Just a further word of prayer.
Now, Lord, You have told us we have not because we ask not. So what we are asking for is more light, more of an impact upon our souls and spirits, more love for You, and more real consecration as a result of our speaking together here this morning.
We dare to ask. And Father, You often give us, as a surprise, something we ask for. So we ask in faith. Thank You for the answer. In the name of Jesus Christ.
Now, at Penny Valley, we have been going through a series of considerations on 1 Samuel. Today we are going to do 1 Samuel 18. But first, I want you to turn to Revelation 2:26.
And he who overcomes, and keeps My works unto the end,
to him will I give power over the nations:
and he shall rule them with a rod of iron;
as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to pieces.
Now, there is a lot of controversy surrounding this verse. We would like to dispel some of that this morning, because I am told by some, “Well, isn’t every Christian an overcomer?” And if you are a realist, a wise person, you will say, decidedly not.
So I am going to use a little ploy. I will consider you folks at least college-level logicians. You know, when we teach logic in college, and we have a sentence we are not quite sure about, like this one, we do a small trick on it.
We talk about the whole hypothesis, conclusion, converse, inverse—all obscure words. But when you take a sentence like this and use what we call an inverse, something becomes clear.
Now, the inverse of every truism is true. We might take, “He who overcomes,” as a hypothesis: “I will give him power over the nations,” as a conclusion.
Now, to get the inverse of that sentence, we put, “I will give him power over the nations,” first, and “he who overcomes” second, and then we negate the two phrases. So you get: “I will not give him power over the nations if he does not overcome.”
That changes the thinking for a lot of people.
We are going to look this morning at David, who has been anointed king of Israel. Let us look first at 1 Samuel 16:13.
Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren:
and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.
So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah.
So remember this: the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. Now let us go to 1 Samuel 18.
Here we have the story of David reenacted a thousand years later by Christ. David has slain Goliath, and we all know that story. All Israel is rejoicing, of course. They are filled with emotion—intense emotion.
It is the kind of emotion they have not seen since the time they got their deliverance at the Red Sea and sang the song of Moses in Exodus. So everyone is moved by this victory of the young warrior, David.
Now, the point is this, and the takeoff for our entire consideration: all except one man. Who was that, Ernie? I warned him I was going to pick on him. That was Saul.
Saul did not react. One man appears in every single scene here in 1 Samuel 18, and he refuses to let David move his heart.
So we would ask the question: What happens to a person spiritually when their heart is closed to a response of deep emotion? Something happens. We are going to be talking about this, and how much of Saul may be in us.
We are inclined to sort of poke fun at the people who are moved by considerable emotion in their worship and prayers. I have heard most wonderful prayers scoffed at, and even been asked to quiet those people who are praying because they put a little emotion into their prayer.
Boy, if you are not emotional, you might as well quit.
So, in the first scene here, let us read 1 Samuel 18:1.
And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul,
that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David,
and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
Is that emotion? Sure is.
Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to his father’s house.
Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.
And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David,
and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.
When Jonathan sees David slay Goliath, his soul is somehow, inexplicably, bound up with David in admiration and love.
As a result of that love, he gives David everything he has. He gives him his armor, his robe, his sword, his bow, and his belt. Furthermore, Jonathan gives David the right to the kingdom. We find out later this will cost Jonathan his life.
Here is true spirituality. Not many of the Lord’s people know the meaning of true spirituality. They do not know that it involves a heart response that would give everything to the Lord.
You know, we just sang, “Give Him my all, and not just a part.” We often stop short of that.
This love, this worship, this appreciation, is really the driving force behind true spirituality.
Now mark that statement. I am going to be saying a few things like that which I want you to mark. I wish I had a little bell to go, “Ding.”
Saul expresses no emotion. He shows nothing. He takes David for himself, and he sends David on errands. Let us read 1 Samuel 18:5.
And David went out whithersoever Saul sent him, and behaved himself wisely:
and Saul set him over the men of war,
and he was accepted in the sight of all the people,
and also in the sight of Saul’s servants.
So Saul takes David for himself and sends him on errands. He takes more joy in placing David over others than he does in rejoicing that David has given them a victory over their enemies.
Now, in this sermon, I am going to be reading a little behind the scenes. I have been a Christian fifty or sixty years, and I have made a certain study of man.
I have not read Freud. I have not read Jung. I have had a proper study of man. What is the proper study of man? How would you delineate it? Psychology? Psychiatry? Anybody tell me?
A number of philosophers have said, “The proper study of man is man.” Yeah. And I have watched men over a good many decades. So I read into a lot of these things here in this chapter things you may not read. Well, you will just have to put up with me.
Next, we find the king, David, and Jonathan in the open field. The king and their hero are given a welcome. Let us read 1 Samuel 18:6.
And it came to pass as they came,
when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistine,
that the women came out of all cities of Israel,
singing and dancing, to meet king Saul,
with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music.
Well, it is kind of like a ticker-tape parade, is it not? Saul still cannot enter in. His emotions are frozen.
And the women answered one another as they played, and said,
Saul hath slain his thousands,
and David his ten thousands.
Well, that was merely the way the Israelites used language. If you remember, it was said, “One shall chase a thousand; two shall chase ten thousand.” That is all they are doing.
They are giving honor to both Saul and David. The text reads that they came to meet King Saul. It does not say they came to meet David and Saul. So they were not creating an antithesis between the two, but giving honor to both of them.
But what was happening? Saul sees everything through the lens of his jealousy. Ah, jealousy is pretty tough to deal with. When you see somebody given honor or place that he may or may not deserve, and you sort of think, “Well, I am better qualified than he is,” that is jealousy. You may not know it.
Saul takes this song of the women as an insult. He interprets it as a personal affront: “Why, the women have given more glory to David than they have to Saul,” is his thought. But it is not really true, and his anger is aroused.
So now he can express some emotion—the wrong kind. He distances himself from the whole situation and will not allow the songs of the women to penetrate his heart.
The women have taken David, and all Israel has taken David, to their heart. And all of a sudden, through Saul’s lens, it becomes paranoia. Jealousy allowed to fester in the heart ends up in paranoia.
That is what is happening to Saul. He sees what only Samuel and God have known. He says, “What more can he have but the kingdom?”
Saul cannot see that David’s success is not due to his ambition—though Saul interprets it that way—but because the Lord is with David.
That is a mighty important thing.
From that day on, Saul sees David with an evil eye. Now we move to the scene in Saul’s home, 1 Samuel 18:10.
And it came to pass on the morrow,
that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul,
and he prophesied in the midst of the house:
and David played with his hand, as at other times:
but there was a javelin in Saul’s hand.And Saul cast the javelin; for he said,
I will smite David even to the wall with it.
And David avoided out of his presence twice.And Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him,
and was departed from Saul.
Therefore Saul removed him from him,
and made him his captain over a thousand;
and he went out and came in before the people.
This paranoia, this evil spirit, this jealousy—that is what it is. It allows an evil spirit free access to Saul. You do not know how many times I have seen this among the Lord’s people. I dare to say it. It has wrecked entire assemblies.
Saul is just this dark, raving man. You may not see it, but that is what is happening in the background of his life.
Does that ever happen to you? He asked slyly. Has that ever happened to you? Nobody? I do not see a single hand.
Yeah, well, this happened to me. I am going to bed angry. Have you ever gone to bed angry? You know what happens when you go to bed angry? The enemy has a great time with you—all night.
You open the door to infinite evil, and you wake up angrier than when you went to bed. It happened to me. Your spouse may have had a wonderful night’s sleep, not even knowing what is going on.
Well, this is what happened to Saul. The irony here is that only David and his harp could comfort Saul. But every time David came around Saul, Saul drove himself further into his paranoia.
You know, if Saul had flung that spear at me, I probably would have yanked it from the wall and thrown it back.
But Saul is now mad with jealousy, so he is left with this endless cycle of rage and comfort. There he is with the spear in his hand, and on the other hand, here is David, the man of the Spirit, with the harp.
Saul’s anger continues to seethe and boils over, and he hurls the spear. But let me make a statement. I wish I had that little bell.
A spear in the hand of a demon-driven man is no match for the man of the Spirit.
Keep that in mind. Mark it down. The man of the Spirit has something operating behind his life that is all-powerful. God is there. Do not forget it.
The spear is no match for the harp.
The harp is usually music by the Holy Spirit—our prayers set to music, and music set to our prayers.
You know, no military machine can defeat what God has determined. When World War II was declared—I know if you were around; I sure was—the Germans had better guns, better armor, better tanks, better planes.
They even had a stealth fighter they were developing until they got bombed off the map by Allied bombers. But, you see, brothers and sisters, we Americans think, “Boy, we did wonderfully. We defeated the Germans.”
Hey, look: they would have run us over like you step on a cockroach if God had not been with us.
So David twice escapes the spear. Here he is met with another failure—poor old Saul—and his fear increases. Saul sends David into battle, where David moves, and what happens? He gets even more popular.
Boy, what is a man going to do? David wins more support because he behaves wisely. Let us read 1 Samuel 18:14.
And David behaved himself wisely in all his ways;
and the Lord was with him.Wherefore when Saul saw that he behaved himself very wisely,
he was afraid of him.But all Israel and Judah loved David,
because he went out and came in before them.
Here is the center line of our entire text: the reason for David’s popularity, his magnetism, and his success. The Lord was with him.
That little phrase represents something immense, powerful, victorious. You see, that is the reason we read that verse out of Revelation. The Lord has destined all overcomers to the throne.
David was to take the throne at a later time, and the Lord is busy now educating him. You know, it bothers me no end: a lot of Christians pray their hearts out about something the Lord has sent their way as a discipline and a learning tool to prepare them for the throne.
They wonder why their prayer is not answered. I had a brother tell me, “I cannot remember one prayer that the Lord has ever answered for me.”
And I foolishly said, “I think the Lord answers my prayers every day.” That made him feel pretty bad, I guess.
But there are certain things we must realize: situations, circumstances, oppressions—God puts us into them to prepare us for the throne. If He did not do that, He could not put us on the throne.
He is not going to put egotistical, arrogant, proud people there—people who are sure they have the answers. By the time we get to that throne, we are going to have our pride well demolished. Arrogance, no more.
Everything you see in people—you give a lot of people a little power, and they turn into ogres. God is not going to let that happen.
When the Lord is with somebody and other people have to respond to that person, it will be one of two ways. Either they will love them as someone worthy of love and admiration, or they will dread them.
Do you know that some people, if you are walking with the Lord, you are a dreadnought? That is a ship of war.
Do not think that the world can ignore anyone with whom the Lord is having real fellowship. It is love or dread.
And I know most of us do not like to be dreaded. Well, Saul dreads David because of his popularity, and he does not know the reason why.
Just take away with you, “The Lord was with him.” That is no small thing.
When any man feels like he must control other people, as Saul did, he loses his spiritual perception. He is not going to allow his heart to feel, and he cannot see what is in the hearts of others.
He becomes emotionally unstable. You know what Saul has done? He has placed the center of gravity outside himself, so he cannot gain his equilibrium.
It is wonderful when the Spirit of the Lord is with you. You can be poised in the midst of dire circumstances. You can retain your equilibrium.
You can be what Rudyard Kipling says: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.” Well, if the Lord is with you, all of that will be like water off a duck’s back.
Poise. Calm.
Saul lost his equilibrium, and he was completely dependent on what took place outside himself. Modern psychologists would call that, in my day, codependency. Today, you might call it bipolar.
You know, sports fans—what is “fan” an abbreviation for? Fanatic. Oh, you did not know that. They go up and down with the fortunes of whatever team they happen to support. Well, I better get off that.
But David’s spirituality comes from what is inside him. Whatever happens outside does not touch him inside. He takes life as a pure gift from the Lord, and what people do outside of himself does not matter. That was David.
He was not the great warrior that so many commentators make him out to be. Why was he able to slay Goliath? God was with him.
Well, that is the essence of true spirituality. You are not codependent anymore on anything outside yourself and the Lord in your life. Wonderful place to be. Wouldn’t we know more of it?
Whatever happens to others around you, you can sympathize, you can pray, you can give comfort, but it does not get inside you. You are not codependent on anything. That is true spirituality.
This is the turning point of the chapter. Saul’s observation is that David is prospering. He is no longer passive; he becomes active. Since the people love David, he wants to use their love and emotions to kill David.
Let us look at 1 Samuel 18:17.
And Saul said to David,
Behold my elder daughter Merab, her will I give thee to wife:
only be thou valiant for me, and fight the Lord’s battles.
For Saul said, Let not mine hand be upon him,
but let the hand of the Philistines be upon him.
And David said unto Saul,
Who am I? and what is my life, or my father’s family in Israel,
that I should be son in law to the king?
You know, that looks like sheer humility, but behind it is a lot more than that. David is cautious, of course, but he is not going to relate to Saul on Saul’s terms. That is important.
By saying, “What is my father’s family in Israel?” David causes Saul to pause and think. What was Saul’s statement about what he was going to give the man who slew Goliath? He said, “I am going to give him freedom from all taxes.”
David is reminding Saul of it, subtly but powerfully. “What is my father’s family? I wish you would just give my family what you promised.” So I say that is subtle, but it is powerful.
Instead of taking responsibility, Saul shifts the responsibility to Merab, his daughter. But she is not given to David; she is given to someone else. Let us read 1 Samuel 18:19.
But it came to pass at the time when Merab Saul’s daughter
should have been given to David,
that she was given unto Adriel the Meholathite to wife.
The deal is off. What would that do to an ordinary person, to be promised a wife and then have her given to someone else? But David is not even swayed by that. No codependency here. Whatever Saul does, David is going to walk with the Lord.
So Saul goes to Plan B. He always has that in mind. Look at 1 Samuel 18:20.
And Michal Saul’s daughter loved David:
and they told Saul, and the thing pleased him.And Saul said, I will give him her,
that she may be a snare to him,
and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.
Wherefore Saul said to David,
Thou shalt this day be my son in law in the one of the twain.And Saul commanded his servants, saying,
Communicate with David secretly, and say,
Behold, the king hath delight in thee,
and all his servants love thee:
now therefore be the king’s son in law.
What a hypocrite, huh? Saul says, “The king has delight in you, and all his servants love you. Now therefore, become the king’s son-in-law.”
And David said,
Seemeth it to you a light thing to be a king’s son in law,
seeing that I am a poor man, and lightly esteemed?
And Saul said,
Thus shall ye say to David,
The king desireth not any dowry,
but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines,
to be avenged of the king’s enemies.
But Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines.
And David arose and went, he and his men,
and slew of the Philistines two hundred men;
and David brought their foreskins,
and they gave them in full tale to the king,
that he might be the king’s son in law.
And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.
Well, Saul wanted—I am sorry we ought to talk about these things, but here they are in the Scriptures. What was the king trying to do? I think he was trying to make David unclean, so the Lord would not be with him.
I do not have any substantiation for that, but remember: the study of man is man.
Saul was not a very good actor, and he realizes this. So he distances himself from David, and he speaks to him through his intermediaries—his servants.
He finds the ingredient that was missing in the first proposal: emotion, deep emotion. He finds that in his daughter Michal.
He has a daughter who loves David, and he can use her emotions to his advantage. So he makes the offer under the guise of his own feigned emotion.
Saul commanded his servants, saying,
Communicate with David secretly, and say,
Behold, the king hath delight in thee,
and all his servants love thee:
now therefore be the king’s son in law.
Now, do not mistake what Saul was doing here. He was feigning emotions that he really did not have.
You know what happens to people who feign emotion to get what they want? Something happens in their lives. They die inside. Real emotions cannot come out.
When you pretend to have an emotion so that you can control others, you just cannot feel anymore. You wonder how other people can have such a live response to so many things.
I know people, sorry to say, who have pretended so long to have emotions that they are just acting all the time. What a strain.
They just do not feel anymore because they have become incapable of feeling, and it is a dangerous thing.
So David responds in true humility. Let us read 1 Samuel 18:23.
Seemeth it to you a light thing to be a king’s son in law,
seeing that I am a poor man, and lightly esteemed?
Well, you know, there may be a little bit of untruth and hypocrisy in this statement. Was David really poor and lightly esteemed in Israel? No. He was highly esteemed.
So Saul says, “It is all right. Just go take vengeance on my enemies.” He is going to get David in trouble, but God is with him.
You are going to say, “What in the world is happening?” Well, I guess I have already talked about it. Saul wanted to make David unclean so the Lord would desert him.
No matter; it pleased David. So he went and got twice the price. The first hundred was for Merab, and the second hundred was David saying, really, “I am not going to allow myself to be manipulated—not on your terms.”
Do not leave love out of this equation. David was saying, “I am going to love this woman.” So Saul reluctantly gives a promised gift.
You know, if you are in, or have been in, the educational world, you meet more of this kind of thing than you would suspect.
I was once head of a math department in a high school. Every spring, I had to write out schedules for a dozen or more math teachers. I would not follow protocol.
Protocol said that the new teachers should be given all the, shall I say, dumbbell classes, and the teachers with more seniority should be given the better classes. I would not do that.
I gave each teacher some good classes and some more difficult classes. And you know what happened during the summer? I had one teacher who would go to the principal and have him change things back to fit the protocol.
I would come back in the fall, and here were these teachers to whom I had already given a schedule saying, “What happened to the schedule you gave me? Were you telling the truth when you said I could have a trigonometry class and an accelerated geometry class? Here I have three or four dumbbell classes.”
Now I am going to give you the kicker: the teacher who did this was a Christian. The principal was a Christian. I know because he would come and sit in the little Bible study I held during the lunch hour.
What is the point of that? I will tell you, brothers and sisters: your biggest test to walk with the Lord and show that He is with you is going to come from Christians.
A Christian principal and a Christian teacher gave me more problems than all the unbelieving teachers I had to deal with.
The teachers who were defrauded of the good classes I gave them would say, “Why do not you go to the teachers’ union?” You know, if I came to the teachers’ union building, I would walk clear around it.
The teachers’ union is one of the dastardly effects in our educational system.
But the point is, it is Christians who will give you more pause, more problems. You have to learn. I would tell the teachers, “I am praying about it, and it will be straightened out sooner or later.”
Well, it took a couple of years to get straightened out. But, for some happy reason, I did not go to the teachers’ union. I did not make a tempest in a teapot to get things straightened out. I waited on the Lord, and He straightened it out. Sometime I can tell you how He did it.
So David gives Saul twice as much, and David got so many gifts.
Jonathan gave David love. The women gave David praise. Saul gave David his daughter, however reluctantly. And the Lord gave David great victory over the Philistines.
Now, I wish there was some way we could see that these are not just Bible stories. They are real events that happened in real life, on God’s real earth, to real people.
They were people who proved the faithfulness and the power of God.
So, in 1 Samuel 18:29:
And Saul was yet the more afraid of David;
and Saul became David’s enemy continually.Then the princes of the Philistines went forth:
and it came to pass, after they went forth,
that David behaved himself more wisely
than all the servants of Saul;
so that his name was much set by.
How did he do that? Because the Lord was with him.
Now let me reinforce what this is all about. Here is a man God has anointed to come to the throne of Israel. You and I are people God has anointed to come to the throne of the universe.
He is going to take us through many experiences we would not want to go through. If we are wise, we will cooperate with Him and let Him do that. Learn our lessons.
The biggest lesson we have to learn is one of humility.
You know, we want to give God a tip. Every time He does something for us, give Him a tip. He wants our all.
That is it. Thank you.