Paul continues his missionary activities through Galatia. By the end of this chapter, on Paul’s missionary journey, we had seen him travel to multiple cities with people coming to faith and others opposing the gospel. We see Paul minister to people of different faiths. We even see a mob try to stone Paul to death. In the end, Paul’s focus is on the Lord who had opened the door for his message to reach people.
Category: Gospel
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The height of the reign of Saul. Studying 1 Samuel 11:8-15
Israel defeats the Ammonites
In 1 Samuel 11, the Israelites face their first major military test under their new king, Saul. He has found out that the Ammonites have besieged the city of Jabesh-Gilead and so Saul assembles an Israelite force.
Verse 8:
8 When he mustered them at Bezek, the people of Israel were three hundred thousand, and the men of Judah thirty thousand.
Numbers can always be a little bit difficult in the Bible. Especially in the Old Testament. In English, our word for thousand always refers to a numerical value. The Hebrew word translated thousand can mean more than one thing. So it’s possible that it’s 300 thousand. It’s also possible it’s 300 military units, but not necessarily 300 thousand men.
It’s a large group in any event.
It’s also noteworthy that you have a split between Israel and Judah – north and south – just two generations later and even here, it’s listing the military numbers for these primary regions of the kingdom separately. The news of this army is shared with the besieged city of Jabesh-Gilead.
Verse 9:
9 And they said to the messengers who had come, “Thus shall you say to the men of Jabesh-gilead: ‘Tomorrow, by the time the sun is hot, you shall have salvation.’ ” When the messengers came and told the men of Jabesh, they were glad.
And so they give their response to the Ammonite king:
10 Therefore the men of Jabesh said, “Tomorrow we will give ourselves up to you, and you may do to us whatever seems good to you.”
In the Hebrew, their wording is actually a little bit cryptic.
The ESV translates it as we will give ourselves up to you.
The ESV commentary on 1 Samuel says that more literally, what they’re saying is we will come out to you.
Which has a double meaning where the Ammonites could think they were coming out to surrender, but in reality they would be coming out to do battle.
In verse 11, the battle is recorded.
11 And the next day Saul put the people in three companies. And they came into the midst of the camp in the morning watch and struck down the Ammonites until the heat of the day. And those who survived were scattered, so that no two of them were left together.
Again, it’s a passage where a battle happens but it’s not really a passage about the battle itself. It gets summarized in one verse. Saul divided his men and they surrounded the Ammonites and so we see some skill in planning on the part of Saul.
The Israelites have a decisive victory. No two of them were left together.
The Ammonites are decimated. More attention is actually given to the aftermath of the victory than to the battle itself.
To explain the end of this chapter, we need to understand the end of chapter 10.
Team of rivals
In chapter 10, after Saul becomes king, he returns to his home and chapter 10 ends by mentioning that there were some who were enthusiastic about the new king, and there were some who were not.
Chapter 10, verses 26-27:
26 Saul also went to his home at Gibeah, and with him went men of valor whose hearts God had touched. 27 But some worthless fellows said, “How can this man save us?” And they despised him and brought him no present. But he held his peace.
After the victory, people wanted to round up those detractors who had been less enthusiastic about Saul and see them executed.
Back in chapter 11, verse 12:
12 Then the people said to Samuel, “Who is it that said, ‘Shall Saul reign over us?’ Bring the men, that we may put them to death.”
The high point of a doomed kingdom
Verse 13:
13 But Saul said, “Not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has worked salvation in Israel.”
As I said in the beginning of our time, this is the high point of the reign of Saul.
For a brief moment, Israel has the king they wanted.
Saul could have been vengeful to his detractors but chose grace instead. He could have hogged the glory but he gives the credit where it’s due when he says that it was the Lord who has worked salvation in Israel.
All is well in Israel.
There is a celebration.
It’s like when a team brings in a new coach or a new general manager and it takes them a few years to built up and then it culminates in a championship. The Cubs winning the World Series in 2016 comes to mind. All that time without winning a World Series and then they get the right people on staff and on the roster and they get there.
14 Then Samuel said to the people, “Come, let us go to Gilgal and there renew the kingdom.” 15 So all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. There they sacrificed peace offerings before the Lord, and there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly.
So we’ve had this great victory. The Israelites are carrying Saul around on their shoulders. The Prophet Samuel suggests that they go to Gilgal to renew the kingdom.
Why would they need to renew the kingdom when they literally just installed a new king?
I think that John L Mackay argues convincingly that the renewal of the kingdom in light of this great victory is not about Saul. That Samuel is seeking to renew the covenant to the kingdom that they have with the Lord who gave them this victory.
Gilgal was mentioned in chapter 10. It’s the place where Saul became king. It was also the place where Joshua built the first altar to the Lord within the Promised Land after they had crossed the Jordan River. In renewing the kingdom at Gilgal, it is also tying the future of Israel to God’s past faithfulness.
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The greatest danger to the Church
There are 300,000 churches in America.
There are many wonderful churches that boldly proclaim the gospel and faithfully teach the Bible every week. There is no perfect church in the world, because every church is full of members who are imperfect people.
I think that the biggest issue the American church faces today is related to truth and love.
Love that undermines truth and truth that doesn’t practice love. I’ll briefly explain what that means.
Love that undermines truth
Love is important. The greatest command in scripture is to love God and to love people. God is love.
But some churches can emphasize love to the point where it undermines truth.
For instance, there is a temptation in some Christian circles to consider the love of God and reason that: “since God is love, his love extends to all people, whether or not they believe in God and whether or not they want or accept his love.”
God is love. But that is just taking a slice of the character of God and acting as if that’s the whole pie. God is love. But he is also just, and righteous, and holy. He judges, he has wrath towards sin. God has all of those qualities at all times.
God is love. But the idea of love is not only exclusive to what our culture defines love as.
We tend to value acceptance and tolerance as what it is to love. And it’s true that God meets us where we are, but Jesus doesn’t save us to keep us the same. God is a perfecting God. We sin. We sin so much that we needed a savior, and the gospel is not a message that teaches us that we’re ok and we should just keep doing what we’re doing. We need to live for God and pursue him.
Making love purely about acceptance and tolerance is not the full Biblical scope of what love is. And so it undermines the truth of scripture. And it runs the danger of undermining the inerrancy of scripture (taking the Bible as practical wisdom rather than the infallible word of God). And this view runs the risk of undermining the gospel itself.
Assuming that love and demand for justice are mutually exclusive.
I observe this being the great risk in more liberal denominations.
Truth that doesn’t practice love
I think this is more of a danger in conservative and evangelical circles. We place a high value on the scripture and theology. And well we should because both of those are hugely important.
But we can get so preoccupied with having the right answer that we lose sight of actually living out what we know. This is very similar to the failure of the Pharisees in the gospels. They were very well studied and trained in theology, but they missed the heart of the message.
It can be easy to know the right answer but it’s difficult to live it out in practice.
Truth and love. It comes down to belief and practice. We need both.
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Originally published May 9, 2018
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The Noahic Covenant. Studying Genesis 8:20-9:17
God formally establishes a covenant with Noah.
In Genesis 6:18 we see the word covenant used for the first time in the Bible.
I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.
Between Genesis 6 and Genesis 9, a lot has happened. God has flooded the earth, he’s killed all people and inhabitants of the earth, save for Noah, his family, and the animals on the ark.
We see more covenant language at the end of Genesis 8. After the flood, Noah builds an altar to the Lord in Genesis 8:20. Sacrifice is an important aspect of Biblical covenants. And it is here where Noah is able to make sacrifices in a newly cleansed creation after the flood.
Genesis 8:20:
20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar
The altar Noah builds is the first time we see an altar mentioned in the Book of Genesis. The altars represent locations where man could make sacrifices to the Lord and it prefigures the later temple which is also an important aspect of covenantal theology.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would all build altars at times of great significance in Genesis. With the Mosaic covenant, there would be the tabernacle which was the portable structure which symbolized God’s presence with the Israelites and the place where the sacrifices were made. In 2 Samuel 7, when David is told to construct the temple, the thing to which the tabernacle was pointing, God also makes a promise to him in another covenant where the Lord promised a Son from David’s line who would have a kingdom that would never end.
2 Samuel 7:12-13:
When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever
And in Christ, we see the true temple, the true presence of God with the people where the true sacrifice is made who establishes a new covenant in his own blood and with his own body.
Luke 22:19-20:
19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood
Back in Genesis 8, Noah builds the altar to make the sacrifices.We see the Lord make a promise. He will restate it in chapter 9, but it’s the same thing the Lord will promise in his covenant with Noah.
Genesis 8:21-22:
21 And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. 22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
Coming into chapter 9, we see all sorts of language both of covenant and creation. God has spared Noah, his family, and the animals on the ark because he is making a new creation through them. As in creation, when the Lord gives the mandate to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, he will give that same command to Noah and his family.
Genesis 9:1:
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
But while there are creation themes, this world after the creation is not perfect. There is animosity within the creation itself. Genesis 9:2-3:
2 The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.
While man can eat meat, there are still stipulations on how we can eat it. The lifeblood of the animal is something which is sacred, as is the life of our fellow man. For any who unjustly takes the life of another, the just penalty for that is death. As man is created in the image of God, so man has inherent value and worth.
Genesis 9:5-6:
for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.
In Genesis 9:7, we see the repetition of the command for humanity to be fruitful and multiply. Once again, the language harkens back to creation.
While the passage has already been steeped in the language and ideas of covenants, it is verse 8 when the Lord formally ratifies his covenant.
It’s striking in itself that God makes a covenant with a humanity that he knows is sinful and that he knows will continue to sin.
The Noahic Covenant
Genesis 9:8-10:
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth.
God’s covenant doesn’t begin by focusing on the sinfulness of man. This covenant is universal. As Noah, his family, and the animals who come off the boat represent all of the life on earth, the covenant promise is made to all of them and applies to all of mankind and to all of the animal kingdom.
It is the only covenant in the Bible that does this. Where it’s universal and applies to everyone and every living creature in the world.
Later covenants will have more specific application. Abraham’s covenant is a promise for a people who will come from Abraham. The Mosaic covenant is given to Israel. The New Covenant is given to the faithful in Christ.
The Noahic covenant applies to all, regardless if someone knows and honors the Lord, regardless if someone considers themselves to be part of this covenant.
So first, we see to whom the covenant applies. Next, we see what the covenant promises.
Covenant promises
Genesis 9:11:
11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth
The Lord will never again destroy the earth.
But what’s amazing is that he could.
Again, it is purely out of his grace that he makes the promise to a sinful humanity that he won’t do this again. The only thing that God is bound by is his own character and righteousness. We can’t stop him from doing whatever he wants.
The covenant is made by God based in the character of God. The text continues to use possessive language. The Lord keeps calling it my covenant. I will establish my covenant with you.
It’s not like humanity can negotiate with God. All that we have is from him.
The flood will be a unique event in human history. That’s not to say that local floods can’t happen. But God will never repeat the flood that he brought as his great judgment on the world. Again, not that the world doesn’t deserve that but because God is gracious and has promised not to.
It can be easy to be frustrated with the state of our world. So much sin. So much darkness. Wars, killings, violents, drugs.
The flood reminds us that God once did away with all of creation save for one family and a set of each of the animals. As Thomas Schreiner notes in his biblical theology of covenants, that the flood reminds us that the fundamental nature of humanity hasn’t changed.
Noah’s covenant does show God’s grace to humanity but it does not bring salvation in itself. It instead points to the preservation of humanity and the continuation of the world. Based on other covenants and promises, we know that this will continue until Christ returns. And the ultimate hope of the world is to be remade once again as a new heaven, a new earth, and a new creation at the end of the age.
Covenant sign
In addition to his promise, the Lord also makes a covenant sign.
Genesis 9:12-13:
12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
The rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant. Other covenants will have signs of their own. With Abraham, the sign of the covenant is circumcision. With the new covenant, communion would be a sign of that covenant which Christ instituted.
From th foreboding clouds of a thunderstorm, we can see a rainbow.
In a dark world, we still have a good God who is faithful.
Genesis 9:14-15, the Lord restates his promise not to flood the earth.
14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.
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Studying 1 Samuel 11:1-7
In 1 Samuel 11, Israel is on the verge of war against the Ammonites, a surrounding enemy.
At the beginning of the passage, the Ammonite king – Nahash – has the Israelite city of Jabesh-Gilead surrounded. The Israelites seek out a treaty with the Ammonites. 1 Samuel 11:1 says: Then Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh-gilead, and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, “Make a treaty with us, and we will serve you.”
In verse 2, the Ammonite king makes an audacious request:
But Nahash the Ammonite said to them, “On this condition I will make a treaty with you, that I gouge out all your right eyes, and thus bring disgrace on all Israel.”An immodest proposal
There are two reasons why Nahash would make such a demand. From the text, it says that it would bring disgrace upon them. I think that’s pretty obvious. A way to shame and humiliate the people by half-blinding the nation and also the pain which that would involve.
A second reason is also likely for such a request. If they just gouged out one eye, they could still farm and therefore serve the Ammonite conquers. But it would make it much harder for them to have any type of military resistance. It would affect depth perception.
Most people are right handed and so to have to carry a sword in your right hand when you couldn’t see in your right eye would also cause problems. Carrying a shield with the left hand could also potentially obstruct the view in the left eye, especially when marching in formations as was common in ancient warfare.
So there is strategy behind this, but given that Nahash wanted to bring disgrace upon Israel, we also see hatred and vengeance as motivations for why he wanted to defeat them.
Back in our passage. Verse 3, we see a request from the Israelites in Jabesh:
3 The elders of Jabesh said to him, “Give us seven days’ respite that we may send messengers through all the territory of Israel. Then, if there is no one to save us, we will give ourselves up to you.”
They ask for a reprieve of seven days. They want to see if they have any options.
It’s obvious from the context of the passage that the Ammonite king agrees because messengers get sent out in the following verse.
Perhaps he’s overconfident or assumes that the Israelites couldn’t possibly mobilize a force in seven days.
We’ve seen Israel’s situation as they come under threat.
And we will see in this passage that it is ultimately a story about the Lord protecting his people.
The king and the battle
So the Israelites asked for a seven day reprieve. They send out messengers.
Verse 4:
4 When the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul, they reported the matter in the ears of the people, and all the people wept aloud.
We don’t know how many messengers are sent or how wide ranging these messengers were sent throughout Israel. But some messengers had made their way to Gibeah, the hometown of Saul, Israel’s new king.
There is one point worth making that helps us understand the connection between Saul’s hometown of Gibeah within the Benjaminite territory and Jabesh-Gilead which was the city under Ammonite siege.
A tale of two cities
As I keep mentioning, Saul was a Benjaminite and so he lived in the Benjaminite territory.
The Benjaminites had fought a war against other Israelite tribes. One area that did not participate in this war were the soldiers from Jabesh-Gilead. So Jabesh-Gilead is under attack in today’s passage. They go to a place that they had previously spared and ask for help.
So you have some good historical relations between these two cities. And that place just “happens to be” the home of the new king.
I say “happens to be” in quotes because it wasn’t just some random coincidence. Once again in this passage, we continue to see this theme in Samuel of the providence of God. And I want to reiterate the point I keep making. That this passage is about God’s faithfulness. Here, we see it through his providential actions.
Verse 5:
Now, behold, Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen. And Saul said, “What is wrong with the people, that they are weeping?” So they told him the news of the men of Jabesh.So it just happens to be these two cities who had this warm relationship with each other, and it just happens to be the hometown of Saul, and now Saul just happens to pass by.
People are weeping. We’re not sure if the messengers even know that there’s a king, or know that they’re in his hometown.
He’s just coming by with his livestock.
We continue to see God’s divine initiative in verse 6.
6 And the Spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled.
So we’ve seen the providence of God, now we see the equipping from God.
The Spirit rushed upon Saul.
This is something that we also see in the Book of Judges where the judges are endowed by the divine Spirit in times of crisis and then act.
The same thing happens to Saul and he goes to work.
Verse 7:
7 He took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces and sent them throughout all the territory of Israel by the hand of the messengers, saying, “Whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen!” Then the dread of the Lord fell upon the people, and they came out as one man.
If nothing else, Saul is a showman. Pretty gruesome.
Cutting up the oxen alludes back to events in Judges but it is also giving a stern warning to his people that they’re being called upon by their king to serve.
The verse ends with they came out as one man.
Saul’s action had its intended effect. And for one of the few times in the history of Ancient Israel, the people are united.
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