1. Samuel 18
In Old Testament times, long before today's Trinity was understood, not everyone who believed in God had the Holy Spirit. And this is how it can be explained that when Saul, the reigning king at the time of David, was anointed, God gave him the Holy Spirit. However, Saul's actions as king caused him to fall from God's grace and be rejected. So it was that the Holy Spirit was taken from Saul and passed on to David through the anointing of David.
I can only begin to imagine what it feels like to have been blessed by God and then to feel this loss of His grace. Saul was in this situation and had the experience of suddenly being outside of God's blessings. It's almost like being in a windowless room and suddenly the light goes out. Where before there was light, now there is darkness. And we all know that feeling. The darkness is suddenly so strong and dense that we are almost blind. With the loss of the Holy Spirit, Saul fell into a bottomless inner darkness and it affected all of his behavior. You could say he went insane. And now he has David, the anointed, at his court and sees the successes of this young man. It was just as well that Saul didn't know anything about the meeting of Samuel and David. But he experiences in chapter 18 of the first epistle of Samuel that this young man was blessed. All of David's undertakings are crowned with great success. His victory over Goliath is only the beginning of a whole series of successes.
At the beginning of this chapter (1 Samuel 18:1-5) we read of the deep friendship between David and Jonathan, the king's son. It speaks of a love that connected these two men. Saul has already lost his son to David here, so to speak. (In Jonathan's sincere love for David, we have a reflection of Jesus Christ's love for us humans. Just as Jonathan loves David and does everything for him, so Jesus Christ loves us even more. When we accept that love, we become through Jesus Christ able to pass them on to others as well) (John 15:12 This is my commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you, or Ephesians 5:2 Love one another as Christ also loved you)
And Saul was torn inside. On the one hand he felt envy of David's achievements and on the other certainly a form of admiration.
So David was also used by Saul as an army leader and he experienced that David outperformed even the best of his people by far. And not only the best of his army, but also himself, the king. People said after Saul he had won over thousands, but after David they said victories over tens of thousands. Saul could not endure these successes and he began to envy David and feared that he might outrank him, the king. And so the envy and jealousy he felt towards David turned into hatred. But David was popular with the people and the soldiers, and this fact made it difficult for Saul to get rid of him. Once before, in a fit of rage, he had attempted to nail David to the wall with a spear, and had failed. And so Saul devised a plan to get rid of David. He had it said that he would be willing to give him his daughter in marriage if he were able to pay the bride price of 100 foreskins of Philistines killed. Behind this offer and the demanded bride price is Saul's hope that David would be killed in one of these fights. But the Lord was with David and brought the king 200 foreskins.
If we read the verses about this in the Bible, one might think that it was not a great challenge for David to obtain this bride price. However, we remember what is written about the Philistines in chapter 17. A warlike people, without Fear of a fight. And I believe that the scalp, i.e. the foreskin, could only be taken from the person who killed the enemy. This is how you can imagine Saul's perfidious insidiousness.
From that day on, David became Saul's mortal enemy. Despite his successes, David did not become overbearing and arrogant, for him Saul was still the king appointed by God.
I think that just this humility that David had was a big part of his success and standing with the people.
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