Special Saturday Edition
Ethan Barton, Pastoral Resident, Tallowood Baptist Church
One of the central themes of the entire Old Testament is this: everything with God succeeds and flourishes, and everything without God sputters pathetically into chaos. The contrast is sharp and unmistakable. After all, the world is God’s own, and he designed it for the purpose of enjoying closeness with him.
This contrast plays out resoundingly between Saul and David. Saul has departed from serving God, and so God departed from him. Now, because he’s trying to rule his own way, his days are filled with military failures, raging insanity, and paranoid terror at everyone around him, especially David. Meanwhile, this young ruddy shepherd is conquering enemies left and right, earning the love of the entire kingdom, and prospering at everything he does—because God is with him. What an incredible thing to say about someone; God is with him!
Saul definitely thought that God was with him—that he was following God’s will—but what he was actually doing was trying to conform God’s will to his own. Is there a single one of us that isn’t guilty of that? Oddly enough, God’s will is not ours to decide. Instead, our will needs to be conformed to his, just like David’s was.
But is God in fact with us today? Fortunately, God’s Word gives us an emphatic “yes”! The last thing Jesus said to his disciples before his Ascension was “surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Paul later writes to the Romans that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” David loved the Lord, and the Lord was with him, and look at all the very tangible good that God was working out for him. Praise God we have the opportunity to say the very same! The Holy Spirit of God is here with us and loves us; do we love him as well? Are we willing to have our wills conformed to his? If so, the Lord promises us eternal blessings and riches beyond our imagination. Let’s love and follow the Lord.
