Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / November 3, 2025 - 1 Samuel 27 & Proverbs 23:1-10

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November 3, 2025 - 1 Samuel 27 & Proverbs 23:1-10 · Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bobarding Plan, where you're seeking to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength with God's word lighting the way.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Josai Smith, lead pastor of Compass South Valley.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Today is Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Listen intently to God's written word.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Samuel 27.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Then David said in his heart, Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing better for me than I should escape to the land of the Philistines.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: So David arose and went over, he and the six hundred men who were with him, to Akish, the son of Mach, King of Gath.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And David lived with Akish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinuam of Jezreel, and Abigail of Carmel, Nabal's widow.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then David said to Akish, If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns that I may dwell there, for why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that day Akish gave him Ziklag, therefore Ziklag has be belonged to the kings of Judah to this day.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the number of the days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now David and his men went up and made raids against the Gesherites, the Gersites, and the Amalekites, for these were the inhabitants of the land from of old, as far as Shore to the land of Egypt.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And David would strike the land, and would leave neither man nor woman alive, but would take away the sheep, the oxen, the donkeys, the camels, and the garments, and come back to Akish.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: When Akish asked, Where have you made a raid today?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: David would say, Against the Negab of Judah, or against the Negab of the Joramelites, or against the Negab of the Kenites, and David would leave neither man nor woman alive to bring news to Gath, thinking, lest they should tell about us and say, So David has done.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Such was his custom all the while he lived in the country of the Philistines, and Achish trusted David, thinking, He has made himself an utter stench to his people Israel.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore he shall always be my servant.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs twenty three, one through ten.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do not toil to acquire wealth.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Be discerning enough to desist.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Do not desire his delicacies, for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten, and waste your pleasant words.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the good sense of your words.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do not move an ancient landmark, or enter the fields of the fatherless.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first Samuel twenty seven marks a bit of a critical turning point for David.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can read there in the first couple of verses that David is convinced in his own mind that he will eventually be killed by Saul.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so as a result, he decides that seeking refuge among the enemy, among the Philistines, really is his only viable way of escape.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the ironic part of it is that in fact it does produce the kind of desired result that he was hoping for.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was what ultimately led Saul from stopping his pursuit.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So David David has this whole plan.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go dwell with the enemy, I'm gonna go dwell with the Philistines, Saul's gonna stop pursuing me.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And ironically, even though that's sort of a morally, you could say, ambiguous choice, it's not heralded as good or wise or um bad or sinful.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's the text kind of leaves us in the tension there.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it does produce the desired results that that he was hoping for.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I think one of the things that we see here in 1 Samuel 27 is a flip in David where we we've kind of seen him vacillate, go back and forth between trust in the Lord that worked its way out physically through prayer, crying out to the Lord.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: We looked at one of the psalms that he wrote while he was in the cave uh on the run from Saul.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: But here we we see uh kind of desperation.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's just worn down by Saul.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: That seems to be driving him towards some pretty questionable choices, especially later on uh when he's interacting with Akish and um describing some of the things that he is doing and even the lives that he's taking.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if we back up, David arrives in Gath with his kind of cohort of men, 600 men in his household, including his two wives, and he kind of establishes himself more as a military force.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's not really kind of seeking shelter as a refugee.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Refugees, more of a military force.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: He he wants uh to go and ask for land, so he requests uh a settlement away from the royal city, uh away from kind of the action, as it were, and Akish grants him Ziklag, and that the text tells us is a town that would subsequently belong to Judah's kings.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so really what this does is uh this kind of arrangement that he concocts succeeds in at least its immediate purpose.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So Saul does, in fact, as I just mentioned, he abandons his relentless pursuit of David, and like I mentioned yesterday, uh the the last pursuit of David has already come and gone, the last face-to-face.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh here we see the the end of the conflict, but still separation, uh uh, because David, of course, is living here amongst the Philistines.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what the chapter does is it reveals I don't know, some moral complexity, if you will, of David's position, what he's doing, what he's seeking, his actions.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, while it seems to he's serving Akish, uh this ruler, David, he's raiding uh neighboring towns, neighboring uh nations, if you will, uh the Amalekites, as an example, uh, and he's taking plunder, he's he's taking their resources, their livestock, but he's leaving no survivors.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when questioned by Akish of what he's doing and who he's raiding, um, essentially he David lies.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: He deceives Akish by claiming to attack uh Judahite territories while he's really kind of strategically eliminating uh witnesses, right?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's literally kind of covering up the tracks, getting rid of the witnesses and the evidence uh who might otherwise expose what he really was up to.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So um what's fascinating again is just the moral ambiguity of these things.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, he's taking life and he's being deceptive.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can remember when Israel was supposed to occupy their territory, that they were supposed to drive out the inhabitants of the land, and this is kind of remnants of that still having not taken place fully.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a sense in which David's actions, on the one hand, fulfill what God intended for the nation of Israel at the beginning, uh, but still you're kind of left with uh what's going on, where's his heart in this?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is he trusting in the Lord or is he trusting in him himself?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and ultimately, I would say the the significance of this chapter kind of lies in um its conclusion.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So David becomes somewhat of a, I don't know, like a Philistine mercenary, uh, if you want to call it that.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: That may maybe is dramatic, but that's what David's doing.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And Saul is as we'll continue to read on in um in the scriptures, he's kind of spiraling towards ultimately divine um judgment.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of weird things happening here in 1 Samuel 27, but I think what we see is uh a man that's um is lacking trust in the Lord and taking matters into his own hands and uh lacking wisdom uh ultimately.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And even here it ends in verse 12, and Achish trusted David, thinking, you know, David deceives him, tells him, you know, that he was attacking essentially his his own countrymen, and as a result, like he's made himself an utter stench to his people Israel.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore he shall always be my servant.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So uh he's deceiving this guy, he's um striking down women and men and plundering um people and their possessions, nations, and territories, and uh just a lot of really tense and and conflicting things that we see here uh in 1 Samuel 27.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as we open up Proverbs chapter 23, one of the things I want to hone in on is verses four and five.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um verses four and five, let me just read it.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: It says, Do not toil to acquire wealth, be discerning enough to desist, know when to stop.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of the reasons why I think we need to focus on this is because we need to focus on what the Proverbs here and and elsewhere are not saying.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we also need to focus on what they are saying.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, what they're not saying, first of all, is that wealth in and of itself is somehow bad or sinful or um in any sort of way should be to avoid it, I guess you could put it that way, uh, in and of itself.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So wealth is not something that has any in sort of inherent evil in it, in and of itself.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so it doesn't condemn wealth.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, we see many biblical characters that have uh substantial wealth uh throughout the scriptures.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so that's what it doesn't say.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say that that's bad, it doesn't say that you are uh walking in the epitome of holiness if you are the opposite of wealthy or something like that.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's not what it says.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what it does say is do not toil, do not work.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can kind of even hear the sense of striving.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Don't put all of your time, your energy, and your focus to acquiring wealth.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems to be the the focus here, the the end goal, if the end goal, if all of your energy, all of your time, all of your uh you could say even resources are aimed towards acquiring wealth.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs is gonna say in other places in scripture as well, don't do that.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it even says, be discerning enough to desist.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Know when to stop, know when enough is enough, know when your heart has been overly captivated by wealth.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then it gives some reasons in verse five, because when your eyes light on it, when you fix your eyes on it, when when you think it's just right there for the taking, just like that, it is gone.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: For suddenly, it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven, flying away, out of reach, not something that you can take with you, something that is temporary, something that is fleeting, and as a result, though the Proverbs or in Scripture more broadly don't condemn wealth in and of itself, it certainly has much to say, and here it's very explicit.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do not toil to acquire wealth.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: If your whole life is aimed in the direction of wealth, I think Proverbs 23, 4 and 5 have something to say to you.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Be discerning enough to desist.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: There is a time, there is a place, and even here it says discerning.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's a sense of you, you need the wisdom, uh, you need the wherewithal to be able to, with biblical sense, say enough is enough to just to stop.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: To not stop working, right?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs says much about working hard, consider the ant, we want to store up for the winter, things like that.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: We want to work hard, we want to provide for our families, we want to make sure that we're doing things responsibly.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: But here it says there's a time and a place to stop the pursuit of working just for wealth.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if if you're finding yourself kind of in this category, I think again, the proverbs don't say that wealth is somehow evil, but it does say that the absolute sort of direction and obsession of your life, if it's aimed in that direction, we need to we need to be discerning enough to desist.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: So when your eyes light on it, just like that, it's gonna go.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So wealth is not something that ultimately um has eternal ramifications, right?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, other than perhaps in a negative way, Jesus says that it's impossible, right, uh, for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, or at least uh it's more likely that a camel would go through the eye of a needle.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so there's this sense of not impossible, I shouldn't say that, but there's a sense of man that when people are obsessed with the treasures of this world, when the world is what they love, um, that really can lead to destruction, even in an ultimate sense.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So uh love what Proverbs 23, four and five says, do not toil to acquire wealth, be discerning enough to desist.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so the question then in verse 4 is how how how do you know when to stop?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know when you're too obsessed?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know that you're that you're doing this, that you're kind of in the the the crosshairs in the scope of what the the Proverbs here are speaking to?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, part of that I think is discerned, not just individually, but uh collectively, I would say.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Proverbs has much to say about in uh plurality of counselors, there is safety.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say uh ask some brothers, ask some sisters, hey, hey, what what's what's going on?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: What are you seeing in my heart, in my pursuits?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I might say one thing and perhaps uh another thing might be the reality.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Help me to discern if um I need to desist, as Proverbs 23, 4 um tells me.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then here, just quickly in verse 9, it says, Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the good sense of your words.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what's interesting is that the Proverbs say both things in both directions.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: It says, uh, do not answer a fool according to its folly, which of course is another proverb, but kind of reiterated here.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's another proverb that says, answer a fool according to his folly.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there's even a sense of uh having wisdom and needing discernment of how to respond and in what way to respond, when and and where.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so Proverbs 23, 9 says, Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the good sense of your words.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so we just we need to even have the wisdom of um how do we speak to certain people in um perhaps that would fit in the category of being a fool?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh how do we make sure that our speech uh, of course, is encouraging, is building up, is pointing ultimately to the truth, but uh, we're not answering a fool according to the folly, but then at times we we are, as the proverb says, we we just need the wisdom uh to kind of know and discern the difference between uh just those different circumstances and and situations that we might find ourselves in.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And even here, right?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not speaking in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the good sense of your words.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass Bible SV.org.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Keep reading, keep growing.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.