Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another edition of The Daily Bible Podcast. Five chapters today, five cha. Yeah, it is a lot. I do remember coming across this one and being like, Ooh, okay. It's a big bite, but man I like First Samuel. It's one of my favorite Old Testament books. I just like the narrative. I like the story. I like the process. Of of moving along here. It's a deep breath after, judges is just oh man, these guys are miserable. But you wanna go slower then? Yes. No, that's fair. But I'm just saying reading five chapters is not the same thing as reading five chapters and judges No it's totally doable. Yeah. I don't think it takes that much longer than what we normally do. I like Ruth, I'm bummed that we're only one day in Ruth. Yeah, Ruth is good. And then it's like, all right, see you later. But yeah, first Samuel's good book. It's, it is got a soft spot in my heart because when I showed up at Compass and was made the men's pastor there, AV back in California, we preached through first and second Samuel. So didn't you suggest Song of Solomon? At first I did. I was like, let me just come out with guns firing. And and that was rejected for some reason. Yeah. A better part of wisdom. They were like, maybe we shouldn't talk about that right off the bat. Let's get to know you in your first year. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. A little bit more. And we were doing the same study that the ladies were doing. Oh yeah. So that would've been weird too. Or maybe. Could have been fitting, could have been fitting, could have been. So a word on the street is that you're gonna preach this at Compass nor Texas Now that you have the pulpit here and you're gonna do Song of Solomon this coming fall, That's exactly not the case. Yeah. Word on the street. Streets can be credible. Hang out on different streets on that one. Yeah. Yeah I'd be interested to go back at and hear MacArthur on it. He preached through the entirety of the Bible, and so I'd be interested to go back and hear him on on Song of Solomon. Did he preach song of, I thought he did. Only the New Testament. Did he preach through the whole Bible? I think he preached the whole Bible. He wrote commentaries on the whole New Testament. I think he's preached the whole Bible. Oh, I thought it was only that he preached the New Testament. Maybe. Maybe it was, yeah. Oh, I'll have to look at that. Yeah. Tommy Nelson did Song of Solomon. Some others did as well, but yep. Yep. You're in Matthew. What chapter Matthew are you in now? Wednesday nights with our Steve. Tomorrow night is Wednesday tomorrow? Today. Tonight. Today. Night is the 14th. Matthew 14. Alright. How did the parables go last week? That was fun. Yeah, it was fun. It's a, it's our strategy at this point. We're covering a chapter a week, and so necessarily we can't cover. Everything. And so we're trying to get the peaks and skip over some of the valleys to give them a, the gist or the sense of what's being said there without trying to go too deeply into the weeds. And so I think it went okay. I think we're still trying to figure that out. So Lewis is preaching tonight and he's doing Matthew 14, and I've got his outline and it looks good. My concern every week is, man, how do we make sure that we do justice to the passage without. Trying to do all the justice that could be ju-just, I wanna squeeze the orange, but I don't wanna squeeze it so much that people drown in the orange juice. I want them to be able to drink it and say, that was really good. Yeah. Satisfying. Even though we didn't get down to every jot and tittle of what's in there. Yeah. And I if you're new to the church or maybe you haven't really considered this that's a hard. That's one of the harder things that we do as pastors, is map out a series and decide, okay, this is, we're gonna spend this amount of time in this passage, this amount of time, in this passage. And man I feel that way. I felt that way this past Sunday. I just felt man, I just took a chunk that just felt to me like it was too big. I was preaching that fourth point on the kingdom of God going, man I'm, I've got five minutes to treat the kingdom of God. What did I do to myself? It is funny 'cause when we were praying that morning, you probably recall everyone's prayer was like, Lord, please, if we have to go so much later than normal, please just give us patience with Pastor pj. It was so funny 'cause don't think it was weeping in tears. Yeah. Yeah. I think I remember Abe in particular saying, Lord, if we have to just, if we have to go longer, if it goes longer than what we expect, help us just to be grateful for that. Everybody was scared, man. You had everybody on edge oh, I've got four points. Yep. And there's 65 verses here. Yeah. But you handled it. I think it was I don't know, probably the average length of your sermons, and then you threw a community on top of that. So I was pleasantly surprised that you were able to pull that off. Yeah, I just felt I don't know. I just felt like I, I robbed the congregation by getting back home and being like, man, I just left so much on the table. But to your point, you have to do that every single time. Every single time you preach, every time you're leaving stuff on the cutting room floor if you're doing it right. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And somebody else will come and preach that. I remember a pastor told me that once and I just appreciated that it was one of those Hey, young buck sit down moments for me and that he was like, Hey, somebody else is gonna come behind you and preach this passage. You're not the last one to preach this passage. Sure. It's a trust. Sure. That what you don't get to God's gonna bring to light through somebody else preaching that word to them. So yeah, someone told me, finish before they do. I thought. Okay. That's all right. Yeah, I guess so. I it's, there's a lot of things, a lot of pastoral wisdom on how to preach to people. And often it's a matter of saying just humble yourself and trust that God's gonna use it, even if you're not particularly pleased with it. Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's it's a joy that we get to do it, and that's true. We're excited for it. So hopefully Lewis, no pressure, but do man. Don't don't mess up. My kids will be there. Don't me know. Don't mess up. Yeah, just don't ruin it. Young man. Hey, hop. John MacArthur completed a remarkable feat by preaching through the entire New Testament. Only New Testament. Only New Testament. Wow. So this is multiple, I'm looking at multiple resources here. I asked did he preach the whole Bible? And the answer is no. Okay, then, man, JMac, let's go. You got the Old Testament now, buddy. Jeez. Genesis one, one. Let's go. Better go fast. Oh yeah. Okay. There you go. I wonder if he's ever done a series on Song of p Solomon, then maybe he hasn't. I think his notes are pretty scant in his MacArthur study Bible, and if his. A study Bible is any indication of his preaching. Yeah. Which I think it is. Don't think he's had a lot of conversations about that one. Probably not. Probably not. We will eventually, but not yet. Right now we're in First Samuel, so let's this fall. Let's go there. Let tell your friends. Yes. I don't know if it's this fall that we'll get to it in the daily Bible reading, but whenever we get to the, in the daily Bible reading, we'll talk about it. Alright. First Samuel, 4, 5, 6, 7, and eight. All right. For single four Israel falls in battle to the Philistines. And the reason they fall in battle to the Philistines here is because they put their trust in something close to God, but not ultimately in God. And man, there's so many takeaways for us as the church about this too. They put their trust in the. Arc of God rather than God himself. As they're drawn up for battle. They call for the arc and they say, man, the arc will go before us. The arc will be our lucky rabbits foot our good luck charm. It'll win the battle. And in fact the Philistines initially think, oh no, the arc is there. A God has come into the midst of the camp. God had not come into the midst of the camp of the Israelites, only the arc A and this is going to be a situation where they are going to be defeated. And and they're defeated and the arc is gonna be captured. And the word eventually is taken back to the to Eli there that not only has the arc been captured, but his sons have died as well. But Eli he doesn't fall over when he hears that his sons have died. He falls over when he hears that the arc has been captured. And that the point that you made about him being a larger individual yesterday and. Yeah, yesterday's podcast leads to, I think his demise as his neck breaks under his weight there when he tips over. But this is yeah. Israel is not putting their trust in God, but in, in putting their trust in the things of God. And we can be tempted to do that too, thinking that, because we show up at church enough that God must be pleased with us or we know enough of the Bible or we've read enough we can put our trust in the things. Close to God, but not in God himself. And that's where our confidence needs to be. Amen to that. Yeah. I feel like we can often, even if it's accidental, we can accidentally treat God like a lucky rabbit's foot. Sometimes we could be this way with our Bibles and we don't want anything on top of our Bibles, which I guess. Sometimes it's a matter of respect, but we can treat God like a trinket to our talisman and pretend because we have a certain prayer that we're saying five times, or because we've we've gone to church on a Sunday that somehow we're more protected or something. Something like that. And the challenge with that is, I think there, there's something to that, praying is a good thing and not putting your Bible not putting things on top of your Bible is a sign of respect. There's things that are adjacent. I think the way that, that you put it. Something close to God, but they're not the same thing as honoring God himself. And so I think it's important for us to realize that even in as Christians, we can do something very similar, even if it doesn't look exactly like this. Yeah. Chapter five God's not gonna allow his arc to remain in Philistine possession for long. Especially not in the temple of their fault. God day. God. So the. Philistines take the arc and they put it in their temple. This was something that was common and the reason that they did this is it was a way to flex. It was a way for them to say, are God's stronger than the God of the army that we just beat? And so God's not gonna b abide by that. So their statue, Dagon falls down and they pick him back up. They're like, oh, that's interesting. They pick him back up. The next day he falls down, his heads cut off, his hands are cut off, just his torso was left. And the Philistines begin to get the message on top of that. Then God begins to afflict them physically with different ailments. And they fully eventually get the fact that that this is a problem. And so they decide in chapter five here that, that they can't keep the arc. They need to get rid of this thing, they need to send it back. And they're gonna then begin to plot how they're gonna do that. Chapter six, then the arc is returned and it's unique. They put it on this cart and they put two oxen who had never hauled anything. And not only that, but they also have these calves back at home that, that are nursing. These oxen have every reason not to take the cart, not to go away from Philistine territory there, but that's indeed what they do. They go up and they go up to Beth Sheesh. And the people there at Beth Sheesh initially rejoice to see the arc return. But they did not take care to revere the arc according to the Old Testament law. So if you go back to numbers chapter four, verses five and six, it says, when that camp is to set out Aaron and his son, she'll go and take down the veil of the screen and cover the arc of the testimony. So the common. People of Israel weren't even permitted to look upon the arc, let alone touch it. And here, I think that's why 70 of them are killed when it says that they looked upon the arc. I don't think they opened up the arc and looked inside the arc. I think this is, that they did not take proper care and respect to, to immediately when they saw the arc coming, say, Hey, we need to abide by the law. We need to cover this and honor it in that regard. And because they treated it commonly, God struck them down. Very similar to what he's gonna do with Siah later on when David goes to bring the arc back into Jerusalem. After this the people of Beshe meh say, Hey, we, this is too much for us. We don't want it here. So they send it down to a town called Curth Jarre and to a town, a man in the town named Abada. And it's gonna remain in his house for quite a while from that point until the ark is called for again by by King David. Later on. Chapter seven then deals with Samuel becoming Israel's judge. And in doing so, he leads them to repent from their idol worship, and also seeks the Lord on their behalf during the battles with the Philistines, which drew the favor of God causing the Philistines to retreat from their attacks on Israel. So Samuel's really stepping forward, demonstrating his leadership here and this is a good bookend with later on in chapter. Is it 10? Chapter 11, when Samuel pleads his integrity as a leader. We'll talk about that in tomorrow's podcast. But you see the outset of his leadership here is that he's setting the people to seek God and to trust in God. And then he's going to lead in a good way as a judge here in Israel. I love pointing out verse 12 here, where Samuel takes a stone and he names that stone. Ebenezer, which if we ever sang the song, I don't know if we sang the song recently. Here I raise my Ebenezer that till now we've safely come. This is a reference here to one Samuel chapter seven, verse 12. Samuel establishes the Rock of Remembrance, and this is a rock that says, God has helped us. God has done great things for us. We ought to remember this. And again, one of the things that we can do today is find ways to help incite our memory to remember what God has done on our behalf. Whatever you do, find a way. It's a good, it's a good thing. Samuel's doing it here. We ought to do it now. Yep. Chapter eight, something that's not necessarily a good thing and yet part of God's plan we've been talking about that a lot on Sundays, that God is sovereign even over the the error of man and the. The wrong wrongful des desires and demands of man. And that's what we find here. In chapter eight. The people look at Samuel and they look at his sons and they go, okay, you're fine Samuel, but your sons, we don't want them to be judge over us, so we want a king. And Samuel is initially offended by this and goes to the Lord, and the Lord says hey. Know what they're not really rejecting you, Samuel. They're rejecting me. And obey them. In fact, that's what he says in verse seven. The Lord said to Samuel, obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you for they have not rejected you, but they've rejected me from being king over them. And so this was more so a rejection of theocracy of God as king than it was of Samuel or his sons as judge. And God then tells Samuel to warn them and to say, Hey. Listen, this is what your king's gonna do. He's gonna take all of these different things. He's gonna take your daughters the best of your fields, your vineyards, your orchards, the 10th of your grain. He's gonna take all of these things from you. So just know what you're asking for here because God was asking for his own offerings and sacrifices being rendered to him, which. They were still gonna have to do under the, under a king, but then the king was gonna take even more from them on top of that. But the people refuse to listen to Samuel. They say, no, this is what we want. And I think the grave statement here, beyond the rejection of God is that they want to be like all the other nations. And that's in verse 20 I. Give us the king that we may also be like all the other nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles. That's the rejection of God right there. That's God's job. God was judging the people through the raising up of the judges and the prophets, and he was the one that was leading them into battle and fighting their battles, and they're saying, no, we want flesh and blood to do that for us instead. So this is a grave chapter in the history of Israel. Yeah, this is really important because I think we have the same tendencies. Verse 20. We wanna be like other people around us. We like not sticking out for the wrong reason, and I think they feel insecure about that. Oh, all we have is these judges and all we have is Yahweh. Man, I wish we were more like the other people down the block. This is trying to keep up with the Joneses. In the Bible, and we can do the same thing. We can look at other people and say, I wish my life were that way. I wish I had Sunday mornings available. Man I waste six or 12 hours at church or whatever on Sundays. I'm spending all this time doing these things and I'm serving at this thing and I'm showing up to this fellowship group over here. It can easily happen in our hearts that we look at sinners and unbelievers and say, man, they have it better than I do. And I serve the, I supposedly serve the God of the universe and they have all these benefits. They have a nicer car, they have a nicer home and. All these things so quickly, our hearts can turn to envy and jealousy because we're looking at them instead of looking at God. That's the first thing I think we ought to see here, is that looking at the Lord instead of looking at our neighbor is gonna be the better tactic. Number two, one thing I wanna point out to your attention here is that Samuel, when he hears the words of the people, he repeats it in the years of the Lord. Verse 21, Samuel. Here's what they say, and he's I need to go tell the Lord this. Now think about this. Does the Lord not know what's happening? What Samuel They said what? Tell me more about that. I love this because obviously God knows, but Samuel has a relationship with God that necessitates, that he communicate with the God that he so loves. We do the same thing with our spouses or with our best friends. We can say, Hey, did you hear about that story? And yeah, I read about that too, but you're gonna talk about it anyway. Because you care about the person that you're talking with, and so you, you end up sharing your heart and your thoughts and your concerns about it. And Samuel, what he does here is so instructive for us, because we ought to be the people who pray to the Lord and tell him like, I know you already know this, but let me just. Let me just bear my heart and mind about this to you, and the Lord is happy to hear it. And the Lord told Samuel here, do what they say and he responds to it. But I just think it's so cool that Samuel who knows God knows everything, who knows that God knows everything still communicates to God in prayer. Yeah, that is interesting because I, we've all been in, in the prayer meetings with the people that they'll go on for two or three minutes reciting like everything, that's all the headlines of the day. And you're kinda like a. Okay. You're right, God does know this. Like this is not news to him. But you're saying there's validity in doing that in a relationship. Yes. If you're thinking pure, purely practical, it wouldn't make any sense because there's nothing you could tell God that he's gonna be like, oh. Oh, no, thank you. But in a relationship context, it makes perfect sense that we would tell God everything that he already knows because he wants to hear from us. I think of a father responding to his kids, how'd your day go? He probably could make some educated guests because he knows who you are and he knows the kind of person that you are, the kind of situation, the classes that you're in. And he knows even your likings. And your proclivities. And so a good dad's gonna say, I probably know what you're gonna say, but I wanna hear it anyway. Yeah. Oh, I liked that class. Oh, you liked the class that I knew you liked. Oh. What did you like about it? Oh, you liked that particular aspect that I knew you liked? A father desires that relationship, so does God desire that with us? Yeah. Yeah. Or when I watch my boys play baseball, and then after the game, they wanna tell me everything. I watched the game. They wanna tell me about every pitch. Did you see that? That thing that I did? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. That's good. Hey, let's pray. Speaking of prayer and then we'll be done with this episode. God we want to be different. We want to be unique. Even as we talked about in John recently, we're in the world, but we don't wanna be of the world. We don't wanna be just like the world we're called to be separate. In fact, that's the church. Cia, we're called out. We are called out from the worldly principles and values that we see around us. So help us live distinct lives. Help us live holy lives, godly lives that would bring honor to Christ and not shame him by looking so much like the world that if we were to share the gospel, someone's. Would say what's the difference between you and me, Lord, may that difference be evident to the lost in our lives, the lost around us, such they would desire what we have, that they would desire the difference that they see in us. And that's only possible as your spirit works that within us. So we pray that we would be people of the word, people of prayer, and people who are different as a result. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep reading Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you. Bye.

Thanks for listening to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about ourChurch@compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review to rate to share this podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening on, and we will catch you against tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast.