Message: In 1 Samuel 18 David became a full-time servant to King Saul in the palace and Saul tried to offer David his daughters in marriage in the hopes of entrapping him. David didn’t carry an attitude of entitlement so Saul had to find other ways to try to kill him. He eventually put him in charge of 1000 men with the expectation he would be killed by the Philistines but literally everything Saul did to try to harm David came back to bite him because David not only excelled at everything he did, but he won the hearts and the favor of all the people and even Saul’s own son Jonathan loved him and made a covenant with him. The more Saul tried to harm him, the more God blessed him and gave him favor and success. David had been anointed king in secret but the favor of God was out in the open. He continued living a life of excellence and he won over the kingdom long before he officially took the throne. Not only that, he served the king that he would eventually replace with respect and honor even while Saul’s jealousy grew to hatred and he tried to kill David.
How does all of this apply to my life? For me the biggest take-away out of this is that David had every opportunity to get prideful and his pride would have destroyed him. Instead, David was humble and honorable no matter what Saul (literally) threw at him. He knew he would eventually take the throne, but he refused to look at Saul with disrespect and he honored him when nobody would have blamed him for retaliating. Because he chose not to take a position of entitlement, God was able to heap on the blessings. Most people probably didn’t know what kind of abuse David took from Saul, but God did and he gave him more favor and blessing than he could ever fathom. It’s so hard to do the right thing in the face of unjust behavior and abuse but God sees all of it. We are not honoring them for their abusive behavior, we choose to honor them because they are marked and chosen by God. When we really understand the power in this we won’t be able to mistreat them even when they mistreat us. David didn’t do this to earn the favor. He did it because it was right and God heaped on the favor.
