It's Complicated(S1) : WK 2 - MON
(1 Samuel: 16)
Now the Lord said to Samuel, “You have mourned long enough for Saul. I have rejected him as king of Israel, so fill your flask with olive oil and go to Bethlehem. Find a man named Jesse who lives there, for I have selected one of his sons to be my king.”
Jesse belongs to the tribe of Judah and appears in 1 Samuel as a civic leader in the town of Bethlehem. Jesse was also the son of Obed and grandson of Boaz and Ruth. (Ruth 4:17; 1 Chronicles 2:12-15)
Here, God tells his prophet Samuel that it is time to move on from the mourning they were doing for Saul. Here is the difficult part, Saul wasn’t dead, but God had at this point seen fit to move on from his authority as King. He just wouldn't tell Saul for quite a while. This put Samuel into a pretty precarious position.
I have always thought that God’s relationship to the monarchy of Israel is dubious at best. He never thought they should have a king, so the first one he gave them was found in a luggage hold, and the second one they had was a shepherd and a poet. I wonder if Israel ever stopped and thought that perhaps God had been mocking them the whole time?
Regardless, we see God moving the story forward and giving him instructions to go and find this man Jesse, because one of his sons would be the future king. I wonder if Samuel was a little tired of all these politics at this point, and simply wished that Israel would follow their God, rather than a king? But nonetheless, he needed to go to find Jesse.
Do you look for a king or ruler in your life, or do you seek to follow God? I often wonder if it is possible to follow two different authorities in your life? The bible seems to say no, but here we are with Samuel about to go and look for another king. We all know who this king will be, David, of course, but I wonder if they really needed a king, or if they could have just leaned into following God.
Either way, they didn’t seem to want to do this, so Samuel has to take on the task of finding the next king.
Now the Lord said to Samuel, “You have mourned long enough for Saul. I have rejected him as king of Israel, so fill your flask with olive oil and go to Bethlehem. Find a man named Jesse who lives there, for I have selected one of his sons to be my king.”
Jesse belongs to the tribe of Judah and appears in 1 Samuel as a civic leader in the town of Bethlehem. Jesse was also the son of Obed and grandson of Boaz and Ruth. (Ruth 4:17; 1 Chronicles 2:12-15)
Here, God tells his prophet Samuel that it is time to move on from the mourning they were doing for Saul. Here is the difficult part, Saul wasn’t dead, but God had at this point seen fit to move on from his authority as King. He just wouldn't tell Saul for quite a while. This put Samuel into a pretty precarious position.
I have always thought that God’s relationship to the monarchy of Israel is dubious at best. He never thought they should have a king, so the first one he gave them was found in a luggage hold, and the second one they had was a shepherd and a poet. I wonder if Israel ever stopped and thought that perhaps God had been mocking them the whole time?
Regardless, we see God moving the story forward and giving him instructions to go and find this man Jesse, because one of his sons would be the future king. I wonder if Samuel was a little tired of all these politics at this point, and simply wished that Israel would follow their God, rather than a king? But nonetheless, he needed to go to find Jesse.
Do you look for a king or ruler in your life, or do you seek to follow God? I often wonder if it is possible to follow two different authorities in your life? The bible seems to say no, but here we are with Samuel about to go and look for another king. We all know who this king will be, David, of course, but I wonder if they really needed a king, or if they could have just leaned into following God.
Either way, they didn’t seem to want to do this, so Samuel has to take on the task of finding the next king.
- How do you go about finding the next king in your life?
- Who do you give authority to in your life?
- What do you think you can do to give more authority to Christ? What would that look like today?
by Pastor Timothy Gillespie
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