My wife and I arrived at the premises of the Church, an Anglican Communion, at Ijegun, Lagos, for ministration lasting from Friday through Sunday. The introduction sold us immediately to the congregation: ‘This is the minister we invited last year but could not come because the Cathedral took him. Is it now a great honour for us to have a man, who ministered last year at the Cathedral, to be ministering to us?’

The topic was, ‘The worthy man in the hands of God’. Any man God calls worthy, I told them, must have been born-again since He cannot refer to a sinner as worthy. A worthy man will live by the will and standard of God. David was a worthy man. He was satisfied in what he was doing in the bush, shepherding his dad’s flock, when God chose him and told Samuel to anoint him king of His people. He went back to the bush and did not scheme, in any way, to drive Saul out of the palace nor did he assume leadership in his dad’s house. The contrary holds today in some families, industry and even in the Church, where some people elect themselves to various positions by various means.

The worthy man allows God to use him as He likes. One day, there was wahala in Saul’s palace because God had left him, taking His Spirit away from him and an evil spirit had dominated him because of sin. It was his choice for disobeying God. Saul’s solace was music and he needed someone to be playing it for him. David was the man for the job. His father sent him and he went and played until the king was stable. Not long after, there was war between Israel and Philistine. David’s three elder brothers were recruited for the battle. One day, their dad sent him to see how they fared. He obeyed, not knowing that it was a way God was going to promote and announce him to the world. Worthy men are obedient to God, parents, constituted authority, etc.

One of the attributes of the worthy man is that he does not help God. He believes that God is sufficient for all things and therefore, is patient with Him no matter the challenges confronting him. It is unfortunate that some great men, even in the Church, only do the things that please them. Abraham, the father of faith, was also a victim. In Genesis 15, God assured him that Sarah, his wife, would bear him a son. God, as we know, does what He says and says what He does but only in His time. In chapter 16, Sarah made a bad proposal to him of sleeping with their maid and he acquiesced. Though the child was born, it was a bad example to follow.

On two occasions, King Saul, in his mad ambition to murder David so that Jonathan, his son, would succeed him, exposed himself where David would have killed him. Killing Saul would have been the sure way of preventing him from murdering David. It would have also hastened David to the throne. David spared his life, trusting that God’s time was the best for him. The worthy man’s first consideration is not what pleases him but what is acceptable to the Lord. He is conscious of the fact that he can win a case in the court by using the best lawyers in town and also of doing all sorts of things, but he knows that at the end of life, he will lose that case in the court of Heaven, where the just God, is the Judge.

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The worthy man does not rejoice in the fall of his enemy. Saul and Jonathan died at the war front. King Saul was ill-prepared for the battle because he was busy hunting for the head of David. An Amalekite, who claimed that he killed Saul, was punished by David by death. David mourned and wrote the Song of the Bow in honour of Saul and his son.

It is possible for the worthy man to get himself involved, not in the hand of God, but makes himself a tool in the hands of Satan. There is no doubt that he is a worthy man, but by going to a wrong place, he is sure to speak their language and he will become one of them. This explains why the Bible enjoins us to avoid every appearance of the devil. Uncle David was a victim. He was resting in his house one day, when he saw a lady bathing, not in the bathing room but outside. A married lady was doing that in my farm and when it was reported to me, I rebuked her. I thought that she would be ashamed but was surprised when she was defending her act. David could have looked elsewhere or should have told his servants to close his windows. He did not. When he sent for the lady, one would have thought that it was to reprimand her for an indecent act as I did. It was rather to sleep with her. Imagine, a worthy man, violating God’s Word!

God sets a standard in marriage for the worthy man. He marries by the will of God. The worldly man bases his choice on tribe, height, complexion, profession, beauty, et cetera, forgetting that they fade overtime. David, the man after God’s heart, did not consider His will in marriage. For marrying Princess Michal, what interested him most was becoming the son-in-law of King Saul. When we marry by the will of God, our home will also be run by that and the children will be trained in the way of the Lord. The family of David and the manner his children were raised, are bad examples to follow. Amnon, his son, raped his half-sister. For a year, David could not handle the matter till Absalom, in revenge, murdered Amnon and declared himself king.

A worthy man is justified through repentance of his sin. That was what David did. Prophet Nathan confronted him on his evil deed of adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah, her husband, to conceal his sin. People in his position would have incarcerated the fearless Prophet until he proved the accusation. ‘My little children, sin not,’ is God’s admonition to the worthy man concerning sin, but if he sins, ‘…we have an Advocate with the Father’. Pride could have made David deny the accusation but he did not. Shame would have done the same, to the glory of Satan, but David owned up. This is an example to follow when we fall into error and while in Religion, you pay for your sins whether you own them up or not. In Christianity, you are forgiven with a warning after repentance, ‘Go and sin no more’.

For further comment, Please contact: Osondu Anyalechi:  0802 3002-471; [email protected]