Mental
Attitude Sins Vs. Wisdom
1 Samuel 18:17–30
Open your Bibles with me to 1 Samuel 18. I have
entitled this lesson Mental Attitude Sins vs. Wisdom. The contrast that we see between
Saul and David through this section in 1 Samuel highlights the difference
between Saul, who is living on the basis of his sin nature and consumed by
these mental attitude sins that are having a terrible effect on his
soul—because that is what happens. Whether it is overt sins, sins of the
tongue, or mental attitude sins, they war against the soul.
We have studied this in our study
on Thursday nights in 1 Peter 2:11. Peter says that we are to “abstain from
fleshly lust, which war against the soul.” They are self-destructive. We see a
great illustration of this in what happens to Saul. This also comes under the
category of a form of demon influence, because demon influence is the thinking
of the devil as it goes through the intermediate means of various philosophies,
theologies, and worldviews. That is the one hand.
We see the consequences of mental
attitude sins of anger, hatred, and fear on the part of Saul versus David’s
wisdom. David gets his wisdom from the Word of God. We see it played out in the
difference in how he handles this situation. One of the things that we should
think about as an application structure, for this is that what David is facing;
a form of testing that we refer to as people testing.
I know everybody here is
surrounded by people who do not have sin natures; they are wonderful, kind, and
loving! But we have a real problem often with other people, who let their sin
nature run away with them. They are jealous of us. They are hostile. They are
cantankerous and grumpy because that is the nature of their sin nature.
Sometimes they live with us. Sometimes they live next door to us. Sometimes
they work for us. Sometimes we work for them. Sometimes we work with them. It
is this area of people testing.
How do you handle people testing
without letting somebody else’s sin nature start controlling your sin nature?
We see a great example of that even in what I was talking about in the
election. That if you have people who steal an election, how does that affect
your mental attitude? How does that affect your ability to face life and
surmount the testing, whatever it may be? Because as Christians we are not to
let our reactions be informed by the sin nature. We have to learn to walk in
terms of grace, humility, and trust the Lord, rather than whatever ideas we
have to try to handle it in our own strength and in the flesh.
We see a basic outline through
this section:
Without David having to do
anything God works out a scenario with Saul where the Spirit of God has left
him. God, in His permissive will, allowed an evil spirit to test Saul. In order
to relieve him of that demonic oppression, Saul’s own people call on David.
They say, “Hey, we know this shepherd who can play the harp. He can come in and
relieve the problem. God promotes David. He is invited to the court.
In this section, which covers 1
Samuel 17:55–20:42, God is protecting David from Saul. This is a very
interesting passage and a very interesting section. We really see a development
of Saul as a poster child for carnality, the poster child of mental attitude
sins, the poster child of what happens when you go into complete rebellion
against God.
The first focal point in the first
section is: Whose son are you? 1 Samuel 17:44–8:4.
Saul wants to reward David. He is
basically saying: What is your family background? Who are they? I need to
identify them so that I can fulfill my reward to them, take them off the tax
roll, as well as the fact that he had promised that whoever defeated Goliath
would marry his oldest daughter. That comes in to play where we are going to
study this evening.
In 1 Samuel 18:1–4 we see how
Saul’s family is beginning to shift their loyalty to David.
1 Samuel 18:5
As a result of that, David’s
popularity will increase with the people. He becomes more and more popular with
the people. They are singing their song that Saul has slain his thousands, but
David his ten thousands. Of course, that is a comparison that is not favorable
for Saul. It is saying that David is ten times the warrior that Saul is. Of
course, Saul is going to react in jealousy. He is going to react in envy, and
as a result of that he is going to again want to take it out on David.
In 1 Samuel 18:10 we are told that
God protects David, even though Saul is trying to hill him. We talked about
this last time, that Saul had tried to kill David. Twice he had attempted to
spear David, but God protected him.
In 1 Samuel 18:11, when David came
to play music for him, Saul tries to pin David to the wall with his spear.
Twice we are told that David escapes. Those are the first two attempts on
David’s life.
In 1 Samuel 18:12–13 we are told
that God is with David. The source of David’s power is God’s blessing upon Him.
God’s blessing upon David is David has walked with the Lord. God’s bottom line
on David is He is going to say David is a man after My Own heart. That does not
mean that David was perfect. As we get into subsequent chapters we are going to
see David, who is far from perfect.
That always gives me great hope,
because David is a great example of how everyone is still a sinner, even though
saved. We can fail just as miserably as David did. God recognized that even
tough David failed miserably, that David’s ultimate desire, what truly
motivated him, was to serve the Lord.
It also lets us know that people
can truly want to serve the Lord and struggle with their own sin nature, even
though their primary focus in their life is to serve the Lord and to do what
the Lord wants them to do, they can fail miserably. That does not mean that
they are necessarily a spiritual loser or a failure, because we can all find
times when we give into our own sin nature. We fail at times.
We learn that God is with David,
and because of David’s time in the Word he has developed wisdom.
Again, in 1 Samuel 18:14 it is
repeated that “David
behaved wisely in all his ways, and the Lord was with him.” The Word of God
gave him the discernment that he needed to face the issues and the challenges
that were in front of him.
The other thing that we see here
is: The Cycle of Sin. I talked about this last time: that we can observe this
with Saul. I want to go over this again. This is a template that you can think
through in terms of your own life when you get angry, when you worry, when you
are afraid, when you have other mental attitude sins, whether it is jealousy,
envy, hatred, anger, whatever it may be. You can go back and see how it fits
into some of the things that we are talking about here to see what is going on
in your own soul and your own thinking.
We learned, for example, back in
the New Testament, Galatians 5:16–18, that we are either controlled by the sin
nature, or we are influenced or walking by the Holy Spirit. It is one or the
other. It is not a little bit of one and of another. That is really popular
today among a lot of pastors. It is “Well, you have mixed motives in whatever
you do.”
Scripture says that a little bit
of leaven leavens the whole lump. If you have a little bit of sin it messes up
the whole thing. You are either walking by the Spirit or you are walking by the
sin nature, one or the other. When we stop walking by the Spirit we default to
sin nature control. That always leads to the production of either personal sin
or human good. A lot of folks do not realize that the sin nature produces
morality. The sin nature can produce a lot of self-righteousness.
That is exactly what we see
depicted in the Pharisees during the confrontations with Jesus. They are very
religious. They are very moral. They have a façade of doing the right thing.
They deceive a lot of people. That is always true of certain kinds of leaders.
They say the right thing. They have a façade of doing the right thing, but the
reality is that they are corrupt on the inside. They are doing something else.
We can produce morality, which is
a cover-up, or we can produce personal sins. Sometimes you produce both because
we are complicated as people. Sometimes we can go back and forth from one hour
where we are very moral, and the next hour we are not. Then we switch back.
That is all part of the sin nature and sin nature control.
1.
The
result is the longer we are involved in sin nature control it produces
spiritual dullness.
2.
We are less and less perspicacious
about issues in life and their spiritual implications. We get involved in the
arrogance skills of self-absorption, which lead to self-indulgence, which lead
to self-justification. Self-justification leads to self-deception. We convince
ourselves of our own rectitude when we are just as wrong as we can be. Then we
are believing the lie. We are setting up our own standards for our life rather
than God’s. That is self-deification.
3.
As we
continue to walk according to the sin nature the ability to trust God becomes
more and more difficult. It begins to shut down. We do not think of the faith
option very much. Our own sin, our own emotions, and our own mental attitude
sins consume us. We begin to forget the doctrine that we have learned. We begin
to focus on wrong issues and wrong priorities.
The result: We suck in more and
more false ideas.
By the way, one of the greatest
heretics of the 20th century died this last Saturday. One of the
great heretics and false prophets who has been responsible for leading millions
and millions of Christians around the world, maybe even billions. His name is
Peter Wagner. He was the head of Missions Department at Fuller Seminary back in
the 1960s and 1970s. He gave birth to what was known as the Vineyard Movement,
along with John Wimber, in the 1970s and 1980s.
Peter Wagner was virtually the
grandfather of the whole church-growth movement. You think about any of the
mega churches in Houston. They are what they are because of Peter Wagner. They
do not teach what they should teach because of Peter Wagner. The latest round
of heresy that he was involved in was the Apostolic Church Movement. He was
going around with several others who were involved with signs and wonders. They
were identifying the last days’ apostles.
The degree of exposure that this
heresy has brought into many churches is unbelievable. But that is what it is.
It is these people who suck up human viewpoint standards and worldliness and
ideas. They repackage it and sell it to churches and Christians as the great
way to have a big booming church and a godly ministry. They are the devil’s
disciples.
4.
You
have increased arrogance. These arrogance skills increase more and more. The
result is that thinking is dominated by foolishness. People are suppressing the
truth in unrighteousness. It gets to the point where they cannot even discern
truth from error. They lose the ability to understand reality as it is.
The result: Foolish thinking
dominates; the mental attitude sins will increase fear, anger, and hatred
towards Christians and Christianity.
The result of this is these people
continue to go into idolatry, which is submission to false authorities in the
place of God. These can be mental attitude idols: greed, power, and many other
things that come along. They idolize emotion, peer pressure, and want
popularity and power. They idolize material possessions, the signs of wealth
and pleasure, escapism, many false ideologies and religions. These people
basically deify the details of life.
The result: Anger, frustration,
depression, and fear. These lead to self-induced misery and further attempts to
mask the misery through drugs, alcohol, pleasure, various forms of escapism,
which opens the door to more demon influence.
One of the things I recently
learned, knowing that there was a certain level of drug abuse among the leaders
in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and 1940s, but they were doing
methamphetamines. They were doing all kinds of drugs that were supposed to
produce these Arian super warriors. Drugs were very much a part of the Nazi
philosophy.
Drug use is demonism. The word
“sorcery” is used in Galatians 5:20. The Greek word used is PHARMAKIA. From
this word we get our word “pharmacy”. It has to do with the use of drugs in an
illicit way. Drugs are used in order to get in contact with spirits, contact
with the gods to develop one’s own powers and things of that nature. This is
the kind of thing that can happen even to Christians, to believers.
Last time we got to 1 Samuel
18:12. This verse talks about Saul’s fear, anger, and looking at the verse: “Now Saul was
afraid of David.” Fear dominates Saul’s soul. He is afraid for spiritual
reasons, because the Lord is with David. Somehow, someway, in Saul’s perception
he understands that he is at enmity with David because God has rejected him.
God has approved David. That means David is his enemy, because God blesses him.
That is something that unbelievers
intuitively understand. This is why I think that many progressives and many
liberals who support the influx of Islam into Europe, as well as here in the
United States. They do not grasp the reality that the first thing that will
happen when the Moslems get in control is slaughter. They will slaughter the
homosexuals. They will slaughter the liberal elites. They will slaughter all of
those who have influence, the ones who bring them in.
This is exactly what happened in
Iran after all of the liberals who were against the Shah of Iran. If you
remember back in the late 1970s that after the Shah was finally deposed and
they brought in the Ayatollah Khomeini, the first thing that the Ayatollah
Khomeini did after he seized power was to kill all the liberals, to killed all
of the intellectuals, and to kill all the homosexuals. There was a massive
cleansing of Iran.
That is what will happen if Islam
gains power in Europe or the United States. That is their goal and objective.
But there is something that the liberals who have rejected God hate more than
anything else. That is anyone who represents the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. If you represent their enemy, God, the enemy of my enemy is their
friend. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” If Islam is the enemy of the God
I am the enemy of then it must be my friend. The liberals are totally blind to
what is actually going on.
One of the things I wanted to develop
more this evening is the dynamics of our most destructive sins, the dynamics of
fear, love, anger, and hatred. We are going to see how this works in Saul. Saul
is a test case for us to see what happens when we give ourselves over to these
mental attitude sins. Some of this I covered last time. I have expanded and
developed it more and reorganized it.
1.
Fear
is the core orientation of the sin nature. When Adam sinned, he and Eve were
afraid.
When God walked in the Garden, the
presence of God came into the Garden, their response was to go and hide because
they were afraid. Fear is their motive. They do not want to be exposed as
sinners. When God spoke to them and said, “Where are you? Why are you hiding?”
Adam responded:
Genesis 3:10, “So he said, ‘I heard Your
voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked (exposed as a
disobedient sinner); and I hid myself.’ ”
Their orientation is to hide. If
the basic drive of the lust pattern at the core of our sin nature is
self-absorption, and we are naked emotionally and psychologically because we do
not have a relationship with God, and we are spiritually dead, then we try to
cover up like Adam and Eve did with fig leaves.
It was non-effective. God had to
provide an effective covering. We are in this state of fear from the moment we
are born. That is the thrust of your sin nature. We are afraid. We are
insecure. We are uncertain. What is the antidote biblically to that fear,
uncertainty, insecurity, and dread that is at the core of our existence?
I can go through numerous biblical
examples of this. Turn to Psalm 56. This is one of my favorite Psalms. I am
amazed at how much is here. I am grateful for the fact that this was one of the
exegetical papers I had to write when I was in my second year of Hebrew. It is
rich with significance. We are not going to drill down in it too much. I am
going to look at exemplar passages of the fact that:
2. The antidote to fear in the
Scripture is always trust in God.
Not “Faith in faith”, not “Just
believe,” but “Trusting in the promises and the Person of God”.
Each of the psalms that we are
going to look at this evening is a psalm that was written by David in the midst
of a specific test situation where he is facing a people test. These come later
on in his life. Psalm 56 we will study in detail when we get to the section in
1 Samuel when David is hiding in Gath and the Philistines capture him.
“To the Chief Musician. Set to (gives us
the music it would have been set to) “The Silent Dove in Distant Lands.” A Michtam (a
form of a psalm)
of David when the Philistines captured him in Gath.”
David writes this psalm. His
enemies have captured him. They have surrounded him. This is Gath. Who is from
Gath? Goliath is from Gath. He is captured by the Philistines in Gath! David is
the one who has killed the hometown hero. He is captured by them and fears the
worst. He begins:
Psalm 56:12, “Be merciful to
me, O God, for man would swallow me up …” David is going to be destroyed by these
Philistines. “Fighting
all day he oppresses me …” Everything is a struggle and David is constantly
being assaulted by his enemy the Philistines. He says, “My enemies would hound me all day,
For there are many who fight against me, O Most High.”
We could apply this to the
presidential election, the culture, and shifts that have occurred in America,
the culture war that is going on. It seems as if the battle has been lost. Many
people are discouraged.
These Philistines of Gath surround
David. He is not discouraged because he understands the battle is the Lord’s.
If God is for him, who can be against him? That is what we keep seeing all
through 1 Samuel 18. God is with David. “My enemies would hound me all day,
For there are many who fight against me, O Most High.” Notice how
David uses a title for God that emphasizes the sovereignty of God; that God is
the ultimate sovereign Ruler above all. He is ‘El Elyôn, The God Most High above all
other authorities.
Psalm 56:3, “Whenever I am afraid …” When you wake
up in the middle of the night and you start thinking through all the boogiemen
in your life. This could go wrong and that could go wrong. What about this and
what about that?
“Whenever I am afraid …,” whenever I
worry, whenever I am being overwhelmed by anxiety, what is the solution? Do not
wait until morning to get up and have a cup of coffee and read your Bible.
Immediately confess sin if necessary and think about trusting God. Rehearse
promises. These are some great promises to memorize:
Psalm 56:3, “Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You.”
The Hebrew word here for “trust” is the
word בָּטַח bāṭacḥ, which has the idea of expressing your
confidence, relying exclusively, and leaning completely upon something,
depending completely and totally upon something. David uses this word three
times, Psalm 56:3, 4, 11, in this short psalm of thirteen verses.
In Psalm 56:3 David says, “Whenever”—any
situation, whatever the circumstances—“I am afraid, I will trust in You.”
Then in Psalm 56:4 David puts “In God …” at
the front of the verse to show the object of His trust and the importance of
God. Then David shifts his thought. He has a parenthesis “(I will praise His Word), in God I have put
my trust.” Again, the word bāṭaḥ meaning David puts his confidence in God. “I will not be
afraid.” That is a dogmatic, indicative statement. Because I am focusing on
God I will not be afraid.
This is mental attitude strength.
It is not allowing or minds to go down that road where we think:
Whatever the circumstances may be
the focus is always brought back to God. I have put my trust in Him, therefore “I will not fear
(period).”
“I will not fear. What can flesh do to me?”
What can they do? If I die I am absent from the body, face to face with the Lord.
It may be a few days or weeks or years of misery, but when I get to eternity it
will not matter at all. “What can flesh do to me?”
Then David goes on and talks about
the situation, his call upon God. He rehearses what they are doing:
Psalm 56:5–6, “All day they
twist my words; all their thoughts are against me for evil. They
gather together, they hide, they mark my steps, when they lie in wait for my life.”
It sounds like David is paranoid.
The only problem with being paranoid is if they are really out to get you, and
they were. He calls upon the Lord. Notice Psalm 56:7a, “Shall they escape by iniquity?” Lord,
You are righteous. Are You going to allow them to get away with this? Are You
going to allow them to get away on the basis of their sin? Are You not going to
hold them accountable?
Psalm 56:7b, “In anger cast down the peoples, O God!”
Then David says something
fascinating in Psalm 56:8, “You
number my wanderings …” Wherever I am going You, Lord, are keeping account
of my wanderings. Then David says, “Put my tears into Your bottle …”
What “Put my tears into Your bottle …” refers
to is in the ancient world if someone had died and you were grieving and shed
tears, you would take a little bottle, a tear bottle, and you would collect
your tears of that grief. You would keep that to remember your grief for the
loss of your parents, a child, or a spouse, to remember that. You are paying
attention to the reality of that loss.
What David is saying to the Lord
in his request is pay attention to my suffering. Pay attention to what is going
on in my life. “Put
my tears in your bottle. Are they not in Your book?” You have written them
down. You keep a record of this. I know that you are not oblivious.
Psalm 56:9, “When I cry out to You, then my enemies will
turn back. This I know because God is for me.” God is for him here. In 1
Samuel 18 God is with him. We have seen that three times in the text.
Psalm 56:10–11, “In God (I will
praise His word), in the Lord (I will
praise His Word), in God I have put my trust; (because David has
put his trust he can state dogmatically) I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”
That needs to be a focal point for us: “What can man do to us?”
Flip over a few pages to your
right to Psalm 112. I want to point out a couple of verses, because what we are
learning here is that when we are afraid what do we do? We trust. That is God’s
provision for fear and all of the emotional complex of sins that spin off from
fear.
Psalm 112 is a psalm. It is not a
psalm of David. There is no indication of authorship there. Let me point out a
couple of things as we read through the beginning of the psalm. The author
says:
1 “Praise the Lord!”
The focal point here is praise. It
is a praise psalm.
“Blessed is the
man who fears Yahweh,
Who delights greatly in His commandments.”
The foundation is the character of
God. Who fears the Lord, has knowledge of doctrine, and who greatly delight in
His commandments? What is the result of someone who meditates on God’s Word day
and night?
2 “His descendants will be mighty on earth;
The generation of the upright will be blessed.”
That is why the United States was
so blessed in the 1600s, 1700s, and into the 1800s. It is because of the
foundation that was laid for the Word of God. Those generations were blessed
because of the fact that they were applying the Scripture.
3 “Wealth and riches will be in his
house,
And his righteousness endures forever.”
4 “Unto the upright there arises light in the
darkness;
He is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.”
That is the character of God.
5 “A good man deals graciously and lends;
He will guide his affairs with discretion.
6 “Surely he will never be shaken;”
Notice in verse six that “He will never be
shaken.” Circumstances are not going to rock the person who has his soul
shaped by the Word of God.
“Surely, He will never be shaken.
The righteous will be in everlasting remembrance.
7 “He will not be afraid of evil tidings;”
Getting bad news, you are not going to worry about it
when you are sleeping at night. You sleep soundly, because you will not be
afraid to get up in the morning and watch the news.
“His heart is steadfast, trusting in
the Lord.”
“Trusting” is the word bāṭacḥ again.
It is confidence in the Lord. It is not in politics. It is not in the end
result of the election. Whether it goes your way or not, God is still in
control.
8 “His heart is established;
He will not be afraid,
Until he sees his desire upon his
enemies.”
Why? Because he is “trusting in the
Lord.” That is the contrast that I want you to understand.
Psalm 18
This is also a psalm of David. It
is addressed “To the chief musician. A Psalm of David the servant of
the Lord, who spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the
day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and
from the hand of Saul. And he said …”
This is a praise psalm after David
has learned that Saul has been killed. His time of testing by Saul has ended.
He rejoices not that Saul is dead, but that this test has been brought to an
end, because God has delivered him. David says:
1 “I will love You, O Lord, my strength.”
Notice the language here.
2 “The Lord is my rock and my
fortress and my deliverer;
My God, my strength, in whom I will trust;
My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”
Look at all those metaphors. All
of them speak of strength and power. In verse 2 the word for “trust” is not
bāṭacḥ. In
fact, this word for “trust” is a word חָסָה chāsā[h],
which means a place of refuge, a place where you flee for protection. It is
used metaphorically to refer to trust, especially in poetic literature. What
does David do? He focuses on the power of God and the character of God. That is
the object of David’s trust. Then David says,
3 “I will call upon the Lord, who is
worthy to be praised;
So shall I be saved from my enemies.”
The worry is handled by focusing
on the Person and the character of God, and on the promises of God. David goes
on to say in terms of his circumstances,
4 “The pangs of death surrounded me,”
Many times it looked like Saul
would win.
“And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid.”
The word there is not the normal
word for fear. It is the word בָּעַת bā‘ath, which means to be terrified. We see a
window into David’s soul. David is not some plastered saint who goes through
this and always, “Well, I am trusting the Lord and everything is great!” He is
terrified at times. Absolutely terrified that Saul is going to win. But he always
has to be brought back. He brings himself back by virtue of good strong mental
attitude practices to focus on the character of God.
I want to point out, as we look at
this issue of hatred, fear, and anger is:
3. The opposite of fear in
Scripture is love.
Usually we think of the opposite
of fear as being some kind of being relaxed, not being afraid, being happy, but
in Scripture the contrast to fear is love.
1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love …”
If you are a sinner, unsaved,
spiritually dead, operating on fear as the basic emotional orientation of your
corrupt sin nature, can you really love? Biblically love? Not at all, because
the Scripture says: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear.”
That is the virtue love of God the
Father that only the believer has. It casts out fear. Focusing on the character
and love of God. “But perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears
has not been made perfect in love.”
In other words, the one who fears
is operating on the sin nature because love is the fruit of the Spirit. If you
are walking by the Spirit the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, and
patience. If you are not walking by the Spirit there is no love.
4. Anger comes when we do not get
our way. When something does not go the way we want, then we get mad. When we
get mad, then we are giving ourselves over to anger. Anger can spin off into
resentment. It can spin off into bitterness. It can even spin off into hatred. Hating
the person that is blocking us or preventing us from achieving that which we
want. Anger is very significant as a mental attitude sin.
As soon as we get angry we ought
to stop. We usually do not because we have already gotten ourselves out of
control. As soon as we give ourselves over to anger we ought to stop and say:
What am I not getting here? What is being blocked? What is preventing me from
being relaxed? I am not getting my way. That is the bottom line. We ought to
say is: “Well, what is it that I am trying to get that I am thinking will make
life better for me or work for me” or something like that?
What we see with Saul is that he
wants his kingdom. He wants to be the king. To be victorious and successful as
the king is what is going to make him happy, not his relationship with God. He
wants the kingdom to make him happy. He wants that power and prestige. Saul
absolutely loses control. He is very angry. He focuses that anger and hatred
against David.
5. After time, if we do not get
our way, if we do not get that which we think will make life the most
meaningful and significant for us, then we get depressed. We get discouraged,
and then we get depressed. We think that there is no hope and no happiness. I
cannot get “x” so I am going to be miserable. I am going to go home and eat
dirt. That is how people often are. They throw a pity party.
6. The other thing that comes along is hatred. Hatred comes when we direct our anger toward the person we believe is preventing us from achieving what we think is necessary for life, for real meaningful happiness and joy. It is not that relationship with God. It is people acting a certain way, events coming out a certain way, circumstances turning out a certain way. If we get that, then we can be happy.
We see that fear leads to anger;
anger leads to hatred. It leads to hatred toward God’s representatives. I want
to give you a great example of this in Genesis 37. This is the episode that
talks about Joseph’s coat of many colors. If we look at the beginning of this
chapter we read:
“Now Jacob dwelt in the land where his father
was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. This is the history of
Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with
his brothers. And the lad was with the sons of Balham and the sons of
Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to his
father.”
These sons want daddy’s approval.
They want to do well in the eyes of their father. At the very least they do not
want Jacob getting mad or angry with them. These brothers are 30–40 years old by this time.
Remember, Joseph is 17 years old according to the text. He is the next to the
youngest. The youngest was Benjamin. Joseph is much younger than these other
brothers. They are all the way up into their 30s, and Joseph is going to tattle
on the brothers. He is going to report on them.
“Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his
children, because he was the son of his old age. Also he made him a
tunic of many colors.”
Jacob made him a garment that was
magnificent. It was beautiful. It showed that Joseph was worthy of special
privilege from the father. It makes the other brothers angry. What they want is
their father’s approval. Joseph is preventing that. They are not getting their
way. Joseph is blocking that. The result is that they are going to get angry.
They are going to direct that anger at Joseph. They are going to hate him.
“But when his brothers saw that their father
loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak
peaceably to him.”
This hatred has dominated. Their
whole life is characterized by this hatred.
“Now Joseph had a dream, and he
told it to his brothers; and they hated him even more.”
The brothers hated Joseph so much
that this eventually leads to the brothers’ attempt to murder him, which is
blocked by Reuben, who says to put him in a pit, and later Judah said to sell
him. Reuben and Judah block the brothers’ action, Genesis 37:21–28.
The point I want to show is that
when you are a representative of God, and you are doing God’s business, then
those who are not are going to hate you. They are going to react to you. They
are going to call you names and accuse you of all kinds of things that are
unjustified. You have to handle that without getting angry, without being
resentful, without hating. You have to relax and use the opportunity to
minister for the Lord.
7. All of these things are the
outworking of the self-absorbed orientation of our sin nature.
Fear, anger, hatred, resentment,
bitterness, hostility, all of them are just evidence of sin nature control.
8. In contrast, when our happiness
is based on the Lord and not circumstances, events, or people, then we can have
joy even when everything is taken from us.
The Lord had joy on the cross. He
has joy even in the midst of the Garden of Gethsemane when He is under so much
pressure as He thinks about what He is going to encounter on the next day, that
He is sweating drops of blood through His skin. The Scripture says that He was
grieving. He was sorrowful. But He did not let those emotions control His
reaction to what was coming.
In John 15:11 Jesus told his
disciples, “These
things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy
may be full.”
James 1:2 tells us that we are to “Count it all joy
when you encounter various trials.”
That is, every different kind of
testing. David is going through this testing. He is going to be tested by Saul.
He is going to be accused unjustly. He is going to be persecuted. He is going
to be chased. All of these things are going to happen to him, but we have to
watch how he responds. It is a tremendous lesson in his humility and grace
orientation.
As a result of the way David
conducts himself with honor and integrity, all of Israel and Judah loved him.
We read this in 1 Samuel 18:16, “But all Israel and Judah loved David, because he
went out and came in before them.” David’s popularity with the people increases.
We see Saul in operation. We will
watch his sin nature work as he is trying to manipulate the circumstances. He
is going to try to manipulate this situation so that David will die. He wants
to kill David. Saul has tried on two occasions already. But now he is going to
come up with a plan that will make it look like he was not responsible. He
comes with an idea, but as part of this he is possibly trying to get back at
David.
1 Samuel 18:17 reads, “Then Saul said to
David, ‘Here is my older daughter Merab; I will give her to you as a wife.’
” Saul makes this promise. “Only be valiant …” that sounds like a condition in the English. It is not that. It is
really a statement of David’s obligations to continue to be a strong warrior.
Notice how Saul brings in the spiritual tone. He is going to use the right
words.
So often that is what politicians
do. They try to cloak their nefarious schemes in all of the right words and
right attitudes. They invoke the name of God. They invoke the name of the
Constitution while they are doing just the opposite.
Saul says, “Only be valiant for me, and fight the Lord’s
battles.” But
what Saul is really thinking is exposed by Scripture. What he is really
thinking is, “Let
my hand not be against him, but let the hand of the Philistines be against him.”
Saul is coming up with a scheme to trap David.
In 1 Samuel 18:18 we see David’s
humility. This is David’s grace orientation. “So David said to Saul, ‘Who am I, and what is my
life or my father’s family in Israel that I should be son-in-law to the king?’
” This is
not a false humility.
David recognizes that his
great-grandmother is a Moabitess, that he comes from a modest family, and that
he has been a shepherd. He recognizes that he is not someone who has any
natural right to be the king of Israel. He demonstrates his grace orientation.
What we see in contrast, because
that verse comes in between 1 Samuel 18:17 and 1 Samuel 17:19, is this
capriciousness of Saul. He cannot be true to his word. On the one hand he has
promised his daughter to whoever kills Goliath, but then he is going to go back
on it.
In 1 Samuel 18:19 even though he
has said all these wonderful things in 1 Samuel 18:17 he goes right back on his
word and gives Merab to “Adriel the Meholathite as a wife.”
We will come back to this, but I
ran across this comment in Lange’s Commentary on the Bible, which I thought was particularly
appropriate for where we are today. “The finer the words the greater the
deceit. Further, he (Saul) would rather see the Philistines triumph than David
survive.”
It is a sad thing that there are a
lot of Republicans who would rather see Hillary get elected President than to
win—total loss of position and power. And frankly, until the Republicans can
recognize, like the Democrats, that it is all about power and getting power,
which means you unite, you do not shoot each other, Republicans and
conservatives will never gain the White House.
The Republicans and conservatives
will never gain power, because they are so divided. They are so filled with
arrogance and self-righteousness. They are like the Jews in the AD 66 War of
Rebellion against Rome. They are so filled with self-righteousness that they
would rather shoot each other than shoot the enemy. Until that changes there is
no hope in the Republican Party. On that positive note, be reminded that God is
our hope, not the Republican Party.
In 2 Samuel 21:8–9 what happens to
Merab is that she gets married to Adriel the Meholathite. Down the road David
will give their five sons to the Gibeonites because Saul went back on Joshua’s
word to the Gibeonites. When the Gibeonites want justice from David, David
recognizes the legitimacy of their claim. David asks the Gibeonites what they
wanted. They told him they had had their people massacred by Saul, which went
against the covenant with Joshua. We want to have Saul’s descendants. We will
execute them. That is what they did. Merab’s sons did not have a good ending.
We are told in 1 Samuel 18:20
about Michal, which name looks almost like Michael in English. “Now Michal,
Saul’s daughter, loved David. And they told Saul, and the thing pleased him.”
Here we see Saul’s nasty little
conspiratorial mind and his arrogance working, “Ah-h-h, another way to trap
David.” He has gone back on his word once, but now has a pang of conscience, “I
am still going to give him my daughter. Michal loves him, so I will give her to
David.”
This is his thinking, 1 Samuel
1:18:21, “I
will give her to him that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the
Philistines may be against him.”
This is interesting because Saul
has already formulated a plan in order to get a special dowry for Michal that
will put David’s life at risk and put him in danger of being slaughtered by the
Philistines. Saul could be thinking that the reason she is going to be a snare
to him is because since she loves him, David will want to marry her and will do
whatever I ask him to do. And that will be the end of David. That is one
possibility.
The word that is translated “snare,” מוֹקֵשׁ môqēsh, is a word that is often used of the
snare of idolatry. It is used about eight or nine times in the Scripture, and
with one exception it always refers to the snare of idolatry.
In Exodus 23:33 God says, “They shall not
dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For if you serve their
gods (Canaanite gods), it will surely be a snare to you.”
In Exodus 34:12 God says, “Take heed to
yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you
are going, lest it be a snare in your midst.”
Joshua 23:13 repeats this, “Know for certain
that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations from before you.
But they shall be snares and traps to you …”
It is repeated in Judges 8:27,
Gideon set up an ephod that the people worshiped as an idol. “It became a snare
to Gideon and his house.”
Psalm 106:36 says, “They served their
idols, which became a snare to them.”
That is the basic idea of “snare.”
At the end of 1 Samuel 18:21 we
are told, “Therefore
Saul said to David a second time, ‘You shall be my son-in-law today.’ ”
Saul had already promised Merab the first time. Now he is going to make a
second promise: Okay, I
am going to give you Michal, “You will be my son-in-law today.”
1 Samuel 18:22, “And Saul
commanded his servants, ‘Communicate with David, secretly, and say …” that the
king really likes you. All his servants love you. “Become the king’s son-in-law.” Entice
David this way.
But we continue to see the
contrast between Saul’s self-absorption and David’s humility, because in 1
Samuel 18:23 repeating what is in 1 Samuel 18:18, “So Saul’s servants spoke those words in the
hearing of David. And David said, ‘Does it seem to you a light thing to be a
king’s son-in-law, seeing I am poor and lightly esteemed man?’ ”
David is not seeking power or prestige
or position for himself. That is not something that motivates David. David is
motivated at this point by his love for the Lord.
This leads to Saul’s third
attempt. He comes up with this idea and says to David, “Here is your dowry. You
are going to bring me a hundred foreskins from the Philistines. That means that
you are going to have to kill them and circumcise them, because they will not
stand still for it otherwise.”
1 Samuel 18:25 says, Saul wants “one hundred
foreskins.” Saul’s real plan is that David will become endangered and be
killed.
1 Samuel 28:26, “So when his
servants told David these things word, it pleased David.”
Notice that. This is a warrior! He
loves the battle! It pleased him because now he can go kill the Lord’s enemies.
He is enthusiastic! “The days had not expired” means that Saul had set some sort of time
limit on it. It was not expired yet.
1 Samuel 28:27, “… therefore David
arose and went, he and his men, and killed two hundred men of the Philistines.”
If you are going to do something
for the glory of God you do it to the maximum. David does not just kill one
hundred. He kills two hundred. “And David brought their foreskins, and they gave
them in full count to the king, that he might become the king’s son-in-law.”
I could go into some interesting
evaluation and explanation of what is going on here. But ever since Bill
Clinton was the President, the news media has devalued the currency of our
language. We are exposed on the news, television, and everything else to all kinds
of language and things we never would have heard before it. I am not going to
go there. You can use your own imagination.
David brings in the dowry. “Then Saul gave
him Michal his daughter as a wife.”
In the closing of the chapter, 1
Samuel 18:28–29, we learn that at that point “Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with
David.” The third time we have seen this. “… and that Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved
him; and Saul was still more afraid of David.” Saul is on that mental
attitude sin rollercoaster. “Saul was still more afraid of David. So Saul became David’s enemy
continually.”
Then we are told in 1 Samuel 18:30
that “Then the
princes of the Philistines went out to war. And so it was, whenever they went
out, that David behaved more wisely …” The contrast between Saul and his
mental attitude sins, leading eventually to his self-destruction, and David,
wise because of the Word of God, more wise “than all the servants of Saul, so that his name
became highly esteemed,” is that David became the hero of all of Israel.