The Meaning Of Life

https://biblehub.com/nkjv/1_samuel/18.htm

So David killed the giant and beheaded him, which put great fear into the Philistines, likely not so much of what David did, but rather that it was obvious that David’s God, was much greater than theirs.

And David was immediately the hero! And he immediately bonded with Saul’s son, Jonathon. If you remember a chapter or two back where Jonathon and his armor bearer slipped away without telling anyone and had a side squirmish with some Philistines? Perhaps David was after Jonathon’s own heart. Perhaps Jonathon had the faith of God like David did, and was more willing to enter into battle than his father Saul. In fact, people were very obedient and respectful of the king in those days, and if the king gave the instruction to sit back, you sat back. Jonathon had a little more freedom to do as he wished being the king’s son, and even David himself likely would not have confronted Goliath, but he perceived Goliath’s taunts to be more against God Himself than it was against the army of Israel, and it ruffled David’s feathers; no one was going to insult his God! Can you imagine today if Christians defended God so vehemently as David did? But instead they dance around the truth or sugarcoat the truth because they don’t want to offend anyone. What was it Jesus said, “You’re either with Me or you’re against Me?” (We’ll read that much later).

So even Saul loved David, and wouldn’t let him go home, but instead brought him home to Saul’s house. And that’s when it happened.

A friend and I recently had a conversation about a woman’s role in life, and she had read somewhere that the woman helped balanced the actions of the man, but there were times when the woman, and she admittedly agreed with this, there were times the woman “messed things up” with their mouth. For example, Eve was the one that ate the forbidden fruit, Sarah urged Abraham to have a child with Hagar, Rachel helped Jacob get the blessing intended for Esau, etc., and that in most cases, the woman was helping to fulfill God’s Will (it was God’s Will that Jacob inherit the promised land over Esau). And I believe the conversation started about some of the teachings of Paul and how he taught about the woman’s role in the church.

Anyway, everything was going good and happy, until the women opened their mouths and when the army returned to town, the women were singing praises to David and given him higher respect than they did Saul. And this angered Saul. And all joking aside, it wasn’t the women who created the problem, it was Saul’s mental illness, his insecurities, his jealousies, and now his defensiveness against whomever the new king was that Samuel had told him was coming. And Saul’s love for David quickly went away.

And again, there is no mention in scripture of Saul praying to God about his fears and concerns.

And Saul’s mental instability continued to spiral downward, and once when he was full of a “distressing spirit”, they called David to play the harp for him. And Saul was so distressed with David that he tried to kill him, and he threw his spear at him. But David quickly dodged the spear and escaped. And now sets the stage for the next several chapters.

Saul, being mentally ill, goes through periods where he loves David and regrets trying to kill him, only to succumb to his insecurities once again and desire to kill David. And David, being faithful as he is, respects the king but is also protected by God, so God helps him escape Saul’s attacks.

Saul even gave his daughter Michal to David as a wife, not as a gift, but rather as a snare, telling David to fight Saul’s battles in return, secretly hoping he would die at the hands of the Philistines. But God was with David, and he became more and more loved by the children of Israel, and Saul became more and more afraid of David as his mental illness continued to worsen.

And all of this transpired, from Saul’s unauthorized sacrifice, to Saul taking matters in his own hand when he decided not to wipe out the Amalekites as instructed by God through Samuel, to his fear of the Philistines and reluctance to go into battle, to the peoples love for David more than their love for Saul, all because Saul had turned away from God. He ignored God’s laws and instructions, he failed to turn to God when faced with trouble, and he failed to ask God for guidance in his actions.

And we are in the same situation today. The more we ignore God, the more we try to solve problems on our own, the more we fail to follow God’s laws, the deeper we will sink into despair, into troubles and bad luck. And make no mistake, it is not a punishment from God for our failures to respect him, it wasn’t God who brought troubles to Saul. It was Satan. As we all distance ourselves from God, we distance ourselves from his love and protection, and we make ourselves more vulnerable to the temptations of Satan. And Satan wants us to make bad choices, just as he made Saul make bad choices which ultimately led to his demise.

All of us have our own different difficulties and challenges. My family is all distant. Because of the privileges God has given me (of caring for special needs adults in my own home), my life is fairly restricted without many friends. My car is 12 years old and my trust in it starting every time I go out is waning. This year when my HVAC company came to do the winter preventive maintenance check, they found a broken part on my furnace, an almost $600 part that required maintenance. I’m aging, my house is aging, my car is aging, but there is one think I can count on. One thing that I know will never fail me, and that is God. God is ever faithful to me, and all I have to do is to turn to him in my time of trouble, and He will be with me.

Now God is not my “sugar-daddy”, I can’t pray to Him for money and it will begin to rain quarters, but God has put me on this earth to fulfill a purpose, whether I know what that purpose is or not, and whenever I run into problems fulfilling that purpose, I know He will help me without fail.

Like Saul, Samuel told him face to face, God has chosen you to be King of Israel. If a prophet told me that, that God had enough faith in little old me (okay, I’m not so little), but if a prophet told me, the least I am in my country and in society, that I was going to be King of Israel, I would have taken that as a Divine Assignment, and I would have stayed as close to God as possible. But Saul failed to do that, and as such, he failed at his task because he trusted himself more than he trusted God.

Don’t be a Saul. Stay close to God in all that you do. That, is a big part of the meaning of life.