David and his men come to Nob, which was about two miles
from Jerusalem and had, at this time, become a city of priests who had fled
from Shiloh after the Philistines attacked that place. We are not told that the tabernacle was here
but the sacerdotal functions of the priestly worship were being maintained so
we assume this is where the tabernacle was located. David lies and says he is on a mission from
the king to induce the priests to provide for the needs of he and his men and
further assures the priest that they are ritually pure. He is given the sword of Goliath, which he
had captured after he killed the Philistine champion, an interesting little
irony. We see a man, Doeg the Edomite,
Saul’s chief herdsman, lurking here, hearing and observing all these things, an
ominous note. David’s deception
continues at Gath, Goliath’s hometown, when he hears the chatter that he is
king of Israel based on the little verse that makes him greater than Saul and
determines it best to pretend to be a madman so as to relieve yet another king
of any fears that David is a threat to him.
David is willing to be a pragmatist with respect to truth when needs be.
The ministry is becoming more regional, more well-known and
the crush of the crowds following Jesus is becoming greater by the day it
seems. They come to hear and to be
healed, to see this man of whom they have heard great things and He can go
nowhere without being followed. Demons
fall before Him, crying out His identity but with a word He silences them,
their testimony is unwanted and unwelcome, their desire is to press the issue,
force the time to come ahead of God’s timing, they do not know the end of God’s
plan, they are hoping to create their own.
The leaders of the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch couldn’t
have been prepared for Paul when they asked, “Brothers, if you have any word of
encouragement for the people, say it.”
No one would have imagined that Paul was going to preach Messiah had
come and was crucified. As He began His
presentation they probably settled in and listened as he remarkably quickly
skipped through a couple thousand years of Israel’s history and then suddenly
proclaimed that God had sent Jesus, a descendant of Jesse’s son, David, as
savior. All the other history, the time
in Egypt, the wilderness, the giving of the Law, the conquest of the land, the
periods of the judges and kings, the exile from the land, all of it, was
nothing more than prelude to something God was doing in Jesus. Nothing anyone did brought it about, John
proclaimed it and prepared people for it, but God did it on His own. Do we ever trust in God’s sovereignty in real
time or only after the fact when we see it clearly? What is going on in your life today that
makes you uneasy about the future? What
are you doing about that, resting in Him or grasping to make something happen?
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