David, Quick to Discern

Anyone can misjudge, and anyone can make mistakes. But in this sin-filled world God lights the way with truth so that his people can discern rightly; he disciplines them through suffering and grants them the strength and wisdom to overcome sin. Through many events and many people he keeps showing us the depth of his love, so if you are even a little sensitive in spirit, you will see it easily. Those who live with spiritual sensitivity keep asking themselves: Why has God sent this into my life? Why did he make me hear those words? How can I handle this wisely?

David did many things that won God’s praise, but he also made many mistakes. When he lived with his heart closed to God, he went so far as to tell King Achish that he wished to join in attacking Israel, to the point of no return. Looking back on his life, David must have longed to erase that moment. In God’s eyes, the earlier David had been a man of faith who would not so much as look at anything he believed to be sin. Holding God always in his heart, he was quick to stop when he went astray, and quick to turn and run back into God’s arms. The kind of person God wants among his people, I think, is someone like David. Watching David turn back the instant he realizes he was wrong, even about something he himself had weighed and decided, we learn how a child of God ought to live. Those who live by human reckoning are convinced that whatever they weigh and decide is right, and so they never admit their own mistakes.

But to admit a wrong as a wrong is the mark of good character. Having admitted his wrong and repented, David prayed to Yahweh, asking whether he would recover everything that had been taken if he pursued the Amalekites. Yahweh answered, “Pursue; for you will surely overtake them, and will without fail recover all.” David, who had been walking the way of the world, came back to his place among God’s people and prayed, and God was delighted and blessed him.

This moment, when the Amalekite soldiers had carried off the people, was the greatest crossroads of David’s life, the point that would set its direction. Standing there, he had to decide whether to humor these people, enraged at the loss of their families, or to let them go from his heart and return to God. It was because of these people that he had come this far, and yet as soon as trouble struck they forgot all gratitude. If he feared their anger and bowed to them once more, he would never again have the chance to return to God.

Seeing that this was a crisis, David realized that he had no one but God. When he repented of his sin, God forgave him once more and told him to pursue the Amalekites. David knew well what God’s consent meant: from now on it would not be David who took on the Amalekites, but God himself. He would have missed deeply those joyful days when he prayed and God answered. When someone once full of faith drifts away from God, the emptiness and sense of loss are immense, because the fear of being far from God is greater than we imagine. How great David’s joy must have been, then, now that his relationship with God was restored!

Verse 2 tells us that, mercifully, though the Amalekites set fire to the city, they did not kill a single woman or child but carried them off as captives. God used the Amalekites to make David see his sin and turn back, yet all the while he was preserving the lives of the people. Ziklag, where David and his people had been living, now lay in ashes, and the women had been carried off by the Amalekites. Here was proof that David’s human reckoning had been wrong. He had gone over to the Philistines to save his people’s lives, and yet Ziklag was burned and the women and children were all taken away. The outcome shows plainly how mistaken he had been to weigh and decide by the world’s standards.

When people compromise with the world and leave God in order to hold on to their possessions, it is like this: they are grasping at fog. Their nameplate is on the door and their family name has passed to their children, so it all seems to be theirs. But if God lets go, they lose everything, just as David lost all to the Amalekites. I hope you will never call your earthly possessions your own. It all belongs to God, and unless God keeps it, you cannot hold on to your property, let alone your children or your very life.

When they found their families gone, the soldiers wanted to stone David. Only then did David realize how foolish it is to defy God’s will in order to please people. He had disobeyed God to save these people’s lives, yet the moment it cost them something, they turned on him in fury. Seeing that, he knew that every decision he had made had been wrong, and with a broken heart he confessed his sin to God and repented.

Once his relationship with God was restored, David returned as a leader of mature faith and fine character. On the way to the Amalekites, after God had answered him, two hundred of his men said they were too exhausted and worn out to go on with him, so David left them to rest and went on toward the Amalekites with only four hundred soldiers. He could make such a decision because he relied on God rather than on people. Just as Gideon went to war with three hundred, David reckoned that if God was with him, four hundred were by no means too few. The David who had been so afraid of Achish that he tried to keep on his good side grew bold once he turned to God.

Seeing David’s faith, God brought him to a guide who knew the Amalekites well. The young Egyptian David came across had been the servant of an Amalekite, but when he fell sick he was abandoned. David took in the sick young man, gave him food, and cared for him. For David, who was searching for the Amalekites, he could not have been a better guide. With the help of this young man, who knew the Amalekites so thoroughly, David was able to attack them with ease.

David recovered everything the Amalekites had taken, rescued his two wives, and seized all their flocks and herds as plunder besides. The people rejoiced and praised him, saying that all of this was David’s plunder. It was a remarkable victory for a force of only four hundred. When we depend on God completely, the battles of life are as easy as this. It is because we do not believe that we fail to receive. If you believe and look to him, God has everything ready, just as he had the guide ready, and is only waiting for you to decide.

On the way back, David met the two hundred men who came out to meet them. They had not been able to join the battle, but having lost their families, they had, I imagine, been sick with worry.

1 Samuel 30:22

22Then all the wicked men and worthless fellows, of those who went with David, answered and said, “Because they didn’t go with us, we will not give them anything of the plunder that we have recovered, except to every man his wife and his children, that he may lead them away, and depart.”

Some of the men who had gone into battle with David proposed that the two hundred who had stayed behind be given none of the plunder; since the others had rescued their wives and children, they should simply take their families and go. In one sense the proposal made perfect sense, since it meant that only those who had risked their lives in battle should have the plunder.

But notice that Scripture calls these people, who were saying something so reasonable, “wicked men and worthless fellows.” Scripture gives that name to those who said the plunder could not be shared, and the reason is that all Israel are members of one body in God. Among members, none can be called needed and another not needed. Though the two hundred could not take part in the battle, they would have been praying earnestly for those who went out to fight, and they would have been guarding Ziklag. When those who are strong in body give themselves with their bodies and those who are weak help through prayer, in God’s sight they have all worked together.

When David heard what these wicked men said, he understood their hearts well, since it was with that very attitude that he himself had drifted from God. Still he said, “My brothers, we won because Yahweh preserved us and delivered into our hand the troop that came against us. Therefore I cannot do as you say.” Those who went out to battle and those who stayed behind, helping by prayer and guarding what was left, had all done the work, he said, and so all must share alike. From that day on David made this a statute and an ordinance for Israel. Good discernment and decisions like these are exactly the kind of deeds that faith produces, the kind God desires. Even the small work of guarding the baggage David counted as work done for God, and he had everyone share alike; that is what shows him to be a man of God.

This kind of problem comes up often in the church. Not everyone can give the same amount of time and money. As each serves according to the measure of their faith, it is true that mature members end up taking on more work than others. Like David, we should recognize that it is because God has blessed us that we are able to work. But if we grumble when we look at those who are weaker in health or in means, we are no different from the soldiers who refused to share. It is only right that those who have received much from God should work. Of course, if people who have not served receive the same grace, those who labored may feel a little wronged. But if we believe that God remembers every act of devotion, we will give thanks, rather than complain, that someone is receiving grace through what we have given.

Those four hundred soldiers were more taken up with how hard they had worked. They had risked their lives fighting the Amalekites, and while rescuing their own families they had rescued the others’ families too, so they felt strongly that they deserved a greater reward. It is like treating a church office as a rank and expecting to be waited on, or being disappointed when our work goes unpraised. Such people feel they have only truly worked when a small service wins large recognition, and because they credit the church’s growth to their own effort, they show no humility toward the pastor or their fellow members. Pride like this is conduct that earns no praise from God, however much work lies behind it.

David told the grumbling wicked men plainly that they had been able to win because God had led them. Since they had won by God’s grace, everything must be shared fairly, so as to display God’s power and grace. Our faith must mature to this point. It is not that the church grew because I gave money; rather, I have been blessed to be able to work in a church that grows by God’s grace. This is a different way of approaching it, and there must be gratitude for having taken part in the work of the almighty God. When you build a house, you need large nails, but you need small ones too. You need great timbers to raise the pillars, and you need small pieces of wood to make the windows. All these come together to earn the praise of a beautiful house. In the same way, through the talents, callings, and devotion of its members, the church becomes the body of Christ that anyone would praise and acknowledge.

Verse 26 records that David remembered those who had helped him in the days when Saul was hunting him, and sent them gifts from the plunder to repay their kindness. His sharing the plunder with the elders of Judah who had stood by him until now shows a character to be treasured, one that knows how to repay kindness. Every time Saul had attacked, these elders had helped him, and David forgot none of them; he sent gifts to them all. He was a man who knew how to repay the grace he had been shown. People whose character has learned gratitude do not forget the grace of God either. Thankful for their salvation, they will give themselves to the Kingdom of God and always strive to live by his word.

It is true that David made many mistakes. But because he was wise, he was also quick to turn back once he saw he was on the wrong road. God may be asking you, too, right now, whether the road you are on is the right one. If, in the light of his word, it is a road you must turn from as David did, I hope you will turn back while God gives you the chance. Though David was rebuked by God, he repented with everything in him and closed his ears to what people said, so that he could return to God’s will. Fear of the three thousand had brought him this far, but he looked to God once more. Anyone can make mistakes, and anyone can misjudge. But we can turn back only when we know it to be sin. That is why we must always strive not to stray from God’s word.

None of us can judge or condemn anyone, because anyone can stumble as David did and walk the way of the world. But once we realize that this is the broad road, the dark road, a road Jesus never walked, we must repent from the depths of our hearts and turn back. God never rebukes those who turn back. He washes their sin completely clean, so there is nothing to fear. I hope you, too, will trust in God rather than people, and fear God more than the world.

When God is with you, he sends a guide like that young man so that life is not hard for you; and just as the Amalekites who had taken everything crumbled like a sandcastle, the world can pose no threat to you at all. As David repented, turned back, and was clothed once more in God’s grace, so if you live without forgetting God’s precious grace, he will cover you with an even greater love.

May you receive the blessings of heaven through a devotion that always gives thanks to God. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 31:1-6

1Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain on Mount Gilboa. 2The Philistines overtook Saul and on his sons; and the Philistines killed Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua, the sons of Saul. 3The battle went hard against Saul, and the archers overtook him; and he was greatly distressed by reason of the archers. 4Then Saul said to his armor bearer, “Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me!” But his armor bearer would not; for he was terrified. Therefore Saul took his sword, and fell on it. 5When his armor bearer saw that Saul was dead, he likewise fell on his sword, and died with him. 6So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor bearer, and all his men, that same day together.