“Blessed be your discretion and blessed be you who have kept me this day from blood guilt and from working salvation with my own hand.”
– 1 Samuel 25:33
Oh, these words are so important to understand. They have such important implications for the way we view our lives and the need we all have for people around us who keep us, protect us in a sense from ourselves. So the whole story here in 1 Samuel 25 is David has obviously been on the run from Saul who is seeking him out with vengeance, wants to kill him, and David is tempted to give in to the temptation to take things into his own hands.
1 Samuel 25:33 Keeps Us from Sin
He says at the very end of this verse, “You have kept me from working salvation with my own hand, from doing what I should not have done.” And he’s speaking specifically to Abigail who God has provided at just the right time to keep him from sinning, to keep him from giving into sinful impulses.
God, we pray that you would help us to be pure and holy and righteous and to walk in step with your spirit according to your word.
And I just think about my life. I want to encourage you to think about your life. Left to ourselves, we are so prone to sin. Were it not for God’s mercy in meeting us and saving us daily from our sin and ourselves, we would be lost. And one of the ways God shows his mercy is by putting people into our path, people into our lives, who help us see things that we may not see, who help us turn from sin in ways that we don’t always see.
We all have blind spots in different ways and we can all get carried away by temptation and we need people in our lives. And this is Matthew 18 when Jesus says, “I’ve put you in each other’s lives so when you see one another in sin,” Galatians 6, “when someone is caught in sin, that you have someone who comes to you and pulls you back, or someone sees you going towards sin, they pull you back in mercy.”
1 Samuel 25:33 Gives Us a Picture of God’s Love for Us
And this is one of the pictures of God’s love for us, that he puts people in our lives that we need to listen to. All of us, every single one of us, none of us immune to the tendency to take things in our lives into our own hands and for God to put people in our lives to remind us to trust in him, to remind us to keep our eyes fixed on him, and to remind us to turn from sin and pursue righteousness. And so we pray, God, thank you for your mercy.
So God, thank you for not leaving us alone in our sin. And in the middle of temptation, God, we praise you for pursuing us, for saving us from ourselves, for your mercy, for not giving us over to ourselves. Even as we think about Romans 1 and the picture of your judgment and giving sinful people over to themselves, God, thank you for your mercy. We pray that you would keep all of us from sin today in our battles with temptation that each one of us will face today, tomorrow.
This Verse Leads Us to Pursue Righteous Living
So God, we pray that you would help us to be pure and holy and righteous and to walk in step with your spirit according to your word. And God, we pray that you would surround each of us with good friends. With brothers and sisters in Christ who will keep us from sin. God, we pray that you would help us to humbly listen. Particularly to those closest to us who see our lives up close and personal. God, we pray that you would help us to listen to their encouragement.
And God, help us to be this kind of encouragement in others’ lives. Lord, to keep one another from sin. To protect one another from sin, to guard one another from temptation, to spur one another on toward you. God, we pray for wisdom in our lives and wisdom and others’ lives in light of 1 Samuel 25:33 for discretion to keep one another from temptation, sin, from taking things into our own hands.
So God, we pray for good friends who will spur us on toward you. We pray that you’d help us to be those kinds of friends. And God, make us a church. Make us a family of brothers and sisters who spurs one another on toward you in these ways every single day. Oh, we love you, God. We praise you for your mercy in our lives. We pray that you would keep us in your mercy today, all day long. In Jesus’ name, we pray according to 1 Samuel 25:33. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
