The Path of Least Resistance - 1 Samuel 23

Water always follows the path of least resistance. This is a bad principle to apply to our lives, especially in determining God's will.

Things went south for King Saul very quickly. Chosen to be the first king of God’s people, we are told in 1 Samuel 11 that the Spirit of the Lord “rushed” upon Saul. In a scene of renewal and worship Saul is crowned king. Then he goes crazy. His decent into madness comes quickly and completely. He impatiently and unlawfully offers sacrifices to God, his poor leadership leads him to proclaim a curse which ends up falling on his own son, which the people have to talk him out of, and then his jealousy of David, his servant and son-in-law, brings about full on looney bin cray-cray. The problem is that he is still king. The last third of the book of 1 Samuel tells of Saul’s pursuit to kill David.

On the flip side we see David. Everything about him is the antithesis of Saul. Saul was a head taller than everyone else, while David’s physical prowess is probably best summed up in the Lord’s words to Samuel, “man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” The Lord rejected Saul and removed his Spirit from him while David is described as a man after the LORD’s heart.

In 1 Samuel 23 we see a perfect example of the difference between Saul and David, and we also see a principle which we can apply to our own lives in determining the Lord’s will. Saul’s violent pursuit of David has reached the boiling point and David hears that the Philistines are attacking the Israelite city of Keilah. In a move that epitomizes David’s selflessness, he seeks the Lord as to wether or not he and his men should leave their hiding place and go to Keilah to fight against the Philistines. The Lord tells him twice that he should go and fight. We are not told exactly how the LORD speaks to David, but it is apparently a clear and obvious call. A principle that I have learned in hearing from the Lord is that He speaks most clearly when the task is most difficult. Be careful in asking the Lord to reveal himself to you in a burning bush like manner because when He does He is probably calling you to a Pharaoh sized challenge. The Lord doesn’t rebuke David for asking a second time even after He clearly told David to go the first time. He understood the fear of David’s men, and he encouraged them with a second call.

Meanwhile, Saul hears of the decision of David and his men to go and rescue Keilah. Saul tells his interpretation of these circumstances, "God has given him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars” (23:7). This was obviously not the case if we believe David’s side of the story. And the rhetorical question must then be asked of whose interpretation of God’s will do we trust based on the spiritual lives and wisdom exhibited by the two men, Saul’s or David’s? How then could the people of Israel distinguish between two contrasting proclamations of God’s provision - David saying God told him to go to Keilah, and Saul saying God brought David to Keilah to give him to Saul. Is there application of this today?

This story illustrates the danger of what I will call the open or closed door approach to God’s will. This is the approach that says when opportunities are presented as open doors that we should walk through them as they are from the Lord, and that when doors are closed it is therefore God telling us that what is on the other side of that door is not from Him. We could call this a path of least resistance approach to determining God’s will. I would propose that this is a subtle form of paganism - God speaks to me through opportunity or rejection, a “blessing" received is taken as a sign of God’s favor where a difficulty is interpreted as God’s chastisement. Perhaps we can say that this oversimplifying of circumstances is akin to Saul’s viewing David’s journey to Keilah as God’s deliverance - the situation appears to be working in my favor therefore it must be from the Lord. The truth of Saul’s situation is that what he saw happening lined up perfectly with his sinful desire to kill David - and he then assumed that his maniacal desires lined up with God’s.

Circumstances, “blessings”, open doors, closed doors - these cannot be interpreted on a spiritual level apart from an intimacy with the Lord.

David obviously experienced that intimacy. I love the gentleness the Lord displays in his communication of this mammoth task to David, even telling him twice. This is probably not a task that David would have chosen for himself. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe David’s selflessness and love for the people of Israel was so great that would have defended Keilah even without hearing directly from the Lord. But if so, that even further proves my point - that David was not only experiencing an intimacy with the Lord but was also walking in such radical obedience to Him that it was easy to hear His voice because he already knew God’s heart.

As for Saul - it is often a sign of a lack of spiritual intimacy when the path of least resistance is assumed to be God’s will. I have found in my own journey that what the Lord desires is rarely the easiest option, rarely the path of least resistance. We must pursue His heart, and walk in radical obedience, and then and only then will we have the courage to break down closed doors, to fight to swim upstream, to hear God when his Word is not in harmony with the words of the world.