YOU DON’T SEE THE BEAUTY LOOKING AT THE BACKSIDE OF TAPESTRIES

DAILY WORD

3/17/23

6. Samuel was displeased with their request and went to the LORD for guidance.

7. “Do everything they say to you,” the LORD replied, “for they are rejecting me, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer.

8. Ever since I brought them from Egypt they have continually abandoned me and followed other gods. And now they are giving you the same treatment.

9. Do as they ask, but solemnly warn them about the way a king will reign over them.”

1 Samuel 8: 9 NLT

Today’s Passage is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. The first is because we get to see a rare and informative glimpse into God’s Communication with His Judges. Not every person in Israel in those days could communicate with God, so this is an eye-opening Scripture.

Well, that may be a bit of a misnomer. Everyone could talk to God, even back then. He just didn’t always talk back. In fact, if you consider how many individuals would have lived and died in the time the Old Testament was written and then cross reference that sum by the number of times God Chose to Speak to someone as recorded in The Bible, you begin to see just how rare hearing His Voice really was.

So, God Established Samuel in this new position, and by the time he was old, the people had already rejected him. God apparently used the corruption of Samuel’s sons to drive the people toward this end. But why? Why would God do something like that? What was the point?

In my time studying the Word of God, I’ve found that it is often unwise and even injurious to our Faith to question God’s intent. The fact that He sees the end from the beginning should tell us everything we really need to know about His foresight and, in turn, His Planning.

It’s like I always say; you rarely see the big picture looking at the back side of tapestries. God is weaving the threads of our lives in such an intricate pattern that from our point of view, we can’t see His Artistry through the apparent chaos.

But it was never chaotic. It was simply viewed from the wrong position. There is no question that when seen from the front, every tapestry is a work of art, but from the back, it is a mess. All we ever see is the chaos while God is Weaving the threads of our lives into something worthy of His Artistry.

But that’s not what really caught my eye in Today’s Passage. Notice that in Verse Six, the Text tells us that Samuel was displeased with the people’s decision. But it never tells us a single thing about how God felt!

Just like a tapestry, when we look at this Scripture from our human point of view, we immediately infer that God must have also been displeased with the Israelite’s demand. But given what we know about The Mind of God through referencing Scripture, I think that would be a mistake.

Maybe we are not given that little tidbit because the writer didn’t know God’s Mind on this subject and didn’t want to overreach in his narrative. But how many times through Scripture is God’s attitude toward a particular situation made plainly evident by the writer?

So, to infer that God was as displeased the way Samuel was, might be more of a stretch than we should be taking. If God was angry, hurt, or offended by the Israelite’s rejection of His Rule over them, He wasn’t saying so. But look at what He did say.

God expressly told Samuel that it was Him they were rejecting, not His Judge. So, He obviously knew the people’s hearts toward Him. How could that not hurt? Because we are not God! Of course, it would make us feel scorned and discarded, but God’s Mind is not like ours.

Remember, He sees the end of a thing before it begins. He knew this was coming. Why else do you think He established Samuel in the position He did? It was because He knew what was on Israel’s horizon, and He needed a man for the impending job who could handle the pressure that was about to be heaped upon him.

But Today’s Lesson comes from what God told Samuel to do next. Yes, God knew what the people were about to do, but what did He tell Samuel to do anyway? God told Samuel to warn the demanding Israelites about precisely what they were asking for, and in Tomorrow’s Passage, we’ll cover what he said.

Today’s Lesson is that God offers us a Way of Escape, even when He knows we won’t accept it! Everybody who doesn’t Trust God always wants to deride Him, saying He’s mean and doesn’t care about us; otherwise, why would He let all these bad things happen to us? But they never seem to acknowledge that the thing they’re facing had a release valve built in. They just ignored it. Whose fault is that? God’s?

Did God Building an Escape Route into your trial make Him mean, or was it Him Dying on The Cross so that we could reject His Sacrifice that was His offense? After everything He’s done to prove His Loyalty to us, a measure we never deserved in the first place, I think we need to reassess our approach because even if we miss His Grace, He still Provides it. But it’s up to us to recognize it!

Don’t blame God that you can’t see His Blessings when you aren’t even looking in the right place. He has Promised to be Faithful, and He cannot lie. So you can bank on His Steadfast Devotion. But we still have a responsibility in this. We must recognize and acknowledge His Grace. There is no other way to spark that all-important Communication, the aspect of our Faith that changes everything!

Have a Phenomenal Friday And Never Downplay Your Direct Access To God. It Is An Absolute Game Changer!

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