The Reconciliation of Saul
Saul said, Is this thy voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his voice, and wept. — 1. Samuel xxiv. 16.
David, the deliverer of Israel, was hated and pursued by the very man who should have honoured and loved him most. Saul said, I will smite David even to the wall; ‘’ “Saul said. Let the hand of the Philistines be upon him j “Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines; Saul became Davids enemy continually; Saul spake to Jonathan his son, and to all his servants, that they should kill David; and whensoever Saul heard of the course of David’s wandering, his heart burned with the fury of vengeance. This is a glimpse of the life of an anointed man! Truly, there be mysteries in human life which seem to shut out as with a wall of darkness the whole idea of God and spiritual government. In winter it is difficult to believe that in a few weeks the land will blush with the glowing colour of sweet flowers; in the blackness of night it is not easy to suppose that presently there will be a great flame in the heavens, and the sunny air will be full of singing birds. It is so with our poor life. God gives one great conquest into our hands, and then drives us away as with a furious wind of anger or contempt, — a wind which often blows out the lamp of our hope, or throws down the tree whose shadow promised rest. It is in such hours that the hearths pain is turned into questions, and those questions are made bitter by the hopelessness, not of philosophical, but of experimental atheism. David says to us this morning — Study my life; look how God dealt with me; put your trials into one scale, and mine into the other. sought the Lord and He heard me, and delivereth me from all my fears.” This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles! Thus one man lives for many, and the sorrow of one soul gathers up the felt but unspoken woe of many generations.
Let us try, as reverend students of divine mysteries, to find out something in the bitterness of Dadds experience which will help us more manfully and hopefully to live out our own few days.
1. Whilst the good man sees his own perils, let him also see the restraints luhich are put upon the wicked.
Saul is mighty; Saul has servants; Saul is accustomed to dip his sword in human blood yet he cannot hit David! Sau?s javelin is shivering in the wall there. He meant it to pierce Davids head! Saul was just on the point of slaying David, but that fact shows the nearer presence of spiritual defence. “The same nighty when Herod would have brought him forth,” etc. (Acts xii. 6). Why should we always look at the peril? Why not look at the escape, and find in its very narrowness the clearest proof of divine care?
2. Let the had man put to himself some serious questions respecting the restraints which limit his power. Saul should have learned a good deal from the failures which followed each other in rapid succession. If enmity could have killed the Church, where would the Church have been this day? Fire sword, bondage, hunger, torture, darkness, — all have been tried.
4” Quenched the violence of fire,’’ etc. (Heb. xi. 36, 37). And still their life rose up before men, a temple of God’s building, beautiful as light, high as heaven! Why do the heathen so furiously rage? Evil is a gigantic failure: is there not a cause?
3. Though mediation may fail in carrying out its purposes, yet let no wise mediator suppose that his ivorh is in vain. Jonathan was mediator between Saul and David. — His repeated and severe discouragements. —
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Looking at it on one side, lie might well have abandoned his work as a failure. — What of its influence upon David? How it cheered him like a light! how it soothed him like the music of a better world! Be some mans true friend. No word of love is lost. No true ministry is a failure though it may have aspects which are discouraging.
4. Observe the infinite sujperioritij of power that is MORAL, as compared with power that is physical. Saul went to seek David upon the rocks of the wild goats. In his pursuit he came to the sheepcotes where there was a cave, and into that cave he entered, little knowing who was there! (ch. xxiv.j Describe the scene. Saul lifted up his voice and wept! What a difference between this and a mere fight of hostile weapons I (1) In the worst men there is something that may be touched; (2) In every life there is at least one opportunity of showing the real quality of the heart. David seized it!
This is the sublime appeal of the Gospel! God does not crush us by mere power. Love, truth, persuasion, — these are the weapons of Gods warfare!
Day by day we are in the power of God. We enter no cave where He is not: on the high, silent mountain; in the deep, shadowy valley; in the den of the wild beast, and in the nest of the eagle; there He is! When the lightning flashes. He says to the wicked manj See, with this I could have struck thee blind! When the storm howls madly across sea and desert and forest He says, See, with this I could throw down thy dwelling-place, and bury thee in its ruins! But as I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the sinner turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die?