“So David and Abishai came to the people by night; and there Saul lay sleeping within the camp, with his spear stuck in the ground by his head. And Abner and the people lay all around him. Then Abishai said to David, ‘God has delivered your enemy into your hand this day. Now therefore, please, let me strike him at once with the spear, right to the earth; and I will not have to strike him a second time!’ But David said to Abishai, ‘Do not destroy him; for who can stretch out his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and be guiltless?’ David said furthermore, ‘As the Lord lives, the Lord shall strike him, or his day shall come to die, or he shall go out to battle and perish. The Lord forbid that I should stretch out my hand against the Lord’s anointed. But please, take now the spear and the jug of water that are by his head, and let us go.’ So David took the spear and the jug of water by Saul’s head, and they got away; and no man saw or knew it or awoke” (1 Samuel 26:7-11).
King Saul had been ruthlessly and wickedly pursuing David to murder him. David had already had one opportunity in chapter 24 to strike back against Saul and kill him. And here was a second opportunity for David to kill Saul. Abishai credited the Lord God for delivering Abishai into David’s hands in this case – into his hands to slay him, telling David that he’ll even take care of it for David. Some people today would say “the stars lined up,” and so this is God’s will to do it.
But David’s answer to Abishai illustrates to us the good heart David had. It was not the Lord’s will for him do any harm to the Lord’s anointed, the king of Israel. David was interested in the Lord’s will and not the appearance of things or circumstance.
There’s a lesson here for us.
It is not uncommon for people to look at events or see opportunities and attribute them to the Lord and interpret them as the Lord’s will regarding a matter, and, in the process, never ask what is the Lord’s will. “This must be what the Lord wants,” someone says, because all the events seem to line up in what they deem to be perfect order. And thus they proceed to act, but what they do may very well be against the will of the Lord. What’s lacking? Faith is lacking.
Someone may answer that faith is lacking in the one that will not go the direction that all the events seem to be lining up to point to. But “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom 10:17). Actually, then, faith is lacking in the one who operates according to the appearance of things, and not according to the word of the Lord. “For we walk by faith, and not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7) – we do not live and act based on how things appear to us, but by belief and trust in what God has said in His word.
We need to be careful about deciding what to do based on how well things seem to be lining up for us. Instead, our decisions need to be based on wisdom and what is the Lord’s will found in the word of God.
-Larry Jones