1 Chronicles 12:17

"The Lord shall give the Word to them that preach good tidings, with great power." Of you, also, I venture to make this prayer, that, in this struggle of ours, truth may prevail. For you are not seeking your own glory but Christ's, and when you win the victory, I also shall win it if I recognize my own error, and, contrarily, you prevail when I win, "for neither ought the children to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children." And in the book of Paralipomenon we read that the sons of Israel went out to fight with peaceful heart, in the very midst of swords and blood shedding and the bodies of the slain, because they were thinking of the victory of peace, not their own.

He meant no harm to any man, which was his rejoicing in the day of evil, and enabled him, when he feared treachery, to commit his cause to him that judges righteously. He will not be judge in his own cause, though a wise man, nor avenge himself, though a man of valour; but let the righteous God, who hath said, Vengeance is mine, do both.

And David went out to meet them,....

AT this time David was in the hold—I suppose in the stronghold of Ziklag, which the king of the Philistines had given to him. It was in that fortress-town that he received a welcome addition to his band. David was an exile and it is not every man who cares to cast in his lot with a banished nobleman. He was outlawed and his sovereign would have slain him with his own hands if he had found opportunity—few care to stake their all with a man in such a condition.

AT this time David was in the hold—I suppose in the stronghold of Ziklag, which the king of the Philistines had given to him. It was in that fortress-town that he received a welcome addition to his band. David was an exile and it is not every man who cares to cast in his lot with a banished nobleman. He was outlawed and his sovereign would have slain him with his own hands if he had found opportunity—few care to stake their all with a man in such a condition. The many who were on Saul's side spoke very bitterly of David and, wishing to curry favor with the king, they slandered him to the blackest degree—few respectable people care to associate themselves with a person who is in ill-repute. Many to whom David had done no ill were eager to betray him and sell him into the hands of his enemy, for men sought their own gain and cared not whom they sold, so long as they clutched the reward—it was no small thing for a band of men to unite with a man upon whose head a price was set. David had to stand upon his guard, for traitors were all around—the men of Keilah would have delivered him up when he went in all simplicity of heart within their gates. The fortunes of David were at a low ebb and, therefore, when these men came to David, they did a valorous action—an action which he would be sure to remember in the later days of his triumph. I want to run a parallel between the case of David and that of our Lord Jesus Christ. At the present moment our Lord Jesus, the Son of David, is still in the hold. Among the men of this world, He is not yet enthroned—their hearts go after another prince—and as yet the kingdom has not come to the Son of David. I know that He reigns in Heaven and that He is, in very deed, King of kings and Lord of lords—but before the eyes of the mass of men He is still despised and rejected. His people, as yet, are but a feeble folk and often hard put to it.