For who has ever found an enemy, and sent the enemy safely away?

 

Friday, July 7, 2023

Psalm 19

1 Samuel 24:8-25:1

Acts 15:12-21

For who has ever found an enemy, and sent the enemy safely away?

Have you ever found yourself in the situation where there is tension between you and someone else close to you, where they have offended you, and the situation has not been resolved, and the tension just continues to bubble away? It can get really quite bad; one can find themselves irritated beyond mention at the mere thought of the other person, to the point where one finds one’s self having imaginary conversations with them in the shower. I know that I am not the only one who has suffered this condition because there is even a word in German for it.

Enemies are so easy to make. All it takes is the merest slight and immediately two paths are opened: one is apology and forgiveness, and the other is stubborn indignation. One leads to life and the other leads to death. And as time goes on it gets easier to stay on the path to death, and the gap between it and the path to life gets wider and wider.

By making himself the enemy of David, Saul had made it very difficult for himself to get off the path to death. He had committed himself, his army and indeed the entire nation to the one objective of hunting down and destroying David. David also had good reason to follow Saul on the path to death: his priest friends had been killed to a man; he had publicly pretended to be insane; and now he had been chased into a cave, the most suitable use of which was for a toilet rather than a home.

But the grace of God swept through even that toilet. David slit a piece of fabric, not Saul’s neck. Even this act was met with holy regret. And then this climactic scene, between the hunter and the hunted, where the kind of grace only God is capable of was made incarnate between these two men.

We used to be enemies of God. We chose to walk down that path to death. But God is the God of the living: He chased us down that path, ran past us to the end, and allowed Himself to be nailed to the cross. Through His resurrection, Jesus has given us the way off the path to death and put us back on the path to life: He found us as enemies, and turned us into friends, and now we are safe in the arms of God forever.