The Bible makes it clear that God's ways are perfect His plan.

The Bible is perfect and often uses a variety of people and unusual means to fulfill His purposes.

Today on Truth For Life we'll see how God protected David, His anointed servant, despite the mounting tension with Saul, the reigning king.

Alistair Begg is teaching from chapter 19 in verse Samuel.

The opposition comes from Saul, the intervention comes from Jonathan, and the restoration is enjoyed by David.

Look at the final sentence of verse 7.

And Jonathan brought David to Saul and he was in his presence as before.

I underlined that as before because I wanted to say to myself, yeah, I bet it was as before.

And you go into verse 8 and it was.

So the protection of God for His anointed by the intervention of John, secondly by the evasion of David himself.

The pattern repeats itself, the Philistines are there, the war is an ongoing rumble.

David goes out verse 8, fights with the Philistines, strikes them with a great blow so that they fled before Him.

And once again, what ought to be the cause for rejoicing throughout the entire community becomes an occasion for dark and murderous thoughts.

For the dog days, if you like, I think it was Churchill who referred to those days as the dog days, where there was a blackness and a darkness fell over Him and promoted by His jealousy.

Once again, He descends to murderous thoughts.

Think about it. As long as the Lord lives, He will not die.

We don't know how much time elapsed between verse 7 and verse 8, whatever it was.

It was enough time for Saul to realize, no, I still want Him dead.

Where do these murderous thoughts come from?

Why do people murder? If they don't murder another, why do they seek to murder themselves?

What is it that draws people into such dark passages that from their very essence, they find that they cannot escape?

Every attempt by secular psychology to explain it and to fix it will eventually have to bow before the clear instruction of Scripture.

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