1 Samuel Lesson 34
David in Gath –
1 Samuel 21:10-13; Psalm 52
1 Samuel 21, we continue with the life of David and the study of this
portion of his life. This portion of his
life is a fascinating portion because it’s so like our experience, it’s so like
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ during His incarnation and during this
point in history. Chapters 16-17 dealt
with David’s anointing. Catch the flow of the argument of the book so we don’t
lose the forest for the trees. In those
two chapters we dealt with the fact that God anointed David; God chose David,
and therefore David had a promise that he was the king by God’s Word. God’s Word said he was the king. In chapters 18-20 we have rejection, the
rejection of David by Saul and incidentally, his acceptance by Jonathan. And then in chapters 21-27 we have the
persecution era of David’s life. During
this time David is fleeing persecution.
To review a little bit of chapter 21 and part of chapter 22, you
remember the problem David faced in 21:1, when “David came to Nob to Ahimelech,
the priest;” the problem was that David was suffering from category four, five
and six type suffering as we use the terms.
Category four suffering is suffering that is due to the fact that we
exist in Satan’s world and receive therefore the hatred of Satan because we are
identified with Christ. Category five
suffering is suffering that the believer receives because the believer has to
learn truth this way, and there are some truths that can only be learned the
hard way. And category six type
suffering is suffering that is due to produce a testimony to believers,
unbelievers and angels in history. Now
all these categories represent suffering that is undeserved in the sense that
it is not immediately caused by something you do. Category one, two and three type suffering
are due to things that we have done in the immediate past. This type of suffering is not. It was this kind of suffering that David
faced. And it was this kind of suffering
that made him liable to the mistake that he did in chapters 21-22.
Therefore we have entitled this subsection of Samuel, chapters 21-22 as
David’s humbling. David was humbled
before God by a failure; by a failure in his strategy and the lesson that David
learned was something tremendous, something we can all benefit by and it was
something that can be applied in the sphere of politics. Here is where you have the practice of
politics and some of the Biblical principles for its practice given in God’s
Word. But you recall that David made a
tactical error at Nob. What happened was
that David, first of all, had a problem with category four, five and six
suffering in that he couldn’t understand it, and he didn’t take enough time to
understand it. By the time we get
through tonight we’ll see that he understood the lesson very well. But he didn’t take enough time to expose
himself to the Word of God and therefore he was unstable; he was not trained
and he was rushing too fast to do (quote) “the Lord’s work,” (end quote),
without adequate preparation and as a result he was open.
The second thing that was wrong is that because he was rushed and he did
not spend time in the Word, he did not spend sufficient time to pray and to get
this thing straightened out in his own mind, he tried to chart his own
course. His mind was dull, he was out of
fellowship at this point because God the Holy Spirit was telling him David,
wait, wait, wait, get this thing settled first, before you do anything else,
and he wouldn’t. And so he was on
negative volition and the immediate result of negative volition is a spiritual
dullness. And the spiritual dullness was
manifested by his inability to spot the error at Nob. When he came to Nob, as it says in verse 7,
there was a spy, called Doeg, of Saul’s dynasty. Doeg was watching what David was doing; David
saw that Doeg was there, David knew, he says in chapter 22, that Doeg was a spy
but because David is now carnal and he is dull, he is not sharp, he’s not alert
and he’s taken in and he rushes, because he is not relying on the Lord, he’s
trying to chart his own way to the throne.
And his way includes lying to the priest in verses 1-4, and it includes
rushing things, after verse 6-7 where he tries to arm himself with Goliath’s
sword. Even though he could have come back to do this he continues to rush
on. This is a sign or carnality it’s
always manifest when you have carnality going. This is why carnality is so
dangerous to you as a believer. If you
are out of fellowship and you persist in staying out of fellowship, you are
opening yourself up to making some very bad decisions and you’ll pay the price
for these decisions, as David did. So we
have this problem of negative volition leading to dullness.
The third problem was that David wound up getting all the people of Nob
slaughtered. Now look at the irony of
this thing; in Nob there were 85 priests plus their women and children, plus
their animals and this entire city of
Tonight we’re going to see how David learned the lesson from the Doeg
incident. Next week we’ll deal with the
rest of chapter 21 and 22 but tonight we’re going to go to Psalm 52 that was
written during the time of this Doeg incident.
This was, of course, written after the fact, but it shows that David
learned a lesson that occurred during this time. The lesson we hinted at last
week; we said really what David has learned is Romans
We don’t have that kind of a promise today as believers, but we have
others; casting all your care upon Him for He cares for you; be careful for
nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your
requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passes all
understanding shall guard your hearts.
Now that’s a promise. That
promise is the same as this promise. If
you want a promise out of your Christian position that is analogous to David’s
promise, think of Romans 8:29 where it promises the believer that he will be
conformed to Jesus Christ’s character.
Think of that one; that is your promise, that’s a promise you can
identify with. All right, David had a
similar type promise, it was a promise that he would sit on the throne.
Now let’s watch the two promises in action. Let’s chart a David and let’s chart a latter
day David out on a toulies trip like David was.
And let’s watch how the same mistake is made; it doesn’t look like the
same but it is the same kind of mistake.
What is the promise to David?
You’ll sit on the throne. What is
the promise to the believer? You’ll be
conformed to Christ. All right, that’s a
sovereign promise, that can’t be changed.
But we live in an open history that involves volition, and volition
can’t be cancelled; volition is the individual’s responsibility. Therefore we have the problem of volition or
free will and we must keep this in tension with sovereignty. Sovereignty promises that something will come
to pass but when connected with volition sovereignty guarantees it will come to
pass through free will decisions. If you
challenge, you say how can sovereignty guarantee free will decisions, I will
counter-challenge that that is a question which can never be resolved and every
religion and every philosophy has the same problem. So if you’re rejecting Christianity because
of some sovereignty-free will problem, you’re a hypocrite because if you’re
rejecting Christianity on that basis you have to reject every other philosophic
position known. So it is not a
legitimate objection to Christianity.
Volition must operate in order to produce David sitting on the
throne. Volition must also operate in
order to produce us to be conformed to Christ.
Fine; now the illegitimate problem of when we’re out in the
toulies. Here’s how somebody out in the
toulies thinks; here’s David. David says
look, God promised me the throne now it’s up to me to get it by my own
gimmicks. And so David sets out to come
to Nob to make a political arrangement with the priesthood. And so David operates to get to God’s goal,
he uses human viewpoint means, and the means David is pulling in to produce
God’s promised goal are sheerly his own creation. He hasn’t consulted the Lord about it, he’s
been to busy running to stick to the Word.
He hasn’t taken time out to get in the Word, like a lot of people, too
busy doing things to take time out to get in the Word. If you are too busy to study the Word of God
you are just plain too busy and you ought to drop a few things. If you have to postpone things till next year
or forever for that matter, if you have to postpone something then that
something isn’t worth it, to get in the Word.
If that thing is keeping you from the Word of God, that thing is keeping
you in a bum’s rush which eventually is going to result in disaster in your
life. So if you notice that you don’t
have time to study the Word, there’s something wrong either with the way you
use your time or there’s something wrong with your attitude toward the Word of
God, one or the other.
Well, David didn’t have time and he, therefore, seized on a human
viewpoint gimmick to produce a promised goal.
Now look, we have the same thing today. What is the goal? To share the character of Jesus Christ. Is that a promise by God’s sovereignty? Yes.
Is it the promised destiny of every person who has trusted in Jesus Christ? Yes.
Is that possible for you? Yes,
all of Christ’s character can be produced in the believer and will certainly be
produced. That is the goal. However, seeing that is the goal isn’t
enough, because some believers…oh yes, now I have got to live the Christian
life, now I have to use all my pet gimmicks to get along, I’ve got to do this,
I’ve got to hustle, I’ve got to get points, I’ve got to go to this meeting,
that meeting and so on. And so we have
the hustlers that are doing the same thing as David. The only thing is their mistakes aren’t quite
as vivid as David’s mistake and the horrible result of his mistake.
But David made the mistake and as a result we learn the lesson; God’s
goals are produced by God’s means and no other means. If God promises that you will be conformed to
Jesus Christ, no matter what a stinker you may be, no matter how out of it you
are, God will get you there, and it will be through His means. Now He may have to knock you down a couple of
times, real hard; on the other hand He may have to bless you. Some people, the only trial they understand
is actually blessing, they’ve got to be blessed into suffering, where they just
get blessing piled on top of blessing piled on top of blessing until they
realize they can’t control it, and they realize the hollowness of
blessing. That’s personally how I came
to know Jesus Christ. So you can get to
Christ through adversity or you can get to Christ through prosperity but God
will use means. And it will be in the
final analysis grace.
Now Psalm 52 is dedicated to all those who are trying to shortcut the
Christian life, and Psalm 52 is a magnificent lesson that David learned by the
college of hard knocks. Let’s look at
it; first dividing it at the end of verse 5.
The first section, verses 1-5, deal with David’s exposure of Doeg. David is exposing this monster that Saul had
in his regime, and the first five verses are devoted both to an expose, and to
an announcement of God’s judgment upon this man. The second part of the Psalm, verses 6-9 deal
with what the righteous believers will learn as a result of David’s suffering,
what the righteous believers will learn as a result of this experience in
David’s life.
Let’s look at verse 1 which is the heading of the Psalm. Your Bible should have the Psalm heading; in
the original Hebrew that’s part of the text.
“To the chief Musician,” a Maschil;
now the word “Maschil” tells us
something immediately about this Psalm.
Maschil comes form, sachil,
the “M” in front of a Hebrew verb converts it into a noun sometimes, so you
have sachil, and that’s the
verb. Sachil means skill or wisdom and a Maschil is a piece of wisdom or
a piece of advice. So this Psalm is
advice to a believer who has the same tendencies as David had to be out of it
and trying to gain God’s goals by earthly means. God has promised that you are going to
seminary, or God has promised or is leading you into some other area of
business, or God has pointed out to you
your right man/right woman, God will fill in the details and you don’t
have to try all the gimmicks.
All right, a Maschil, a piece of advice, and then the Holy Spirit has seen
fit to enscripturate the background of the Psalm. So here’s one of the Psalms that we know
where it fits. “When Doeg, the Edomite,
came and told Saul, and said unto him, David is come to the house of
Ahimelech.” Doeg was what we would call a secretary of agriculture under
Saul. He was in charge of all the herds
of the official government. In fact,
it’s ironic that he was tied with some of the animals, apparently, that were used
in sacrifice. He was in the same
business the shepherds were in, in the Gospel of Luke, when the angels came to
announce the shepherds by night, the shepherds left their flocks, they left
their flocks because they were the temple shepherds, temple flocks. Those flocks would never be needed because
Messiah was born; Messiah would die and the flocks were outmoded. So the angels come to the shepherds at night
to announce this. The same business goes
on in Saul’s regime, and Doeg is in charge of the official herds of the
administration. And he is a very
powerful man and he is an advisor to Saul.
He was equivalent to what the German Third Reich called the SS
Troops. When the German army would not
do something, when they wouldn’t slaughter enough Jews or when they wouldn’t
massacre enough people, and Hitler couldn’t get his generals to do it then he’d
just simply call on his SS Troops and they were the goon squad that went
through Holland and slaughtered people, slaughtered evangelicals who housed
Jews in the basement and so on. So Doeg and his bands were the equivalent of
the SS Troops if you want a good gory image; it’s Doeg that comes.
Now David, in the Psalm, turns to Doeg musically. Remember David is skillful in the war, in
military art and in the musical arts and he was forever writing Psalms, and thank
the Lord He has preserved those Psalms in the book of Psalms. In verse 1 David uses, pardon the expression,
sarcasm. So here is a proof that the
Holy Spirit can use sarcasm and here it comes.
“Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? The goodness of God endureth continually. [2]
Thy tongue devises mischiefs, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. [3] Thou love evil more than good, and lying
rather than to speak righteousness. [4] Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou
deceitful tongue. [5] God shall likewise destroy thee forever; He shall take
thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the
land of the living.”
Now the first verse deals with David’s analysis of Doeg, and it’s a very
interesting character analysis. He says,
“Why are you boasting,” and the word for “boast” in the Hebrew, hallel, is written in a certain kind of
stem that is reflexive, and the reflexive stem indicates that Doeg is going
around congratulating himself all the time.
It’s in the imperfect tense, which means it goes on and on and on and on
and on. Doeg got quite a charge out of
what he had done, massacring the 85 priests of Nob and all their families and
all their cattle. He thought it was a
pretty big deal, like all bullies usually do. And Doeg was one of the bully
boys and so he liked to boast himself and he boasted himself “in
mischief.” And the word “mischief” here
means a treasonous act.
Now why was it a treasonous act that Doeg had committed. There’s special different words used in the
Hebrew for various kinds of activities. Can you think why this was a treasonous
act? What did he kill? He killed off the priesthood, and who had
ordained and designed the priesthood?
Jehovah. So therefore, Doeg has just destroyed something that God has
created and made, a special elect group.
The covenant of peace was given to the sons of Aaron, meaning that they
would last forever in history, there would always be… in fact, the Levites
still exist, if you see somebody in the phone book called Levi, that’s just a
Jewish survival of the tribe of Levi. If you see a Jewish person by the name of
Kohen, that’s just… he was a priest, kohen,
kohen is the Jewish word for priest, and Levi or Levite is simply the
continuation for down through the years the Jewish people have kept this
tradition. And probably people that you
might know by the name of Cohen or Levi can trace their ancestry back to the
tribe of Levi and they’ve kept that name going for century upon century upon
century.
Now, if that’s the case, and he has destroyed the priesthood, who has he
really assaulted? He’s attacked Jehovah,
and so therefore it becomes an act of treason because in the Old Testament who
is the real King. You’ve got to get the
picture; the real King of the nation is Jehovah or Yahweh. Under him serves the human king, in this case
Saul, but Saul has been set aside by Samuel and David is the legitimate
king. So now there is a tug of war
between these two people. This is a
political battle that is going on; it’s strife between two great dynasties, and
if you’re a student of ancient history you know how bloody these strifes can
get in the Assyrian annuls, in the Babylonian chronicles, you can go into the
records of the reign of the different Pharaoh’s of the middle and new kingdoms
and you’ll see these things go on where you have tremendous power struggles;
sometimes between brothers, other times between fathers and sons, other times
between whole houses.
Now the interesting thing here is if David operates according to human
viewpoint he will do what every other politician in the ancient east did and
that was he is going to assassinate Saul.
This is the normal way the culture would dictate his behavior. But David listened to the Word of God first
and therefore David becomes the most wise politician of all history. He is the only man who ever gained his office
by pure grace. David refused to engage
in the human viewpoint tactics of his own generation, of his own history, he
believed that if God wanted him in the office, then God would work out the
details. And he relaxed and trusted in
that fact.
So therefore, when he comes to a situation like this he doesn’t panic
and he emphasizes that when an enemy tries to stop him from getting to the
throne, since that throne is God’s promise and that throne is something that
God has sovereignly decreed, if he has an enemy that is blocking him from
getting to that promise, the enemy is under the wrath of God. Now understand the psychology or you’re going
to misread the Psalm; you’re going to say oh gee, look at Psalm 52, that has
hate in it, the Old Testament teaches hate, the New Testament teaches
love. That’s not correct. The Old Testament exposes righteous hatred
for that which opposes God’s plan. And
if you don’t think the New Testament doesn’t show hate you ought to look at how
Christ handled the people in the temple.
Do you suppose He went into the temple in John 2 and handed out
Kleenex? He did not; He armed Himself
with a weapon; the equivalent in our own generation, incidentally, to a
blackjack, and very gently tapped a few people on the head with it. Now that’s how Christ went into the
temple. Now you tell me that the New
Testament always teaches love? It does
not!
I teaches the whole range of situation, it teaches truth and hatred and
love, two sides of the same coin. That
being the case, don’t think when you come to this Psalm that you’re reading
something out of biblical context, it fits right in perfectly.
“What are you boasting thyself in treason, O mighty man?” And here’s the sarcasm; the word “mighty man”
is gibbor, and gibbor was the Hebrew word for hero, O you big hero, what are you
boasting about? Boy, you were really
magnificent, you went in and murdered women who didn’t have any weapons and you
had all the weapons, boy, that really took a man, didn’t it Doeg. It really took a man to slaughter innocent
priests who were totally disarmed, O you are a hero Doeg, keep on boasting! See the sarcasm, this is all directed against
gibbor and it’s ironic because who
disarmed Nob? David, by taking the only
weapons that they had to defend themselves with David actually disarmed
them. And it’s ironic but when he was
out in carnal land he made a mistake that disarmed a whole group of people that
allowed themselves to get slaughtered.
Whether any of the priests could have lifted up the sword of Goliath
would have been another story but at least they could have tried. So this is sarcasm against Doeg and in
contrast to it he adds the last part of verse 1, “The goodness of God endures
continually.” Now that’s the theme of
the Psalm; that’s the lesson learned, God’s goals that are promised will be
blessed with God’s means.
“The goodness of God” is that familiar word for love in the Old
Testament, chesed. Remember there are two Hebrew words for love,
ahav and chesed, ahav love means I
love because I choose, this is when I initiate it; chesed is when I am loving because of a prior agreement to love; chesed is more loyalty, chesed is marital love, ahav is single
people, when you’re single and you say I love you to somebody, that’s ahav.
When you’re married and say I love you it’s chesed, you’re being faithful to your oath. So it’s chesed
love of God here, because of promises that God has made to David. God has given
him promise so it’s not ahav love,
God isn’t coming and initiating love to David at that point, God is coming
because He promised to help David, and so David says “the love of my God for
His promises endures,” and it isn’t “endured continually,” it’s more potent
than that, it’s the Hebrew word that means every day. And that’s the theme that’s picked up by
Jeremiah in Lamentations, “Thy mercies are renewed every morning, O LORD.” In other words, what David is saying is that
because of the promise given in 1 Samuel 16 that is in line with the entire
Abrahamic Covenant, God has to bless me.
Now isn’t this the picture of a relaxed believer; now David wasn’t
relaxed when the original incident occurred but by now he’s had a chance to
calm down and think it over, and now he’s perfectly relaxed and he’s saying to
Doeg, Doeg you big dope, do you think you’re going to blast the plan of God,
now God promised that I am going to sit on that throne so guess what Doeg, I’m
going to make it. Now is this boasting
on his part? No, it’s boasting because
of God’s promise. You see the tremendous
heart of David here, all credit goes to God all the time. “The goodness” or chesed “of God is every day.”
Now in verse 2 he describes Doeg’s character, this is the typical carnal
politician and this is how it maneuvers, if you are at all personally
acquainted with the innards of government today, not that every person in
government, there are some find dedicated people, incidentally it’s the
dedicated people in government circles that keep our country going. The hoi polloi that are wrapped around them
are these kinds, and you will see in many Psalms this reference to the tongue,
over and over, you wonder who is this reference to. Psalm 52 should educate you because we know
from the heading of Psalm 52 who it’s talking about. It’s talking about people in government,
therefore in the other Psalms when you see this same kind of language, David is
bothered with the hypocrisy of the people in government.
Verse 2, “Thy tongue devises mischiefs,” the tongue, now why is the
emphasis on the tongue? Well,
politicians weren’t any different then than they are now. And therefore the chief activity was
speaking, what they were going to do.
And the tongue became the symbol for both the tongue and action, so
therefore David said tongue and by it meant both the tongue and the work. “Your tongue devises,” and this is the word
to mean calculate, or plan, or scheme; it means to plot literally, “Your tongue
is always plotting mischief,” and this is the strong word for violence, deceit,
“Your tongue constantly,” it’s imperfect tense, in other words, that’s part of
man’s nature, “like a sharpened razor, working treason.” The word “working” is a participle and it
means you are continually doing this, so it’s part of Doeg’s character, which
also tells us he’s probably an unbeliever, he may be a carnal believer but more
likely he is an unbeliever, who is “constantly working treason,” constantly,
over and over and over and over. Treason
against whom? Not Saul; he was Saul’s
right hand man. Then against whom is
treason being committed? Against the real king, against Jehovah.
You are constantly committing treason and your tongue constantly
devising plots, and this can be seen by Saul’s violation of the Word. Israel had no legislature; now it’s
interesting, there are three parts of government, Israel only had two. Israel only had a judiciary arm and she only
had an executive arm but no legislature.
Where was the legislature? It was
the Law and the prophets, they were the legislature. So therefore when treason was committed it
was committed directly against God’s Word.
Verse 3, “You love evil more than good, and lying rather than speaking
righteousness.” And this explains that
Doeg was an advanced state, now we’re going to assume that he’s an unbeliever,
and for unbelievers it works the same way as carnal Christians in this sense,
an unbeliever is faced with God-consciousness, every non-Christian is
God-conscious. He has to be, he has to
borrow absolutes every time he opens his mouth to communicate and he has to use
absolutes in other areas. But often
times an unbeliever will go along and not be too strongly negative, and then
all of a sudden they might hear the gospel or they may just simply get tuned
out and they’ll go on negative, as a result darkness sets in the unbeliever’s
soul. Now when darkness clouds the
unbeliever’s soul it destroys what residual God-consciousness he has. And an unbeliever on strong negative volition
who has a state of darkening, he’s almost impossible to reach with the gospel;
almost impossible because he has destroyed so much of his latent
God-consciousness that when you talk to him about God, about sin, about Jesus
Christ, the categories don’t mean anything.
In other words, you see, the common ground is shot because he has
literally destroyed this by his rebellion.
Then human viewpoint has come into his soul.
And Doeg has progressed all the way up to the point of hatred. He hates God and he hates everything else
associated with it, and this is why it becomes a love,” now this is ahav, the Hebrew word to ahav, and here you see something else
about the Hebrew word to love, it isn’t talking about some gooshy
sentimentalism; the love means a firm resolve, and that’s the essence of love
in God’s Word. It’s marvelous how God’s
Word straightens you out in certain categories of human experience and the
quickest way is to understand the word love, in our generation where it is used
and misused and abused. The word “love”
in the Scripture means to firmly choose, it’s almost equivalent to the verb
“choose” in our language. That’s how
strong love is in the Bible.
Now it’s this word, you have loved, you have purposed, you have chosen
to oppose God at every point. Certain
outstanding unbelievers will always do this; they specialize in tearing down
the divine institution’s. How can you
recognize the Doeg’s of our generation.
It’s simple; just look around and see who it is that’s advocating
disarmament, to destroy the fourth divine institution. Who is it that’s advocating world government,
to destroy nationalism? Who is it in our
generation that is destroying the family by invading the family authority with
the public schools? When you parents
have children in the public schools and you have the schools give tests to your
children, that the children can’t bring back to you and they are asked all
sorts of sneaky questions about what goes on in the home, without your permission,
they are violating your authority and you should oppose it. You brief your children that they are not to
answer questions to any school administrator, any teacher, without your
permission, period, and you want to see the questions. If you do not you are allowing the state to
destroy your home, to undermine your authority.
They are not to give any information about the family to anybody
outside.
That’s one example of how the state has invaded your home. Other places the state can destroy, just look
around and see where the policies come from that would advocate the abolition
of private property, who would limit how much profit you can make on certain
goods, the interference with God’s laws of economics. Where government would step in and tell you
how much profit you can make on the thing that you produce or how much you can
market it for. That is another
interference, so the Doeg’s of our generation are always recognized by hatred
for God in a concrete way, hatred against all the divine institutions. And you can look around and find out who the
Doeg’s are, just simply apply the principles of the Word and you’ll be led to
them very surely.
“You love evil more than good, and lying rather than speaking
righteousness.” Again, it’s the idea of
talking because it’s a politician that’s being addressed, and it’s a verb of
speech that stands not just for speech but also for activity, not only lying in
the speech sense but also in plotting various schemes to undermine truth in the
nation Israel.
Verse 4, another portrait of Doeg, “You love all devouring words, O you
deceitful tongue,” treasonous tongue would be a better way of saying it, “you
love devouring words.” Now this is one
of those little Hebrew idioms that crops up time and again in the Psalms, and
you may love to read the Psalms and you’ll see this word “devour,” so what does
it mean. The word “devouring words”
looks upon the mouth as a cavern, in fact you’ll see this in the Psalms often
times, the mouth is a gaping cavern.
What is that talking about? The
whole way of looking at it is the Old Testament Hebrew, looking at how an
unbeliever handles truth. The words are
said to be devouring because they literally eat up the truth. The Jewish person had an interesting way of
looking at truth, he didn’t look upon it as something abstract, he looked upon
it as something concrete, that you could eat, and so the person who is on
strong negative volition actually consumes the truth. You see what he does, is he takes it into his
mouth.
Visualize it as something concrete that you can eat. Look at a group for example, suppose you’re
in some living group, in college in some dorm situation, you have many people
sitting there and suppose the truth here is the truth of the gospel. A person who is an intense unbeliever will
take the truth of the gospel message, maybe some Christian has been witnessing,
presented the gospel issue, and so this person will come along and actually
consume the gospel, in other words, they understand it, they will take it in,
but the way they handle it, they way they talk, they take it in and then they
issue devouring words that eat up the truth in these people. The “devouring words” are words that cut and
eat up; first he eats it up and then secondly when he speaks words out of his
mouth those words are designed to actually consume the truth, destroy it, not
just ignore it, not just cover it up, but literally destroy the truth. And this is why in the area of evangelism, in
the area of teaching the Word of God, in the area of applying the Word of God
on the job, in business, you are up against enemies that you can’t
believe. [tape turns]
When you put out the word clearly and authoritatively the enemy will eat
it up and you too, if they could, because eventually what is the symbol of
Satan in the New Testament; he goes about and eats, the lion of 1 Peter 5. What is Satan, a lion, “seeking whom he may
devour.” And he’s talking about
believers, Satan is looking for steak dinner, and any gullible sheep that
strays away from the fold is good, delicious meal. So Satan becomes the
archetype of Doeg, he consumes. And this
is the “devouring words, O treasonous tongue.”
Now in verse 5 you have what appears to be a very vengeful mental
attitude. And we want to examine this
idea of vengeance for a moment and distinguish between what we will all the two
categories of animosity. There are two
categories, one is correct and one incorrect.
There is one which we will call divine animosity and the other human
animosity. Divine animosity is righteous
anger and the believer can share God’s divine animosity. That is something that you can be filled with
the Holy Spirit and share divine animosity.
Or, you can be carnal and share human animosity, that’s personal
vengeance and so on. Now can you imagine how Saul would write Psalm 52, just
judging from the several weeks that we have studied Saul, knowing his
character, how do you suppose he’d react in David’s place. Can’t you just see
him writing those words? Huh-un, Saul
would not be interested in the covenant love of God, he would be accusing Doeg
of some personal injustice, Saul would be manifesting human animosity instead
of divine animosity. But this is an
expression in verse 5 of divine animosity.
“God shall destroy you forever, He shall take you away, and pluck you
out of your dwelling place,” now that’s a sarcastic reference to where Doeg
kept his power base in Saul’s administration.
The “dwelling place” is the word tent, and refers to his department of
agriculture, this is his sphere of politics.
So what David is saying, he’s going to get you out of that cabinet and
destroy you, take you out of political office and “root you out of the land of
the living,” meaning he’s going to kill you.
That’s the end of verses 1-5; that’s David’s analysis. So far you say well, where’s David’s lesson,
I haven’t seen in Psalm 52 yet where David really has learned his lesson that
he needed to learn. All right, beginning
in verse 6, here’s the second half of the Psalm. David is telling what the righteous believers
are going to learn, he’s learned it, and now he is anxious that we learn
it. “The righteous also shall see,” “the
righteous” refer to believers in that day who were loyal to Yahweh in the
kingdom, they were the loyal citizens, they were the Jonathans and so on,
people that hadn’t gone along with Saul and his corrupt Edomites. See, Saul couldn’t get many of the Jews to do
his dirty work, he had to hire foreigners, people from Edom. And so “the righteous,” that is the brethren
who understand, “will see” what? They
are going to see Doeg get creamed in verse 5, that’s what they’re going to see,
and they are going to “fear,” and the word “fear” means respect authority, they
are going to respect the authority of Jehovah. And this is a lesson that has to
be learned time and time again in your life, my life, and the life of believers
down through history, is that we have got to learn to respect the authority of
the Word of God. And we can treat the
Word of God with contempt, we can ignore it, but there are going to come times
of pressures and trials in your life where you are going to have to learn God’s
authority. Here is one of those
times.
The righteous are going to see the horribleness of opposing God’s Word,
and they are going to fear, they are going to respect God, taking Him at His
Word, and they “shall laugh at him.” Now
if you turn to Isaiah 14, here is the ultimate Doeg, Satan himself. I want you to notice, when Satan is finally
destroyed from history, people are going to laugh. Isaiah 14:16, the same concept, the idea of
laughing, sharing divine animosity, “They that see thee shall narrowly look
upon thee, and consider thee, saying, So that is the man that made the earth to
tremble, and did shake kingdoms,” it’s all participles, that constantly shook
the kingdoms, [17] “that made the world as a wilderness, and opened not the
house of his prisoners,” oh is that the man, well look at him. In other words, Satan is going to be cut down
to size and everybody that has been persecuted by Satan is going to say well,
well, well, now look at him. This is
after the Lord Jesus Christ gets through in a very unloving way dealing with
Satan.
Back to Psalm 52, so this is what’s going to happen and believers are
going to laugh at it. Now that laughing
is not human animosity, that is divine animosity, and you can be filled with
the Spirit and do this, believers are going to be filled with the Spirit,
they’re going to laugh at Satan, it’s going to be one of the great worship
services, when everybody can stand around and laugh.
Verse 7, “Lo,” David says look at this, “this is the man,” now verse 7
tells you why David learned his lesson; David could have executed personal
vengeance on Doeg, he could have said all right, we’re going to get a gang of
guys together and we’re going to go clean Doeg.
That would have been human animosity, but David is smart enough to say
now just a minute, let’s just wait, who is Doeg really against, David? No, he’s really against the Lord, so let’s
just pull back and examine the situation and plan our move carefully. If David withdraws from attacking Doeg
personally and lets the Lord do it, who is going to what lesson? Believers are going to learn the lesson of
verse 7, this “is the man who made not God his strength,” he never made God his
strength, it’s imperfect, he never made God his strength, which would suggest
he’s an unbeliever. “Strength” is the
Hebrew word for place of safety, it means a cave; he never went to God. Apparently this tells us something about
Doeg; Doeg was like many people in politics, he aspired to high office, and he
wanted to get there, cutthroat or not he was going to get there because of
power lust, and he had a lust after high office and he would bribe, lie, and
ram his way to the top until he satisfied his power lust. And he would never
relax and trust in the Lord, he “made not God his place of safety.”
He “made not God his place of safety, but trusted,” the word batach means advanced trust, he trusted
or he relied upon “the abundance of his riches,” this is an indication that
when Doeg rose to power he may have risen by loaning Saul money because Saul by
this time was so carnal and so out of it for so long that he needed money. Why did he need money? To hire a professional army to fight the
Philistines, remember Saul never was popular after this, he never could seem to
command popular widespread grassroots sympathy and therefore he had to protect
the nation by a professional army, instead of using universal military training
and drafting volunteers from that corpus.
So Doeg may have been the man who financed Saul’s army. You “trusted in the abundance of his riches,”
in other words, I bought my way in here and I’ll tall Saul what he can do and
not do, “and strengthened himself in his treason,” see this word, same kind of
word for treason, and it occurs again here.
So the emphasis is over and over again that this is a personal enemy not
against David, but against Jehovah.
Verse 8, again, please read it carefully or you’re going to interpret it
as self-righteousness, it is not self-righteousness, “But I,” strong
conjunction of contrast, “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God;
I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever.”
The green olive tree was a source of production, it is the emblem in
Scripture of joy. Now here is a most
interesting principle. Where is David a
green olive tree? In the temple; only
one problem, there aren’t any green olive trees growing in the temple, in fact,
nothing grew in the temple. Then what
does the expression mean, “the green olive tree in the temple?” The green olive tree is used as a metaphor
here, it is used for a believer that pleases God. For example, in the Old Testament, a child
that pleases his father is called an olive tree, as the children sit at the
table it says they are as olive trees to you.
Now I don’t know if you’ve said that to your children, you may have said
a lot of other things, but saying that they are olive trees might stop them for
a minute while they figure out what you said.
But saying that to the child in the Old Testament was to praise him,
that you were pleased with him, pleased like the farmer that produced the
olives and so on; the olive oil was a luxury in the ancient world. So it was that which was pleasing.
Now David says “I am like a green olive tree,” he doesn’t mean a literal
olive tree growing in the temple, he means I am pleasing to God. Now look at this claim, this is fantastic; he
says I please God, how about that for a strong claim. “I am like a green olive tree in the
tabernacle.” Now just a minute, when was
the last time David was in the tabernacle?
Was he a green olive tree when he went in and took the sword of Goliath
out, when he was out of fellowship, when he got in trouble and got all the
priesthood slain at Nob, do you suppose the priest would have said David
pleases God? I doubt it! David was not a green olive tree in the
temple. So then what does this verse
mean when he says “I am a green olive tree in the tabernacle” or “house of
God.” This is his lesson, this is what
he’s learned, “I am a green olive tree in the house of God,” why, “because I
trust in the mercy of God,” in other words, I was horrible, I was ugly in God’s
sight when I went in there to Nob because I was in a rush, because I hadn’t
taken time to study the Word and get straightened out, and therefore I was not
an olive tree, but I am now. When David wrote this Psalm, I am now “like a
green olive tree” before God. What was
in the house of God? The Shekinah glory,
the presence of God. So this is an idiom
which means I am pleasing to God.
And what is it about David that pleases Him. “I trust” and the word is batach, we’re going to face two verbs in
the Hebrew here that are strong verbs for trust, batach, it was used in the Arabic language for wrestling, to throw
your opponent down on the mat, and it meant finally to completely trust, just
lay yourself out, complete trust. And
this is advanced faith of a mature believer.
“I trust in the mercy,” the word “mercy” is chesed, meaning the promises “of God forever and ever.” Now what is the lesson that David has
learned? If I have a goal out here,
which is the throne, and God has promised me that throne, what is it that I can
do that will please him every day. Trust
Him, trust that He who promised is He who can bring it to pass, and He can
bring it to pass without any gimmicks at Nob, without any busting in and
getting the whole priesthood wiped off the face of the map. Here we have trust, “I will trust … forever
and ever,” that is David’s lesson, amplified in verse 9.
Verse 9, “I will praise thee forever,” that is David’s response to what
God has done, “because,” now look at what’s happening, “because Thou hast done
it, “but He hasn’t done it, because Psalm 52 wasn’t written after David took
the throne, it apparently was written before David got on the throne. Then how can he say that God has done it? What has God done, He hasn’t got David to the
throne yet. All right, here we have a
prophetic perfect; the perfect tense in the Hebrew looks at an action as
complete; now let’s see, this action began, say at age 16, we’ll just use that
as an age at when he was anointed. He
got to the throne at about, say age 30, I’m just using this as an illustration,
these are not mean to be accurate. But
this is the length and duration from the time God promised till the time God
delivered. 14 years; now the perfect
tense summarizes 14 years of God’s activity in his life. Right now David is somewhere in here, the 14
years have not elapsed, but David now has the faith that he didn’t have before
this incident occurred.
As a result of this incident, where he goofed, fell down completely, but
David being a grace oriented believer didn’t cry and whine, he didn’t say oh, I
sinned now I’ve spoiled the whole thing, and I can’t get back in fellowship and
I’m unacceptable with the other believers, I’ve just blown my life. That is ridiculous, if you have give-up-itis
because you think you’ve blown God’s plan, I’ve got some good news for you;
there’s nothing you can do to blow God’s plan
You can sit here for hours and dream up ways how to blow it, and you
can’t. God will not permit you to blow
His sovereign plan. This is the wonders
of sovereign grace. God has decreed
David is going to get on the throne and David will get to the throne. But you see, David earlier didn’t know that.
Going back to our diagram, when you become a Christian God puts you in
union with Christ and you have a circle of experience that expands with
maturity. That circle represents how
much you believe God. When you first
become a believer it’s very small; as you mature it comes out, maybe in some
areas more than others and gradually it expands. All right, David could not take undeserved
suffering when he started into this thing; his failure to settle down in the
Word of God, take things slowly, and move on resulted in a disaster but under
the principles of sovereign grace, that “all things work together for good to
them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose,”
another blessing comes out of this. The
first blessing we enumerated last week; after it all who wound up with the
priesthood? David. Of the two kings vying for office which one
had the priesthood? The legitimate king
had to have the priesthood. David winds
up… there’s only one priest left but he winds up with him. In that sense David did blow the plan of God
in that there weren’t too many priests around but the one that was around he
had and it was all by grace, because he didn’t deserve anything. Because of God’s sovereign grace that He will
perform the things in your life that he has promised you, it will be done.
And therefore, out of this a second blessing; the first blessing was the
priest, now David’s got a second blessing, his circle of faith has increased as
a result of all this pressure and all this trial. So now he is able to say truthfully, “Thou
hast done it,” meaning that God has provided en toto all the way to those next years; David is looking forward
to the time when he will sit on the throne and in his mind’s eye at this point
it’s finished. That’s David’s faith
here. We’ll see later on how that
tremendous faith of David takes him through many, many future trials and he
makes mistakes but he doesn’t make this one any more; he is able now to move,
convinced that if he’s going to get to that throne it’s not going to be by
trying to pull a fast one over on some priest some place, it’s going to be
because God has provided for His promises.
“I will praise thee forever, because Thou hast done it; and I will wait
on Thy name,” and this word is the most colorful word in the Hebrew for wait,
it’s quavah, and quavah is a Hebrew verb that was originally used to tie a rope, you
start out with one strand, you add more strands to it, and so on, you add more
and more and more and more, and it’s a word for tension, and it is the picture
of the believer, holding, as it were, the promise of God in one hand with the
circumstances in the other and he’s under the tension of the promises pulling
in one way and the circumstances pulling in another way and he stands holding
both. And that is quavah, that he connects with the promises in the middle of pressure. “I will wait,” I will quavah, “I will hold to your name.”
Now we’ve said this enough times so most of you now should know when
you’re reading your Bibles, “name” means essence or character, the Hebrew named
the name after the essence of the person or thing. So, “I will wait” upon what” “I will wait upon Your character,” God is
sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is omniscient, omnipresent,
omnipotent, immutable, love and eternal.
Now let me just show you something about this, you say yeah, I’ve seen
that before. Divine essence is a
doctrine that grows on you. This is a
doctrine that is always open and you may be able to go through and say God is
this, that, that, that, that, that, hopefully next year you’ll be able to say
that with more meaning. It is an ever
expanding thing in your own consciousness as you go through the Christian
life. The area that grows the fastest is
love. That’s the attribute that you can
theoretically hold to, but here is where I’ve noticed most believers have
problems. Most of the people who have
problems in the Christian will say yeah, I know God is omnipotent, I know He
can do it, that’s not my problem, my problem is that He doesn’t want to do it
for me. Therefore it’s really a doubt of
His love toward you. And that is, I will
say, of all the attributes a central problem that every believer faces. We all face it, I know God is there, I know
He’s able, but will He do it for me.
Now that’s what David is talking about when “I quavah,” I take His love, His attribute of love, I grip it, I take
my circumstances over here and grip those, I don’t chicken out, I don’t cop
out, I hold both together, in tension, and that’s my quavah, that’s my standing of faith.
“For it is good before Thy saints.”
Now with this last phrase we can summarize what came out of David. We started by saying that David, in this
whole series of chapter 21-22 and Psalm 52, by saying that David’s problem was
that he couldn’t understand why he was suffering. He knew category one, two, three type
suffering, that wasn’t an issue; but he couldn’t understand category four,
five, six type suffering, that was the question mark. God, why, why do I get this suffering? Now this Psalm tells us why. Category four,
David has learned category four, the fact that He is identified with God’s
enemies, that was made clear in verses 1-5, Doeg. Doeg hates God and because Doeg hates God
Doeg hates David. So David has mastered for the first time in his life, you’re
watching an exciting picture here of a man’s faith grow, one of the most famous
people of the Old Testament and he had to learn. So don’t feel out of it because you have to
learn a few things, so did David and look where he went. David learned category for, I am hated, now I
understand God, it wasn’t that I sinned that precipitated my expulsion from
Saul’s house, that started the whole thing going; it was basically because
people like Doeg and Saul hate you and I’m identified with You, I am walking in
Your plan, so that’s why they hate me.
So immediately David’s soul comes to be able to rest, and this would be
the effect when you master doctrine.
Many of you have had this, once you struggle and struggle and struggle,
finally the light turns on and you at last master a Biblical principle. Sometimes it even happens while I’m teaching
up here, I can see this light go on.
This is what David’s experience was, all of a sudden I see; now I know
why I’m suffering. Is his suffering
removed? No, David is going to suffer
and suffer and suffer, so that’s not going to change. But what’s going to change? His ability to analyze his problem and relax
and trust the Lord. Category five David
has learned. How do we know that? How do we know he’s really learned this? Because of verse 8, the olive tree here. I am pleasing to God when I trust him, so
category five suffering says now I know why I’m suffering, I am suffering to
learn how to trust God better and therefore please Him more. So David mastered category five.
Now category six, has David learned the lesson? The last verse, verse 9, “I will quavah Thy name,” “I will wait upon Thy
name; for it is good before thy saints.”
So David masters the sixth category of suffering. I suffer, why? Because I am suffering in
history and the illustration of God’s principles and truths to other people who
are looking at me. By looking at me they
learn doctrine? Isn’t that true, because
we’re learning doctrine by looking at David tonight. Verse 9 is being fulfilled right now because
by studying David’s life we’re learning.
It’s been my experience when believers have trouble and pressure and
misunderstanding, the quickest way for them to come out of it is to watch
another believer in the same trial. I
always like to ask people, after they’ve through the problem, I want to know
how did you get out so I can learn to tell somebody else, and one of the common
themes that they always report upon getting back in fellowship and moving on
after a period of tremendous trial, is that somewhere along the line they saw
another believer facing a very similar pressure and said if they can do it, I
can do it; the Word of God worked for them, how come it’s not working for
me. It must be me, it’s not the Word,
and if they realize that and move on, things are good. David learned these three things, Romans 8:28
again; he wound up now, he’s got the priesthood with him, and he’s got Bible
doctrine now. What were the two things
he needed when he started, at the end of chapter 19? He needed the priesthood and he needed Bible
doctrine. What did he get after all the
mess? The priesthood and Bible
doctrine. Did he earn or deserve
it? No, he screwed up, didn’t he. He came out of it like a man and moved on, he
learned it, Romans 8:28. Next week we’ll
show another aspect of this toulies trip of David.