DISCUSSION
It can be
clearly seen in 1Samuel 21-24, that Saul now has a huge problem with
David. He has already attempted to kill
him…twice; now he has begun his quest to hunt him down. David has fled on the advice of his friend
Jonathan and is headed out of the city.
He stops by Nob and that is where we meet the priest Ahimelech. While there, David deceives the priest by
implying that he is on a mission for the King.
He and his men are hungry and are in urgent need of food, so he
petitioned the priest for food. With no
common bread on hand, the priest gives David the consecrated bread for
food. While there, he also gives David
the only weapon that is on hand, the sword from Goliath the giant that David
killed. Unbeknownst to David, an Edomite
by the name of Doeg was there witnessing the whole thing. Doeg reports back to Saul all that had
happened at Nob, causing Saul to summon Ahimelech the priest. In I Samuel 22.6, Saul does the unthinkable
and orders the death of Ahimelech and all his father’s household. In all, Saul was responsible for the
slaughter of eighty-five priests. Let’s
pause for just a moment…it hasn’t been that long ago that Saul was anointed
King by God, now we find him responsible for the death of eighty-five men whose
lives were dedicated to the service of that same God. Now, I am sure that if you were to ask Saul
when he was anointed king over Israel if he ever thought he would do such a
thing, he would have been appalled at the suggestion. However, the text speaks for itself and that
is exactly what he did. How does this
happen? How does a man who was selected
by God make such a departure from God ? It doesn’t happen overnight; it a process of
poor decision making. We began the week
highlighting some of those poor choices from Saul and now they have climaxed to
the unthinkable. A wise person once said
that when you tell a lie, it doesn’t take very long for you to have to tell
another lie to cover up the first. Then
you must tell a third and fourth lie to cover up the previous ones. This process continues until you have found
yourself caught up in a web of lies and deceit.
Sadly, this process isn’t just true with lying, but with all sin. Sin tends to snowball into an avalanche of
sin. No sane person wakes up in the
morning and decides to kill someone, yet murders happen every day. They happen because poor little choices make
for destructive consequences. Make sure
that we keep an eye on ur own lives before we do something that we deeply
regret.
Prayer
Requests:_______________________________________________________________