Can you Trust the Lord and Still Tell Lies. (1 Samuel 21: 1-15)

People like to sort life into neat, tidy categories. And Christians are no exception, we often like to sort life into straightforward ways of approaching things, tidy categories: right and wrong, black and white, faithful or unfaithful. Maybe we assume too easily that if someone trusts the Lord, they will always walk in integrity. Surely a believer who lies must not be trusting God in that moment… right?

But what if I told you that a man of sincere faith — a man who deeply loved God, a man the Scriptures themselves describe as having a heart after the Lord — once found himself in a place of great fear, and in that moment… he lied. Boldly. Blatantly. No nuance, no half-truths — a proper, old-fashioned whopper of a lie.

The man I’m talking about is David. The story we are about to enter, recorded in 1 Samuel 21, is the beginning of that long, exhausting, ten-year season where David lived on the run. sheltering in caves, hiding in the shadows, and in these moments when fear pressed in— some of the deepest spiritual lessons emerge…..