Implications

Now the Philistines attacked Israel, and the men of Israel fled before them. Many were slaughtered on the slopes of Mount Gilboa. The Philistines closed in on Saul and his sons, and they killed three of his sons—Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malkishua. (1 Chronicles 10:1-2 NLT)

Reading this story made me pause and say, "Didn't just read this?"  It's a pretty common occurrence for me when I'm reading this part of the Bible.  You see, several of these Old Testament books report on the same time of history, so the story gets told multiple times.  

The fighting grew very fierce around Saul, and the Philistine archers caught up with him and wounded him. Saul groaned to his armor bearer, "Take your sword and kill me before these pagan Philistines come to taunt and torture me." But his armor bearer was afraid and would not do it. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it. When his armor bearer realized that Saul was dead, he fell on his own sword and died. (1 Chronicles 10:3-5 NLT)
 
This particular story is about the death of Saul, King of Israel, and his sons.  When Saul dies, David will reign as the new king.  In any case, I already wrote about his death last month in another blog post entitled, "Don't fall on your sword."  That account was from the book of Samuel and it shared the same story as the one from Chronicles quoted above.

The story in Chronicles, however, has a little different ending to the story.  It takes a moment to summarize what had just happened and why.  Take a look at what it says:

So Saul died because he was unfaithful to the LORD. He failed to obey the LORD's command, and he even consulted a medium instead of asking the LORD for guidance. So the LORD killed him and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse. (1 Chronicles 10:13-14 NLT)

Saul didn't lose his life because he was a bad warrior or because his army was outgunned.  He lost because of his disobedience to God.  Story after story throughout the pages of Scripture remind me of the same concept over and over again.  Obey God, things will go well with you.  Fight God and they won't.  Sometimes people lose blessings they were promised.  Sometimes they are punished.  Sometimes, they die.  In the end, God's justice is served and people get what they deserve.

It's good to remember that God is always just (fair) in His dealings with us.  It's not fun to think about when we do something wrong, but I would always rather deal with a fair God than one who is unpredictable, spiteful, or just mean.

It's also good to remember that my words and actions have implications.  I do have the ability to choose.  I can decide to follow God or not.  I have the ability to love, forgive, believe the truth, and to fight back any temptation to do otherwise.  I can decide to say what Joshua said to Israel, "as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." (Joshua 24:15b NASB)  Then, I can decide to live it.

I like the fact that my life has implications.  Now, I can spending it making those implications good.