Southern Cross Presbyterian Church

1 Samuel 12-14

I’m always tempted when reading the Bible, the Old Testament in particular, to try and work out who the goodies are and who the baddies are. I should’ve learned by now – God’s the goodie and everybody else are the baddies! Of course its not quite that simple, not all the baddies are as bad as each other and occasionally one of them is a goodie most of the time. What I’m getting at is that Saul is a complex character who finds himself in complicated circumstances. But with all that said, Saul ends up a baddie because at key points in his reign he fails to honour God and obey his word, an then, even worse, fails to repent of his sin and seek God’s forgiveness (see how Saul tries to justify his disobedience to Samuel in 13:11-12) . It’s this final failure that is the worst.

God knows we will fail to be faithful to him. But in his grace he has made it possible for us to be forgiven for our unfaithfulness through Jesus’ sacrifice in our place. When we sin we need to acknowledge our failure and seek forgiveness in the only place available – the Cross of King Jesus – the place where all sin has been dealt with. And God will not only forgive us our sin but purify us from it and reckon us righteous.

Making excuses for our sin is just plain dumb.

In chapters 5 and 6 with the story of the Ark outside of Israelite territory.We see the power of God on display. God can’t be subdued by any foreign people or god:

2 Then they carried the ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon. 3 When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the LORD!

Even when the Ark returns to Israel, he can’t be domesticated. He is Holy and can’t be treated lightly:

9 But God struck down some of the men of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they had looked into the ark of the LORD.

Chapter 5 and 6 show God to be the mighty king. He is powerful and holy and can’t be constrained by people, nations or other Gods.

The victory is his alone.

He alone is King.

Sorry about the late blog!

I completely lost track of the days of the week and where we were up to on the bible reading as I forgot to take the booklet on holidays with me! It was great to get back and read back over the blogs from the last few weeks – thanks guys for all your thoughts. Its encouraging to know we don’t read in isolation but we’re doing this as a family!

so 1 Chronicles 6:48 – 8:40…

When I was reading this, it felt like some of it was stuff that we’ve heard before – the land that was allotted to God’s people, the numerous descendants that God had faithfully provided. God’s people in God’s promised land but were they living under God’s rule? It doesn’t tell us but overall, we know the book is pointing the faithfulness of God in keeping his promise.

If anyone has any thoughts about this passage, please share! I struggled to keep reading (and struggled not to skim read) as there were lots of names of people I have no idea how to pronounce and where they fit into the bigger story, God’s big story.

Sorry again for the late blog.

The original Hebrew name for what was the single book of Chronicles was ‘The events of the day’ or ‘journals. After the opening chapters you can kinda see why.

The family tree of 1:1-3:24 spans from the beginning of history to a Jewish family who settles in the period after the exile.

The Chronicler goes on to focus on the royal line of Judah. No kings of the Northern tribe is mentioned. The focus is on the line descended from David.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more family trees….

Ruth 1-4

Aaaah… Ruth! What a breath of fresh air!

Sandwiched in-between the sorry tale of the failure of Israel’s judges and kings we find this idyllic little love story! It’s a bit of a chick-flick but after all that gore and bloodshed, a bit of PG romance is fine by me!

There’s so much to comment on really. But I thought that I’d just mention one thing that stuck with me from a talk I heard years ago and that is that Naomi wanted to be known as Mara – which means “bitter” – because she had returned “empty” (Ruth 1:20-21). The cool thing is that as the story goes on, through what happens with her daughter-in-law Ruth, God fills her life again. This fullness is hinted at during the story as Ruth returns twice from the fields with her shawl full of grain, the second time with the message from Boaz, “don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed”. At the end of the book the women of Bethlehem describe Ruth as “better to you than seven sons”.

In her loss, Naomi concluded that God was against her (Judges 1:13). She couldn’t see the good thing that was coming – that God would fill her emptiness, fill her to overflowing.

Did you notice who Ruth’s great-grandson turned out to be? Even at the end of the story, Naomi didn’t know the extent to which God was working through her – that through her offspring – David, and then through David, Jesus – God was working to bring fullness to all his people.

It’s a love story alright, the greatest story of love ever told.