1 Samuel 27
Bible Passage: 1 Samuel 27
David in this chapter really puzzles me.. Only just in the previous chapter, David appeared full of faith. He was given the second opportunity to kill Saul, but because of his fear in God, he chose not to. He already had the upper hand… It was already 2-0.. yet in today’s chapter, right from verse 1, we see how weak his faith was.
“And David said in his heart, “Now I shall perish someday by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape to the land of the Philistines; and Saul will despair of me, to seek me anymore in any part of Israel. So I shall escape out of his hand.” (1 Samuel 27:1)
When we seek our own ways to resolve problems, and forget about God, we rarely go the right (or righteous) way.
Actually I cannot believe that David went to seek refuge at the enemies’ place (By the way, the Achish in this chapter is not the same as the one who saw the “mad” David in chapter 21). Moreover, the period of stay there was one of deceit and darkness. He not only sought help from the enemies of Israel, he disregarded God (no mention of God at all!), and he lied in order to gain the trust of Achish. We probably also find the manner that he attacked and raided the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites questionable, for he killed all so that no one would be alive “to bring news to Gath” and to inform on him (1 Samuel 27:11).
Such a period of darkness! Almost feel like the presence of God has left David! In fact.. it almost feel like hell. (Isn’t the scary thing about hell precisely because the glory of God and His presence is no longer with us (2 Thess 1:9)?
There is much for us to ponder about from today’s chapter. Are there times in our life of faith when we have behaved as David did here? Times when we took things into our own hands and followed our own will, perhaps because of fear? Or times when we lied and did things to cover up our lies, in order to gain the trust of someone whose favour we think we must seek?
Although we often have our times of weakness, we see that God remains a faithful God. We may be faithless, but He is faithful. We saw that when David returned to God and sought His help, He is ever ready to deliver His people out of troubles (1 Samuel 30).
In fact, God waits for our returning. When we have strayed, He desires for us to turn back to Him, and He is ever ready to be our Helper.
‘but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’ (Nehemiah 1:9)
Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
Let him return to the LORD,
And He will have mercy on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:7)
Therefore, in period of danger or distress, we ought to draw even nearer to Him. Otherwise, like David here, we might find ourselves drifting further and further away from God and into darkness.
During moments when we feel far from God, we need only say a simple prayer, “Lord, draw me closer and draw near to me.”
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. (James 4:8a)
4 Comments
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How do we know that the Achish here is different from the one in Chapter 21?
PS
Yes, how do we know that they are 2 “Achishes”?
Just some childish thoughts:
i think David’s faith of “As the LORD lives, the LORD shall strike him, or his day shall come to die, or he shall go out to battle and perish. The LORD forbid that I should stretch out my hand against the LORD’s anointed…” (1 Sam 26:10) did not waver.
David was buying time to wait for the word of God to come to pass.
What amazed me was King Achish’s acceptance of David and his words. As a king, Achish’s generous gift of Ziklag to David (1 Sam 27:6) and his readiness to accept David’s words (1 Sam 27:10,12) was a surprise.
! Sam 27:8 And David and his men went up and raided the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites. For these nations were the inhabitants of the land from of old, as you go to Shur, even as far as the land of Egypt.
This verse is interesting when i read it carefully.
Amalekites sounded familiar. Were Geshurites and Girzites Canaanites or Israelites? not sure. But here the bible is exceptionally clear. They were “inhabitants of the land from of old”, thus they were definitely not “Israelites”.
Also, the phrase “as you go to Shur, even as far as the land of Egypt” sounds a bit out of place too. Sound like God was talking to David, telling him where he could get subsistence for his families and men and gits to appease King Achish.
treasureinearthernvessel
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
After writing this post, I came to an awareness of a dear sister who seemed to be drifting further away from church and God. She confessed of her hard-heartedness and I believe that she is praying for a change of heart.
While I was praying for God to help her change her heart of stone to a new heart of flesh, I suddenly feel that it is not enough simply praying for God to manifest His power in this way.
He absolutely and most certainly can do it – changing our hearts of stone to hearts of flesh – if He is willing.
But what good will it do us if He simply does that? What lessons would we learn?
And then, these words came to me, “Return to Me, and then I will give you a change of heart.”
We have to make the first step towards God first.
Eagerly, I searched the Bible and the closest equivalent I found is this:
“When they arrive there, they will remove all its detestable things and all its abominations from it. And I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove their heart of stone from their bodies and give them a heart of flesh, so they may follow My statutes, keep My ordinances, and practice them. Then they will be My people, and I will be their God. (Ezekiel 11:18-20)
Israel had to first remove all the detestable things and all the abominations before God would give them a new heart and a new spirit. Similarly, we have to first take that step to remove whatever lies in our path, preventing us to reach God.
It may be directing your footsteps towards church on days when you just don’t feel like coming church.
It may be refusing to let your mind dwell on things that you should not be thinking about.
It may be choosing to say a prayer when you feel too tired to even drag yourself out of bed.
And the amazing thing is, once we make that first step (no matter how small it may be), God does the rest.
Notice how “draw near to God” comes first before “and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8)?
Once we make that first step towards God (not only pleading for a change of heart in our prayers, but really showing that we want to return back to God in whatever small actions we might do), God will not resist to draw nearer to us.
We will then find ourselves in God’s arms again in no time.
Hope this would encourage that sister (and whoever is finding himself/herself drifting further away from the presence of God) and spur us all together on this journey to heaven. 🙂
InHisTime
Dear Treasureinearthenvessel, when i read your comment the first hymn that came to mind was Hymn 346- “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is calling”
Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading….
Why should we linger and heed not his mercies…
Actually the answer is very simple..simply return to God and everything falls nicely into place. But we like to complicate and take matters into our own hands. To quote from a brother, we must always learn to rein our emotions in and not let them rule our heads and hearts.
I also pray that this sister is willing to stick her foot out and take the take the first step to seek God.
In any case, I am sure she is very grateful and happy to know that she has friends who care 🙂