Daily Thought

Having seen Saul formally installed as king, Samuel commanded the people to ‘stand still, that I may reason with you before the Lord of all the righteous acts of the Lord, which he did to you and to your fathers’, v. 7.

He then reminded them of Israel’s sad spiritual history, starting from Egypt and ending with ‘the king whom ye have chosen, and whom ye have desired’, v. 13.

Then he told them, ‘If ye will fear the Lord, and serve him, and obey his voice, and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then shall both ye and also the king that reigneth over you continue following the Lord your God: but if ye will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then shall the hand of the Lord be against you, as it was against your fathers’.

In order to substantiate what he said about the Lord’s power, he told them to ‘stand and see this great thing, which the Lord will do before your eyes’, v. 16.

Human activity has to cease so that divine words, works and wonders can be seen to their full extent; see other commands to ‘stand still’ to see the Lord working mightily, Exod. 14. 13; Job 37. 14; 2 Chr. 20. 17.

Samuel then told the people, ‘Is it not wheat harvest to day? I will call unto the Lord, and he shall send thunder and rain; that ye may perceive and see that your wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking you a king. So Samuel called unto the Lord; and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day: and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel’, vv. 17, 18.

Samuel had, in faith, fully committed God beforehand by stating precisely what He would do, in an act that, beyond any shadow of a doubt, would be a matter of divine intervention. Such a seemingly impossible event would later produce the proverb ‘as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a fool’, Prov. 26. 1. Then ‘the Lord sent thunder and rain that day’, v. 18, just as in Moses’ day ‘the Lord sent thunder and hail and the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt’, Exod. 9. 23.

The God of yesterday is always proved to be the God of today by the answer to believing prayer!