A Newsletter of weekly meditations on Biblical Theology and curated resources from The Carson CenterApril 1, 2026
 Deuteronomy 17:14 “When you come to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your God will choose. ….. 17 And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. Deuteronomy 17:18 “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. 19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, 20 that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. 1Samuel 16:6 When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’S anointed is before him.” 7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” Read 1 Samuel 16; Romans 14; Lamentations 1; Psalm 32 Everyone loves an underdog story—where the disadvantaged little kid with acne and glasses becomes the star of the team, gets the girl and defeats the bad guys. But it’s important to realise that 1 Samuel 16 isn’t one of those stories! The idea of Samuel moving along the line of Jesse’s sons, saying no to each one in turn, before David, the little guy, gets picked. That interpretation may be attractive, but it’s not quite what’s in the text. When Samuel comments on Eliab’s appearance and height, we’re supposed to think of Saul, who was the tallest (and best looking?) man in Israel when he was chosen as king. That didn’t turn out so well. This time, though, God is choosing the King, and he will do so using a completely different set of criteria. Those criteria aren’t new—they were set out by Moses on Deuteronomy 17, and they revolve around the “heart” of the king. The “heart” in the Old Testament isn’t so much the seat of the emotions, as the place where we make choices. This means that the kind of person God is looking for as his anointed one (or in Hebrew, his ‘messiah’) is someone whose life is centred on pleasing him. In Deuteronomy 17, Moses describes a godly king whose heart isn’t easily “turned away” to idold, or easily “lifted up in pride . God chooses David not because he is weedy but because he is faithful and humble. rRemember, David has already killed lions and bears with his bare hands by this point,and when Saul’s armour is too big for him in the next chapter, it’s because it’s XXXL, not because David is tiny. Deuteronomy 17 sets the pattern for the kind of godly king God’s people need, and David is the closest thing in the Old Testament to a king who matches up. Yes, he is still sinful, but he isn’t proud and he never starts messing with other gods. Every other king will be measured against him, until the one comes who is “gentle and lowly in heart” and at the end, says “not my will, but yours be done”. – Gary Millar Reflect: Take a moment to think about the beauty of Jesus Christ, our true and living king, who embodies faithfulness and humility. Then ask for God’s help to follow in his steps as a “loyal subject.” |
  “Your Church Makes Christianity Credible” by Frank Thielman Not long ago, I glanced through an old email account that I was trying to shut down. Here’s a sample of messages that had arrived within a few hours of each other: - “What just happened inside the White House will shock you . . .”
- “Tax Review Notice: Action May Be Required . . .”
- “Caught on Camera: Strange Discovery on Mars.”
You get the idea. Obviously, that account needed a better spam filter. Our society is swimming in information, much of it unreliable and a disturbing amount of it harmful. We get texts from “employers” offering high wages for easy work and phone calls from robots posing as well-meaning tax advisers. Our workplaces require cybersecurity training to filter out insidious attempts to hold their data ransom. Is it any wonder that when non-Christians hear Christians talk about the gospel, they sometimes look skeptically on their message of good news? Christians, too, can bounce around in a sea of doubt, jostled by waves of dubious religious claims. In this flood tide of false information, we should think about what makes the gospel, with its dramatic claims about peace with our loving Creator, stand out as true. When Paul writes from prison to the Christians in Ephesus in the first century, he addresses a group of believers who, like us, live in a world overwhelmed with false information. They too can be “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine” or be taken in by “human cunning, by craftiness” for the purpose of “deceitful schemes” (4:14). Paul seems to write to them, at least in part, to provide them with much-needed reorientation. With the shifting winds of disinformation blowing strong, he wants to remind them of their identity in Christ and of the way of life this identity entails. We need these reminders too. |
