1 Samuel 22:6-16

Resistance to God's purposes.

The facts are—

1 . Saul, hearing at Gibeah of David's movements, makes an appeal to his Benjamite attendants.

2 . He insinuates the existence of secret designs against himself, connivance at David's supposed purpose, and lack of pity for his condition.

3 . Thereupon Doeg the Edomite relates what he saw at Nob, and makes the statement that the high priest inquired of the Lord for David.

4 . Saul sends for Ahimelech and charges him with conspiracy.

5 . Notwithstanding the high priest's denial of the charge, and his conviction of David's innocence, Saul condemns him and his house to death. The conduct of Saul is increasingly devoid of reason, and this gradual failure of intelligence has its root in moral decay. The key to his infatuation is to be found in the obstinate impenitence of his heart in relation to the sins of his probationary career, and the consequent fight of his entire nature against the settled purposes of God ( 1 Samuel 11:1-15 :24, 25; 1 Samuel 12:24 , 1 Samuel 12:25 ; 1 Samuel 13:11-14 ; 1 Samuel 15:26-29 ). The events recorded in the section before us reveal a more fatal advance in this course of mental and moral degeneration.

I. RESISTANCE TO GOD 'S PURPOSES FORCES ON INCREASED DANGERS . Had Saul with penitent spirit bowed to the will of God, as expressed in 1 Samuel 15:26-29 , and at once retired into private life, the rest of his days might have been at least devout and quiet. But, persisting in rebellion, he soon saw in the innocent son of Jesse a personal enemy. And the resistance to God's purposes which induced personal envy and ill will prompted also to open deeds of violence, and these deeds, designed by the perverted judgment to negative the Divine decree ( 1 Samuel 15:26-29 ), had the triple effect of cementing the bond between David and Jonathan, of developing the sympathy of the prophets and of all just men with the persecuted one, and of making David the leader of a band of 400 men. Thus the very devices of a guilty, hardened heart to prevent the fulfilment of the purposes of God were conducive to a reverse issue. Saul's dangers multiplied just as he sought their removal. The only safe course for guilty men, guilty Churches and nations, is to bow at once before God, and place themselves unreservedly at his mercy. The laws of providence are in incessant movement toward the realisation of God's purpose against sin. Every effort to set them aside, or to avoid their inevitable issue, only tends to multiply the agencies by which they at last shall be vindicated. The man who, having committed secret sin, seeks, in the exercise of an impenitent spirit, to cover it up, or brave it out, creates by every thought of his mind a new cord by which he is bound fast to his fate. Nations that seek to ward off the judgments due to past sins by guilty acts for strengthening their position in the world, rather than by sincere repentance and newness of life, are only heaping up wrath for the day of wrath. Penitence, submission, righteousness, these are the "way everlasting." Practical godliness is the soundest philosophy for individuals and communities.

II. IT INDUCES A STATE OF MIND WHICH CREATES GREAT FEARS OUT OF SLIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES . Three circumstances were the occasion of much fear to Saul—the existence of David, his friendship with Jonathan, and his holding a cave with 400 men. External events are to us what the medium through which we view them makes them appear to be, and this medium is often the creation of our moral nature. With all his daring resistance to the purposes of God, Saul could not lose the consciousness that he was a guilty man, that the judgment pronounced was just, and that, in spite of all wishes, hopes, and efforts to the contrary, the dreaded doom would come. In such a state of mind he saw messengers of justice and supplanters of his position where others saw only blessings to Israel. A prudent act for purposes of self-defence against cruel persecution became to him a formidable attack on his throne. The secrets of a holy friendship were the plottings of unfaithful men, and the want of sympathy on the part of upright men with his malicious designs against an honourable man and public benefactor, he construed into conspiracy against himself. This tendency of the mind to clothe all things with its own moral coloring is universal. As the holy and the wise see occasions for joy and confidence in everything except the sins of men and their natural effects, so the guilty and foolish see occasions for trouble and fear in what to others is the expression of goodness and of righteousness. It is a slight circumstance for a policeman to walk the street, but there are men who quail at the sight. The bare mention of a name or incidental reference to a transaction will cause agitation in the minds of evil doers. The appearance among men of the holy Saviour caused trembling in the heart of the guilty Herod ( Matthew 2:3 ; Matthew 14:1-3 ). A man like Saul carries within him all the elements of a hell. Small things become instruments of self-inflicted torture. In such a moral mood a man becomes an Ishmaelite indeed by reason of the quickness of his fears and the strength of his suspicions. If, beyond this life, this state of mind is intensified in the wicked by the complete dominion of sin and absence of present mitigations, it is not difficult to conceive the imperfection of language to indicate the future of the lost.

III. IT PROMPTS TO NEW EXPEDIENTS FOR RELIEF FROM SELF - CREATED DIFFICULTIES . The circumstances which caused fear to Saul were the product of his transgression; for had he not disobeyed there would have been no need for a David to be brought out from the sheepfold as a conqueror of Goliath and chosen supplanter of his line, and hence no suspicious friendship and no cave of Adullam; but now that the fears bred of these circumstances were heavily upon him, the old resistance to God manifests itself in fresh contrivances to extricate himself from trouble. He addresses the leading men of Benjamin, seeking for loyal support. He works on the feeling of clanship. He appeals to their lust for promotion and wealth. He claims their pity in his sorrows, and suggests that they, as loyal men, should avoid the suspicion of conniving at a conspiracy between his son and the son of Jesse. There is here a strange blending of hardihood and cowardice, defiance of God's will and sense of weakness, distrust of his friends and hope of assistance from them—a fair index of the mental confusion out of which spring all devices for warding off the certain doom which the guilty conscience sees to be approaching. Generally very much energy and skill are spent by men in seeking to avert the necessary consequences of their past lives. No mental operation is more universal than that which associates evil consequences, remote or near, with wrong doing. But a guilty man's repugnance to suffering, combined with a determined spirit of rebellion against the moral order, induces an incessant strain of energy and skill to evade the inevitable. It is possible for men to look on Saul's appeals to Benjamites, and his stratagems for nullifying the words of Samuel ( 1 Samuel 15:28 , 1 Samuel 15:29 ), as vain and foolish as would be an attempt to prevent the action of the law of gravity, while in their own sphere they may be pursuing a similar course. All who live in hopes of a future blessedness while not laying a foundation for it in purity of nature and personal fellowship with Christ are practically like Saul; for no law is more unchangeable than that the pure in heart alone can see God. History relates how men of abandoned lives have, in later years, under a dread of future consequences, become precise in formal acts of worship, and bountiful in use of wealth, without the slightest perception of the need of a radical love of holiness, hoping by such external means to break open the door that bars the entrance into the kingdom of God of whatever defileth. A salvation from uneasiness and pain men are eager for, not a salvation which consists in holiness of nature and joy in God.

IV. IT IS SURE TO FIND SOME ABETTORS OF ITS STRIFE WITH GOD . It is probable that the more sober of the Benjamites had begun to distrust their king, and although they may not have known all his dread secret ( 1 Samuel 15:28 , 1 Samuel 15:29 ), they could not but see that he had lost the moral support of Samuel, and was bent on a reckless course in hunting the life of David. But one man was ready to strengthen his hate and urge him on in the fatal conflict. Doeg the Edomite, a man of low spiritual tastes, an alien to Israel, maliciously added fuel to the raging evils of the unhappy king. There are several suggestive items in this brief account of the dark deed of Doeg.

1 . He was not a true Israelite. By education, habit, and taste he could not have sympathy with the lofty, Messianic aims of o David or a Samuel. He is the type of a formal professor, who bears the name, but has none of the spirit, of the true religion.

2 . He had material interests at stake in the continued reign of Saul ( 1 Samuel 21:7 ; 1 Samuel 22:9 ). The psalm supposed to refer to him represents him as bent on the acquisition of wealth ( Psalms 52:1-9 ). He is the ideal of a man whose main thought is business, and who therefore forms a judgment of religious, social, and political claims according to their presumed bearing on worldly advancement.

3 . He was cruelly cool in his plans and conduct. The simulated tone of ingenuousness in his reference to what he had seen at Nob, his abstention from personal invective, and the matter of fact way in which he welded his lie about the priest inquiring of the Lord for David with the other part of the story, reveal a cruelly cool scheme for destroying one whose pure life and lofty aspirations must have mirrored too painfully his own vileness. The readiness with which he could subsequently shed the blood of God's priests fully bears out all the severe language of Psalms 52:1-9 . He reminds us of the many vile men who, under cloak of attachment to a religion too pure for them, pursue this cruel course, seeking to heap up treasure by any means, and ready by word or deed to blight fair reputations and pander to the passions of the powerful. It only requires a little knowledge of the facts of David's life to enable every just and pure mind to sympathise with his strong denunciation of such men ( Psalms 35:4-9 ; Psalms 52:2-5 ; Psalms 57:4 ; Psalms 58:4-11 ). There are affinities of evil. Sauls yearn for Doegs, and Doegs are ever ready to blend interest with the Sauls. Satan is not the only one lying in wait to destroy the poor and needy. Hand joins hand in wickedness, and base heart encourages base heart in the mad endeavour to destroy a greater than David.

V. IT WILL PROCEED TILL IT SETS AT NOUGHT THE MOST SACRED THINGS . Bad men are often checked in their antagonism to God's purposes by the wholesome influence on their remaining religious instincts of spiritual institutions and characters. The priesthood was revered by Saul at one time. The spiritual power had been prominent in his installation to the kingdom. All the influence of early Hebrew training conspired to make him look up with reverence to the high priest as in some sense the representative of all that is holy and Divine. Common prudence, religious prepossessions, every sentiment of tenderness and awe ought to have discounted the assertion of Doeg in the presence of the high priest's emphatic demal of having inquired of the Lord for David. It was therefore an evidence of the utter suppression of all that hitherto had acted as a beneficial restraint when. in the desperate violence of his strife with God, Saul dared to sentence the innocent high priest to death. He now sank to a deeper deep. The spiritual powers became the object of his deadly hate. The warfare must now be urged against the most sacred things of God. Facilis descensus Averni. Spiritual deterioration is nearly complete when men set themselves in antagonism to the institutions of religion. It argues a terrible power of evil when a soul can accept the suggestions of bad characters and cast aside all the reverence fostered by years of education and discipline. Yet there is a reason in the madness; for, no doubt, as the spiritual in Israel was at this time the most formidable, though not conspicuously active, force against Saul's permanence in the kingdom, so it is the spiritual, as embodied in a pure Christianity, which bars the way most surely to the permanent prosperity of the man who persistently lives in impenitence, and, therefore, from his mistaken point of view, it is essential if possible to doom it to destruction. It is the old tragedy again when men, for love of their own sinful will, trample underfoot the Son of God, and count the "blood of the covenant an unholy thing" ( Hebrews 10:29 ). The bold defiance of religion is too often simply an effort to cast away the cords of a holy restraint ( Psalms 2:3 ).

General lessons : —

1 . It is well to consider the force of habit in its bearing on unwillingness to submit to God's judgments.

2 . Whenever slight circumstances create great fears it should be regarded as instant proof of the existence of a perilous spiritual condition, and a demand for great searching of heart.

3 . Remembering how much all our judgments are coloured by our imperfect moral state, we should pray much that God would open our eyes to see things in his light and lead us in the "way everlasting."

4 . History and personal experience should teach us that the shortest and indeed only way to extricate ourselves from difficulties induced by our sins is to shun every evil way and submit ourselves entirely to God.

5 . Reputations are to be held sacred, and all gain at the cost of others' ruin brings a curse with it.

6 . One of the best safeguards against the dangerous allurements of wealth and the love of worldly power is a lofty spiritual aspiration—sympathy with the Lord's Anointed.

7 . It is in vain to spend arguments on men who in self-abandonment to their sinful will seek to destroy the institutions of religion; for it is not a question of reason, but of perverted, degraded nature.

8 . We should avoid the slightest approach to evil, seeing that when indulged in the impetus downwards is so fearful.