A Little Off the Top

Date: 2021-10-31

Audience: Grass Valley Corps

Title: A Little Something Off the Top

Text: 1 Samuel 18:17-27

Proposition: God protects us even as the world schemes against us

Purpose: Trust in God’s favor, not that of humans

Grace and peace

Horror Stories of the Bible

Saul – King – selected by God but continued to ignore God’s instructions.

Finally: 1 Sam 15:10-11a:

10 Then the Lord said to Samuel, 11 “I am sorry that I ever made Saul king, for he has not been loyal to me and has refused to obey my command.”[1]

Samuel went to try to help out. Saul sees him and says “Hey, I did that thing God told me to!”

Which is crap, because he didn’t. And when Sam presses him, he admits that he was doing what the people asked him to instead of what God asked him to.

At the end of this story, we are told

35 Samuel never went to meet with Saul again, but he mourned constantly for him. And the Lord was sorry he had ever made Saul king of Israel. [2]

Then God sent Samuel to secretly anoint David as the next king, but David’s too young to take over, so he goes back to tending his father’s sheep. I’m not even sure that Samuel explained to David’s family what he was doing – none of them seem to be aware of the importance of his visit. But we are told that the Spirit of God was with David and that it was no longer with Saul.

As a shepherd in Bethlehem, David had plenty of time to practice two things. He practiced his combat skills, learning to hit ridiculously small targets with sling stones from very big distances. Learned to fight equally with either hand – a regional point of pride and something that would serve him well by giving him an edge in combat in later years.

Also time to practice music- got pretty well known for his harp and singing.

Saul’s depression

David called to castle to soothe Saul’s spirit by playing – seems to work. David spends more time at palace.

Then the Goliath thing.

Saul’s son Jonathon loved David – pledged his life and friendship to the young man who was now living at the castle full time.

Saul sent David out with raiding teams. When successful, put him in charge of them. Which seemed like a good idea, but led to people celebrating like this: 1 Samuel 18:7-9

7 This was their song:

“Saul has killed his thousands,

and David his ten thousands!”

8 This made Saul very angry. “What’s this?” he said. “They credit David with ten thousands and me with only thousands. Next they’ll be making him their king!” 9 So from that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David. [3]

Decided to do him in.

First try the next day: Either had or faked a fit. David played. Saul tried to pin him to wall with a spear.

Missed. Twice!

At this point, should remind you what each man knows:

Saul knows Samuel said God had taken the right to rule away and that someone else was now the ruler.

He does NOT know David is that person. He doesn’t know about the anointing. He just knows that his son, who should be the heir, treats David as an equal or better. He knows that his people celebrate David as a greater hero than Saul. And he knows that he just failed to kill the boy.

David knows that God made Saul King of Israel.

He knows Saul is sick and has fits.

Saul may hate David, but David has no idea. David loves Saul and attributes every bad thing to his illness.

David wants to bring honor to his king.

David will do anything for Saul.

14 David continued to succeed in everything he did, for the Lord was with him. 15 When Saul recognized this, he became even more afraid of him. [4]

Saul was afraid of anything to do with God. God had told him that his reign was over. Instead of seeking forgiveness or seeking God at all, Saul simply tried to ignore his decree – tried to make the world do what he wanted instead.

Saw David’s devotion to God. Heard it in his songs. Decided to use it to get rid of the threat David posed.

17 One day Saul said to David, “I am ready to give you my older daughter, Merab, as your wife. But first you must prove yourself to be a real warrior by fighting the Lord’s battles.” For Saul thought, “I’ll send him out against the Philistines and let them kill him rather than doing it myself.”[5]

Marriage was reward for defeating Goliath.

David had proved his worth.

But Saul knew David now. Knew that he was deeply insecure. Just a kid from a poor family! What right did he have to live in the palace? To be favored by the royal family? To marry his insignificant family line into their high-status one?

18 “Who am I, and what is my family in Israel that I should be the king’s son-in-law?” David exclaimed. “My father’s family is nothing!” 19 So when the time came for Saul to give his daughter Merab in marriage to David, he gave her instead to Adriel, a man from Meholah. [6]

Saul kind of traps himself by playing into David’s false narrative that he wasn’t good enough. Tried to use it to encourage David to go pick dangerous fights to become a dead hero. Ended up convincing David that he wasn’t good enough to even try.

But Saul saw another opportunity:

20 In the meantime, Saul’s daughter Michal had fallen in love with David, and Saul was delighted when he heard about it. 21 “Here’s another chance to see him killed by the Philistines!” Saul said to himself. But to David he said, “Today you have a second chance to become my son-in-law!”[7]

Not “Prove yourself,” but “I want you to do this.”

David would do anything for Saul.

Saul asks his men to talk to David – encourage him to marry the princess. Because he knows that David will have a problem.

23 When Saul’s men said these things to David, he replied, “How can a poor man from a humble family afford the bride price for the daughter of a king?”[8]

And when the men reported this back to Saul, he knew he had him.

25 He told them, “Tell David that all I want for the bride price is 100 Philistine foreskins! Vengeance on my enemies is all I really want.” But what Saul had in mind was that David would be killed in the fight. [9]

It was the perfect enticement.

David wants to serve the king.

He wants to serve the country.

He wants to marry Michal.

Saul has given him a path to what he wants.

But it’s a path that walks directly into the valley of death.

Saul figures David is likely to be killed trying to take so many lives.

Saul figures that – even if he lives – David will have killed a hundred men – a hundred innocent men. Perhaps God will abandon him.

And asking for foreskins?

What a gruesome prize! Even in those days of ethnic and tribal warfare, this was a particularly brutal and bloody prize to seek.

Would the women be so quick to sing songs about how wonderful David is when their mental picture of him is one of him bringing a sack of Philistine genitals to count them out before the court?

They didn’t stop at each body and carefully snip a little piece of flesh off with a pair of scissors. Each man he killed, David would have had to strip the body, grab hold of what there is to grab hold of on a man, then slice it off with his knife, ignoring the splatter of blood. It isn’t so easy to cut through a piece of rubbery, stretchy human flesh, either. It may have taken some tries to get the hang of doing it in a single stroke rather than sawing through the skin. And then David would have had to count and recount each grisly trophy into a stained and leaking bag until he had enough.

And the deadline to return this sack to Saul loomed large on the horizon.

But David would do anything for Saul.

26 David was delighted to accept the offer. Before the time limit expired, 27 he and his men went out and killed 200 Philistines. Then David fulfilled the king’s requirement by presenting all their foreskins to him.[10]

In his enthusiasm to help his king, he murdered twice the number of men he had been asked to. And he had lived through the many fights required to get so many!

And he stood before the court, counting penises out of a bag into a pile before the king, with blood dripping from his hands. Yet, somehow, the people didn’t see the picture Saul was trying to make them see. They didn’t see a bloodthirsty boy gleefully handing over his grisly prizes to buy a place of power in the kingdom. Instead, they saw a hero taking his place in the royal family.

Michal didn’t see this, get repulsed, turn away from David, and refuse to marry him. Instead, she saw an act of devotion that made her love him more.

How could this be?

Well, the thing is, it was God.

I’m not saying he approved.

I’m not saying that David should have done what Saul asked.

In fact, I think it may have been exactly the WRONG thing.

When David went to build a Temple for God after he became king, the LORD told him no. He said that David had too much blood on his hands. That was a reference to innocent blood. But when had David shed innocent blood?

Right here, for one. Or should I say, “right here for 200”?

Even if the first 100 might have been forgivable for David because he was following the instructions of Saul, the second hundred were entirely David’s responsibility.

God doesn’t rejoice at the death of his children.

But when we rely on him, he does protect us from the schemes of the world and from our own foolishness and sometimes even from the consequences of the evil we do when we do not stop and think before we act.

Again, I am not saying there is anything right or good about what happens in this story.

What I am saying is that God’s grace is bigger than our mistakes. It can overrule the schemes of the world to derail us. It can forgive the unforgivable.

Grace means we can look at this story and feel sympathy for David as he earnestly tries to do the right thing even as he does something very, very wrong.

We can look at our own stories and recognize that even though we have all done things which we cannot take back, maybe even things we think are too big to forgive, God’s grace is bigger. He forgave David the murder of 200 innocents. He can forgive you.

But wait, because there’s more.

Think about those people who have done you wrong. The ones who hurt you or stole from you or even something worse. Now think, “God’s grace is big enough for that too.”

It doesn’t mean that what they did to you was right.

It means it can be forgiven.

It doesn’t mean there aren’t or shouldn’t be consequences for what happened! Forgiveness isn’t asking the person who molested you as a child to babysit your kids.

It’s more about putting down that thing that caused you pain which is still causing you pain and then not picking it up again.

Grace means providing space to give someone a chance to do better, to be more. They may or they may not, but they may.

What Saul did to David was horrible.

What David did to those Philistines was horrible.

[1] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Sa 15:10–11a). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. [2] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Sa 15:35). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. [3] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Sa 18:7–9). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. [4] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Sa 18:14–15). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. [5] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Sa 18:17). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. [6] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Sa 18:18–19). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. [7] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Sa 18:20–21). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. [8] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Sa 18:23). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. [9] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Sa 18:25). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. [10] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (1 Sa 18:26–27). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.