Shaken But Not Forsaken
One of the things
that points to the Bible being inspired by God
A)Is that the Bible uniquely presents it’s hero’s at
times in unfavorable light – Tells the Good the Bad
& the Ugly
B)We read of Moses committing Murder / Abe’s giving
his wife to be in the harem of the King / Peter’s Denials
C) The bible uniquely tells of the moral failures of it’s hero’s –
1) but their failures only serve
to MAGNIFY the GRACE OF GOD in their lives !!!
Prov.24:16 Though a righteous man may fall seven times/ he rises again
D) Well here in this section
dealing w/ the Life of David – we find David has hit Rock bottom – turning to
deceit & acting in a undignified manner
As we come to
Ch.21 that is where we find David – he is on the run / Running from Saul –
but then he ALSO starts to run from the Lord
A)But God in his grace will not let David get away –
B) He has a plan & a purpose to use this time in David’s life in a special way –
C) Although we see David fall
in a big way here in this Chapter –
1) We see him rise again – as He
turns to the Lord
D) And we
see that the grace of God is more than ready to cover David’s sin & to
carry him on
1) DAVID IS SHAKEN BUT NOT FORSAKEN Read v.1-6
Now David goes to the right place – but he does the wrong thing when he
gets there !!
A) Ahimelech wonders why David is
ALONE
B) Seemed
Unusual and DANGEROUS ………………
C) David PRETENDS – NOT ALONE
SPECIAL MISSION …HASTE
1)
Basically He Lies to the priest
SO David runs to
the house of God but he doesn’t do business w/ God once he gets there
A)We can do that too – we run to the house of God – He
speaks thru a message / a person / he pinpoints the problem – we don’t respond
B) Pretend everything is OK
– This is not a Place for Pretending !!!!
Why didn’t David just
tell the truth?
A) PROTECT HIMSELF – Didn’t know who he could trust
B) PROTECT
AHIMELECH – What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him
C) Here is the
PROBLEM: At this moment in David’s Life instead of placing his life
in God’s hands
1)
he is Choosing to take matters into his own hands
D) When Things are in my hands I
always make a MESS!!!!
WELL David asks
for some food & Ahimelech tells him the only bread that was available was
the Showbread
A)What did the showbread mean?
Why would God have a bakery rack in the tabernacle?
B)The importance and meaning of
the showbread is found in the name. Literally, showbread means "bread of faces."
1) It is
bread associated with, and to be eaten before, the
face of God. F.B. Meyer calls the showbread "presence-bread."
C) 12 Loaves one for each tribe speaks of God’s Presence among his
people
In giving David
the bread, Ahimelech broke with priestly custom, or tradition but not with
God’s word. God’s word Priest/
Trad. Only Priest
A)He rightly understood that
human need was more important than religious Customs & traditions.
B) In fact Once, when Jesus’ disciples were criticized for breaking
religious custom by eating against traditions, { turned to this story –
illustrate that pt.}
1) Jesus uses this event in the life of David as an example for
breaking religious customs – Human need supercedes – Religious
tradition
C) Also worth noting that
As Jesus told this story – there is no mention of David’s lie – there is no
mention of David being in the wrong –
1) That my friends is God’s grace & forgiveness – He remembers our
rights what we did right & forgives & forgets what we did wrong
D) THIS
SIDE OF CALVARY
Now Although David’s sins were forgiven here -
But there are always consequences to sin
A)David would come to horribly
regret this lie –
B) Because Doeg the Chief
Herdsman – is there over hears tells Saul
RD v. 7-9
Doeg
was not an Israelite but an Edomite – he was
the Chief of the herdsmen:
A) The word translated chief means mighty,
but can also be used to mean violent or obstinate.
B) Doeg will certainly show himself to be a violent and obstinate
man.
Now there were
two things that David asked for – 1st was food the 2nd
was a weapon –
A)THE SWORD OF GOLIATH - HOW did
Alimelech get the sword of Goliath?
B) David must have presented it
to the Lord..... Presented it in the Tabernacle of the Lord
1) Now David is on the run and he needs a weapon and the Lord gives it
back to David
C) The Lord
is seeking to remind David here of His Presence with him
1) He is wanting David to
remember the Faith that Brought him the Victory over Goliath
D)
Problem is At this point He is starting to trust more in his own cleverness
than in the Lord, on the Run again
1) This
time David runs from God’s house to the world
V. 10-15
Now this is
comical of how when we are not trusting in the Lord we will do the stupidest
things
A)David leaves Nob w/ Goliaths sword at his side -
& he heads for Gath – Guess who was from Gath? GOLIATH
B) David goes to the home town of the Philistine
Champion w/ the very sword that he used to cut off the Giants head/
C) Raider
in Charger locker room
1) He goes
there hoping to find a refuge & some asylum – but his plan backfires / they
recognize who he is – ( what he did )
D) Not only killed Goliath but he
killed 10,000 of their men
1) David
responds by acting like a crazy man – completely undignified
Degrades
himself & the Lord
E) David pretended to be MAD –
CRAZY including scratching on the doors
of the gate, and let saliva fall down on his beard.
Here we see the 2nd
thing that our sin does – disgraces the Lord and bring shame to us – David the
Champion / God’s man – Disgrace
A)The world glories in our failures – / This is the
Champion of Israel ?
C) David runs to the world – And in order to save his life – he totally
alters his behavior – Disgracing himself & the Lord
1) That is
what compromise always does – Alter your behavior in such a way that you are
disgraced / And so is the Lord
D) LISTEN the Lord wasn’t going to let David – find
refuge in the world – and he won’t let you find it there either
God had another
plan FOR DAVID: The Shelter of a Cave
Ch 22:1a
David therefore departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam
A) A Cave can be a good place for
God to work in our lives/ recall Elijah running in fear Jezebel /
wanted to die in the desert / ends up in a cave
B)
Fire / Earthquake / windstorm – God wasn’t in it / Then the Lord spoke thru a still small voice –
C) Sometimes God needs to get us
into a cave type of setting – before we are still enough to hear his voice –
laid off Job / Sickness / Heavy trial
1) We
think at first it is the end of us – that we are doomed – but we
find that God is not seeking to end our lives but to reroute them
See
before David could go up, he had to be stripped down.
A) God had effectively pulled all of the crutches out of David’s life.
He had lost his job, he had lost his wife,
B) he
had lost his place in Saul’s household, he had lost his best friend Jonathan, he had lost his position with the fighting men of
Israel.
C)
This wild
dream about him becoming the King was like a vapor
that had drifted away.
Now why, why did God allow David to sink to
this place,
A) why did God allow His man to end up
with nothing, living in a cave in Adullam?
B)
Very simple, before we can come to the beginning of
what God has for us, we have to come to the end of ourselves.
C) God’s University, UBSD, University of the Back
Side of the Desert.
1)
There are a lot of lessons to be learned in the Back Side
of the Desert,
D)
but the main one is this, we have to come to the end of ourselves,
so we can come to the
beginning of God.
God is taking away all of David’s support so
that his only support is God
A) He couldn’t go to Samuel, he
couldn’t go to Jonathan, he couldn’t go to the house of the Lord,
B) But he could go
to a humble cave and find refuge.
C) The
name Adullam means refuge, but the cave
wasn’t to be David’s refuge. /
1) But It was in the cave that David found that the Lord wanted to
be
D)It is at this point that Others come to David at the
cave of Adullam
v.1b So when his brothers and all
his father's house heard it, they went down there to him.
First, V.1 David’s family came to him.
A)This is a precious gift from
God, because previously all David had was trouble and persecution from his
father and his brothers.
B) Now, they join him at Adullam cave.- It seems that they finally came to
recognize God’s hand upon David.
1) What a Blessing this must have been to David to see their Friendly
faces
C) But then we see in verse 2 How
God was going to do in David’s life what He could never imagine
V 2 And every one that was in distress, & every one that was in debt & every one that was discontented, gathered themselves to
him; & he became a captain over them: & there were with him about 400
men.
These men were
the most UNLIKELY candidates to be the mighty men of God in David's army
A)YET God raised them up and used
them to establish the Kingdom of Israel & bring it to the zenith of it's glory by using these men to destroy
the enemies of Israel
B) But they started in distress..... in debt..... discontented
C) DISTRESS-
Under pressure/ under stress / In DEBT – those
who couldn’t pay their bills
1) discontented: Those who were in Bitterness
of soul –
These
all came to David when he was down and out, hunted and despised.
A)
Once David came to the throne, there were a lot of people who wanted to be
around him.
B)
But the glory of these 400 is that they came to David in the cave.
C) “Herein David became a type of Christ, the
Captain of our salvation, who cried, ‘Come unto me, all
ye that are weary.’”
“Do
you see the truth of which this Old Testament story is so graphic a picture?
Just as in David’s day, there is a King in exile who is gathering around Him a
company of people who are in distress, in debt, and discontented. He is
training and preparing them for the day when He shall come to reign.” (Redpath)
So these men
came & gathered around David & He became captain over them:
A)God would use David to make
this ragtag group of renegades into the
kind of men described in
1 Chronicles 12:8: Mighty men of valor, men trained for battle, who could
handle the shield and spear, whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were
as swift as gazelles on the mountains. .
B) Men who would do Great
Exploits- They killed Giants / they killed 800 men single handedly in Battle
God wants to
reach North County/ Your work place / Your Neighborhood - Who
will he use?
A)The distressed .......
The discontented
........ The DEBTORS
YOU & Me
B) All
God wants is an OPEN and WILLING heart
You
CAN'T say: "I'm to YOUNG"........
Jeremiah tried that excuse
You CAN'T say: "I'm too OLD"......... Moses tried
that excuse
C) You CAN'T say: "My life is a mess"....... David's
army was made up of 400 losers
1)All we can do is GATHER AROUND JESUS Christ & Tell Him:
"Lord, I'm distressed "
D) Tell Him: "Lord, I'm discontented with the way things are.... In my life and in the world around me....
I want to give my life to you"
1) Tell Him:
"Lord, I am a debtor to
You... I owe You my life"
So God is doing a New thing –
Bringing these men into David’s life at this time
RD V. 3-4
Now
David took his parents to Moab because his great-grandmother Ruth was a Moabite
A)He wanted his parents to be safe in whatever battles he may face
in the future.
B) This shows wonderful love and obedience on the part of David.
C) First,
it shows a wonderful love. He cared for his
parents when he had plenty of problems of his own.
1) We sometimes think that when we are going through trials, we
have a
license to be unloving and selfish,
D) David shows that we can care about others instead of becoming
self-focused in times of trial.
Secondly,
it shows a wonderful obedience.
A) Even though David did not have a problem-free
home life,
B) he knew he was still obligated to obey the fifth commandment: Honor your father and your mother (Exodus 20:12).
C) He wants to make sure they are being cared for until he sees
how this was all going to play out
RD V. 6-8
Now
the Focus shifts here back to Saul – We see that he is becoming more demented
by the day
A) He thinks that everyone – his son the Priest his men –
B) Jealousy does
– makes you paranoid so that you don’t know who you can trust
C)Listen folks, the
problem here is not that the world was against Saul, the problem is that God was
against Saul. { That was the real Problem –
What
was really bugging Saul was God’s hand
of
judgment that was against him.
A) He just wouldn’t admit it and he
tried to shift the
blame off to everyone else.
B) What Saul needed to do was to repent and fall in line with
the plan that God had for his life.
C) Saul is looking for people to blame and with the help of Doeg
finds one in Ahimelech -
V.9-15
Doeg is looking for an opportunity for
Self promotion is going to find it at the expense of Ahimelech & priest
A) Saul accuses Ahimelech of conspiracy with David.
B) Ahimelech is so blown away by this accusation and is so unaware
of the Kings hatred for David –
1) So much so that he praises David before the Jealous king
C) He asks - : And who among all
your servants is as faithful as David.
Standing up for people, especially our
brothers and sisters in Christ, is one of the greatest things that we can do
for them.
Ahimelech’s words only fuel Saul’s rage -
Saul commands the execution of the priests and their
families, and Doeg the Edomite carries it out.
RD V 16-19
“This is one of
the worst acts in the life of Saul;
A) A bloody sentence, harshly pronounced and as rashly executed,
without any pause or deliberation, without any remorse or regret.
Note worthy that The servants of the
king would not lift their hands to strike the priests of the LORD.
A) To their credit, Saul’s servants feared God
more than Saul, and refused to murder the priests.
B) But Doeg wanting to score points – is more than willing to
oblige the king in his request
C) Unfortunately the
slaughter didn’t stop there, Doeg takes a group of guards with him to Nob,
1) Where he massacres all the
priest & their families
This was the total extermination of the priestly community.
A) Actually it was the extermination of all but one, look at verse 20 – 23
B) One of the things that you will notice as you go through
the Bible is that God always has a remnant.
C) No matter how bad things get,
God always preserves a handful of people who will accomplish His
will on the earth.
D) That is the case here, all the priests are killed but
one, Abiathar, and with Abiathar comes the Ephod of the High Priest which will
serve David well.
The News of the Priest death
must of Crushed David especially when he realized it was his sin that played a
part in this tragedy
A) I think that it was right here that David finally began
to see what was at stake,
B) he was finally coming to grips
with fact that his life, his actions were going to impact a lot of people. 1) What David said and did, could either preserve life, or it could
destroy life.
C) The power of life or death was in his hands.
1) Same true for us – Our actions / words
have an impact for life – or for death
D) Kids
who hate Church – Parents words
1) pastors
kids – All the Crude
Now David couldn’t do
anything about the past, neither can we, but he could do something
about the present.
A) He could take care of Abiathar, he
could bring him into his company and protect him from future harm.
B) This is
the step that many of us miss when it comes to dealing with our sins and
mistakes, and failures.
1)We are sorry for what we didn’t do, {
So no to temptation etc - but we don’t embrace what we can do.
C) We say no to the bad stuff, but we don’t say yes to the good
stuff.
1) It’s saying yes to the good stuff that moves us away from the sin and
establishes us in the place where God wants us to be.
D) With every failure comes the opportunity to do what is right
and good,
1) David saw that, and he embraced
it.
So David confessed his
sins, he received forgiveness for his sins, and then he did those things that
would take him forward and away from those sins.
That brings about the full cycle of forgiveness
and restoration.