Mislead by Our Senses: 1 Samuel 17:31-40
Our senses convince our mind to trust what we know to be true instead of looking to what God knows to be true. I live this out every day. I know my sinfulness; I know my thoughts. I’ve seen the evil my hands can do. What I have difficulty doing is accepting God’s forgiveness and focusing on the good He can do through me.
Saul catches wind of David’s words. When David comes before Saul, he sees a young musician and shepherd rather than a warrior. Saul allows his eyes to hide God’s truth. Instead of seeing a warrior willing to fight with God, Saul sees a warrior so small Goliath will have to stoop to fight.
This is the problem for physical beings. From birth, we learn to trust our senses. We know truth because we see it with our own eyes, hear it with our own ears, or feel it with our own hands. We enjoy certain foods because they bring pleasure when we taste them. We know the difference between good smells and bad smells because our nose tells us how to react.
Don’t get me wrong. Our senses are good. They keep us from danger; they allow us to interact with the world. Our senses were given to us by God so we can enjoy His creation. Considering the complexity of each sense with respect to how it works in the body, each sense is an amazing feat of neurological engineering. Our senses are a stunning part of God’s creation, and He intends for us to use them in amazing ways.
Unfortunately, we lean too heavily upon our senses. Because seeing is believing, we tend to trust eye-witness accounts under stressful situations more than we should. Our sense of smell is so strong, we can associate good smells with bad situations and develop wrong first impressions. Our touch, especially when isolated from our other senses, can be misleading. Our senses are incredible, but they are not as reliable as we would believe them to be.
David’s brothers, their warrior friends, and even Saul are guilty of allowing their senses to mislead. They see a young, short David. David is probably half the height of Goliath, and because strength is a measurement of cross-sectional area, David is only one-fourth as strong if not weaker.
David sees himself as a tool in God’s hands. Saul and the rest see an arrogant young man who could turn them all into servants of the Philistines. There’s the problem. The senses of the warriors around David mislead them and allow their fear of Goliath to continue to dominate their mind. Even when David convinces them he can defeat Goliath, Saul doesn’t believe David over his senses. Saul clads David in armor.
We lean on our own understanding. Our greatest strengths can become our greatest weakness. Our senses convince our mind to trust what we know to be true instead of looking to what God knows to be true.
