June 4: In Job 34:14 and Psalm 104:29, the authors make the point that if God withdraws His Spirit, we die and return to the dust. In today’s three passages, I see how crucial His continual presence is in my life. He withdrew His Spirit from Saul, and it upended his reign and legacy. He sent leanness to the souls of the Israelites in response to their repeated concupiscence and whining at Him about what He was providing. The religious leaders in Israel by the New Testament times had been purified to some extent of yearning for carnal pursuits and of literal idolatry by the captivity’s exposure to a carnal and idolatrous culture, but they had become religious relativists, taking their extreme fastidiousness about the Law as evidence of their holiness, while ignoring the purpose of the Law, which was to make them dependent upon God, to be ready for His salvation, to long for the true holiness they couldn’t find in themselves. As Paul has said, I have to avoid the ever-present temptation to presume upon God’s grace and use the fulfilled law as an excuse to be lax about sin and obedience, using liberty for a cloak for wickedness (1 Peter 2:16), but instead to pursue freely the best that God has for me.
1 Samuel 28-29: What was the Old Testament concept of the grave? Before he was given revelation about the resurrection, Job imagined a final death (Job 7:9), a hiddenness from God’s wrath, (Job 14:13), a rest, (Job 17:16), a final consumption for the wicked, (Job 21:13, 24:19). A place where no one gives God praise (Psalm 6:5, 115:17). Ecclesiastes likewise pictures a place where knowledge, wisdom and fruitful labor are extinguished, (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10). There are other passages revealing a different experience after death, but what is being revealed about death in the necromancy of Samuel? Samuel’s protest is “Why have you disquieted me?” And we might read that as “disturbed my rest” but the word is often “moved with anger” or grief or fear and is used in more than one passage to describe an earthquake. Note that Samuel knows the condition of Saul’s relationship with the Lord and is given revelation by the Lord of future events. We must not think of prophecy as a supernatural “power” one is independently given: it is a communication to the prophet from the Lord. It’s ironic in these two chapters that the dead prophet, the last judge, has a connection with God, but the living first king does not. The second king is prepared to go to war against his own country with the Philistines, and the King of Philistia swears by Jehovah, (Was it because of the Ichabod event in 1 Samuel 4-5?) while the King of Israel uses necromancy, a violation of the law (and his own commandment) so grave that the death penalty is prescribed for it. Both Saul and David are in a very dark place. The Holy Spirit has been taken from Saul, and David’s faith in God’s protection seems to have lapsed to the point that he’s despaired of returning to Israel. All of this background must be understood when David asks God to “cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:11) after his great sin. He had seen how serious a matter it was when Saul lost the Spirit of God.
Psalm 106:1-27: This is another Psalm like 105, recounting the history of Israel, glorifying God and reminding the people of their sin. It’s meant to praise the Lord. It is also to make them fear the consequences of:
- misunderstanding the purpose of His miracles, (Psalm 106:7),
- forgetting His works and not seeking His counsel, (Psalm 106:13),
- tempting Him, (Psalm 106:14), and
- envying His chosen leader, (Psalm 106:16),
- committing idolatry, (Psalm 106:19-23),
- despising and disbelieving His promise, (v. 24),
- murmuring against Him and ignoring Him, (v. 25).
It’s a Psalm of repentance (v. 6), and an appeal to heaven to remember His favor (grace), and visit the petitioner with His salvation (Yeshua). How did they get here? The worshiper is supposed to reflect. By presuming upon His patience with them as they lusted for what He did not provide, for along with it, He sent “leanness into their soul.” The word implies thinness or scantness due to a wasting disease. What a picture! This kind of illness usually wastes a person away because they’re too nauseated to eat enough to keep themselves nourished. The plague from Numbers 11 that is being referenced happened “while the flesh was between their teeth, so this reflection is talking about a judicial spiritual leanness. God’s people must reflect on the spiritual nausea to the things of God that occurs in our hearts when we pursue our own way.
Romans 10: The pursuit of righteousness by the law brings a zeal to establish one’s own vindication, not a submission to the righteousness of God. (vv. 1-3) How is faith brought? By hearing, according to v.17, although they have “not all obeyed the gospel.” The natural state of man, whether having the revealed law or not, is to rationalize our sin and judge others, but the law, properly understood, demands perfect obedience upon pain of a curse. It is therefore “the end of the law” (telos, or purpose) to teach us to despair of our ability to produce righteousness and instead identify the perfect Man (Christ) by it, confessing that He truly is the resurrected Lord.
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