1 Samuel 18:17-30

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning we are going to finish up 1 Samuel chapter 18. David continues to rise in status in a unique way. So let's have some coffee, we'll pray, and we'll get into God's Word. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your word. We thank you for what a blessing it is that we get to hear from you and to serve you. Father, we pray that you would please help us to love you all of our lives. You are so good and kind to us. In Jesus' name, amen. Here we go, 1 Samuel chapter 18, beginning at verse 17.
Then Saul said to David, here is my older daughter, Merab, I will give her to you as a wife. Only be valiant for me and fight the Lord's battles. For Saul thought, let my hand not be against him, but let the hand of the Philistines be against him. So David said to Saul, who am I and what is my life or my father's family in Israel that I should be son-in-law to the king? it happened at the time when Merab, Saul's daughter, should have been given to David, that she was given to Adriel, the Meholathite, as a wife. Now Michael, Saul's daughter, loved David. And they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. So Saul said, I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. Therefore Saul said to David a second time, You shall be my son-in-law today.
And Saul commanded his servants, Communicate with David secretly, and say, Look, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you. Now therefore, become the king's son-in-law. So Saul's servants spoke those words in the hearing of David. And David said, Does it seem to you a light thing to be a king's son-in-law, seeing I am a poor, and lightly esteemed man? And the servants of Saul told him, saying, In this manner David spoke. Then Saul said, Thus ye shall say to David, The king does not desire any dowry, but one hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to take vengeance on the king's enemies. But Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines.
So, when his servants told David these words, it pleased David well to become the king's son-in-law. Now the days had not expired. Therefore David arose and went, he and his men, and killed two hundred of the Philistines. And David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full count to the king, that he might become the king's son-in-law.
Then Saul gave him Michael his daughter as a wife. Thus Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David, and that Michael, Saul's daughter, loved him. And Saul was still more afraid of David. So Saul became David's enemy continually. Then the princes of the Philistines went out to war. And so it was, whenever they went out, that David behaved more wisely than all the servants of Saul, so that his name became highly esteemed.
Oh, we need to ask ourselves, A, what is this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do? So A, what is this about? Well, this is this plan of Saul's that is somewhat counterintuitive, right? He's going to show honor to David to say, you can marry my daughter, right?
These are arranged marriages, political type marriages. There's a higher status. And he says, you can become my son-in-law. But what he really wants to do is he's going to try to destroy him. He can't just outright murder him, so he sets up the plan. sows the seeds, tries to do all the things to get David to become killed by the Philistines. So at first he offers him one daughter, right?
David's like, wow, hold on, right? This is a small thing to become the son-in-law of the king? Now I think part of that is this honorific type thing, but also it's going to come with a huge dowry. David's from a small family, Jesse's not rich. So how does he pull this off?
Well, there's the first wife. It doesn't work out anyways. Actually, I wonder. I don't know all the circumstances. We don't know all the circumstances between why Saul offers the first daughter to David, but then that doesn't work out. Normally, in an honor-shame type culture like this, it would be a shameful thing. right that he was disgracing him and he's just kind of the fickleness of Saul here right he's making power plays and doing things he's holding all the cards he's got no problem using people with manipulation and so he finds out his other daughter Michael well she's attracted to this young warrior. She loves him, and he's hoping. Michael loves him. His heart is going to want to be with her, and so if I tell him, no dowry, by way of whispering in his servant's ears, tell him it's okay to become my son-in-law. It's okay. He won't even have to. It'll be fine, right?
So he's playing people here, Saul is. And he's hoping that when David will go into battle, his heart will be thinking not about the battle, but he'll be distracted thinking about Michael. And what'll happen to a distracted warrior? Well, he'll die. And so he says, you don't even have to pay a dowry, David. Saul says, you can go and take vengeance on my own enemies, and then you can become my son-in-law. And he fully expects David to die.
And I wondered if David drags his feet a little bit, right? Again, David, this is a huge honor, right? It's not a small thing to become the son-in-law of the king. But David, it pleased David well to become the king's son-in-law. Now, the days had not expired. I'm not sure how long it was between these episodes. Did David drag his feet? Did he strategize? Did he weigh the cost? Was this really worth it? Would he agree to the contract by essentially doing the terms and eventually he says, all right, let's go for it. He gathers his men and they go and they fight against the Philistines.
Unprovoked type war. Again, I can't justify everything that happens in these books. This is just history. And I actually want to zoom out and think about that with you for a moment. Sometimes people have gone to books like this and they'll try to point out and hold up David like he's the perfect model of character and kind of flatten people's characters. And I just don't, I'm not going to go there, right? Because David just does what he's doing. In this culture, that's what's happening. Would I want this to be what happens in our culture today? To have vengeance warfare that seems unprovoked?
No. No, right, now we know that there's just this constant land battle that's happening between the Philistines and Israel. Guess what? Today it's still happening between the Palestinians and the Israelites. The Jewish people who are still in the land, the point being, right, there's this constant warfare. And God said that this was going to be what happened if they hadn't pushed all the people out when they first conquested the land. But all that to say, This is what's going on. This is what this is about.
David comes back with the four skins of 200 dead Philistines and gives them to Saul. You can imagine how frustrated Saul must be. David has essentially done the impossible. He comes back and it says, Then the princes of the Philistines went out to war.
So it was, whenever they went out, that David behaved more wisely than all the servants of Saul. so that he became highly esteemed. The point here is that the Lord is still superseding all of these things and Saul continues to diminish and David continues to increase. The Lord had planned all this out and even with all of Saul's scheming and manipulating and using people and trying to play on people's natural intuitions and desires and he's trying to set everything up. God still prevails. By the way, David's going to find this out still later. He's going to actually end up having somebody killed by doing this type of manipulation that kings do in their power plays, and God's not going to let David get away with it either. This is about Saul decreasing and David increasing.
What's the best verse to summarize this? Well, I think what I just read, verse 29 and verse 30, I think is what I would underline. But I could see somebody saying, well, Brian, the main thing is about this marriage and the four skins of the Philistines. That's fine. Underline in your Bible what you think is the best verse that would help you memorize or help you remember what this section is about.
Last, seek calling. What's our call to action? And how are we pointed to Jesus Christ? Well, it's Jesus Christ who, again, I think does the impossible. In our lives, we're called to be faithful, to live uprightly, to do the most wise things, and as we lean on the Lord and as we do what we think is the best thing, the most biblical, principled thing, godly thing, most loving thing, most Christ-like thing in our lives, we leave it to the Lord. Sometimes we may increase and sometimes we may decrease. That's the Lord's plans, but we can trust in Christ knowing that He took the path of humiliation to end up with the highest exaltation. He is sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He's our conqueror and our king, even though He was humiliated. But He didn't have to do the scheming. He told people what He was doing all along. He is our Christ, and we can follow Him.
Let's pray. Father, we thank You so much that we are able to see that people plot, and they scheme, and they manipulate, and they use people. Yet somehow, you are still God. You still have plans that are much higher than ours. So Father, we pray that you would keep us humble. We pray that we would trust you and love you and follow in your ways, for you indeed are a true and wonderful God. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. May God bless you. May you walk in the joy of Jesus. May you follow your King and have peace forever. I'll see you next time. Bye.