Samuel the killing Prophet!

     Greetings to you in the name of Jesus Christ.  I am getting back into using the Treasury of Daily Prayer as one of my daily devotions.  If you are not familiar with this work, it is fantastic.  It has a Psalm, an Old and New Testament reading, a selection from either the Book of Concord or one of the early church father's writings, a verse from a hymn, and a prayer for each day.  So this morning I read it and I always appreciate the including of a psalm, but also like that the Old and New Testament selections connect from one day to the next to work through a book of the Bible.  So this morning's Old Testament was from 1 Samuel 15.  This is where Saul was supposed to completely wipe out the Amalekites.  However, Saul has his army kill the people but save the king and take their best sheep and cattle from the plunder to sacrifice to the Lord.  Now this doesn't seem like that big of a deal.  They are going to kill all of these sheep and cattle anyway, why not kill them in the temple and sacrifice them to the Lord to give Him thanks for the victory?  Just then, Samuel comes to Saul and gives him the bad news that God has rejected him.  Wait, what?  Saul is going to sacrifice all of these animals to the Lord and the Lord rejects him as king for it?  Samuel tells Saul that the Lord prefers to be obeyed over receiving sacrifices.  God told them to kill everything and that is what He wanted done.  Saul disobeyed by bringing home the plunder, even if it was to sacrifice to the Lord.  Also, is it really a sacrifice if they are not your animals.  That would be like stealing money from your work place to put it in the offering plate at church on Sunday.  Sure it looks like you are doing a good thing giving money to God, except you broke one of His commandments of stealing to do it.  So Saul hears from Samuel that he has been rejected as the king of Israel and that is the last time Saul will see Samuel until the day of his death.
     That was just a little background on the story in case you are not familiar with every story from the Old Testament.  The part that really caught my attention was Samuel's actions in this chapter.  After Samuel has told Saul the bad news and why he is being rejected as king, he orders the king of the Amalekites be brought to him.  Now this king was supposed to already be dead, because Saul's army was suppose to kill him just like all the other Amalekites.  So Samuel, the prophet of the Lord who was called by God as a child, has the king brought before him and HACKS HIM TO PIECES!  Samuel tells the king, "As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women."  I understand he kills the king because this is what God has said to do from the very beginning.  However, Samuel doesn't just kill him, he hacks him to pieces.  I mean I know most of us don't fight with swords anymore, so I think we don't really stop to think about how gruesome of a death it is to die by the sword.  It would be a bloody messy if Samuel would have even just stabbed him.  It would be an even bigger mess if he even just chopped off his head.  But no, Samuel hacks him into pieces.  Think about the effort it would take to swing a sword hard enough to cut through skin, muscles, and bones.  Think about how many swings it would take to just cut him in half, let alone into even more pieces.  Think about the amount of blood and chunks of meat on the floor.  This is not a death scene where the camera turns away and you see the shadows of the sword being swung and a few drops of blood are splattered on the way to give you the idea.  No, this is a death scene from the Saw movies where you see the body parts being hacked off, the blood spraying everywhere, you hear the screams of pain and the grunts of Samuel swinging the sword.  This is a brutal and horrific death!  But why?  Why would Samuel, the prophet of the Lord hack him into pieces?  I cannot say this is the exact reason, but my guess is to set the example for the other people.  Saul was supposed to bring complete destruction to the Amelakites and he didn't.  He set the wrong example for the people of Israel.  So in order to set a positive example of obeying the Lord, Samuel brings complete and utter destruction upon the king.  He doesn't just kill him, he destroys him past the point of recognition.  He is showing the people (possibly over-dramatically but it does get the point across) that when God tells you to do something, you do it!  So I give thanks that in my first week as an ordained pastor I haven't had to hack anybody into pieces.  However, I do imagine there will be times in my ministry I will need to go to the extreme to get the point across to the people.  The world is setting the example that it doesn't matter if you listen to God's word or not, so we need to make sure we set the positive example of obeying God to the fullest.  Thanks be to Him who gave us His Word and His Son so that we may obey Him and live as His people.  Amen.

I'm Back!

     Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. I apologize for such a long break but I was traveling this summer and did not have internet access most of the time. It was an amazing summer break after officially graduating from the seminary in late May. I put over 7,000 miles on my car in just under two months. I covered 8 states and saw some beautiful parts of the country. I also got some projects done at both JoAnna's and mom and dad's. Then this last week I moved up to an apartment here in the Duluth/Hermantown area. Last week I got all settled into my apartment and helped with VBS. We had 150 kids in VBS and it was such a fun week. Then Sunday we had my ordination and installation service. It was an amazingly beautiful service with awesome music, a great sermon, and the special touch of a couple of my friends coming to be part of the service. Monday I set up my office and today is my first day of real work. I spent most of the day getting my new computer set up, but did write a news article and am working on this.
     I decided for now not to change the name of my blog and to just keep going with it as is. However, I have decided to change the format a little. I am going to go dailyish devotions. I will try to do daily, but as I get busier might be three or four a week. As I do my devotion first thing in the morning, I am going to try to write up just a simple five minute devotion and share with you. I hope you enjoy.

Psalm 39 - "But a Breath"

      Last night I read Psalm 39, and in it the Psalmist has a very unique request.  He asks God to show him exacly how long his life will be?  Now at first glance this doesn't seem like a completely bizarre request, because there have been times in my life where it would be nice to know the exact time and date I will pass from this world.  So I really don't think it is too far out of bounds to think that a human would ask God to show him how long his life will be.  However, when you look at what the psalmist says next, it seems to be more bizarre than one might think.  he psalmist makes a couple of statements about how short and how small a man's life must be from God's perspective.  "You have made my days a few handbreadths, and my life is as nothing before you.  Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!" verse 5.  This psalmist is realizing how puny, how unimportant he is compared to God.  He is realizing how short his life must seem to a God who is not bound to the limits of time.  Even if this guy lives to ninety years, it is still just a mere breath to God who has been around for the entirety of creation... and really has been around for eternity since He has no beginning.  So now when you look at this palmist's request of wanting to "how fleeting he is" seems a little more strange.  It is one thing to want to know how long you will live to know how much time you have left, it is a whole other thing to want to know how long you will live to make you realize how unimportant you are in the grand scheme of things.  Why would this psalmist ask to be put in his place, to see how little he is standing in the shadow of the God Almighty?  To us this might seem crazy, but maybe it is not such a bad thing after all.  To humble yourself with this "new" perspective of how small we really are, allows us to redirect our focus of how big, powerful, and important our God is.  It is a way to change our own perspective to see it is not really us who matters, but our God who is, has always been, and always will be is the one we should look to.  

    I was ordained this last Sunday and I tell you what, I got a dose of this realigning perspectives.  As I was on my knees, holding the weight of five grown men's hands on my head, and hearing over 200 people speak the Lord's prayer, I quickly realized how small, how unimportant, how fleeting I am.  It quickly put me in my place reminding me that the day of celebration was not really about me at all, but rather about God directly at work in His Kingdom and among His people.  I realized my entire 26 years of preparation (which seemed like forever to me) wasn't even a full breath to God.  Think about that!  Think about how quickly you can breath in and out without even thinking about it.  That is what my lifetime so far has been to our eternal God.  And yet, I know God didn't do it without thinking about it.  I know that even as fleeting and unimportant as I am in the grand scheme of things, God still is with me, guiding me, protecting me, preparing me, and He will continue to be with me for the rest of my ministry.  I can tell this is exactly where I am suppose to be right now in my life and I know it was God's doing that brought me here.  He will continue to work through me, and even though the next 60 or 70 years of my ministry may be but a breath in a timeless God's perspective, He is still working through it and using it to bring more fleeting lives into His kingdom.  After all, even though all of mankind is but a breath, mankind is the reason He created this creation, mankind is the reason He sent His Son to die and rise again, and mankind is the one He loves and continues to show His grace and mercy.  So there may be times where we feel small and fleeting, and we can use these moments to remember how awesome and powerful of a God we have, but remember He always loves you, is with you , and has claimed you as His own.   Use your next "breath" to think about how amazing our God truly is!!  In His name, Amen.