1 Samuel Lesson 36
David’s Family Escapes to
We are in the section, chapters 21-22 when David is recovering from the
episode in
If you want to break it down chronologically, that is, the order in
which this occurs, it’s chapter 21:1-10, and then the rest of it, 21-22:5 this
section, although following chronologically in this section, is unrelated to it
topically; the topic shifts over to chapter 22:6 and following. So in this situation there are some things
that are chronologically okay, which is unusual for the way this book is
usually written, but this follows the opposite scheme. Here we have themes that are traced and I
have taught this is in an unchronological fashion. I taught the first ten verses of chapter 21,
and then we dealt with 22:6 and following.
Why? Because that shows you the
continuity between what happened at Nob and what happened at Nob; what happened
when David was there, what happened when Saul sent his soldiers there. And that traces one of David’s errors.
Now chapter 21:11-22:5 traces the second of David’s errors. But if you line all these verses up the way
they are in Scripture, in your Bible, 10; then
Then sometime while in
Tonight we come to 1 Samuel 22:1 and David has escaped, indeed because
he has now, being delivered, the Lord has worked it out so neat that he was
actually pushed out of Gath, he doesn’t even have to escape, because the
heading of Psalm 34 said that the king of Gath, Achish, gave him his personal
escort out the door. So David is finally
provided for, and this is always the way it is when we follow God’s solution to
our problems instead of some adult tantrum or losing our patience and blowing
it by some gimmick that we’ve come up with.
When we relax and let the Lord solve the problem He always comes up with
the ideal situation. And so David was
not only allowed to escape from
Now tonight we pick him up in verse 1, “David, therefore, departed from
there, and escaped to the
And then when he escaped he moved back and he picked a place to stay
called the
The other place where the Jews have traditionally bottlenecked their
enemies is in a series of caves to the northwest of the
Now it’s to the
Now the savior of the family turns out to be the little kid that
everyone despised, because although David’s brothers are with Saul, apparently
by this point Saul is making threats.
You see, he’s somewhere in the vicinity if Nob, that’s where Saul is, or
he’s at Ramah, these are the two places for Saul to hang out, and you can see
how close they are to Bethlehem. And
David’s family is in
Always keep in mind the book of Samuel is primarily a political
structure, spiritual behind it yes, but on the surface it is a political
battle. This whole book is a book of
politics by grace. Actually it’s a
model; any aspiring politician, if God has a right office for you and you are
the right incumbent for that office, as a Christian citizen participating in
the functions of your nation, you have the right to use some of the techniques
of grace that David employed in securing his throne. And this will be very instructive to pay
attention to some of the mental attitudes David had while he sought a political
office.
So his family moves southwest, from Bethlehem to the cave of Adullam,
and apparently his brothers are also coming to him, either they were thrown out
of the army, they probably were, Saul was a very suspicious person, and
probably all his brothers had been thrown out because they were related to
David, the insurgent. Now at this point
David is alone and all he has is his family.
At this point it is probable that David writes Psalm 142 So let’s turn to Psalm 142 and see his prayer
that he makes. It is not probable that
he makes this prayer later because later he is surrounded by men. So Psalm 142 can be written at only two
points; it can be written at 1 Samuel 22, or 1 Samuel 24, and my guess, and I
identify this as a guess, because we can’t be dogmatic, the Holy Spirit when He
made the heading on Psalm 142 did not clue us in on all the details. It says “in the cave” but he was in this
fortification several times. So taking
Psalm 142 as David’s petition when he was in the cave all alone.
Psalm 142 is an individual lament Psalm.
This is a Psalm that is written to petition God about a certain problem
and it has three parts to it; it’s a very simple Psalm, it has three parts:
verses 1-2, verses 3-5 and verses 6-7.
The first two verses speak of David’s resolve to pray, to petition God
about his problem. The second part,
verses 3-5 is David’s analysis of his situation at Adullam. And verses 6-7 is his reasons for
anticipating God’s answer to that petition and what he is going to do when he
received that answer.
Let’s look at verses 1-2, “I cried unto the LORD with my voice; with my
voice unto the LORD did I make my supplication.
[2] I poured out my complaint before Him; I showed before Him my
trouble.” All of these are written in
the King James text as past tense, however all in the Hebrew are imperfect
tenses and are therefore habitual. “I
cry unto the LORD,” in other words he made this a habitual petition over a
period of time, we don’t know how long it was but when he was in that cave
alone he prayed and he prayed and he prayed.
Remember, David is in the will of God at this point. Why?
Because who was it that taught him to escape from
But moving in God’s will he finds a problem, and so he responds to it
this way, and please notice also in verse 1 it tells you how David prayed. Some often wonder how to pray. Verse 1 implies very much that David made his
prayers audibly, that he actually spoke the words out loud, and when he was
alone in the cave he would pray out loud.
And apparently he carried this habit forward in his life because from
other remarks in Scripture we find that other people were impressed who lived
around David, who dwelt with him in the army and so on. These men were impressed deeply by his
petitions, so David would publicly and audibly petition. Sometimes he would be out alone, probably
walking in the field, or walking around his command post and he would be
petitioning the Lord audibly. Now some
people like to pray quietly and some audibly, and you can pick which one, but I
find frankly that oftentimes when you’re mentally tired or physically tired and
you can’t concentrate, it helps to pray audibly because when you pray audibly
you’ve just got to put it out.
Verse 2, “I poured out my complaint before Him; I showed before Him my
trouble.” Now why does this happen again
and again in Scripture. God is
omniscient, God knows the problem, why rehearse it before Him? Why bend His ear with all of our
difficulties. The reason is, as we have
seen again and again, is that in the Old Testament particularly, it’s in the
New Testament too but you don’t see it as much, but in the Old Testament as you
look at the Psalms, as you look at the great prayers, the man had a personal
relationship to God and what does a personal relationship involve but verbally
talking to somebody, communicating to them; that is the guts of a personal
relationship. A personal relationship
always hinges first on verbal communication.
This is what is so phony about a lot of concepts of marriage in our
generation; you can sleep with somebody for ten years and have no communication
with them, none whatever. And you have
no relationship with them, there’s nothing different between that and the
barnyard, and the reason is because you have no relationship on a high personal
level of verbal communication. And so
David is interested, as all the great pray-ers were interested, in having a
deep personal relationship. He didn’t
just say oh well, God knows, you know God and go on. No, he talked to God about his problems, a
tremendous habit to get involved in. And
you also find something, when you talk to God about your problems you won’t be
bending everyone else’s ear about them.
Verses 3-5 deal with his analysis of the situation and it’s written in a
very interesting way. Verse 3a, the
first part, has to do with confidence, and verse 5 has to do with confidence,
and verse 3b and 4 have to do with the problem.
And this tells you he’s got it very neatly sandwiched, think of a
sandwich here and he’s got his problem inside and the two pieces of bread are
the confidence. And so you see, he takes
his problem and he puts it between two confidence sections. Let’s watch this.
Verse 3, the first part, “When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then
You knowest my path,” that’s confidence.
The word “knowest” can be past tense or it can be habitual perfect; it
means You always know my way. Now what
previous experience in David’s life would you think he had on his mind when he
wrote verse 3a. What was fresh on his
mind? Wasn’t it the Gath episode, wasn’t
it when he was in the closet waiting for Achish’s secret police to find him
cold, with all the evidences of Goliath’s sword in Goliaths’ hometown.
And “when my spirit was overwhelmed,” that’s the depression I’m talking
about in the Proverbs series, the beaten spirit. It tells you that if this applies to the Gath
episode that David was tempted to be depressed; everyone is tempted to be
depressed. Don’t think just because you
have a temptation to be depressed that you’ve got the most unusual problem that
ever faced the human race. Every person
who has ever lived has the tendency to be depressed. There’s not one person sitting here, in the
pew next to you, in front of you, in back of you, there’s not one person in the
building including myself that doesn’t have the temptation to become depressed. Everyone has the temptation to become
depressed at some time or another. Then
what’s the difference? How you handle
it; you handle it either by human viewpoint or handle it by divine
viewpoint. And this is the lesson we
have to learn and until we learn that we are not grown. We may be 40 or 50 years old and every time
we have a temptation to depression we react to it like a little kid and throw a
fit, we have not learned to handle our depressions biblically.
Now David had a principle that he learned over and over and over, there
would be many times in the future that he would have the tendency to be
depressed, many, many times, but every time David had this tendency to be
depressed, he said, “when my spirit is,” the word “was” isn’t there, it’s just
the Hebrew verb to be, it’s expressed implicitly, “when my spirit has the
tendency to be beaten within me, then You know my path.” All right, what does that tell you that David
did? When he had depression he
immediately [can’t understand words] God’s omniscience. Whatever this problem is that’s frustrating
me, I don’t even understand because I don’t know the depths of my own heart; I
don’t understand this problem, God does.
Now to some this may not seem like much, but if you’ll think it through
it’s tremendous, that somebody somewhere does know the solution. Now you may not know the solution but it’s
comforting to know at least there’s someone in the universe does know the
solution to the problem. And that’s what
went on in his mind, and this is what he always reacted to when he was
depressed. “When my spirit is
overwhelmed, You know my path.”
Now let’s skip the last part of verse 3, verse 4, and let’s go to verse
5 because that’s the other part of the sandwich. “I cried,” again this should be translated
the present, “I cry unto Thee,” this is my practice, “I cry unto Thee, O
LORD. I say,” and the next thing should
be in quotes, this is the promise that he claims when he faces depression; he
claims this as a promise and now he quotes it, when I do this I quote this
promise. Now combining this with verses
1-2, what do you suppose, that he quoted it to himself quietly or he quoted it
to himself audibly. Obviously as he
walked around in the cave he probably quoted this audibly; it was a promise and
he quoted it. “Thou art my refuge and my
portion in the land of the living.” The
word “refuge” is a military term for defense; in other words, though he was in
a physical cave, from the divine viewpoint his eyes weren’t on the physical
cave; his eyes were on the God that led him to Adullam; who got him out of
Gath, who met him that night and told him how to get out of here. So the Lord is his defense.
“You are my refuge and my defense,” and you are “my portion in the land
of the living. “My portion” means my
inheritance and it means something very interesting about David’s depressions,
and here is what is going to separate psychological gimmicks from true
spirituality. Now if you’re going to
approach this whole thing of faith as just a psychological gimmick you’ll think
something like this. Well, every time
I’m depressed I’ll just think of the Lord and that’ll get rid of the
depression. Now if you approach it that
way you’re never going to be successful.
You’re never going to be successful because what you are doing is using
God as a genie to get rid of your problem, but that is not the mentality that
is carried over in the faith technique.
You don’t use God as a big aspirin to get rid of depression. That is not the approach the Scripture speaks
of.
The difference, and it’s a fine one but you have to have it fit in your
soul, and you have to toss this around in your head until it fits right, but
what the difference is, surround this portion, “my portion in the land of the
living,” “portion” means your central concern and therefore David’s mental
attitude in the middle of these depressions was that my chief concern is the
Lord Jesus Christ “in the land of the living,” not my problem. And there’s a world of difference. While
you’re applying all these promises and so on, in back of it all there has to be
this point, or it just breaks down and doesn’t work. A lot of people say well I tried that, it
doesn’t work. Well, you didn’t try it
Biblically, that’s why it didn’t work, it works, it’s worked for thousands of
years, why should you be an exception.
Now either God’s Word is true and is capable of solving every one of
your problems or it’s not true for anybody at any time in history for any
problem. Now you can take your pick, so
obviously it shows there’s something wrong with the way we’re applying it.
David applied it this way, he said “in the land of the living,” all
right; phase one is when we accept Jesus Christ, phase two, from the time we
accept Christ till the time we die, phase three after death. Now during phase two, or the time we are
living, that’s the time when we can influence history by our personal
choice. It’s too late in eternity, the
game’s all over then, the clock has run out.
So the time to operate is now, in phase two, and so what David is saying
here is that the chief thing now, not in eternity, you see this is a different
mentality entirely. Oh, I’ll just hold
on to the promises until the Lord takes me home, kind of thing. No, David didn’t operate that way, he said
I’m not holding on until the Lord takes me home, I want the Lord Jesus Christ
to be glorified today, in this history, in this point, in this location, right
here, I want Christ to be glorified. And
that is the mentality he had when he was claiming the promises. Now compare that attitude with the way some
would apply the promises of Scripture, as just another psychological
aspirin. And for a while it works
because it’s interesting, it gets your mind off of it, and then after a while
it doesn’t work any more, and then you lose faith and chuck the whole thing.
Why do you do that? Because you never
used it right in the first place. The
name of the game is glorifying Christ, ultimately it isn’t your problem that’s
the point. It’s not your depression or
my depression or my problems or your problems; the issue is whether Jesus
Christ is going to have an opportunity to show part of His essence to other
people at this point in history. That’s
the issue. And that’s what he
means.
“Thou art my refuge and my defense,” but he quickly says in order that
you not get this just psychological aspirin business, “and You are my portion
in the land of the living.” Now that’s
the mentality that he had, so those are the two parts of the sandwich. Those are the confidence sections, those are
the sections that tell you what he used.
So now you don’t have to say gee, I wonder how David solved his
problem. You know how David solved his
problem, just read Psalm 142, that’s how David solved his problem; visualize
him walking back and forth, talking Psalm 142.
Do it for yourself some time, just quote it to yourself; think of what
we have taught here, and quote it to yourself, and kind of model after him for
a while and then you’ll catch on to how David solved his problems and met his
depressions.
All right, now in verse 3b and 4 he speaks of his problem. I had a very good question handed to me that
has to do with something that is very vital and it comes out here in the Psalm
and the question is this: we always hear
it said in psychological circles that it is bad to suppress anger, that you
suppress this stuff and you never get it off your heart. Isn’t what you taught from Proverbs contrary
and isn’t it in some situations downright dangerous? And the answer is no, if you understood how
people resolve their problems. What we
taught in Proverbs and what David does here is opposite to psychological advice
in this sense. Nowhere in Scripture,
ever, ever, ever, ever is the modern concept of ventilation of feelings in a
group situation, in group therapy or something else, ever tolerated in God’s
Word. You do not solve your problems by
venting them in front of other people and by letting it all hang out. That doesn’t solve a thing and Scripture says
that every time you participate in some group therapy type situation and you go
through this thing, and you burst out and let it all go out in front of
everybody, you are just simply training yourself not to rule your human spirit;
you are training yourself to have an unruly human spirit and it is
anti-biblical.
However, does that mean the Christian just suppresses his problem? No, he has something that the unbelieving
psychologist has no awareness of because he’s not regenerate; he’s an
unregenerate man and that is, he has the vertical option of letting it all hang
out before God, privately, on a one to one relationship between him and
God. And David did this. And the last part of verse 3 and verse 4,
David does take his problem to the Lord.
And notice it’s within a framework, it’s within a disciplined framework,
David just doesn’t burst out with a chaos of anger; it’s not that kind of thing
at all. He has carefully thought it
through inside a theological frame of reference. If you can’t do that you are just not a
mature believer. But the Biblical model
of solving problems is to think them through inside of a theological
framework. And inside that framework
there’s plenty of room to blow off steam, and here’s where you’re going to see
David blow off steam.
Verse 3b, “In the way wherein I walked, they have [secretly] laid a
snare for me,” in other words, he’s referring to the fact that down here at
Adullam he is trapped, he is trapped to the west by the Philistines; he is
trapped to the east by the Jews, and now what does he have, he’s got his
father, he’s got his mother to protect, without any weapons, without any
soldiers. So all David knows is that at
any time Saul could send a group of troops into the eastern side and just
massacre him, his father, his mother, his brothers, and sisters in front of his
eyes and murder him. For all he knows,
Achish can send a force in from the west and do the same thing. David has no army, he has no weapons, and yet
he has to care for his family. How is he
going to handle this situation. “In the
way wherein I have walked,” what way has David walked? He has walked from Gath to Adullam and that
way is God’s way. God, the Lord Jesus
Christ has spoken to him in Gath and has directed him every step of the
way.
So he says “in the way I have walked” because he has walked in God’s
way. This problem came not outside of
the will of God but inside the will of God.
David’s problem at Gath came because he was just out of it, but the
problem he faces in Adullam is not that kind of problem. This is the kind of problem we face when we
are submitting ourselves to God’s authoritative Word, interpreted through the
Holy Spirit by prayer and so on, on a day by day basis. This problem is one of
those things that come after you have dedicated your life to Christ on a moment
by basis, and you are filled with the Holy Spirit and you still encounter the
barrier. That’s the kind of thing, “in
the way wherein I have walked they have laid a snare for me.”
Now verse 4 is to be translated with imperatives; the best most accurate
translation of verse 4 is not with indicative moods, but with the imperative
form of the verb. “Look on my right
hand, and behold, there was no man that would know me. Refuge dialed me; no man is a carer of my
soul.” He bursts out here, here is where
you do have a man in depression and he is letting go before God but not in a
chaotic way; it’s controlled steam, it’s under control of the general
framework, in that he trusts that he is in God’s will, but right now he has a
problem. And so he takes it to God and
he orders God, this is one of those psalms like we had Wednesday night, that’s
so hard to understand, it just blows your mind to look at it. We read it, we can’t believe it, when it says
“God, take your hand out of my pocket and answer my prayer, will You.” It’s amazing that they talked to God this
way; that’s the way they do.
And here, “God, if you look on my right hand, there’s nobody there,” now
why does David say his right hand?
Because the shield of the soldier was kept in the left, he didn’t have
to worry about people coming up on the left, he had a defense on the left side,
he didn’t on the right. And so that’s
what he was saying, on my unprotected side I don’t have a man there. And it could refer allegorically to the fact
that he had no defense against these particular kind of problems, or it could
refer to the literal fact that if you have a line of soldiers they protect one
another. This is why the Romans
developed the systems they had of moving their legions in the battle, each
legionnaire would protect the man on his left and on down the line. Well, he hasn’t got anybody on his right
side; he’s got his shield in his left hand, and so that’s why he says “I look
on my right hand, there’s no man that would know me.” “No man would know me” means to care for him,
to be his teammate in battle. “No man is
a carer for my soul,” this means somebody that’s right along side and willing
to protect him. He’s all alone at
Adullam with all these cares and responsibilities.
So he pours out his heart to God, and then in verse 6-7 he concludes
with a divine viewpoint, anticipating God’s answer to this prayer. He says, “Attend unto my cry; for I am
brought very low. Deliver me from my
persecutors; for they are stronger than I.”
So David is fully aware that on a human level he doesn’t have power; on
a human level he’s one man. True, he’s
the Goliath champion but Goliath champions can’t hold off two armies. There may be a lot of dead Jews and a lot of
dead Philistines before they take him from the cave, but sooner or later
they’re going to take him. And his
persecutors are stronger than he.
Verse 7, “Bring my soul out of prison,” you can easily see why he speaks
this way, here he is trapped in the cave, “bring my soul out of here, that I
may praise Thy name.” You see what I
mean by the Lord was his portion in the land of the living, “that I may praise
Thy name.” Why does David want
deliverance? Just to get over
depression? No, David wants deliverance
not only to get over his depression but one step beyond that, that he may give
testimony, publicly in history to the grace of God.
And then he makes this statement, which anticipates the way the Lord is
going to answer this Psalm: “The righteous shall compass me about; for Thou
shalt have dealt bountifully with me.”
Now the word “the righteous,” the righteous ones, “shall compass”
literally means to surround with a fence of joy over triumph. It was used of soldiers who would be in the
military victory parade and the people would compass them about. Now why would people compass them about? They would be cheering their victory. So what he is looking forward to in verse 7
is righteous people parading, like that day when he came back with Saul and
they sang that song, Saul has killed his thousands but David his ten thousands.
He remembers that victory parade, he says that’s going to happen again. And this time the people on both sides of the
avenue as I move forward are going to be the righteous ones; the believing
remnant of the nation Israel, and they’re going to praise me, praise me because
You have delivered me. “The righteous
ones shall triumph, for Thou shalt have dealt,” in the English this is a future
perfect, “You shall have dealt bountifully with me.” That means with super grace, with a lot and
lot of grace, grace piled upon top of grace.
And because you are going to deal with me in grace, the righteous ones are
going to triumph around me.
Now just think for a moment how David’s mind is working. Here he is faced at Adullam; Adullam is the
great problem, but down here he has the ultimate victory of the throne. Why does David know he’s going to get to the
throne? Because God’s Word said so,
wasn’t it. Isn’t that what Samuel said,
a prophet speaking God’s Word. This
answers to you, if you’re a Christian Romans 8:29 says something about your
destiny; it says that you’re predestined to be conformed to Jesus Christ. And that predestination is a sovereign decree
of God, and you can’t change it, and when you face your Adullam, when you face
your problems and you’re trapped in the cave, just remember how David worked
it. He looked at the throne and he had
the confidence God was going to get him out of there. Yet, it did not result in just a zombie-ism,
just oh well Lord, I’ll just let go and you do something. It wasn’t that either, David felt
responsibility under the first divine institution to make a real live petition
to God. So the means of moving from
Adullam to the throne was by means of positive volition; he didn’t get the
lying on his back. He got there because
he acted.
Now that should act as an encouragement; if you know you can win,
doesn’t that act as an incentive to encourage you to claim the promises, to
encourage you to make the prayer petitions if you’re already guaranteed you’re
going to win; now the guarantee to win doesn’t cause you to win by itself, it’s
just a guarantee you can win if you will.
And it’s an incentive, now obviously under God’s sovereignty you’re going
to win, but what I’m saying is that this guarantee itself doesn’t come in and
twist your volition and carry you along.
You’ve got to exercise your volition.
And if you understand and proceed carefully, the fact that you have a
sovereignly guaranteed destiny, that should act as an incentive that would head
off, if skillfully applied, it would head off any depression that is of
spiritual origin… if properly and skillfully applied. Depression for physical causes no, but
depressions that are due to spiritual causes yes; they can be met by a firm
grasp of God’s sovereign plan to you as an individual person and the fact that
it cannot fail.
And that’s what David did, but before we leave Psalm 142 to go back to 1
Samuel and the text, I want you to notice one thing, because God is again going
to exercise a sense of humor toward David.
David looks forward ultimately to the righteous ones, he visualizes all
of these people who are mature believers, who are the great saints that are
going to be surrounding him. Now turn
back to 1 Samuel 22 and see what God gives him. [tape turns]
… four hundred clods, if there ever were a group, yet out of these four
hundred men are going to come some of the finest leaders of the nation. Ten of these men, at least, and possibly as
many as thirty, will become generals, will become military heroes. How?
Because of the training David is going to give them. Let’s follow through and see what’s going on.
Verse 2, “And every one who was in distress, and every one who was in debt, and
every one who was discontented, gathered themselves unto him,” you see this has
become now a full scale revolt against the throne of Saul because now you
actually do have a political insurrection in motion. Now it is not just one man, David, who was a
former officer in the Israeli army, now it’s more than that. Now it’s broken out into an insurrection;
David is acquiring what could be interpreted by the authorities as a rebellious
mob, and in the eyes of Saul and the de
facto government, this certainly would have been considered an army
insurrection against this power. And
here you have legitimate revolution against an established government.
“And every one who was in distress,” the distressed ones, and the
debtors, and those who were discontent would receive instructions as David
would give them. Now last week I taught
Psalm 34; if you turn there I want to show you how Psalm 34 was written with
this crowd in mind. Remember he had to
start military training but he didn’t start by showing them how to wield the
sword. He started his program of
military training by training the men spiritually.
First, the distressed ones, what would be a distressed person? Wouldn’t a distressed person be one who is
just totally cramped in. The Hebrew word
for “distress” means to pinch in, to bind in, and certainly you’ve been in that
kind of a situation, you know how it feels when you’re in a situation and just
feel cramped, frustrated, everything goes wrong. That’s the distressed person. Now why do you suppose in Psalm 34 you have
verse 8-10? Remember Psalm 34 is the
first piece of instruction given to these people. To the distressed ones David would say look,
“Taste and see that the LORD is good, Blessed is the man who keeps on trusting
in Him. [9] Fear the LORD,” or have respect to Jehovah, “you His saints, For
there is no want to them that fear Him,” to those who respect Him, you aren’t
going to lack.
You feel distressed, you are not going to lack a thing if you’ll respect
the authority of God. You see, the
problem of a person in distress is that they disrespect the authority of the
Word. Maybe you’ve never connected it
this way, but let’s look at a situation.
Here you are, great problem. How
do you respond to that? If you respond
with this discontented attitude, isn’t that really saying that you disrespect
the authority of the Word? When God says
I’m going to supply all your need, and you walk away from a situation totally
out of it, isn’t that an expression of your disrespect for His Word? Or disrespect for His character, that He
really doesn’t mean what He says in your case?
Of course, in everybody else’s case it works, but not in yours, you’re
special. And you have this great special
problem that nobody else in the world ever had before. And God’s Word, I know it worked before, but
it’s not going to work on my problem, you don’t understand my problem, God
doesn’t understand my problem. Only I
understand my problem.
So here’s a person with big problem and they disrespect, and David cuts
right to the core, the first thing he says to these people is you’ve got to
learn respect for God’s character. He
doesn’t tell them to “love the Lord, praise the Lord,” he doesn’t lead a chorus
like that. David is smart, he doesn’t
work that way. He goes back and deals
with the problem, and the problem is their failure to respect God’s character
and so he deals with that.
Now the second group, the debtors, now we haven’t come to economics in
the book of Proverbs yet but when we do you’ll see that economics viewed from
the divine viewpoint, debts are always viewed as a form of slavery. And so when you have these debtors here, they
are viewed as slaves who need to be freed.
It’s implied that some of these debtors may have legitimate debts and
others illegitimate. But the point
remains is that the debtors must be made free.
Now if you’ll to go Psalm 34
you’ll notice the verse in there that seems to be directed just to these
debtors. Look at verse 22, “The LORD
redeems the soul of His servants,” the word “redeem” means to free, He frees,
and it’s not just the immaterial soul, remember I warned you over and over
again, the Jew doesn’t think in terms of abstraction, he thinks in terms of
something concrete, that the soul is a living thing. We would translate it the way they used the
word soul, we use the word life in English.
He says, “The LORD redeems the life of His servants,” makes it count
again, and “none of them that trust in Him shall ever be desolate.” See the pertinence of Psalm 34 to a
debtor?
And now the third group of men, those who were discontented; it’s much
stronger in the original language, in the original language it means they are
bitter men, with deep bitterness, they resent Saul, they resent the social
order under which they lived. They are
very, very bitter people. And what does
David tell them, all the way from verse 11-21 in Psalm 34, “Come children,
hearken unto me,” verse 13, “Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from
speaking treason, [14] Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue
it.”
I’m taking this time out to go back and forth between Psalm 34 and this
passage because I want you to see how very, very different David handled a
potentially hot situation and the way the rabble-rousers handle the same kind
of situation today. Instead of [can’t
understand word] people up and taking advantage of self-pity, the persecuted
minority of four hundred people, David does not play on self-pity, even if
there are legitimate reasons for them to feel sorry for themselves; David is
dealing with a persecuted social minority and he does not play on social
pity. You notice that; Psalm 34 tells
you how David worked with a social minority that were under genuine
persecution; he never played to their self-pity and he never encouraged a
rebellious attitude. Why does Psalm 34,
over and over and over use the word “fear the Lord,” “fear the Lord,” “fear the
Lord,” why? Respect for authority. The first thing this persecuted social
minority had to learn was respect for authority. And until they learned respect for authority
they’d stay a bunch of losers. And this
is why we do not have, in this country, many people that are wise in working
with the socially oppressed minority, they always fail at this point, they
encourage self-pity. Now if you are working with people that are genuinely
depressed there can be a time when you can be pitiful but don’t ever let them
know you know it. In counseling you may
have to bear down on somebody and say you don’t have to feel sorry for
yourself, even though you personally may feel sorry for them. But it doesn’t help them for you to express
your pity toward them; you keep it to yourself.
So David kept it to himself.
Sure, he felt for these guys, but he didn’t let them know it. Psalm 34 tells us the first thing, he
cancelled out self-pity with the concept of authority and that concept of
authority wasn’t David’s authority, it was authority under God. You see Psalm 34 is a great witness to a
persecuted social minority; it is a witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and David
is saying in essence, summarizing this whole thing, this is what David is
saying to these men, these bums that are gathering at the cave. See, they probably came to the cave and said
oh, good, we can have a big rumble here, a good skillful hero like David, man,
we’ll cream these people. And this is
probably, in all reality the way they thought, except when they got in the cave
they found something different. They
found a guy that wasn’t going to bend to their feelings of self-pity, he wasn’t
going to say oh you poor little people, you’ve been so oppressed, let’s have a
study for social minorities in the school curriculum to make you feel
better. David never handled it that way. He started out with this: you guys learn
authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, period, or you’re not part of the
operation, so you learn it or get out.
That’s Psalm 34 and that’s the way he handled it; if you want to deal
with a group and you want real freedom I’m here to give it to you because,
remember what the king elect was to do in Israel? He was to save, and that means physically,
political and social salvation; he was going to lead them into the kingdom,
yes, but it was going to be under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if he had a group of people that were
just involved in self-pity, forget it, you’re not on the team, you don’t
qualify, you don’t have the right mental attitude. So David started right out fresh with Psalm
34 to declare the issue, and that’s the way the issue should be declared today,
in any area, in any country, in any point of the earth’s surface, it is always
the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You start out trying to replace a government with a mob and you’re going
to wind up with another mob worse than the first one; it never works. And David understands this elementary
principle that anybody with a second grade understanding of history should
know. You cannot replace illegitimate government
with a mob or you will wind up with something worse than you had before. It never works, you have got to instill
authority and discipline and order first, and then you can move. And this is what David is doing.
So let’s turn back and see how successful he was in doing this. They “gathered themselves,” it’s a hithpael stem
in the Hebrew, which means it was of their volition, they chose to gather
themselves to David. David didn’t have
to go out and recruit an army. It’s very
interesting to watch the give and the take here, you see, David just got
through praying Psalm 142 and he’s looking forward, God’s going to answer it,
and there’s going to be a lot of righteous people, and all of a sudden these
guys start drifting in. And no, that
can’t be the answer to the prayer, and God says oh yes they are, guess what
you’re going to do David, you’ve got a nice little job the next couple of
months, you’re going to conduct boot camp for these four hundred guys and
you’re going to instill discipline and authority in their souls. And after that you’re going to use these men
to rule in your army; then you’ll have the righteous ones, oh yes David, I’m
going to answer your prayer, just not the way you thought. You’ll get you righteous people.
So in the last part of verse 2, they “gathered themselves together
voluntarily,; and he became a captain over them,” that’s an expression of the
fact that gradually he developed the concept and structure of authority and he
exercised it over them, “and there were with him about four hundred men.” Now to see what happened to these four
hundred men we have to turn to 2 Samuel 23, one of the last pieces to be
written in the book of 1 and 2 Samuel.
It’s a listing that begins in verse 8, I want you to notice some of the
men David had in his army. Now first a
note of explanation. We cannot positively
say every one of these men were at Adullam.
But here’s what we can say. If
you review the places where these men came from that are given in the list,
their families and so on, you can ascertain that the first ten, after a certain
point is reached in the chapter there are ten men that come from Judah. Then as you read down the list they spread
out geographically, now what does that tell you? It obviously tells you where is Adullam? It’s in the tribe of Judah, see that’s where
he’s holed up. So it looks like he
gradually gathered his staff out of Judah and then when he extended his sphere
of influence he picked up more people, until finally he picked up Gentiles and
one of the men listed here, in fact the last man in 2 Samuel 23 is the man he
murdered later on, because he wanted to commit adultery with his wife. And there again you see the grace of God,
Uriah the Hittite.
Now these are the great men in the army; let’s look at some of
them. First, understanding the structure
of the army, it was patterned, apparently after the Egyptians, though we have
no positive evidence of this, in that David used a system of triads. If you’re familiar with Homeric literature
will understand and recognize immediately that you encounter the triads in Iliad, and I think once in a while in
the Odyssey, but mostly in the Iliad, during the Trojan War, they speak
of tribes, so and so drove the chariot, so and so and so and so; there’d be
three men that Homer speaks of. And then
he’ll talk about something else and there’ll be three men. Now that didn’t start with Homer and the
Greeks, it started back here with David.
And David had a triad at the head of his army; under that he had some
intermediate officers, and under that he had what he called the thirty; now
there were more than thirty men because apparently they filled in, one died or
one was killed in battle, they had somebody else, and the group of thirty would
be equivalent, all these men would be equivalent to generals today. This is a listing of those men, and we can
safely infer that these were the men he began to pick up beginning at the cave
of Adullam, and this shows you what a tremendous group these four hundred men
were. If ten of these men in this list
came from Judah, and they were included in the class of Adullam, under military
training, can you imagine a class of four hundred cadets and out of that class
ten make general, like a general before they retire from the service. So it was a very successful training program.
Now let’s look at some of these men and what they did, beginning at
verse 8 you have one of the key men, and this is the man that David had,
[Josheb-basshebeth] the Tachmonite, chief among the captains, now Adino, the
Eznite is a transliteration, it means a spear thrower, and this man is one of
those great believers in history, his name is unrecorded except here, and this
is one of those things that we have to kind of pause here when we read this
kind of Scripture and give thanks to God for this believer. This is a tremendous believer, he exercised a
lot of work in David’s army, he helped David get where he was, and the Holy
Spirit [can’t understand word] his name here in this chapter, and most people
never even know his name, but he was one of David’s great men; “he lifted up
his spear against eight hundred, whom he slew at one time.” It means that in one particular battle this
man picked up spear after spear, and killed eight hundred people. So it shows you what kind of a man this guy
was. He obviously didn’t have any
trouble with “thou shalt not kill.”
Verse 9, “And after him was Eleazar, the son of Dodai, the Ahohite, one
of the three mighty men with David, when they defied the Philistines that were
gathered together for battle, and the men of Israel were gone away; [10] He arose,
and smote the Philistines until his hand was weary, and his hand clave [adhered
to] the sword; and the LORD wrought a great victory that day, and the people
returned after him only to spoil.” In
other words, he and a group of men were trapped in the field one day and all he
had was his sword, and he hacked the Philistines and kept going after them,
chopping and cutting and slashing until his hand actually got paralyzed on the
end of the sword, he fought for so long, and you’ve gripped something for so long
that your muscles just freeze after a while; this man’s hand froze to his
sword, and this is the kind of man that was a great killer. Notice the Holy Spirit elevates these men and
identifies them as great killers. So
those of you who are in the military service, don’t ever feel embarrassed about
killing.
Verse 11, “And after him was Shammah, the son of Agee, the
Hararite. And the Philistines were
gathered together into a troop, where was a piece of ground full of lentils;
and the people fled from the Philistines. [12] But he stood in the midst of the
ground, an defended it, and slew the Philistines, and the LORD wrought a great
victory,” another killer on David’s team.
And then in verse 13 you go on to the thirty, “And three of the thirty
chief [leaders] went down, and came to David in the harvest time,” it describes
another incident, and then finally down in verse 19, “Was he not most honorable
among the three?” of the triad, “Therefore, he was their captain; howbeit he
attained not unto the first three.” In
other words, he wasn’t part of the triad but he was part of the thirty. Then we have the thirty begin in verse 23,
“He was more honorable than the thirty, but he attained not to the triad,” the
high class of four stars. Then we have a
listing here in verse 24, “Asahel, the brother of Joab, was one of the thirty,”
and then you have all the names listed down to Uriah the Hittite. And these are the great men that were finally
made the backbone of David’s great army.
Where did it start? Notice it
started in a dirty cave with a bunch of creeps that God gave as answer to his
prayer in Psalm 142, the righteous, and the righteous did become the righteous,
God said they would, it just required a little operation and training on the
way but they became the righteous and God the Holy Spirit recognized the
effectiveness of this training program.
Let’s quickly go back to 1 Samuel 22 and finish this last part of this
passage. The four hundred are gathered
together, right now they are just in the process of being trained. Then in verse 3, David decides to evacuate
the families, both his family and probably the families of the other people to
Moab. Moab is off to the east and out of
the way, so one night, apparently with maximum security they take all their
families and move across here to Moab, take them out of the way, this is to
evacuate all their families from what is going to become the great battle
zone. And why do you suppose David goes
to Moab?
He says in verse 3, “And David went from there to Mizpeh, and he said
unto the king of Moab, Let my father and my mother, I pray thee, come forth,”
that means continually go forth, “and be with you, till I know what God will do
for me. [4] And he brought them before the king of Moab; and they dwelt with
him all the while that David was in the fort [stronghold],” probably all the
time actually that he was in the cave Adullam.
Why Moab? Again, hold the place
and turn to the book of Ruth. I want to
show some interesting history here. Ruth
1:1, “Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a
famine in the land. And a certain man of
Bethlehem-judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and
his two sons.” So you have a
Bethlehemite leave and go to Moab in a time of famine. He and his wife leave, and his two sons, his
wife’s name was Naomi, and his two sons married Gentile girls, the Moabitesses,
one of whom was Ruth. And Ruth is David’s
grandmother, Ruth 4:17, this is the connection between David and Moab, when
Ruth finally had a child by Boaz, “they called his name Obed: he is the father
of Jesse, the father of David.”
So David’s father, Jesse, was one quarter Moabite, in other words, part
of the family was Gentile. This is just
deliberately put in the Word of God to anger people who became very
self-righteousness and proud that only Jews could be in Messiah’s line, so God
the Holy Spirit put a prostitute in the list in Matthew and made sure He had a
few Gentiles recorded, just to destroy any self-righteousness of the
people. And this is the way history
worked. And so we have one of the great
female believers of Scripture, Ruth, who becomes the grandmother of David, and
actually her connections in Moab are going to be used and are being used in 1
Samuel 22:3. David has friends in Moab;
he has right then to have his family go there.
Now verse 5 closes up this whole episode and reminds of the Romans 8:28
principle, David did not earn this, David did not deserve it, but look what he
wound up with. “And the prophet Gad said
unto David, Abide not in the stronghold; depart, and get thee into the land of
Judah. Then David departed, and came into
the forest of Hereth.” The prophet said
okay, get off the border and come on into the land, the savior of the land must
be in the land. So we have David under
the Romans 8:28 principle, having gotten what?
He got the priesthood, now it wasn’t exactly what he thought he was
going to get, he only got one priest, the rest of them were killed. But he did get the priesthood, he got the
high priest. He didn’t have a great
course of prophets, he probably wanted all those guys that were in Samuel’s
seminary, he didn’t get them but he got Gad, this priest. So he has the priesthood, and he has the
prophets on this side when all this episode is done with. And what does he have? The core that will one day become his fine
army, an army that will conquer all the way to the Tigris-Euphrates valley, an
army that Israel has never seen. The Six
Day War in Israel was nothing compared to the fine army that Israel raised up
in David’s day. All of this David did
not earn and did not deserve and it’s a lesson for us as believers that God is
the God of grace.
David started this whole episode in the first part of chapter 21 by
making a mistake, but David’s mistake plus God’s sovereign grace equals
blessing, and that’s the way it always works. God has sovereignly promised, if
you are a believer, to bless you. You
can make a mistake and suffer for it, David suffered, he had to watch the
innocents of Nob being slaughtered, he had to cope with these clods in the cave
week after week after week training them, but was David finally blessed? Yes.
Some have wondered about David being a redhead in Israel and in one of
the Life magazine supplements on Israel there’s a picture of an Israeli soldier
who is a redhead, a tank commander in the Israeli army, there’s a story on him
and you can see for yourself; it’s a modern young Israeli who has red hear, just
like 1 Samuel says. Shall we bow for
prayer…