Daily Devotional

“Then Abishai said to David, ‘God has delivered your enemy into your hand this day. Now therefore, please, let me strike him at once with the spear, right to the earth; and I will not have to strike him a second time!’ ” (1 Samuel 26:8). 

Abishai was David’s nephew, the son of David’s sister Zeruiah. David made him a captain in his army because he had killed three hundred enemy soldiers. He was “most honoured” in his unit. When David’s son Absalom threatened to take his father’s throne, Abishai took over a third of David’s forces against his son (2 Samuel 23:18, 19). 

When David asked who would go with him to spy out King Saul’s camp one night, Abishai quickly agreed. As they crept up on the form of the sleeping monarch, Abishai held his sword high over Saul’s heart, and whispered loudly, “God has delivered your enemy into your hand this day. Now therefore, please, let me strike him at once with the spear” (1 Samuel 26:8). But David refused. On another occasion, as David approached a town, a man named Shimei came out, “cursing continuously as he came. And he threw stones at David and at all the servants of King David” (2 Samuel 16:5, 6). Again, Abishai suggested the ultimate punishment: “Please, let me go over and take off his head!” (verse 9). Again, David refused. Later, when Shimei apologized to David for his behavior, Abishai hadn’t let up on his grim reaper perspective: “Shall not Shimei be put to death for this?” (2 Samuel 19:21). David promised Shimei that he would not die. 

Lucifer was the most honoured angel in heaven because he was stationed closest to the throne of God. When controversy broke out, he won over a third of God’s angelic creation against His Son. And now, at every turn in our lives, he is quick to suggest the wage we have earned— death. “[Satan] desires to take every glimmer of hope and every ray of light from the soul; but you must not permit him to do this. Do not give ear to the tempter, but say, ‘Jesus has died that I might live. He loves me, and wills not that I should perish’ ” (Steps to Christ, 53). 

Thank You, Jesus, that when Satan suggests death for me, You say No.