The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 107: Samuel's Speech (2023)

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

As we continue reading from 1 Samuel, Fr. Mike points out how God gave the people a king like they wanted, even though it was not part of his plan. This reveals to us that even when we choose things that God does not want for us, he is still with us. The readings are 1 Samuel 11-12 and Psalm 55. 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 107, and we're reading today from 1 Samuel chapter 11 and chapter 12. We'll also back to the Psalms. We are praying today, Psalm 55. As always, the Bible translation that I am using is the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition.

I'm 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, and you can get that delivered directly to your inbox. Also, if you have not yet subscribed to this podcast, please consider yourself invited. You're not commanded. You don't need to do anything I say. You just are invited to hit click subscribe. And also, if you want to comment, that'd be cool. If you want to rate this podcast, if you've been journeying with us for 107 episodes and it's blessed you, great. And if you don't like it, I guess you can, I'm

really glad. Thanks for sticking it out. That's amazing. But you can also rate this podcast and hopefully it will help other people find it and hear the Bible. As I said, today is day 107 and we're reading from first Samuel chapter 11 and 12. We're praying Psalm 55. First Samuel chapter 11. Saul defeats the Ammonites. Then Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh Gilead. And all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, make a treaty with us and we will serve you. But Nahash the Ammonite said to them, on this condition, I will make a treaty with you that I gouge out all your right eyes, and thus put disgrace upon all Israel. The elders of Jabesh said to him, Give us seven days' respite, that we may send messengers throughout the territory of Israel.

Then if there is no one to save us, we will give ourselves up to you. When the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul, they reported the matter in the hearing of the people, and all the people wept aloud. Now Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen, hearing of the people, and all the people wept aloud. Now Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen, and Saul said, What ails the people that they are weeping? So they told him the tidings of the men of Jabesh. And the Spirit of God came mightily upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled. He took a yoke of oxen, and cut them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the territory of Israel by the hand of messengers saying, whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen. Then the dread of the Lord fell upon the people and they came

out as one man. When he mustered them at Bezek, the men of Israel were 300,000 and the men of Judah 30,000. And they said to the messengers who had come, thus shall you say to the men of Jabesh Gilead, tomorrow, by the time the sun is hot, you shall have deliverance. And when the messengers came and told the men of Jabesh, they were glad. Therefore, the men of Jabesh said, tomorrow, we will give ourselves up to you and you may do to us whatever seems good to you. And the next day, Saul put the people in three companies and they came into the midst of the camp in the morning watch and cut down the Ammonites until the heat of the day. And those who survived were scattered so that no two of them were left together. Then the people said to Samuel,

who is it that said, shall Saul reign over us? Bring the men that we may put them to death. But Saul said, Not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has wrought deliverance in Israel. Then Samuel said to the people, Come, let us go to Gilgal, and there renew the kingdom. So all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. There they sacrificed peace offerings before the Lord. And there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly. Chapter 12, Samuel's farewell address.

And Samuel said to all Israel, Behold, I have listened to your voice and all that you have said to me, and have made a king over you. And now behold, the king walks before you, and I am am old and gray and behold, my sons are with you. And I have walked before you from my youth until this day. Here I am. Testify against me before the Lord and before his anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Or whose donkey have I taken? Or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed? Or from whose hand have I taken a bribe to blind my eyes with it? Testify against me, and I will restore it to you.

They said, You have not defrauded us or oppressed us or taken anything from any man's hand. And he said to them, The Lord is witness against you, and his anointed is witness this day, that you have not found anything in my hand. And they said, he is witness. And Samuel said to the people, the Lord is witness who appointed Moses and Aaron and brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. Now, therefore, stand still that I may plead with you before the Lord concerning all the saving deeds of the Lord, which he performed for you and for your fathers. When Jacob went into Egypt, and the Egyptians oppressed them, then your fathers cried to the Lord, and the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, who brought forth your fathers out of Egypt, and

made them dwell in this place. But they forgot the Lord their God, and he sold them into the hand of Sisera, commander of the army of Jabin, king of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab. And they fought against them. And they cried to the Lord and said, We have sinned because we have forsaken the Lord and have served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. But now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, and we will serve you. And the Lord sent Jerubabbel, and Barak, and Jephthah, and and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side. And you dwelt in safety.

And when you saw that Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, came against you, you said to me, No, but a king shall reign over us. When the Lord your God was your king. And now, behold the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked. Behold, the Lord has set a king whom you have chosen for whom you have asked behold the lord has set a king over you if you will fear the lord and serve him and listen to his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the lord and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the lord your god it will be well but if you will not listen to the voice of the lord but rebel against the commandment

of the lord then the hand of the lord will be against you and your king. Now therefore, stand still and see this great thing, which the Lord will do before your eyes. Is it not wheat harvest today? I will call upon the Lord that he may send thunder and rain, and you shall know and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the Lord in asking for yourselves a king. So Samuel called upon the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day. And all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. And all the people said to Samuel, Pray for your servants to the Lord your God, that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king. And Samuel said to the people, Fear not, you have done all this evil, yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with

all your heart, and do not turn aside after vain things which cannot profit or save, for they are vain. For the Lord will not cast away his people for his great name's sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you, and I will instruct you in the good and the right way. Only fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart, for consider what great things he has done for you. But if you still do wickedly, he shall be swept away, both you and your king. The Book of Psalms, Chapter 55. Complaint about a friend's treachery. To the choirmaster, with stringed instruments, a mascal of David.

Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my supplication. Attend to me and answer me. I am overcome by my trouble. I am distraught by the noise of the enemy because of the oppression of the wicked, for they bring trouble against me, and in anger they cherish enmity against me. My heart is in anguish within me. The terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me. And I say, oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest. Yes, I would wander afar. I would lodge in the wilderness. I would wait for him who saves me from the raging wind and tempest. Destroy their plans, O Lord.

Confuse their tongues. For I see violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around it, on its walls, and mischief and trouble are within it. Ruin is in its midst. Oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace. It is not an enemy who taunts me, then I could bear it. It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me, then I could hide from him. But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.

We used to hold sweet converse together within God's house. We walked in fellowship. Let death come upon them. Let them go down to Sheol alive. Let them go away in terror to their graves. But I call upon God, and the Lord will save me. Evening and morning and at noon, I utter my complaint and moan, and he will hear my voice. He will deliver my soul and safety from the battle that I wage, for many are arrayed against me.

God will give ear and humble them, he who was enthroned from of old, because they keep no law and do not fear God. My companion stretched out his hand against his friends. He violated his covenant. His speech was smoother than butter, yet war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. But you, O God, will cast them down into the lowest pit. Men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their days, but I will trust in you. Father in heaven, we do trust in you. We give you thanks.

Lord God, even in the midst of not just enemies, but friends who have failed us, friends who have betrayed us, even in the midst of love that has run out, people who have promised, made covenants to us and promises to us, and then have failed to live up to those promises, have broken those covenants. We know that you are faithful and you love us and you fight for us and you never break your promise and you never break a covenant. And so we give you thanks. You delight in us and you love us and you choose us and you sustain us. And so we thank

you and we love you back. Help us to receive your love more and more this day and every day. In Jesus' name we pray, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Okay, amen. Wow. So gosh, here we are with 1 Samuel chapter 11 and 12. And what we have in chapter 11 is we get to see Saul as a great leader. We get to see Saul as an actual leader.

And one of the things that, okay, context, we have Nahash the Ammonite, right? So the member of the Ammonites, Philistines, these are some of the major characters who are the enemies of Israel at this point. And Nahash says to the men of Jabesh Gilead, basically other Jews, they say, the men of Jabesh Gilead are afraid, terrified of Nahash the Ammonite and say, we'll serve you. And Nahash says, well, if you serve me, let me gouge out your right eyes. And that'll be a sign of disgrace that you gave yourselves up to me, that you basically, if a warrior was allowed to have his right eye gouged out, you realize how compromised you would be in battle. If you had a sword and shield, your sword would typically be in your right hand, your shield be in your left

hand. So you'd have your shield in your left hand, kind of blind you from the left side, because you'd have to hold it up. You won't be able to see anything on your right side where you'd have your sword side. And so this is kind of Nahash's way of saying, I would basically neuter you, but, you know, hamstring you in such a way that you would never be able to rise up against me. If you want to belong to me, let's make it permanent, that kind of a situation. So what does Saul do? Saul says, this is the deal. We're going to go to war. We're going to fight. We're going to battle against Nahash the Ammonite and every person who belongs to Israel, you're going to fight too. He unites them, rallies them behind this challenge that Nahash had said to the men

of Jabesh Gilead. And it goes well, right? And not only that, but Saul shows that he actually has some leadership capability. He shows that he has the spirit of God. Why? Because at the end of chapter 11, the people who fought say, hey, those people who stood against Saul, because we just made him our king, like basically, yes, he was anointed in private by Samuel, then elected in public in front of everybody. But here now, he has basically consecrated himself a king by the fact that he just led us all in battle into victory. And they say, everyone who was against you, Saul, let's kill them. And Saul does a great job. He says, no, let's not do that. Let them go. And we'll just renew the kingdom. We'll sacrifice peace offerings. And there he will be the leader, right? Of everyone,

even those who opposed him originally. And so Saul shows a great amount of restraint and a great amount of wisdom in not just destroying those who were opposed to him. Good on you, Saul. Well done. Again, as we said yesterday, Saul is a complex character. He is not a hero in the story, but that doesn't mean he doesn't sometimes do heroic things. And it doesn't, just because he dies without the spirit of God in many ways, doesn't mean he doesn't have the spirit of God in this moment, in this time to accomplish this call that God has given to him. At the same time, here's the next lesson of Samuel's speech in chapter 12. My gosh, it is so powerful and it's so important for us to pay attention to what Samuel is saying in this final address in chapter 12. Here's what he says.

He recounts the fact that in the past, what did God do? He led the family of Jacob, Israel, right, into Egypt and they became slaves. And then people cried out to the Lord God. And what did he do? He sent Moses and Aaron to deliver them. And then they had other enemies. After they wandered through the desert, they had other enemies like Asisra, a member in Judges. We heard all about this. And Jabin, the king of Hazor, and the Philistines, and the king of Moab. And what happened was they called upon the Lord and he sent leaders. He sent people to fight for them. Here's the Lord God taking care of them. And he sent Jerubabbel and Barak and Jephthah and Samuel, myself, you know.

And now what have you done? You've asked for a king. You don't want to rely upon, this is so important. Here is Saul, who's been anointed king by God. The spirit of God has come upon Saul as king. Now, even Saul has demonstrated the fact that he can unite the people as king once again. So all this stuff is happening, but Samuel is demonstrating this is not what God wants. He's allowing you to have this thing. He's allowing you to have this king. He's even giving that king strength. He's even giving that king power and giving him a role, giving him his spirit, but he doesn't want this. This is not part of his plan. He is tolerating this because of the hardness of your heart. Now, this is so important for us because it highlights the ways in which,

you know, we've read through Joshua. We read through judges. We read through those battles that the people of Israel were led into. And we can think sometimes mistakenly, we talked about this before, we need to remind, be reminded of this again. We can mistakenly think that that was what God wanted. No, that's what God allowed. So even though it says that God said, okay, go do X, Y, and Z when it comes to battle, when it comes to leading people into those places of violence, even though it says, well, God, you said to do this, that was not the original plan. Just like how God is giving the Holy Spirit, you know, the spirit of God upon Saul. And you think, well, no, this is clearly God's plan because he's giving the Spirit upon Saul

and Saul can lead into battle. He was anointed by Samuel, all these pieces. But God is saying, I'm merely doing this because of the hardness of your hearts. I'm doing this maybe some ways in spite of myself. It's what we're going to hear later on in Matthew's gospel, chapter 19. At one point, the people or the scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus about divorce. And Jesus says, no, divorce and remarriage is not allowed. It's committing adultery.

And they say, what about Moses? You said you could divorce and marry another. And Jesus says, because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses said you could do this. One of the things we're going to find is that God's call is always higher, but he sometimes allows us to stay lower, I guess, for lack of a better phrase. But what we have to do is keep our mind and our heart and our eyes set on the heights, set on what would God's original plan be. And this is so important, not just when it comes to the Bible, not on what would God's original plan be. And this is so important, not just when it comes to the Bible, not just when it comes to these areas of he was willing

to let them have a king. He was willing to, again, allow things that he doesn't like, like violence and like this destructive warfare or divorce, that kind of situation. But in our lives, this is the word of encouragement. In our lives, many of us have made the wrong decisions. I'm sorry, let me clarify. All of us have made the wrong decisions in our lives. And yet, what has God done? He hasn't said, well, you're disqualified now. You made the wrong choice.

Therefore, I don't want to go where you're going. You're done. And hey, it was a good run, but it's over now. He doesn't do that. What God does is he says, okay, you made a choice that's against my will. I can send you my spirit even now. Okay, you made a choice. You made maybe even a permanent choice where here you are now in a state in life that you can't get out of.

Okay, but this is not my will. It's not what I wanted, but I can still work with this. I can still give you my spirit. Ultimately, here's the word is that in 1 Samuel chapter 12, that Samuel is saying, even though you're choosing what God does not want, he is still going to be with you. And that's just such a hard word to really allow into our hearts because on one side, we can say, well, if that's the case, then I'll just keep choosing whatever I want if God's going to still be with me. On the other hand, we can say, are you sure? I don't know if that's the case. I still believe that I'm disqualified from the Lord's anointing.

I'm disqualified from the Lord's spirit. I'm disqualified from the Lord being present to me. And yet here is the truth that is revealed in 1 Samuel chapter 12, is that here's the people who are directly going against what God wants, and yet he is going to cooperate with them in their hardness of heart, out of the greatness of his own heart, out of the patience in his own heart, from the mercy that is unlimited in his own heart. Now, of course, what does he say? The last word here, he says that this will be blessed. This will be a blessing provided that you and your King both are faithful to me. If not, it will end in catastrophe. It'll end in catastrophe. So yes, I can give you this thing that you've asked for. I don't want it, but I'll do it

and I'll be with you. But even in this moment, you're not disqualified, but, but please, please know that from now on, you're called to be faithful. This is what conversion is all about. We recognize our brokenness and we recognize that I need God's grace. I need his help. And he says, okay, you have it. You have my mercy. You have my forgiveness. Okay. Now, like he said to the woman caught in adultery in chapter four of John's gospel, he just read it a couple of days ago. It's okay. And I'll go and sin no more. Okay. You're forgiven, but sin no more. Okay. That's not what I wanted. So I'm with you. I'm with you in your presence. Now move forward. You're not disqualified. I'm present to you. I can heal you. I can restore you. Now let's move forward together. I think that's one of

the messages here in Samuel's final farewell speech, even though we're going to see Samuel for the next number of days. At the same time, it's his last big speech that we get in 1 Samuel chapter 12. I am so grateful for you all to hang with me and stick with me here. What a gift to be able to be journeying in this way together. We all have broken lives. None of us are disqualified. We've all chosen things that God didn't want for us, and yet he's still present to you. If you're listening to this, he is still present to you. And I know I brought up even topics of violence or topics of divorce and topics that are really present in a lot of people's lives right now. Recognize you are not disqualified. The Lord continues to be present to you. The Lord continues

to call you and me and me forward. That's why we need to pray for each other because we hear those words of Jesus. Okay, you've been forgiven. Now go and sin no more. And sometimes even that is so daunting. And so sometimes that is so intimidating, but that is our call. So we need, we need God's grace. That's why we need to pray for each other. Please, please pray for me. I am praying for you. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless. you