David Cuts The Corner Of Saul's Garment In The Cave Series

Have you ever had something really bad happen, and you wonder to yourself? How could God let this happen? Why is this happening? Or maybe you think, I can’t handle this.

You feel overwhelmed. What do we do when we feel overwhelmed? We get through it. We let ourselves feel it. And we get through it. We know the feeling isn’t permanent. It’s temporary.

But we might be tempted to ask the question: Why God?

Why me?

Maybe a better question is, why not me? We all good through hard times. That’s part of life. That’s part of how God’s system works. Particularly for Christians, we go through trials to test and build our faith in Him.

We may be tempted to start arguing with God. What if instead we trusted Him? Instead of starting to ask those questions, maybe instead, or at least after we ask, we can finally say, I don’t understand. But I choose to trust you God. That’s hard. It’s very important though, because God wants us to learn to trust Him more and more despite our circumstances.

We’ve seen that situation again and again for David, who is on the run, with his band of followers, fleeing from King Saul.

David could’ve said Lord why? I was supposed to be King. But instead I’m on the run. Instead David trusted God. David also wrestled with God. He had it out with him in the psalms. But he kept trusting.

He didn’t give up. That’s the battle I think, really. We wrestle with God as Christians, with questions and fears and emotions, with sins, and the goal in all that is I think to wrestle but stay with God, sometimes people want to run away, but we as Christians run toward. Keep running toward God.

We’ve spent our lives so many of us here running away from things. Running away from our problems running away form people, but now, with God, let’s run toward Him, not away.

If you recall, David and his six hundred men were being chased by King Saul’s army. But at the last moment, Saul was called away due to a philistine attack on Israel.

After fighting the philistines off, Saul goes to work again.

It says in 1 Samuel 24:1-2, “After Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines, he was told, “David is in the Desert of En Gedi.” 2 So Saul took three thousand able young men from all Israel and set out to look for David and his men near the Crags of the Wild Goats.”

Chelsey our program coordinator was telling me about how beautiful En Gedi is. She traveled to Israel several years ago, and got to visit some of these sites we hear about in the Bible. En Gedi is a desert, but there is a beautiful oasis, with a waterfall, where I’m sure David and his men visited and refreshed themselves at. It’s important to remember that these aren’t just stories, about David and Saul, these are historical events, at real places. Places you can visit even today.

In verse 3 it says, “Saul came to the sheep pens along the way; a cave was there, and Saul went in to relieve himself. David and his men were far back in the cave.”

Saul has three thousand men pursuing David, but he has to sneak off to use the bathroom. So he goes off into this cave. And little does he know David is in that cave with his men.

What are the chances right? But that’s the thing. What are the chances any of us would be here today? For some of you, me included, what are the chances you would be anywhere near a church much less in one? That’s what God does. He does the impossible. He sets things up just right for the right moment to happen.

We’re just the right distance from the sun, the Earth is. We’ve just the right number of DNA sequences. The moon is in just the right place to stabilize the rotation of the Earth. Jupiter is in just the right place to absorb incoming asteroid impacts. And God made sure we were all here today.

So David’s men think this is the perfect opportunity to finally take out Saul.

Any other person on the planet would think the same thing. I would think that, if I were in this situation. This is the chance we’ve been waiting for.

In verse 4... The men said, “This is the day the Lord spoke of when he said to you, ‘I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with as you wish.’” Then David crept up unnoticed and cut off a corner of Saul’s robe.”

David doesn’t kill him. He sneaks up, and cuts a piece of his robe off. Then he comes back to his men.