses of chapter six of the book of Proverbs. And I just want to highlight, you know, in chapter five and chapter six, as we heard it, you know, chapter five is the subtitle warning against loose women and chapter six is practical admonitions and warnings. And so it can be sometimes difficult for us to hear, okay, so loose women, what about the men? You know, and of course, Proverbs is directed to the character of my son. So obviously, it's going to be kind of one-sided in this way.

But it does have this, in this last section on chapter six, it does have this word of caution. It talks about the thief. And it says, men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his appetite when he's hungry. Right, because you think, of course, I mean, I get it. I don't like the fact that you stole my stuff, but I also understand that you were hungry.

I don't understand that you were desperate and that you needed food. So you can pay me back and we'll call it square, right? But he says, those who commit adultery, it's something different, right? Because a person does need to eat in order to live, but a person does not need to commit adultery in order to do anything.

And so that recognition of that, there are some things that we do that can be completely understandable. And there's some things that we do that make no sense in any context. I remember my dad years ago, I made a video about this for essential presents once, but he was talking about how my dad, we got robbed at one point, someone broke into my parents' house when we were, when I was younger and, and they stole some things and they also trashed one room. They kind of broke some things in a room. And I remember my dad saying he didn't mind being stolen. He didn't like being robbed, you know, at all. But he hated the fact that people just broke stuff because he said, I get it. You need money, you need stuff, whatever the thing is, but you didn't need to break my stuff in the

process. And there's something also, you know, similar about this in Proverbs chapter six, where I get it if someone's going to steal from me, but you didn't need to steal my wife. You know, I get it if someone's going to steal from me, but you didn't need to break my marriage vows or vice versa, right? Steal my husband, that kind of situation. And something we can do is we can look at our own hearts in this context and say, what are those sins? It doesn't have to just be theft or adultery or, as I mentioned, vandalism, but it can

be anything. And there's something we can choose to do that we realize this isn't benefiting anybody. I don't actually need this. In fact, this is just a sign of my broken heart, whether that's using someone, whether that's being envious of someone or prideful or vain, gossiping, none of those things, none of those things we're tempted to actually help us. And so it makes no sense that we do them. And so we ask the Lord not only for his mercy, for his forgiveness for those times, but also for healing, reconciliation and restoration so we can avoid them in the future. Just a, just a thought on, on Proverbs chapter six is we're going back tomorrow to the Psalms. And so just kind of a

last word. Okay, here we are. Our introduction to Saul is very clear that he looks like a king, right? So Saul is the most handsome in all in Israel. There's no one more handsome than he, this is the words of scripture. And also not only that, but scripture makes a very important point, or at least emphasizes the point that Saul was incredibly tall, that he was head and shoulders taller than everyone else. Remember, the job of the king is going to be not only to unite the people, but also to fight for the people. And so Saul looks like a king. He looks like a fighter.

He looks like a warrior. He looks like someone who would be brave. And that's how we're introduced to him. Now, we're going to find out that Saul suffers from an affliction that happens to many people who look the part, right? There's a lot of times in our lives where we might look the part. She might be super beautiful. And so we think, oh, she is such a way, or he might be really handsome. So he's such a way, or someone might seem really aggressive. And so they're just a big fighter or someone looks weak. And so we just kind of put them into these categories.

And Saul is someone who looks the part. He looks like he is the king, handsome, tall. He looks capable. What we're going to find is Saul is not capable. Well, he's sorry. He has capabilities, but one of his Achilles heels, one of his shortcomings is he is overly concerned with what other people think. And again, this is the affliction of those who look the part. It's because they look a certain way, because they appear to others to be a certain way, they are always thinking about how they look to others. They're always thinking about how they're seen

in other people's eyes. And this is gonna be one of the situations that happens to King Saul. Now, before we get to that point though, recognize that here is Saul, he's doing his job, he's doing his duties. Now, Saul is not, and this is important for us to understand, Saul is not an evil character. Now, he is going to descend into being pretty much a bad guy, right? Yet, we need to understand that we've done this already for 105 days until today, 100 day, 106,

is that we've recognized that there are people just like us in the Bible that are mixes of good and bad mixes of good motivation and bad motivation mixes of good choices and bad choices. And Saul is one of them. Saul makes some really good choices. Saul is doing his father's bidding. He's doing his daily duty. He's doing what he should be doing and looking for these lost donkeys. And he's not going to give up. He continues to seek them. That's really good. That's really noble. And then also when he goes to see Samuel in the high place, Samuel anoints him with oil and says, here's what's going to be a sign of your being anointed is that you're going to get to meet a band of prophets and you're also going to prophesy. In fact, it's so powerful to recognize that it says the spirit of God will come upon you and

you will be a new man. The spirit of God will come upon you. It will be a new person, a new creation. In fact, this is exactly what happened to you and me at our baptism. When we received the Holy Spirit, we became a new person. We were given the gift of, you know, when a child is baptized, when an adult is baptized in the Catholic church, they're not only baptized, but they're also anointed with oil. And they're anointed priest, prophet, and king or queen. So anointed priest, prophet, and king or queen.

And here is Saul. He's anointed king. And he's king or queen. And here is Saul. He's anointed king. And he's also anointed prophet, which is remarkable. That's what happens to us. And that spirit is real. And that prophesying was real. It was so real that people recognized there was something different about Saul. He's not a prophet. Where did he get this spirit of God? Where did he get this new role? Where did he get this new power? Well, it came from God. And so Saul was really truly given the gifts he needed to be the man and to live up to the vocation he was called to. And yet, even in this story, we see a chink in his armor. And what is that? Even though he's been called, even though he's been anointed, even though then he's chosen

by Lot from all the tribes of Israel, from all the people of Benjamin, from all the families, he's chosen. Saul is hiding among the luggage. He from all the people of Benjamin, from all the families. He's chosen. Saul is hiding among the luggage. He knows he's going to be elevated to be the king. But in the face of the crowd, in the face of other people, he shrinks back, right? He hides. Why? Because one of Saul's Achilles heels is going to be what other people think.

Now, this is going to go with us on this next journey of the next number of days as we follow Saul. He will have so many strengths. Why? Because the spirit of God is upon him. God has actually chosen him and gifted him and equipped him, but his downfall is going to be this preoccupation with what other people think. If that's where we are, then that's what we need to identify with Saul. Even though he's not the most heroic of characters, he's not thoroughly corrupt. He's just like you and me. He's wounded and he cares too much about what other people think. And so if that's us, let's pray for each other because we got a long way to go in this story of Saul leading into the story of David and the royal kingdom. We have so many days ahead that are so good and we're going to be so blessed. But those of us who

have received the Spirit of God, we also have to be aware that if I'm overly preoccupied with the opinions of human beings and not as driven by doing the will of God, then I too, we too, will need to change that. We'll need to ask for that help from the Lord. So we ask for help from each other. I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. Pray for each other. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.