In his book, “Pioneer Priests of North America,” historian Francis Parkman tells the tale of a group of missionaries in the late 1600’s who were having a very difficult time trying to win converts from among the Huron people of Canada. The indigenous people were not interested in anything the Jesuits had to say, but they were enthralled by a cuckoo clock that the missionaries had brought with them from France. Every hour on the hour the bird would emerge from it’s house and chime the number of hours. This amazed the natives who had never seen such a thing. They gathered at the crude, little chapel the missionaries had built by the hundreds to sit silently and breathlessly before the clock waiting for the moment when the cuckoo would appear. The missionaries came to understand that the natives believed that a powerful spirit made its home in the clock, and the chiming was the language by which it spoke. It was a matter of great importance to the Hurons that they find an interpreter who could translate the meaning of it all. The missionaries seized upon this fascination with the clock and said they could interpret the meaning of what the cuckoo was saying. According to them the Cuckoo was telling the Hurons, rather conveniently, to listen to what they were trying to tell them.

They gained an audience through deceit in order to tell them “the truth.”

Do the ends justify the means? In this case, clearly not.

So far in our study of the life of David we’ve seen a lot of lying. Saul lies constantly. Michal lies. Jonathan lies. And this week as we take up chapter 21 together we will see that David can also tell some whoppers when he gets cornered.

But was it wrong for Michal to say David was sick in bed when really he was healthy and running away? Was it wrong for Jonathan to say that David had begged leave to return to his family in Bethlehem when really he was hiding behind a stone heap on the edges of a field nearby?

Or what about when Rahab hid the Israelite spies in her apartment in Jericho? Or when the Egyptian midwives failed to kill Hebrew babies when they were born according Pharaoh’s law saying that the Hebrew women gave birth too quickly for them to carry out the infanticide?

We know it is wrong to lie, but what if you’re hiding Jews from the Nazis or smuggling Bibles into a closed country? Is it then permissible when a lie saves a life or allows a person to circumvent the dictates of an evil law?

Listen in as we tackle this difficult question and more as we study 1 Samuel 21 together.