“Things are going downhill…FAST”

 

DISCUSSION                         

                        

                It can be clearly seen in 1Samuel 21-24, that Saul now has a huge problem with David.  He has already attempted to kill him…twice; now he has begun his quest to hunt him down.  David has fled on the advice of his friend Jonathan and is headed out of the city.  He stops by Nob and that is where we meet the priest Ahimelech.  While there, David deceives the priest by implying that he is on a mission for the King.  He and his men are hungry and are in urgent need of food, so he petitioned the priest for food.  With no common bread on hand, the priest gives David the consecrated bread for food.  While there, he also gives David the only weapon that is on hand, the sword from Goliath the giant that David killed.  Unbeknownst to David, an Edomite by the name of Doeg was there witnessing the whole thing.  Doeg reports back to Saul all that had happened at Nob, causing Saul to summon Ahimelech the priest.  In I Samuel 22.6, Saul does the unthinkable and orders the death of Ahimelech and all his father’s household.   In all, Saul was responsible for the slaughter of eighty-five priests.  Let’s pause for just a moment…it hasn’t been that long ago that Saul was anointed King by God, now we find him responsible for the death of eighty-five men whose lives were dedicated to the service of that same God.  Now, I am sure that if you were to ask Saul when he was anointed king over Israel if he ever thought he would do such a thing, he would have been appalled at the suggestion.  However, the text speaks for itself and that is exactly what he did.  How does this happen?  How does a man who was selected by God make such a departure from God?  It doesn’t happen overnight; it a process of poor decision making.  We began the week highlighting some of those poor choices from Saul and now they have climaxed to the unthinkable.  A wise person once said that when you tell a lie, it doesn’t take very long for you to have to tell another lie to cover up the first.  Then you must tell a third and fourth lie to cover up the previous ones.  This process continues until you have found yourself caught up in a web of lies and deceit.  Sadly, this process isn’t just true with lying, but with all sin.  Sin tends to snowball into an avalanche of sin.  No sane person wakes up in the morning and decides to kill someone, yet murders happen every day.  They happen because poor little choices make for destructive consequences.   Make sure that we keep an eye on ur own lives before we do something that we deeply regret.

Prayer Requests:_______________________________________________________________