1 SAMUEL 19
Read 1 Samuel 19
Saul is by now obsessed with getting rid of David. He does not think rationally and tries to get everybody involved in his plot to kill David. He tried to get his son, Jonathan, on his side but Jonathan was very fond of David and had made a covenant (a sort of formal bond of commitment and friendship) with him (18:3) and tipped off David that he should be on his guard. Saul tried to get his daughter, Michal (now David’s wife) to give him up, but she too warned David to ‘run for your life’ (v11). Saul was becoming isolated. His son and daughter had closer bonds with David than with their father and would not co-operate with Saul’s seemingly irrational behaviour.
Jonathan did manage to persuade his father to take David back into his household after David again proved himself loyal to Saul in battle against the Philistines. But Saul, prompted by the Lord sending an evil spirit against him again turned against David (v9). The evil spirit is a reminder to us that Saul is under the Lord’s judgement. He had disobeyed the Lord’s instructions on several occasions and was now intent on pursuing the Lord’s anointed choice as king.
We see that the Lord protected his servant David in many ways. Saul tried to skewer David to a wall with a spear, but the Lord enabled David to elude him. Then the Lord used David’s wife, Michal, to deceive Saul’s soldiers and buy David time to escape. And finally, David took refuge with Samuel, still seen as the ‘grandfather’ of the nation, as it were, and the one to whom even the king deferred. And when Saul sent men to capture David while he was with Samuel, the men were overcome with the Spirit of God and started prophesying, that is receiving and speaking the word of the Lord. And when led by the Lord, they were unable to carry out the instruction to arrest David. Even, Saul, frustrated that no-one would carry out his orders, went in person and he too came under the influence of the Lord and was unable to carry out his own wishes, but rather had to defer to the Lord’s will.
We see here that the Lord gave his protection to David, his chosen and anointed one. And he did so, partly through human agents in Jonathan and Michal who acted to save him from Saul’s plans to kill him. But the Lord also acted supernaturally in disabling Saul’s troops from carrying out their orders and finally by disabling Saul himself from doing his own will and subjecting him to the Lord’s will.
There is a reminder to us here that the Lord works in various ways. We may be waiting for a supernatural word from the Lord when actually he has been speaking to us all along through the voices of other Christians. Alternatively, we mustn’t rule out the supernatural voice of God, even of that doesn’t come naturally to our way of thinking.