Saul, Who Forgot to Be Thankful

From birth, human beings take an interest in other people and grow up forming relationships with them. We pray to meet people of good character, because all our lives we cannot help but live among others. How long a relationship lasts and how deep a friendship goes will depend on whether the other person is someone who sacrifices themselves or someone who only demands sacrifice from others. Relationships endure longer when we embrace one another in love, understand one another, and share. If one side demands sacrifice from the other alone, or seeks only to meet its own needs, the relationship will not last long.

King Saul told David that he was more righteous than Saul himself, because David had done him good while he had done David evil. The Saul we know was jealous of David and hounded him without end, so this was plainly a relationship that would be hard to sustain. Of course, keeping a relationship good does not mean that whenever we receive one thing we must give one thing back. Those who know how to be grateful when they are loved strive to give back as much as they have received, and such relationships can last a long time.

No relationship improves through one person’s effort alone. Husband and wife, parents and children, friends and siblings, fellow members of a church: in relationships we cannot walk away from, discord will arise unless both sides make an effort. A calculating relationship can simply be dropped once feelings are hurt; but a relationship we cannot abandon even when we are hurt will bring greater trouble unless both work to fit together. The relationship between God and his people, too, can never grow close without effort. No amount of effort on our part can repay God’s love, it is true; still, if we live always with a grateful heart, we will be able to show those around us a little of his love.

Look at the relationship between Saul and David. Though Saul had David on the run, David kept doing good to Saul, evil as he was. Saul attacked David without mercy, but David fled rather than stand against him. Saul was an earthly king with everything in his hands, and David a fugitive hunted by that king. Why, then, did David not attack Saul? The answer is in Romans 12:19.

Romans 12:19

19Don’t seek revenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to God’s wrath. For it is written, “Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord.”

God tells us to leave vengeance on our enemies to him, and says that if our enemy is hungry we are to feed them, and if they are thirsty we are to give them a drink; in doing so we heap coals of fire on their head and can bring them pain. This is how we are not overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. Jesus knew he would bear the cross, yet he never stopped preaching the gospel, so that sinners would not fall into death. Only when we can see this love of Christ by faith do we see our own sin. When the eyes of your spirit are opened to see your own sin, you will weep, overwhelmed by a love of Jesus too great to bear.

When we give love to someone, we must give as Jesus gave, a love greater than they can take in; and when we receive, we must know how to be grateful for love no bigger than a mustard seed. People of such character and wisdom are the truly big-hearted. David had seen and understood God’s love, and that is why he did not attack Saul.

Saul, who never stopped pursuing David to kill him even as David did him good, had turned back when he heard that the Philistines were attacking Jerusalem; but once the Philistines withdrew, he returned to the place where David was hiding. This time he brought three thousand of Israel’s finest soldiers, intending to wipe out David and his six hundred men at a single stroke. Saul knew David was hiding in En Gedi, and he had three thousand men; if he set his mind to it, David could be killed. So desperate was the situation that David poured out an earnest prayer in Psalm 35:1-3.

Psalm 35:1-3

Contend, Yahweh, with those who contend with me. Fight against those who fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for my help. Brandish the spear and block those who pursue me. Tell my soul, “I am your salvation.”

He prayed, committing his enemy to God, rather than fighting Saul himself. Though David could have fought Saul at any time, he is earnestly asking God for help. David was human too; how could he not want to deal with Saul himself? But those who have met God need the wisdom to entrust everything to him and to accept their circumstances as they are.

Had David failed to master his anger and killed Saul, how could he have served God with the guilt of murder upon him? And how could he have held on to a throne of Israel seized by force? God would not protect a David who had climbed to the throne by evil means. David had to wait patiently and endure until God established him, which is why he prayed constantly to the God who warned him of danger in advance and gave him a way of escape. The experience he gained through this training in faith is what brought David to maturity.

In verse 3, Saul, who had come to seize David, went into a cave “to cover his feet,” and as it happened David and his men were hiding in that very cave. Here “to cover one’s feet” means to relieve oneself. Saul is relieving himself, utterly defenseless, in front of David and six hundred men.

From a human point of view, the perfect opportunity had come to David. His men asked him whether this was not the very day of which Yahweh had said, “Behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.” From this it seems that God had told David in advance that such a moment would come. God had foretold this moment, and now Saul was before his eyes, defenseless. All that remained was to kill Saul and take the throne. Yet David only quietly cut off the skirt of Saul’s robe, and he did not sin.

In Psalm 35:4 he pleaded earnestly that those who sought his life would be disappointed and brought to dishonor, and that those who plotted his ruin would be turned back and confounded; so desperate was his situation, and still he did not seize this chance. Had David made up his mind to it, there could have been no better chance than this, to kill Saul while he relieved himself. But far from killing Saul, David repented even of cutting off the skirt of his robe. Unless we understand David, who repented before God merely for cutting the robe of the man trying to kill him, we cannot rightly walk with God.

When God told David that he would deliver Saul into his hand and that David should do to him as seemed good to him, he meant this: understand what I [God] want from you [David], and weigh things well and act rightly even in a situation so ripe for revenge. Killing Saul by human reckoning would rid David of his enemy, but it would be a great test, one that would make him an enemy of God. For God’s people, hardship is a test, but an opportunity like this one is a test as well.

God weighs your faith too. When he wants to entrust you with something greater, he gives you various problems to discover the truth: does my child really love me? People who do not understand this heart of God, when they are given the means of revenge or find themselves where they could sin, act as they please without even asking God’s will. Faith like that is not something God can use as his instrument. If in the course of your life a chance comes to satisfy your greed or to take revenge, I hope you will weigh it as carefully as David did. The reason is plain: killing Saul would have eased things for the moment, but God would never have forgiven David. You who believe in God and serve him, may you live from now on as David did. Only then will God lift you high, as you persevere to overcome hardship by faith.

Unaware of the momentous thing that had taken place in the cave, Saul came out, and David called after him. He bowed down and asked why the king was pursuing him, listening to people’s lies that David meant to kill him. Showing him the skirt of his robe, David told Saul that he had had every chance to kill the king and had not done it, so the king should not listen to the lie that David would kill him.

And in verse 12 he said that Yahweh would judge between him and the king, and swore that even if God avenged him on the king, his own hand would never harm him. David would have wanted to judge Saul himself, the man who was after his life. But because God always held first place in his heart, he did not sin. In Psalm 35 he pleaded with God: he had treated Saul like a friend or a brother, yet Saul repaid good with evil and, like a ruffian, never stopped striking and tearing at him; and he asked God to put Saul to shame and disgrace instead. With his enemy before him and unable to kill him, David must have wrestled with many thoughts. David, who had the chance to kill and did not, and Saul, who longed to kill and was never given the chance, were as different as two men could be. Opportunity, then, is something God gives. David is handed opportunities without striving for them, while Saul cannot seize one no matter how hard he tries; seeing the two of them, we realize how much it matters whom God walks with.

In verses 19-20, after hearing David ask why Saul sought his life when he had never rebelled, Saul said that a man who finds his enemy will ordinarily kill him, and that he wished Yahweh would reward David with good for the good he had done in sparing him. He went on to say that he knew David would surely be king and that the kingdom of Israel would be established in his hand, and before he went home he even begged David not to cut off his offspring. Saul was not ignorant of David’s goodness; it was precisely because he knew it that he was doing this absurd thing, trying to kill David so that he could not become king. Listening to Saul, who knew God’s will and even entrusted his descendants to David, one would think he would never trouble David again.

But in chapter 26 we meet Saul pursuing David once more. Saul, who had promised never to chase him again, comes after David with three thousand soldiers, which shows that people never change. Unless they are born again through the word of God, people’s nature does not change; and so Saul could tell David that he knew he was good and entrust his descendants to him, seeming to have changed, and still return to the place of evil and do the same thing again.

When Israel faced a grave crisis, Saul received great help from David. To be frank, Saul could keep his throne now only because David had risked his life to face Goliath. David won victory after victory and delivered Saul when he was afflicted by an evil spirit; but once the nation was secure and Saul began to think he no longer needed David, David’s devotion became a burden to him instead. The very act of forgetting grace received, as Saul did, shows how evil the human heart is.

Once people’s needs are met, we see them cut off first whoever helped them most, whether that is God or a person of faith. This shows that human beings are sinners from birth. Saul had received great help from David when he was struggling, but when the people sang that David had slain his ten thousands, and the time came to share his authority and power, he set out to kill him. Here is Saul’s folly. It was God who placed David at his side, and it was by God’s grace that Saul held his throne through David; but his spiritual eyes were too dim to see it, and once he had what he wanted, he tried to kill David.

But think it through: if the nation was saved through David, a man of faith, then simply having David with him was a great blessing to Saul. No one is more foolish than the person who takes the benefit, mistakes it for their own, and then casts off God and the person of faith. The trouble is that all people carry the same heart as Saul. Saul, who had shut his heart with greed and jealousy, could not easily kill David no matter how hard he tried. Even when he called out his troops, David could not be seen, as if hidden in a fog. As long as God protected David, Saul would never catch him. As long as God lived, Saul would never put his son Jonathan on the throne. David understood this purpose of God and lived uprightly; Saul knew the same purpose and still tried to force his own will through.

My heart ached for Saul. If he had had even a little wisdom, he would have made a man of faith like David his fellow worker. Because God was with him, David had defeated Goliath, won every battle, and driven out the evil spirit that had come upon Saul. Saul hunted that very man to kill him. But we must know that God rules over all the earth, and so the wicked cannot harm a person who belongs to God. This is why I tell you that you must live with a good heart and good conduct. If you live to keep God’s word according to his will, evil spirits and evil people will never be able to harm you.

But foolish people, as soon as they escape a hard situation, readily cast off both the God and the David who helped them. The peace they now enjoy is a blessing received because God, and someone else, prayed for them; yet they refuse to share it at all, and for that reason their greed keeps them from seeing a wider world.

If you have received grace from God and from people of faith, I hope you will treasure it in your heart and be faithful to God even to death. Saul, who did not know how to give thanks, fell into the pit of ruin he had dug himself, and drove not only himself but his sons as well to their deaths. Those who do not know grace will in the end meet someone just like themselves. What we have said and done is bound to come back to us just as it was, and therefore we must not say and do whatever we please, as Saul did.

If God has helped you once, he has the power to help you ten times, a hundred times, so you must not forget his grace. You must not betray such a God, nor lightly cast off and turn against anyone who, like David, has given themselves for your sake.

May you always remember the love that God and the people of faith have shown you, and as his precious people, know how to repay it. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 25:14-22

14But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, saying, “Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to Greet our master; and he insulted them. 15But the men were very good to us, and we were not harmed, and we didn’t miss anything, as long as we went with them, when we were in the fields. 16They were a wall to us both by night and by day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep. 17Now therefore know and consider what you will do; for evil is determined against our master, and against all his house; for he is such a worthless fellow that one can’t speak to him.” 18Then Abigail hurried and took two hundred loaves of bread, two bottles of wine, five sheep ready dressed, five seahs of parched grain, one hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys. 19She said to her young men, “Go on before me. Behold, I am coming after you.” But she didn’t tell her husband, Nabal. 20As she rode on her donkey, and came down by the covert of the mountain, that behold, David and his men came down toward her, and she met them. 21Now David had said, “Surely in vain I have kept all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that pertained to him. He has returned me evil for good. 22God do so to the enemies of David, and more also, if I leave of all that belongs to him by the morning light so much as one who urinates on a wall.”