Bethany Baptist Church

Then David said in his heart, “Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of Philistines. (I Samuel 27:1)

How would you fill-in this blank? “there is nothing better for me than ________”. I want to know how you filled that blank, however, you don’t have to let me know. We all come across moments in life when we make our own conclusions based on common-sense. Have you recently come across one such moment? May be right now you are going through one such experience. Well, you are not alone in this. David, the man after God’s own heart also has gone through the same experience.  He thought that there is nothing better than to get to the Philistines for security. That’s quite surprising, isn’t it? Few years ago, he stood by faith against a Philistine named Goliath and upheld the glory of God. Now a few years later, the same David is unable to bear the stress and intimidation created by Saul that he thought the Philistines are better than Saul and decides to run to the Philistines for better security. David was wrong in concluding that he will perish one day by the hand of Saul although that was certainly a common-sense based conclusion. The fact is that he will not perish because the Lord has already anointed him to be the king. How then shall he die? At the same time, let us not condemn David just like that, because stressful moments and pressures in life have their way of pushing us to make rash conclusions. Faith could falter when stressful moments storm in. Our common-sense and cultural-sense could at times become the worst enemies of faith. David’s decision to go to the Philistines sounds like a wise move as the king of the Philistines welcomed David and gave him accommodation in Ziklag. However, Chapters 29&30 unfolds the unfavourable repercussions of such a decision. Faith may falter at times but it need not disappear.  Yes, while David lost everything in Ziklag the Philistine city, we read that “David strengthened himself in the LORD his God” (I Sam.30:6). There's the evidence that his faith did not disappear although it may have faltered under intimidating moments and pressure. I don’t know how you are in the process of filling in that blank I gave in the first line. You may be having justifiable reasons to fill-in the blank the way you want to. Please stop for a minute. Let me suggest a better way for you to fill-in that blank, “there is nothing better for me than to live by faith”. Does that make sense? Yes, the just shall live by faith.

-Pastor