Foolish David

There is an old Korean saying about a man who cannot recognize the letter giyeok even with a sickle lying in front of him. It means that someone who does not know the alphabet at all will not understand, even when told that a sickle is shaped like that letter. Such a person has no choice but to learn the alphabet from the beginning, step by step. But those whose pride and self-righteousness run strong, though they do not really know, foolishly refuse to learn because of that pride. If they would admit what they do not know and ask to be taught, they could gain far more; still they will not humble themselves and learn. A lack of worldly knowledge costs us nothing more than being called ignorant, but spiritual ignorance leads to the second death. We can come to salvation, then, only if we lay down our pride and stubbornness and learn what we do not know. God has brought people across the paths of many others and through many events so that in the course of their lives they might discover him, and he has helped them find the answer. But people care nothing for the heart of God. With their attention on the world alone, they fail to grasp what God intends every time they meet a problem, and they never find the right answer.

How far do you think a human being can sink into folly? Worldly foolishness shows itself in what people do, so it is recognized at once. Spiritual foolishness is much harder to detect, because in the world’s eyes nothing seems to be wrong. This is why we must be spiritually alert if we are to discern rightly.

When I counsel those who are wise, they obey whatever is asked of them, because they believe that God is almighty. Those who are sure their own thinking is right, by contrast, grow cold to a degree that grieves me. It is a great pity, for they are letting slip their chance to grow spiritually. Those who are further along in the spirit see by faith what cannot be seen, while those who are still young in the spirit want to see first and believe afterward. That is why persuading them, by telling them in advance of things they cannot yet see, is never easy. I tell you this often: Satan does not want you to grow, in spirit or in body. We must never forget, then, that he is always working to hinder us.

What I have found in my own walk with God is this: once we have grown to a certain point, God sets a small problem before us in order to give us a greater blessing. How we apply that problem to our lives decides whether it becomes a crisis or a blessing that overflows. A jar filled to the brim spills over the moment one more drop falls into it. In the same way, God gives you a problem because he longs to give you a blessing that overflows; yet because you do not understand his deeper purpose, you complain or stumble. Rather than grumbling, raging, or losing heart, the wise thing is to pray for the strength to bear it.

But keep this firmly in mind: when God blesses you, Satan moves as well. There are, of course, times when God rebukes us through suffering, and those are the times when the water of faith in the jar is running low. When it runs low, Satan goes to work all the more busily. He turns our attention to the world, crowds our days with busyness, and stirs up our temper until we pour out the faith the jar was holding. So people lose patience, and far from being blessed, they spend their whole lives in the futile labor of spilling the water of faith and filling the jar again.

When Satan tempts them, believers at first feel the guilt of it and resolve not to go back to the world. But as the temptation grows stronger, their consciences become seared, and in the end, of their own accord, they will be taken captive by the very desires Satan planted in them. It breaks my heart to see this. Because everyone in the world lives this way, they tell themselves, because this is simply how the world works, they cannot be free of it either; and with that thought they give in to Satan.

What is God to you? Is the God who created heaven and earth one who has nothing to do for you as you compete with the world? People seem to regard God as a deity whose only work is to help their business along, help their children do well at school, and make their lives comfortable. When hardship comes, or their children do not turn out as they hoped, they abandon God, as though he had failed in his duty. For such a person even God can do nothing.

If your faith has taken on much the same color as the world, I hope you will pour out that dirty water quickly, before God breaks the jar. Only then can you receive a blessing that never runs dry. May you never strike a compromise between God and the world. If you have tasted God’s grace and still go on wavering between him and the world, Satan will keep testing you, and because God cannot pour out grace on a faith like that, you will grow spiritually parched.

God showed David everything, led him, and protected him, yet David could not let go of his own thinking and was behaving like a fool. Though God had told him not to leave Judah, he fled from Saul to Achish, king of the Philistines, and lived at ease under his protection. To stay in Philistine territory, he bowed and scraped before King Achish and even lied to save his own life. The three thousand people with him were probably grateful to David for listening to what they wanted, and would have praised him as loving and wise. This is exactly what a person who compromises between God and the world looks like.

Someone will ask whether David was not wise to save those lives. Would it have been right, they will say, to stay in Israel and get many people killed? By the world’s standard, David’s conduct will seem right. But David was a man of faith who had lived by God’s commands, a man who knew that life is in God’s hands. Had such a man entrusted his own life and the lives of his people to God, God would have given not only David but all three thousand of them a more peaceful life. So in God’s sight, David’s decision was a dead one. Having abandoned the truth, he was already wrapped in darkness, and in that darkness he no longer had the discernment to decide wisely.

When David trusted in God alone, his actions may have looked reckless, yet it was faith that sent him running toward Goliath, and faith that made him flee rather than strike back at his enemy with his own hand. But the moment that same David saw a crowd of three thousand, his discernment failed him. This unbelief put David and his soldiers in a position where they had no choice but to go to war against Israel. If David had stayed in Judah, trusting God with everything, none of this would ever have happened. He listened to people rather than to God and tried to please them, and it landed him in the sorrowful reality of having to stand against his own people.

When King Achish said he would bring David into the war against Israel, the lords and princes of the Philistines were displeased. Their reasoning was that if David went into battle with them, he might take Israel’s side and turn on them instead, and so they said they could not trust him. As I listened to what these Philistine lords said, it struck me that their very words were God’s astonishing grace. Had they said instead that here was a man so able that Saul had slain his thousands and David his ten thousands, and that he should lead the vanguard, David would have had no way out. He would have had to stand at the front and attack Israel, because his three thousand people were as good as hostages in Philistia.

But God had to make David king over Israel and bring about the work of salvation through his descendants, and so he used the lords’ distrust to head off the worst that could have befallen David. This is the heart of God, who goes on loving David to the end, even after he has made a foolish choice. When you meet hardship and crisis, God is weighing your faith. If you cannot overcome it and you compromise with the world, you will meet even greater trouble, as David did. May you endure with faith and with wisdom.

On hearing the princes’ counsel, King Achish carefully summoned David. He told him that he liked him and trusted him, but since his lords could not trust David, he should go back to his own place in peace. Something truly like a miracle had happened for David. But with God’s wisdom hidden from him, David could no longer see far ahead, and though God was helping him, he went on acting foolishly. If we are not spiritually alert, we will fail to recognize God’s help even when he gives it.

In verse 8, when Achish told him to go back, David did an absurd thing: he protested, asking what he had done wrong that Achish should distrust him. He had served as Achish’s servant with all his might to this very day, he said, so why should he not go and fight the enemies of his lord the king? David, of course, would have been pretending, against his true feelings, to be loyal to Achish beyond measure. But the moment David, who knew God’s will, spoke these words to win Achish’s favor, he became the greatest of fools in God’s eyes. He committed a grave sin as God’s servant, and he failed as a man of faith. Even if he did not mean it when he said he too would go, the words had already left his mouth, and God must have been angered to see David, having defied his command, go on telling lie after lie.

Instead of offering thanks in prayer to the God who had brought him through the crisis, David swore loyalty to Achish and said how sorry he was not to join the war against Israel. That is foolishness which brings suffering on oneself, because if King Achish took him to be truly sorry to miss the battle, he would be sure to bring David along to the next one.

We commit the same error today. To take one example, under Japanese colonial rule, when Shinto shrine worship was being forced on the church, there were pastors and church members who said that the times were bad, so they should bow at the shrines for now and wait for a better moment. Later they claimed they had never betrayed God. Some pastors even asked who would preach the gospel if every minister refused shrine worship and was killed. By their reasoning, the pastors and church members who were martyred become fools. It is the same error, because in spite of God’s command they made the choice David made: to save their own lives, or to escape suffering.

Though David had been loyal and devoted to God until now, once he drifted from God he tore down with his own hands the faith he had built up. God’s holding him back from the battle was grace, yet what mattered more to David was winning Achish’s trust right then. Suppose the lords had heard what David said to Achish to have his loyalty recognized, and had told him to prove that he meant it. What would David have done? When people throw wisdom away, this is how they stop thinking about what comes next.

David had defied God’s command, but to protect his life God caused the lords to turn against him. Still, David did not grasp God’s purpose and kept on with foolish words and deeds. God, who loves souls, never stops giving us opportunities, but those who have left God cannot take hold of the chance to be blessed even when it is offered. So foolish people say that since another chance will come even if they do not live by God’s word, they may live more or less as they please for now. God does indeed always give his children the chance to turn back. But once we grow spiritually dark, we no longer receive an opportunity as an opportunity.

The Philistine princes hesitated to go into battle with David because they saw him as a man of God, a leader of Israel. But David himself was doing what no child of God should do. However hard you try to blend in when you go out into the world, the world will not accept you as one of its own. Why? Because spirit discerns spirit, and what they see first is the God who holds you in his arms. If, like David, you fail to recognize God’s love even while you are receiving his love and protection, you will fall to ruin before the Philistines, God’s enemies. Only when you hope in God’s grace with unshaken faith can you overcome Satan’s temptations with ease.

God had kept him out of the war with Israel, yet David went on acting foolishly. God therefore did not hold back the trouble that came upon him, the raid of the Amalekites. Having won King Achish’s favor, David came home glad that he had handled things so wisely, only to find that the women and children had all been carried off by the Amalekites. God was showing him that it was not because he and his six hundred warriors had guarded them that he had been able to live in peace with these vulnerable people until now. Once his family was gone, David must have realized how foolish he had been. We may think it is by our own ability that we earn money, keep our households safe, and raise our children, but it is possible only because God’s grace protects us. Forget that and grow proud, and God will take down the hedge of protection as he did for David; once it is gone, suffering will come pouring in like a flood.

David had heard God’s word through Samuel and, as he prayed, through the Holy Spirit, and he had been led by it until now. But once he was gripped by his own ideas, he forgot it all, both what Samuel had told him and what he had heard from God directly. Samuel heard the voice of God himself and passed it on to David, and the Holy Spirit is God, so everything David heard was God’s will. When we see a man like David stumble even after hearing so much, we ought to live with still greater care, because the hardships the world brings can be borne by God’s grace, while the discipline God himself sends cannot be borne by anything at all.

Those who pray to God about even the smallest things, who repent and turn back day by day, will receive eternal blessing. Remember that the broad road may look safe and yet be a road of thorns. May you obey God and follow his will. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 30:1-10

1When David and his men had come to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid on the South, and on Ziklag, and had struck Ziklag, and burned it with fire, 2and had taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great. They didn’t kill any, but carried them off, and went their way. 3When David and his men came to the city, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, their sons, and their daughters were taken captive. 4Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voice and wept until they had no more power to weep. 5David’s two wives were taken captive, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite. 6David was greatly distressed; for the people spoke of stoning him, because the souls of all the people were grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters; but David strengthened himself in Yahweh his God. 7David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, “Please bring the ephod here to me.” Abiathar brought the ephod to David. 8David inquired of Yahweh, saying, “If I pursue after this troop, will I overtake them?” He answered him, “Pursue; for you will surely overtake them, and will without fail recover all.” 9So David went, he and the six hundred men who were with him, and came to the brook Besor, where those who were left behind stayed. 10But David pursued, he and four hundred men; for two hundred stayed behind, who were so faint that they couldn’t go over the brook Besor.