Message: In 1 Samuel 22 David fled to a cave after he tried to flee to Gath from Nod. In chapter 21 he quickly realized that the Philistines knew who he was and how successful he had been in battle so he pretended to be insane in front of the king. Apparently, they believed that mentally incapacitated people were cursed and they were afraid to touch them and get it on them. I couldn’t help but laugh at David’s brilliance, but I also realized how desperate an act this was. Now he was completely alone in a cave but it didn’t long for his family to hear and they joined him. Then more people joined him until there were more than 400 people who were desperate, in debt or disgruntled all rallying around David and they made him their leader. Meanwhile, king Saul was full of jealousy and rage and it made him more and more irrational. In his attempts to control, he was losing his influence but instead of rebuilding it he made things worse by making more irrational assumptions. His negativity was compounding like a vicious cycle of more negativity and irrationality until Saul was completely unstable. He had just found out that his son Jonathan had made a covenant with David and this only fueled his suspicions when his servant told him that the priest had sheltered David. In his irrationality he refused to hear the priest and when he ordered his servants to kill the priest and all his family, they refused and only the one who snitched was willing to do it. Saul still had the position of king but he had lost the favor of God and the loyalty of the people. The more he tried to oppose David, the more favor David gained. Although David had been anointed king and was gaining favor, he was still on the run. As I processed all of this I thought about the danger of trying to control and manipulate. For Saul this all began with his pride when he took matters into his own hands and made the priestly sacrifice. Then he disobeyed God by taking spoils that God told him to destroy because of his fear of the people. Pride and insecurity go hand, in hand and this is what destroyed Saul. This challenges me to examine the areas of my life where I’m allowing pride and insecurity to drive. Saul was his own worst enemy and he caused the very things he was fighting so hard to avoid. Looking back at my own past experiences I can see this very same dynamic.
