I wonder what Saul thought about the words of Samuel. This is a very specific prophecy isn't
it? You will meet men with three goats
and three loaves of bread, they will give you two of them. You'll continue on to a certain place and as
soon as you enter it will come a band of prophets with specific
instruments. Then, "the Spirit of
the Lord will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into
another man." As soon as he began
going where the Lord told him to go, away from Samuel, "God gave him
another heart." All these things
happen in one day yet when he goes home and his uncle asked what Samuel had
said to him, he only mentions, "Oh yeah, he said the donkeys are
fine." It seems that Saul didn't
know what to make of all that happened to him.
What in the world does it mean that he will be turned into a new man and
what happened when God gave him another heart?
What did it mean to be king over Israel, no one had ever done that before? Sometimes you just have to process.
Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees, those who are the
leaders of the people but who are stubborn with respect to the way of the
Lord. They ask who gave Jesus permission
to teach and act as He has done with respect to the money changers yet Jesus
will not answer. It isn't a question of
who gave authority, but whether they see the authority by the result. They have the information necessary to know
by what authority Jesus does these things, it is the authority of scripture
that forces Him to clean the temple and teach the truth there for all to
hear. The little parable of the two
sons, one who initially refuses to do his father's will and then repents and
does it as over against the one who, to the father's face looks good but then
fails to act, has an offensive application for the leaders. Jesus says that everyone knows that acting is
more important than speaking. Repentance
by tax collectors and prostitutes is more important than the faux righteousness
of the Pharisees. These will get into
the kingdom ahead of the would-be leaders.
Righteousness is faith, faith is righteousness. We want to measure righteousness by what we
see or do when in fact it is believing in what God is able to do and that what
He promises will be done. Faith in Him
is all that is required because He alone is perfectly faithful. We will always be disappointed and we will
always disappoint. We are sometimes
those in the parable who say we will and then don't. He is always good for His word and the
faithfulness of Jesus, perfect fidelity to the Law, was the atonement for our
unfaithfulness. We who believe in Him
are now inheritors of the promises.
Performance is no longer based on trying to be good enough to deserve
God's love, it is based on desiring to please the One who loves you enough to
die for you and whose love will never leave you. The Spirit has come upon you and you have
been turned into another person.
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