Other comments on this day's readings can be found here.
Reading 1 - 1Sa 10:21,22
"Finally Saul son of Kish was chosen. But when they looked for
him, he was not to be found. So they inquired further of the LORD, 'Has the man
come here yet?' And the LORD said, 'Yes, he has hidden himself among the
baggage' " (1Sa 10:21,22).
"God answers Israel's request by appointing them their first
human king, Saul. However, when the people came to make him king, they could not
find him. The Scripture tells us that God had to tell the people, 'Behold, he
hath hid himself among the stuff' (AV). The future king of Israel had answered
God's call for service by hiding himself among the baggage.
"How many of us answer God's call by hiding among the stuff?
"When it comes to stuff, my family has plenty. We have so much
stuff, that we can't even store it all. We have an attic, a garage and several
closets full of stuff. Once or twice a year, we have to go though all the stuff
so we can give some of the stuff away to people who don't have enough stuff of
their own.
"Yet, despite our abundance of stuff, we seem to accumulate
more and more stuff. The thought of having to move sends shivers down my spine
because I am not sure if they have a moving van big enough to carry all of our
stuff.
"Saul was a fairly big man. The Bible says 'he was head and
shoulders taller than any of them'. Yet, he found enough stuff among his family
to hide himself so thoroughly that only God could find him. I look around my
house and see I have enough stuff to hide a small army.
"Now, besides bemoaning my ever shrinking living space, there
is a point to all of this. Stuff is a distraction. There can come a point in
life when we do not own our possessions, but our possessions 'own' us. What I
mean is that taking care of so much stuff has a huge price. We all need food,
shelter and clothing. These blessings from God take care of us. Yet, after the
initial benefit of having our basic needs taken care of, we keep going to the
point where we spend all of our time taking care of or acquiring more stuff.
Then, after we get the stuff, we have to work a little harder so we can insure
the stuff so we don't ever lose it. It takes so much out of us to acquire the
stuff and maintain it, that the stuff eventually owns us. We find that the
primary cost of stuff is our valuable time and energy...
"All of this has made me come to realize in a more tangible
way that the only stuff that matters is the stuff we can take into the Kingdom
with us. It is not the house or the car or the club membership or the swimming
pool that matters, but our relationship with God and Jesus Christ, our family,
our brethren and our friends. These things we can take into the Kingdom with us
to enjoy for eternity.
"King Saul answered God's call by hiding among the stuff. Yet,
God saw him. We too can hide ourselves from God among our stuff. But make no
mistake about it... He sees us hiding there" (Kyle Tucker).
Reading 2 - Isa 54:9-11
" 'To me this is like the days of Noah, when I swore that the
waters of Noah would never again cover the earth. So now I have sworn not to be
angry with you, never to rebuke you again. Though the mountains be shaken and
the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my
covenant of peace be removed,' says the LORD, who has compassion on you. 'O
afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will build you with stones
of turquoise, your foundations with sapphires" (Isa 54:9-11).
The reference to the days of Noah suggests the Assyrian
invasion was like the Flood! (Isa 8:7,8; 17:12). Then Jerusalem was the only
"ark" of safety (Isa 1:7,8). There, at Passover, Judah was saved (cp Isa
26:20,21), whilst all about there was death.
Jerusalem, lashed by the storms, surviving (but just barely!)
the "flood" of the Assyrian army (v 9).
And then, in one of those breath-taking figurative leaps which
the prophet Isaiah seems to enjoy, the ship of salvation, tossed by the tempest,
is all at once transformed into a beautiful temple, adorned with precious
stones!
"It is no wonder, when we consider the part gems play in the
glory of man and the pleasure they give to him when he feasts his eye upon their
glory and the riot of colour, that the Creator of this earth with all its
treasures takes hold of that which constitutes its radiance and glory and
teaches by it a lesson. A perfected gemstone in its relation to light is a
fitting symbol of that relationship that will obtain when the living gemstones,
gathered from among the peoples of the earth, shall ornament the earth with the
charm of colour and beauty that they are to reflect from the Sun of
Righteousness, whom God has formed to be His light bearer to the sons of men. To
them, during the painful time of their cutting and polishing, the symbol -- when
understood -- will bring a message of hope, and patience and comfort, the
requisites required to sustain them during the trial" (Wright).
Reading 3 - Rev 17:1
"Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute,
who sits on many waters" (Rev 17:1).
To begin with, there is a plain connection with the woman of
Rev 12, who can rather easily be identified with Israel:
The sun, moon, and stars (12:1) are frequent Bible symbols of Israel (Gen
37:9,10; 22:17; Jer 31:35,36; Amos 8:9; Mic 3:6; Isa 60:20; Joel 2:10,30,31;
3:15; Psa 89:35-36).
The son whom she bears, who rules the nations, is
Jesus (Rev 19:15; cp Psa 2:9; 110:2)... not Constantine!
The dragon's
attempts to kill the baby Jesus (Mat 2:1-6) are shown in Rev 12:4.
After the
birth of the special child, the "woman" (Israel) flees into the wilderness (Rev
12:6,14) = the dispersion of Israel.
Later, the same woman (or so it would seem) appears already
"in the wilderness" (Rev 17:1-3), where she had fled earlier, but now she is a
harlot, drastically changed!
And she is riding on a beast! At first glance, the beast seems
to be "Babylon", doesn't it? Because the whole system described in Daniel, of
which Babylon was the head, is easily equated with the 7 heads (the number of
the heads of the 4 beasts in Dan 7), and ten horns (equates with 10 toes of
image in Dan 2).
But it is the woman who has the name of "Babylon" written on
her forehead (Rev 17:5). So will the real Babylon please stand up? Is it the
beast, or the woman, or both?
I would suggest, it is both, in this sense: The beast is truly
the Latter Day Babylon (read Iraq, or some similar Middle East coalition of Arab
nations bent on the promotion of Islam, the conquest of Jerusalem, and the
destruction of Judaism).
And the woman is "Babylon", but in a different sense. She has
the name of Babylon tattooed on her forehead! She is now the SLAVE of Babylon,
being marked by him on her forehead (cp Rev 13:16). (By contrast, and by way of
explanation, the servants, or slaves, of God are marked on their foreheads with
the name of the Father and the Son: Rev 7:3; 2:17; 14:1; Eze 9:4).
But, from Rev 12, we have seen that the "woman" has a strong
connection with Israel. And she is still Israel, but only the subset of Israel
which has gone over to the enemy. She has given up being the handmaid of God,
and has become the slave of Babylon. And now she is, along with Babylon proper,
a fierce persecutor of the saints, apostles, and prophets of God (the revived
witnesses among Israel in the Last Days -- who are described in Rev 11 as
perishing in Jerusalem).
How could this have happened? How could Israel be a party to
the persecution of its own citizens? Perhaps like this: As a result of its
defeat by Babylon and the 10 (Arab) kings in the Last Days, the nation of Israel
has now become differentiated into two totally disparate elements: the faithful
remnant who bear the mark of God and His Son, and the unfaithful harlot who bear
the mark of Babylon -- who see their main chance, their only chance in selling
their birthright and allying themselves with the loathsome enemy so as to
receive a share of the Beast's power. These powers the harlot uses, to the best
of her ability, to persecute her own countrymen, the faithful remnant, the true
Jewish believers who have developed in her midst.
This scenario looks remarkably like two other familiar
situations: (a) Israel in the first century, where the Jewish leadership (Herod
and the high priest class) collaborated with the Roman overlords (Pilate, etc)
to persecute the faithful Jewish believers in their midst; and (b) on a more
secular level, the German-puppet Vichy government of occupied France during
World War II.
So what happens to the Israel "woman" riding on the Babylonian
"beast"? Things go well for her... but only for a while... then she loses her
seat of power, is cast down to the ground, and devoured by the Babylonian beast:
"The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring
her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire"
(Rev 17:16). Because she is, after all, only so many more detestable Jews... and
Jewish collaborators are perhaps even more to be detested than other Jews by the
Muslim Arabs after they have fulfilled some kind of initial
usefulness.
It may be added that there is another interesting Scriptural
connection along these lines, and it has to do with the harlot "Jezebel"
introduced earlier in the Revelation (Rev 2:20-24). The original (OT) Jezebel
was a Gentile (an Arab!) and an idolater and a false prophetess who married into
Israel (king Ahab), and who used her high position to promote immorality and to
persecute God's true followers (like Elijah) among her "countrymen"! What better
name, then, for an Arab-Israeli composite "harlot" persecutor of the righteous
Jewish remnant in the Last Days? (Notice how clearly Elijah is delineated in Rev
11, for example.) (And notice, also, how the Last Days "Jezebel" is eaten by
wild beasts just like her OT namesake was eaten by dogs!)