So David went on his way. In other words, he made no attempt to comply with Saul’s request and return to court, because he knew this was a meaningless repentance. Saul had been through it before, and it hadn’t lasted five minutes. Emotional repentance doesn't necessarily mean anything. Now there is a well-known preacher, and he goes about evangelism in a very emotional way, and it is a very emotional impact that he makes, particularly on the lives of young people. Some years ago we had quite a little cluster here of young men whose testimony was that this particular preacher had turned them round, and really brought them to commitment to Christ. Now interestingly all the people concerned were people who had Christian backgrounds, brought up in believing homes, brought up to go to churches, but they had repudiated their upbringing and turned away. And those particular people seemed to be very vulnerable to this man's very powerfully emotional style of appeal. As far as I know they are all back entrenched in the world. It may have seemed at the time: ‘Oh the Spirit is moving. This is wonderful’, but repentance can be simply an emotional experience. It can soon be lost, especially if someone has got a bit of a religious background, and they feel bad about the betrayal of their background and all the friendship that perhaps was lavished upon them in their church at one time in the past. They feel some regrets, and some kind of worldly style of lostness. Only the Holy Spirit can really turn men and women to repentance. As we preach – we have to be as earnest as we can be, as feelingful as we can be. We have to reflect something of the love of God and the love of the gospel, but not we must not adopt techniques which are merely playing with people's emotions, because an emotional repentance is seldom a good one. On the other hand good repentance contains much emotion, but there is a difference between the two. In the good case, the emotion is a response to a deep understanding in the mind of God grace and mercy in Christ.
Do remember that, because God can deal with his enemies, including the most powerful forces against you and I, in evangelism, in Christian work: all the atheism around us. You go to speak to somebody and to witness to them. Yes, but they are influenced by the powerful brainwashing and mental programming of education, and evolution and television and the attacks on the Bible and upon religion. But always remember, just as with David and his nephew going through that defensive guard of Saul's, God can just deal with everything which is against us, put that arrow of conviction in, make our word effective. And David proved this.