1 Samuel 29-30: God’s Deliverance

Outline

• David and the Philistines
• David and his men
• David and the Amalekites

Introduction

In the last chapter we considered what it looks like when God turns His back on a man and makes him His enemy. In the next two chapters we have the opposite, the faithfulness of God, even when we are weak and unfaithful. The book of 1 Samuel is pushing towards a climax, the death of Saul, and the end of David’s exile in Philistia. These two chapters are an account of how David who has been backslidden for a while is restored to God and delivered by God. Do you remember back to chapter 27 when David had fled to Achish and had lied about who he had been raiding. How this led to David getting a promotion to Achish’s personal bodyguard, and then Philistia was going to war against Israel. And we were left hanging in 28:1-2 as the story moved away from David leaving us hanging in anticipation of what would happen next. We followed Saul to the witch, but we are back again to David and what happened next. What will David do? Philistia is launching a huge war against Israel and David has been boasting about all the Israelites he has been killing and now the act is about to be exposed. Should he run away, should he fight, should he wait for an opportunity to turn on the Philistines? God comes to the rescue!