Day 109: 1 Samuel 28–31; Psalm 18

Welcome to 5 -Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today's April the 19th and we'll be looking at 1

Samuel 28 -31 in Psalm 18. Now today we arrive at the tragic collapse of Saul's reign and the turning point where God removes one king who rejected him and preserves the other king who follows him after his own heart.

These chapters show Saul's final descent into darkness while at the same time God quietly guards and delivers

David through the crisis. And alongside of this we read Psalm 18 which is a song forged in the fires of conflict where David looks back and declares that every rescue, every survival, every victory had to come from the hand of the

Lord. And at this point we're approximately 300 years after the death of Joshua which is 50 years longer than America has even been a nation which just goes to show how long the period of the

Judges and the reign of Saul actually was. So if you look at these chapters in chapter 28

Saul faces the rising threat of the Philistines but heaven is silent. God's not answering him.

The Lord doesn't hear Saul's prayer. So instead of repenting Saul turns to darkness and he seeks out a medium who is one who contacts the dead at the city of Endor revealing that the king of Israel is now looking for guidance from forbidden voices because he has rejected the voice of God and the fact that this witch even exists means that his kingship had not purged the land of this kind of idolatry and wickedness in the first place.

So he goes there and he receives a final word of judgment because his kingdom is finished and his life will end in defeat and that omen is the last word spoken over Saul.

Then chapter 29 shifts to David who is living among the Philistines at this point and as they prepare to fight

Israel the Philistine leaders refuse to let David join them and what appears to be a kind of rejection is actually protection because God is keeping

David from raising his hand against his own people. Then in chapter 30

David returns to Ziklag and finds devastation. The city is burned, families are taken and even his own men began to turn against him.

Yet in that moment of crushing pressure David strengthens himself in the Lord. He seeks

God and he receives direction from the Lord and leads a complete recovery bringing back everything that was lost.

And then in chapter 31 we see the very end of Saul's story. He's wounded, he's abandoned, he's defeated and then

Saul takes his own life on the battlefield so that a Philistine would not be responsible for killing him.

The king who would not listen to God dies under the judgment of God exactly as the

Lord had spoken. And then Psalm 18 is a kind of commentary on these events showing how

David was delivered. It's not just an abstract song, it's the song of a man who's been hunted, cornered and yet repeatedly rescued by his

God. So as you read today I want you to ask the following question. Where do we turn when it seems like heaven is silent?

When our prayers are hitting the ceiling and when fear is closing in? Because these chapters show us that the direction that you turn to in the moment is going to shape everything that follows.

Saul turned one direction, David turned the other direction and we get a theology at this point of what it looks like to turn to darkness versus turning to the light.

And obviously it's clear we're supposed to turn towards the light. And the pattern running through these chapters is the dividing line between the despair and the dependence.

Saul is afraid, he's surrounded by enemies, he's cut off from God and he's desperate for control. But instead of humbling himself he reaches for what

God has forbidden. His fear does not lead him to the Lord, it drives him further from the

Lord and further into darkness which ends in his destruction. David also faces overwhelming pressure.

At Ziklag everything is gone, his home is burned, his people are taken, his own men are ready to stone him.

And yet in that same moment David does something radically different from Saul.

He strengthens himself in the Lord, he seeks God's direction and he moves forward in faith instead of doubt.

And this has massive implications for our life as well because when fear tightens around our heart we're either going to run to God or we're going to reach for something that God forbids.

Saul grasps for the darkness and it leads to his destruction, David clings to the Lord and it leads to his deliverance and who we turn to and what we turn to when we are in pain or turmoil or conflict or suffering determines everything about our destiny.

Psalm 18 reveals what is truly beneath the surface of both of these lives.

God is our rock, our fortress and our deliverer and he's not those things for those who pretend to have strength apart from him, but for those who take refuge in him, he will be their deliverer.

And all of this presses us forward to Jesus Christ, the true and faithful King. Saul shows us what happens when a king rejects

God, his reign collapses under fear and disobedience and judgment. David, though imperfect, points forward to a better king.

David's preserved, he's delivered and he's strengthened by God and all of that anticipates a greater deliverance that is still yet to come because Jesus is the king who never turns aside.

Where Saul seeks the forbidden voice in the night because God has been silent to him, Christ enters into the silence of his suffering in the garden of Gethsemane and even death itself and yet remains perfectly obedient to the father.

He doesn't grasp or control. He entrusts himself completely to God saying, not my will, but yours be done.

And then Psalm 18 ultimately finds its fullest meaning in Jesus because he is the one whom

God delivers through death into resurrection. He is the true servant who has rescued and vindicated and enthroned forever and through him, all who belong to him are brought into that same deliverance, rescued not just from their enemies, but from the greatest enemies of all

Satan, sin, death, and judgment itself. So as you read first Samuel 28 through 31 and Psalm 18 today,

I want you to watch how Saul's story of collapse into tragedy is telling while David is preserved by the steady and unseen hand of God.

And then tomorrow we're going to step into the rise of David's kingship as God begins to establish his chosen king over Israel.

But with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally, and joyfully, and may the Lord use his word to sanctify you completely.