Saul lacked only one thing (1 Samuel 31), Apr 25, 2015

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Today’s Scriptures

Today’s Bible reading plans include:

Ready – 1 Samuel 31
Set – 1 Samuel 31; Matthew 12
Go! – 1 Samuel 30-31; 1 Chronicles 10; Matthew 12

1 Samuel 31
1Meanwhile the Philistine and Israelite armies had clashed. The men of Israel ran away, but many of them were killed on the heights of Gilboa. 2 The Philistines even followed Saul and his sons and closed in on them; there they killed his sons, Jonathan (the beloved friend of David), Abinadab, and Malchi-shua.

3 The battle closed in around Saul, and he was shot with arrows and badly wounded.

Saul (to his armor-bearer): 4 Please take out your sword and thrust it through me. Don’t let these uncircumcised dogs come and put their swords and spears into me for their sport.

But his armor-bearer was afraid and would not do it. Saul drew his own sword and fell upon it. 5 When the armor-bearer saw this, he also drew his sword and fell upon it and died. 6 So Saul, his three sons, his armor-bearer, and all his men died together on the same day.

7 When the people of Israel who were on the other side of the valley, and even those beyond the Jordan River, learned that the Israelite army had been defeated and heard that Saul and his sons were dead, they left their cities and fled. Then the Philistines came and lived in them.

8 The next day, as the Philistine army was looting the bodies of the fallen Israelites, they found Saul and his three sons dead on the heights of Gilboa. 9 They cut off Saul’s head, stripped his body of his weapons, and sent messengers with the good news to the temples and to the people throughout Philistia. 10 They put Saul’s armor in the temple of Astarte and nailed his body to the wall at Beth-shan.

11 But when the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead heard about this indignity done to Saul by the Philistines, 12 the brave men among them rose up and traveled through the night. When they arrived, they took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall at Beth-shan. They returned to Jabesh and burned them there. 13 Then they took their bones and buried them in Jabesh beneath the tamarisk tree, like the one where Saul had held court in Gibeah, and for seven days they fasted and mourned.

Today’s Devotional

From today’s background scripture God might say:

Saul did a lot of things wrong and caused Me to reject him as king over Israel. But he also did a lot of things right. He remembered the rules I gave Moses about kings and what they should and should not do as leaders over My people. Saul didn’t want to be king, but I chose him over all the other Israelites to be the first king. I chose him for a reason.

If you look back through Saul’s reign, you’ll find he never taxed the people he served. All the other kings did. He never conscripted soldier to fill his army, he only asked for volunteers to fight with him to defeat the Philistines who invaded the country. All others except David conscripted young men to fill the ranks of a standing army. Saul came from a poor family and took care of the poor in many circumstances and with the way he targeted rewards for various activities.

Saul exercised his leadership well throughout his reign in almost every area only failing in the most important one. He failed to obey My commands. When I told him to destroy all evidence of the Ammonite inhabitants, leaving nothing behind to attract his soldiers or the rest of the Israelite people to any of their belongings or idols, he failed to do so. The idols and possessions his soldiers brought back with them began a downhill process from them in which they switched their loyalties to pagan gods instead of Me.

Had Saul kept his eyes focused on Me and kept the commands I gave him. There is little doubt he would have been regarded as one of Israel’s greatest kings. As the first king, he established many precedents in how the kingdom would run. How kings would operate on a daily basis. How they should be viewed by the populace and by other nations. Saul did many things right.

The intervention by the men of Jabesh-Gilead at his death provide an indication of how good a king Saul was. Those men risked their lives and the lives of their wives and children to retrieve the bodies of Saul and his sons after the Philistines hung their bodies on the wall of the city fortress of Beth-shan. They risked their lives, brought back their bodies and gave them heroes burials to honor them after the battle despite their defeat at the hands of the Philistines.

I rejected Saul because of his unfaithfulness to Me, but his faithfulness to his tasks as king should not go unnoticed. He served well, he lacked one thing to live well. He just needed to honor and obey Me.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
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