“Then David quietly crept forward, and quietly slit off the bottom of Saul’s robe! But then his conscience began bothering him. “I shouldn’t have done it,” he said. to his men. It is a serious sin to attack God’s chosen King in any way.” 1 Samuel 24: 4-6 (TLB)
How many of us want to see if we can “help out” the Lord by moving events a little faster for him? David knew that he was to be the next King of Israel. Samuel the Prophet had anointed him, and all his men knew he was the “King Elect.” Just as we in the United States sometimes have someone who has been elected, but the time has not yet arrived for them to take power, such was
The situation David found himself in. They all knew once Saul was dead, David was to be crowned the King of Israel.
It is a sin for us to try to make God “hurry up a little.” Jehovah does not need us to help bring his plans, written before he called light to shine into the world, before he laid the foundation of the Earth. To assume that we have the right to hurry along the Father’s plans, even by one single fraction of a second, is the absolute height of hubris and pride, and such a man may be certain that the Creator will remind him of who is really in charge, and knock him down from the pedestal his pride has puffed him up onto.
David’s men wanted to alter the plans God had written before the heavens and the earth were created. David almost fell for that type of “worldly” logic.. But the Holy Spirit, living deep in David’s heart, reminded him that our timing is not God’s timing, and his ways are higher than our ways. David’s decision takes on an even more gravity when we recall David was promised that Jesus Christ would descend from him, David. Altering God’s plans even a minute amount would have had ramifications we can not even comprehend. But David chose to honor God by honoring Saul, the man Jehovah made King over Israel. Yes, David was to be the NEXT King, but the key word is NEXT. By realizing this, David had already begun to grow into the man the Scriptures give the ultimate compliment to, “the man after God’s own heart.
Copyright 2007 Timothy E. Davis