"The Fall of the House of Saul" - Know Your Enemy (page 8 of 17)

Know Your Enemy

Let us continue in 1 Samuel 29:4:

"But the princes of the Philistines were angry with him; so the princes of the Philistines said to him, 'Make this fellow return, that he may go back to the place which you have appointed for him, and do not let him go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he become our adversary. For with what could he reconcile himself to his master, if not with the heads of these men? Is this not David, of whom they sang to one another in dances, saying: "Saul has slain his thousands, And David his ten thousands"?'

Then Achish called David and said to him, 'Surely, as the Lord lives, you have been upright, and your going out and your coming in with me in the army is good in my sight. For to this day I have not found evil in you since the day of your coming to me. Nevertheless the lords do not favor you. Therefore return now, and go in peace, that you may not displease the lords of the Philistines.' So David said to Achish, 'But what have I done? And to this day what have you found in your servant as long as I have been with you, that I may not go and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?' Then Achish answered and said to David, 'I know that you are as good in my sight as an angel of God; nevertheless the princes of the Philistines have said, "He shall not go up with us to the battle." Now therefore, rise early in the morning with your master's servants who have come with you. And as soon as you are up early in the morning and have light, depart.' So David and his men rose early to depart in the morning, to return to the land of the Philistines. And the Philistines went up to Jezreel."

David knew his enemy. Something happens in churches: we tend to become Amish. The Amish people are a Mennonite sect whose ancestors in Holland were truly saved Christians. Most of them today, however, are virtually cultic and are unsaved. One of the reasons they went wrong was the sin of “party spirit”. Another mistake they made, however, was that they forgot how to be in the world but not of it. When a group becomes so introspective that they lose their capacity to understand and relate to unbelievers, it becomes evangelistically ineffective.

I don't advocate Christians listening to heavy metal music – personally, I hate the stuff. However, I do advocate understanding what it is. How else will you witness to people who do listen to it? It is stupid to spend hours of your time watching one idiot thing on television after another. But it's good to know what the world is watching and how they're thinking – that's their worldview. David learned to know his future enemy. The way that he overcame the Philistines was in having once become one; he wasn't ethnically a Philistine, of course, but he rode with their army. The Philistines for their part might have overcome the Amalekites if they had kept David; God might have blessed them if they had blessed David rather than ostracizing him. However, that was their loss.

David knew his opponent. People who were saved out of the world generally have an advantage in witnessing because they know the way unsaved people think. Personally, I don't have a great burden for drug addicts. One would think that I should, since I was once one of them. When I was a teenager I was addicted to hard drugs. I was fooling around with heroin by the age of 16, but once I got to college my god was cocaine. Maybe being around drug addicts reminds me too much of what I used to do and be, and that's why I don't like it. Seeing junkies reminds me of things about myself that I would much rather forget ever were; perhaps that is true. I do understand the drug culture, however; I understand the way a junkie thinks, what makes him tick. Holy huddles are detrimental. “Be in the world, but not of it”. David knew his enemy. Too many Christians are insular, ignorant of what the world is like. The usual exception to this is those churches which are worldly themselves. Largely, therefore, you have two rotten choices: be insular, or be worldly. Neither one is Biblical. It is no more Biblical to be Amish than it is to be worldly; rather there is a balance: “in it, but not of it”.

Notice that the Philistines accepted David up to a point. The world will always, always, always end up rejecting Christians; Christians have rejected the world already. Unsaved people only ever accept a Christian to a certain point. Never trust an unsaved person. Let me repeat that: never trust an unsaved person. Even if you are married to one, do not trust him or her beyond a limited point. "The whole world is in the power of the wicked one" (1 Jn. 5:19); "Satan is the god of this world". (2 Co. 4:4) If a person is not covered by the blood of Jesus directly or indirectly, he or she is working for the god of this world, the devil. Again: never trust an unsaved person; at some point they will turn against you.

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