1 Samuel 29

Jim Butler1 Samuel 29

God's providential deliverance of David from an impossible dilemma — being compelled to march against Israel with the Philistines — and the immediate plunge into the disaster at Ziklag raise a single pressing question: how does a believer endure when the last straw is not the last straw? Working through 1 Samuel 29–30:8, this study traces two movements: the Lord using the objections of the Philistine lords to extract David from his dilemma without David having to act, and the devastation at Ziklag that arrives the moment he returns home. The sermon draws out three means by which David strengthened himself in the Lord his God — the experiential knowledge of God, the promises of God rehearsed through fellowship, and the use of the means of grace — setting these against the contrasting figure of Saul, who in the same crisis had no priest, no ephod, and no word from the Lord.