“If your father misses me at all, say, ‘David begged me to let him hurry to Beit-Lechem, his city; because it’s the annual sacrifice there for his whole family.’”-1 Samuel 20:6
David and Jonathan’s plans to test Saul during the royal Rosh Hodesh banquet involved a flat-out lie.
David told Jonathan when his father asked why he hadn’t shown up at the dinner, he was to tell him he wasn’t attending because he had to go home for a special feast.
This feast was called ZEVAH in Hebrew.
It was a voluntary type of sacrifice where people could choose to do it to honor God.
They could also eat most of the meat as part of it.
So, David made up this story to explain why he wasn’t going to the Rosh Hodesh dinner.
Now here’s what’s funny.
According to David’s lie, there was supposed to be some kind of yearly family celebration going on.
But here’s the thing.
No sacrifice to God is ever to take place unless done under the supervision of a Levite priest.
And it’s supposed to take place at the bronze altar…
Either at the Wilderness Tabernacle…
Or the Temple…
Ya, feel me?
We know for many years the sanctuary had been at Shiloh, but that had long ago been disbanded.
During Saul’s time, there were competing sanctuaries located all over the place in cities like Bethlehem, Gilgal, and Nob.
It was like a freakin’ McDonald’s franchise operation!
But not only that.
Multiple priesthoods were competing with each other for power.
Scripture tells us there were at least 2 lines of high priests.
We had the descendants of Ithamar, and the descendants of Zadok.
So here’s a quiz question for you.
Which line was the proper Torah-authorized one?
Zadok or Ithamar?
If you said Zadok, BINGO!
You got it!
Here’s another quiz question for you.
Which line did Eli (Samuel’s mentor) come from?
If you said Ithamar, BINGO!
You got it!
But again, isn’t that funny?
Samuel, who was a God-ordained prophet, was mentored by an illegitimate High Priest.
Why am I telling you all this?
I’m sharing to show you just how messed up and far from Scripture Israel had fallen.
This is what happens when you let manmade traditions and customs infiltrate the purity of God’s Torah.
Every man and his grandma was doing what was right from their own fleshly perspectives.
There’s another thing here I don’t want you to overlook.
Notice how everyone thought what they’re doing was holy and good?
It’s like how the church thinks everything is all fine and dandy when they observe pagan Easter (Easter is Anglo-Saxon for Ishtar, a fertility deity).
No one appears to have any concerns or cares about what they’re doing.
Faithfully obeying God’s Torah was thrown right out the proverbial window during Saul’s reign.
What’s even more tragic is that the newly anointed King-in-waiting (David) wasn’t any different.
I’m telling you, folks…
We’re reading about what happened back then…
But we might as well be reading about today…
Ya, feel me?
I feel ya! Yes, this world today isn’t any different from the world “back then.” We might read about what the people did throughout the millennia, but it doesn’t always sink in that we humans tend to go in cycles … often “full circle” like on a rat wheel in a cage. We knock ourselves out to “do better” yet often revert back to doing EXACTLY what we attempted to avoid during our drive to improve our own lives, or our workplace, or society in general.
Often, we end up back where we were because there are too many “voices” and/or opinions from the “peanut gallery” getting in the way. Bottom line: mankind simply never learns. We might try to “accomplish something better in the future,” but in the end, we often revert back to “who we were” and “how we used to do things.”
It reminds of this little story we counselors used in a church “Singles Adjustment Seminar” (a weekend for newly divorced or widowed people). It went something like this:
Satan hates you and he wants to hurt/maim/kill you! He keeps us on a “merry-go-round” from which we cannot escape, because he knows our likes and dislikes and the “ruts” we are in. We are creatures of habit and will ALWAYS gravitate back to what we know.
Here is an example:
A guy comes to a “fork” in the road. He looks to the left and sees a lot of bumps and potholes. He looks to the right and the road looks a lot newer and better, so he takes that one. He walks for a long time with no problems, then all of a sudden, he falls into a huge pothole – one so big, it takes him days to climb out.
So, he goes back to the fork in the road, looks to the left and the right. The left has all those potholes and the right is still smooth, so he figures, now since he knows where that big pothole is, he will just walk around it, and so he takes that “right” road again.
When he gets to the pothole, he walks around it, but didn’t realize there was another, even bigger one on the other side, and he falls into that one, which again takes him days to climb out of. Once he does, he goes back to the fork, but rather than to try to see where that other road leads, he once again decides to take the smoother-looking road…because now he knows where those two potholes are, and he’ll just be extra careful this time….
Do you get it? We always try to fix ourselves the same way, from several different angles, doing what is “right” according to our limited human mindsets. We like to believe we are in control, never stopping to think that, if we were to let go of what we THINK we know, we could begin to find some better remedies and get to our final destination a stronger, smarter person. The other way – the way we THINK we know – can kill us! And that is what Satan is counting on. If you’re dead, you won’t have a chance to “get yourself right with God!”
So many great takeaways in your comment Carmen
Such as…
FIRST, don’t be deceived by appearances (the smooth road) but trust God despite appearances…
SECOND, learn from your failures. Why keep going down the same smooth-looking road when you’ve already proven to yourself you can’t handle it?
It’s like an alcoholic fooling himself again and again by deciding to just have 1 or 2 beers thinking he can stop whenever he wants to, but he never does, and ends up drunk out of his mind.
THIRD, the final and most important lesson is the fallacy of relying on our own strength to get through life’s challenges.
I don’t know if it’s pride or ego, but as you said “we like to believe we are in control.” But we never are.
Once we fall into the trap of thinking we can be our own God, that’s when the adversary (Satan) has got us in his clutches.
Your comment is an article in itself filled with so much insight!
Thanks for sharing!