I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

     Today’s passage tells us of King Saul’s growing jealousy, fear and hatred of David. King Saul has been tapped into playing the public relations game since he became king, and everything he has done wrong has come from that. He offered the sacrifices in Samuel’s place when Samuel was late in arriving because he was afraid if he waited any longer all of his men would desert him. He kept alive some of the Amalekites’ livestock in order to throw a big bash of sacrifices because that was what the people wanted and he was afraid to go against them (at least that is what he told Samuel, I wonder if his plan wasn’t to set himself up as a priest-king as many of the other rulers in that area had done), even though God’s command had been to kill everything. And now, he hears the people saying that Saul has killed many of the enemy, but David has killed even more. The next day, Saul has one of his fits and attempts to kill David while David is playing his harp in an effort to calm Saul. After this Saul sends David out to be one of his army commanders. David has even more success and Saul’s jealousy grows.
     King Saul next tries to pump David’s ego up and get him to take excessive risks in battle by offering David his eldest daughter in marriage. All David has to do is prove himself in battle even more than he already has. The Bible does not tell us exactly what Saul asked David to accomplish in battle, perhaps it was just open-ended enough that Saul could keep upping the ante, either way it was suicidal to attempt, since the Bible does tell us that Saul intended for David to be killed by the Philistines, and David recognizes this. David does not outright refuse to do it. Instead, he says that he is unworthy to be the king’s son-in-law. King Saul tries to play upon David’s ego, but David shows that he has a realistic understanding of his abilities. King Saul then marries his daughter off to another man. In the meantime, Saul’s second daughter has fallen in love with David. King Saul sees this as another opportunity to get David killed by the Philistines, which suggests that the feeling was not entirely one-sided. This time King Saul sets David a specific task, which David exceeds.
     King Saul continues to escalate his attempts to have David killed until David has no choice but to flee for his life. In all of this, David continued to serve King Saul faithfully and to the best of his ability. He does not use this as an excuse to plot against Saul. He does not do less than his very best in serving King Saul as both a military commander and as a member of his court. It is only when King Saul orders some of his men to kill David that David flees from King Saul’s court. In all of this, David does his best to obey God and does not use Saul’s perfidy as an excuse to be dishonest or disloyal himself.

     This passage has always bothered me a little bit, because it seems like Jesus is antagonizing the crowd, escalating the confrontation with each exchange. However, this time and I read and re-read this passage, I realized that the confrontation starts with the crowd, not Jesus. Jesus starts by saying that if they want to follow Him, they need to be faithful to His teachings and that as a result they will know the truth and the truth will free them. The crowd responds by saying, “What are you talking about? We are descendants of Abraham and do not need to be freed from anything.” This is the key point of the whole passage. If we want to follow Jesus, we need to admit that we need Him and His salvation. Jesus goes on to explain that if we sin, we are slaves to sin and thus need to be freed from sin. In order to receive the salvation that Jesus is offering we must admit that we need it and our powerless on our own to free ourselves. Sin is an addiction, or addiction is a sin, but in either case, in order to be free of them, the first thing we must do is admit that they have power over us. Until we admit that sin has power over us, we will be unable to accept God’s ability to free us from it and we are completely unable to free ourselves from it. The best we can do on our own is to substitute one sin for another, it is only through submission to God that we can be freed from sin. That is, it is only through the power of God that we can stop committing acts of sin which bring harm to ourselves and those around us.
     I can illustrate this from my own life. Years ago I smoked marijuana and occasionally did other drugs. I was always very careful to avoid becoming physically addicted to any of these drugs and used them in extreme moderation. But marijuana was “safe” because it was not physically addictive, so I didn’t need to be so careful. Then my life changed and I started to feel God’s call to be more involved with the Church and serving God. But I felt that as long as I was smoking pot, which I knew was wrong, (if for no other reason than it was illegal), I would be a hypocrite to be more active. So I decided I would stop smoking pot. Only, it wasn’t that easy. I tried for a couple of years to quit, all the while the feeling that I should be more actively serving God grew, as did the feeling that I would be a hypocrite to do so while smoking pot. Then the Lord spoke to me, “You know what I want you to do. Do it! Leave the marijuana to Me.” So I did. I started attending a congregation where I couldn’t just come in for the service and slip out without talking to anyone. A congregation where people had known me my whole life and had expectations of me. I got involved with a couple of Christian Singles’ groups and talked about what i thought it meant to follow Christ. I stopped trying to quit smoking pot. Six months later, I realized it had been six months since I had smoked pot. It was really that easy. I didn’t stop hanging out with the friends that I smoked pot with. I just didn’t spend as much time with them because I was busy doing other things most of the time. I didn’t have to stop spending time with my friends that I smoked pot with because they smoked pot. I just spent less time with them because I was spending more time with people who were helping me grow in my faith. It wasn’t that hard to say, “No thanks, not tonight,” when they passed the pot around, when I only had to do it once in a while (since I was busy spending time with other people rather than with them) rather than 4 or 5 times a week. On the other hand, it was hard. I had to admit to my fellow Christians that I smoked pot, that I lacked the willpower to give it up. I had to admit that for as strongly as I felt about the importance of following God and doing His will, I was unable to stop doing something that I knew He didn’t want me to do. Then one day I realized that God had taken the power of that sin over me away.
     When I started writing that story, I wondered what I was doing. I write these blogs for me, so that I can work on my daily devotions and study God’s Word. I knew that story and what it means. Except that as I wrote it I started to realize that I had forgotten. Oh, I hadn’t forgotten the story. I had forgotten the point. Once again I find myself fighting a habitual sin and once again I am trying to defeat it by the strength of my willpower. That isn’t how it works. God says, “I have things I want you to do. Stop trying to overcome sin. Just do My will and I will take care of the rest.” Unfortunately, this time I am not as sure of what things God wants me to do as the last time, but I know a few things and I just need to start pulling that thread and I am sure that God will show me the rest. This blog was part of that. God has been calling me to do this for over a year and I never got to it. Now I don’t know how I started my day without it.

     This psalm has so much in it, I don’t know where to start to unpack it. I will start where the psalmist does. I will praise the Lord. He tells us that those who fear the Lord will be joyful and follow His commands with delight. If you are trying to follow God and you are not full of joy, you are doing it wrong. Then we need to be generous. We need to be fair in all of our business dealings. No squeezing every transaction for every penny, just fair. Confidently trust the Lord to care for us. I am sure there are many things this psalm has to say to us. But today it says to me that we should not allow the world around us to convince us that we have to “Look out for number One first.” That is not God’s way for us. God’s way for us is to look out for those in need. This does not mean that we delegate the task for caring for those in need to the government. It means that we look for those around us who have needs that we can fill and then we do our best to fill those needs.

     Two of these proverbs tell us how to recognize the wise. The second of the two is easier to talk about. It tells us how to tell if we are behaving wisely. “A wise person is hungry for knowledge…” What sort of stuff do we fill our leisure time with? What TV shows do we watch? What books do we read? What Internet sites do we visit? What do we do with our time? Do we seek out knowledge? Or are we like the fool? “…while the fool feeds on trash.” I think we all know the sorts of things that we can fill our leisure time that falls into that last category. Understand that what qualifies as trash is not the same for everyone, but if you can’t think of how it feeds you knowledge and/or you think of it as trash, maybe you shouldn’t be spending your time with it.
     The other one tells us how to tell if someone is a wise source. “Mockers hate to be corrected, so they stay away from the wise.” If someone is criticizing another or making fun of something, but they refuse to talk with those who support who or what they are criticizing, we can know that the criticism is poorly founded or all together unfounded. For that matter, we can use this to measure our own criticism of something or someone. Are we willing to talk about our criticism with those who are supportive of that person or practice? If the answer is No, then our criticism is probably something we should keep to ourselves even if it is, perhaps, not just plain wrong.