1 Samuel Lesson 38
First Betrayal and Deliverance of David
–23:13-18; Psalm 63
Turn to 1 Samuel 23. We continue
our study of David’s life in the persecution phase, chapters 21-27. This section, chapter 23-24 deals with one of
his lessons. In the first chapters 21-22
we found David learning the lesson of the danger of hastiness, the idea of
deciding something and going on too fast, and then later on discovering that he
had not listened to the Lord, he had not inquired of the Lord and therefore was
in deep trouble. In chapter s 23-24 we
deal with the second lesson that David is being taught during the persecution
phase of his life, and that is the danger of treachery. Over and over again in this series of
incidents we find the theme of treachery; over and over again David is betrayed
and over and over again God delivers.
And David is going to let us in through the words of a famous Psalm how
he felt and how he coped with the problem of treachery in his life.
1 Samuel 23:1-5 dealt with the siege of Keilah, and at the siege of
Keilah we have a grain city, located on the boundary between the Philistine
occupation of the west and the Hebrew occupation or the Israelite occupation to
the east. Keilah was a place of
provision for grain, and every country needs grain, and most countries will do
anything, the communists will even buy it from capitalists, to feed
themselves. So since grain is a basic
product that feeds nations, the Philistines were no exception and the
Philistines had to obtain grain so they used to raid the neighbors. They waited until the grain was on the
harvesting floor, the threshing floor, and then they’d send their columns up
with large oxen and carts to carry off the grain. David broke up the siege at Keilah and stayed
with the guard force with some four hundred men in the city until the harvest
was finished.
David, therefore, in verses 1-5, established his role as king. David is now clearly functioning as
king. Now in verse 13, David and his
men, which were now about six hundred, in other words in this operation he
picked up about two hundred volunteers, and so now his total force is six
hundred, which is nothing compared to Saul’s three to four thousand. So at this point he is still outnumbered; yet
David is the legitimate de jure king,
Saul is de facto king. Now the city was going to betray David and
here we have one of the first betrayals, because the section from verses 6-18
is the first betrayal and the first deliverance. We have David, who was the savior of the
city, betrayed by those whom he saved.
In verse 2 and 5 you’ll notice the word “save.” That word is not just a common verb, that
word is a technical word; that word is in the text and put there by God the
Holy Spirit to alert you to the fact that David is now functioning as
king. Up to this point he has been king
by anointing, he has been king by his performance under Saul, but he hasn’t
actually socially functioned as king.
The job of the king is to save the nation, and therefore now he is
commanded to do it in verse 4, verse 2, and in verse 5 we have the report that
he was successful. Since in verse 2 God
commanded David to function to save the city we know that God has ordained him
at this point to function as king.
Therefore, from this fact we can deduce something. The inhabitants of Keilah were supposed to
have gone over to David; the city of
Now at this point we have a most interesting analogy with Jesus Christ
and believers. Christ is our Savior, but
He does not become our Lord. The
Lordship of Christ is not part of the gospel; don’t ever confuse this with this
little slogan that goes around and people mean well that say it but it’s
completely anti-Biblical, and that is “if Christ is not Lord of all, Christ is
not Lord at all.” And that is a
misreading of the word “Lord,” it’s a misreading of soteriology and in general
it is a very fouled up gospel. Jesus
Christ cannot be your Lord when you first believe on Him because you don’t know
enough to make Him your Lord. I didn’t
know enough to make Him my Lord when I believed. No one knows enough to make Christ Lord, it’s
ridiculous, and the Lordship of Christ is an issue that follows salvation, it
is not part of salvation.
Let’s watch how the lordship of God worked in the nation
So here we have another illustration, David is the lord of Keilah; David
saved Keilah, and Keilah was saved from the satanic menace, the
Philistines. So while Keilah had been
delivered from the satanic menace of the Philistines, the people of Keilah were
not yet ready to make David lord and therefore they were slaves to another
satanic menace which was Saul. These
were people who are like believers who become Christians, who accept Christ as
Savior, who trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ and are truly and
genuinely saved, but who are not yet prepared to allow Christ to have dominion
over all their life, and they are on the boundary line, like the Keilahites
were between the David occupied territory, Saul’s occupied territory and the
Philistine’s occupied territory and the result is they’re usually very unstable
people. People who are no more mature in
the faith than the faith of Keilah are very unstable and can be very
treacherous people.
And the Keilahites were treacherous people; they were cheering David one
moment and just as quickly they would turn against David the next moment. Were they believers? Yes they were, by
analogy. Were they saved? Yes. Did they turn against their Lord? Yes. And this is why you can have a person
accept Christ and five weeks later they are turning against Him. Are they still saved? Yes.
What makes them turn against Him?
Because they are not prepared to make Christ dominion over all areas of
concern.
Now another analogy between the incident at Keilah brought out in verse
13 and Christ and the believer today, and that is when you have a group of
believers who will not submit to their savior the savior leads by virtue of his
presence. And here David departs from
the believers at Keilah, just like the presence of Christ, in one sense, though
not in the permanent positional sense, the sense of His presence departs from
believers who are disobedient, from believers who will not trouble themselves
to submit to the Word, or believers who do not take Jesus Christ seriously, the
reality of their faith just seems to go down the drain, and so David had to
leave Keilah just like Christ leaves believers in experience, though not in
position, who will not prepare to side with Him against Satan in all his
devices. So the people of Keilah
rejected David; they accepted his salvation but they rejected his
kingship. And many believers are in this
state today. David gained two hundred
men and so now he has six hundred.
Now in the middle of verse 13 there’s an interesting phrase, “Then David
and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah, and
went whithersoever they could go.” In
the Hebrew it reads more simply than this, “they went wherever they went.” And it’s an idiom in the original language
for vagueness; there was no direction in their life any more, it was just
wandering. And so this becomes the
destiny of David and his Adullamite group, the army that he is developing, is
that they are now wanderers, wandering away in the area of
And this is why it’s so wrong for Christian organizations to become
geographically localized. Who says the
Holy Spirit is geographically localized?
Anywhere in Scripture do you read that the Holy Spirit is localized in
an area? Not necessarily. And so most of the more mature people on the
mission field are encouraging mobile strategies, of pick up and abandon a whole
area if it’s turning against the gospel, just leave it and move on to some
other place where there is positive volition.
And that’s basically the smart way to move in the ministry of the Word. Some of you who are going to seminary,
remember that. Don’t just go out and
pick some Christian organization that’s rooted to a geographical area; you pick
an area where you think God the Holy Spirit is working and the other places
forget about them. Go to the area where
the Holy Spirit works. And this is the
way David is, he’s avoiding the persecution and he moves all over.
Then it says in the last part of verse 13, “And it was told Saul that
David was escaped from Keilah; and he forbore to go forth.” Now Saul was informed, the word “was told” is
nagad, and that is the Hebrew word to
report, and it’s that one that we have seen again and again in chapter 23, and
it’s here to show you the issue of chapter 23 is one of intelligence; it is one
of spying, it is one of information, because in chapters 21-22 David’s lesson
was whether he would have the information necessary for divine guidance. Now at this point David is interested in the
divine guidance of intelligence, here it’s Saul’s intelligence. But over and over in this chapter you have nagad, nagad, nagad because the Holy
Spirit is emphasizing both of these men’s intelligence systems. On David’s side of the ledger we have the
Holy Spirit; we have the ephod, and we have patrols, we also have a prophet. On Saul’s side of the ledger we just have
patrols, and Saul is pictured as one cut off from proper intelligence sources
and therefore actually Saul is the one that’s wondering spiritually, though
David is wandering physically.
Someone handed in a question that my remarks last week on military
intelligence sounds like you’re saying that the end justifies the means. This comes through a problem that apparently
a lot of people have trouble with this and I think the reason that some of you
have trouble with this is that you’ve never understood history very well
because if you’d read anything in history you’d understand that men in
leadership positions have to choose and make some agonizing decisions at
times. You have to choose to blow
somebody’s head off or allow a whole country to go down the drain; you have to
choose to kill of an enemy counterspy, murder him in the street if necessary,
versus letting him get information back to the enemy that would endanger the
homeland, and these are real life decisions.
Now I think some of you live in an ivory tower existence some place and
think this kind of decision making never occurs. It occurs often, and the evangelical, woe be
to him if he doesn’t anticipate this kind of a situation ahead of time and get
his ethics straightened out so he can handle it or else fall apart.
There are two ways you can handle this, and this is just a footnote to
this military intelligence question, but there are two ways being held
today. One way is what we will call an
ideal way, the technical name is absolute idealism, and evangelicals who
believe this way hold that there are a set of absolutes, all of equal priority,
and then when you have to choose between one absolute and another one, in the
case, it is an evil choice either way you go, and therefore you have to confess
no matter which choice you make. Then
there’s the other group, what we call the ethical hierarchicalists, and this is
held by Dr. Geisler, and this is that your absolutes are structured in a priority,
it is not a sin to dump a lower absolute in order to obey a higher one. Therefore if Rahab has to lie to save life,
then in this particular case, since she is lying to save the lives of Jehovah’s
spies it is right, Rahab did not sin when she lied. And these are the two ways that it is
handled.
In verse 14, “And David abode in the wilderness in strongholds,” now
these are the natural fortresses, the natural fortifications, that is actually
literally David’s stronghold because David doesn’t depend on manmade
strongholds, he depends on those in the wilderness, “and remained in a mountain
in the wilderness of Ziph.” That’s in
the southern area, and it’s not “a mountain,” it means the mountainous areas. “And Saul sought him every day, but God delivered
him not into his hand.” So you have Saul
continuously chasing David. Now that
doesn’t mean that Saul himself was there.
What it means is that Saul had patrols out looking for David, he had
scouts out checking for David’s presence. Saul wasn’t anywhere near the place
as we’re going to see when the reports come in that Saul has to move to the
area, so obviously Saul wasn’t there; these are Saul’s representatives who are
there. And they send these patrols all through
the wilderness of Ziph to check on David’s location, but it happened every
single day God was delivering.
Then in verse 15, “And David saw that Saul was come out to seek his
life; and David was in the wilderness of Ziph in a wood [the forest].” Now the word “saw,” some of you will notice
in your translations will have the word fear, but here’s the reason. We have to pause a moment to go back to what
these two verbs look like in the Hebrew.
One looks like this, the other like this and the only difference between
them is a dot and a line underneath; that’s the verb, and so obviously this is
a situation where in the transmission of the text there may have been an
error. Some have chosen to use the word
“fear” and most of your modern translations say “David feared because Saul had
come out to seek his life.” But those of
you who read the older translations read it “David saw that Saul was come
out.” Now both are permissible with a
confidence, the question which vowel is it.
All the Masoretic tradition goes with the King James and the other
reading is one that is forced into the text; it’s a good guess, but there’s no
textual evidence for it. The evidence is
strictly brought into it by translators who think it should be there. My experience with this kind of thing in
working with the text is you always get burned when you start manipulating the
text on what you think you can be there.
And it’s a very, very difficult lesson to learn but when you’re in
textual criticism, you start out trying to improve the text because your
natural inclination if something doesn’t look grammatically right is to fix it
up, and then after you’ve worked with it a while you see that perhaps you
shouldn’t. So probably the best thing to
do in this case is to go back and take the same King James translation, the older
translation, which is the traditional one, and say “David saw.”
Now why do I make a big point a verb here? Because however we deal with this verb is the
section of how we place Psalm 63 in here.
If we read “saw” in verse 15, “David saw that Saul was come out to seek
his life,” David is not in a condition of despair; David is in a condition of
encouragement and Psalm 63 could go right after verse 15. However, if we read the verb “fear” in verse
15 then we would have David in a condition of despair, Psalm 63 could not go
after verse 15 and would have to drop down after verse 18, and the Jonathan
meeting would have to occur between this verse and Psalm 63. I’m going to handle the text as though it
reads “saw,” “David saw that Saul was come out to seek his life; and David was
in the wilderness of Ziph in the forest.”
Now at this point David recognizes undeserved suffering. In chapter 21-22 David was mystified by the
fact that Saul was seeking his life.
David did not understand why Saul would seek his life because he felt
what have I done to sin against Saul, that Saul would get irritated at me to
take my life. Under undeserved suffering
David hasn’t done anything except represent Jesus Christ to incur the wrath of
Saul, who is now under demonic oppression.
Therefore, at this particular point we find that David is simply
confessing that he sees the big picture; he sees that Saul is after him, it is
very clear in his mind what has happened, he has learned his lesson from
chapters 21-22 and therefore Saul, he sees, must hound him because Saul’s
kingdom will not be secure as long as David survives.
There’s an analogy with this; today during the Church Age Satan knows
that his kingdom is not secure as long as the body of Christ is on earth and
functioning. This is why Satan must
hound Christians who are deeply obedient to the Word of God. Notice Saul does not bother the inhabitants
of Keilah. Who are the believers that
Saul bothers? David and his group; he
doesn’t bother the believers at Keilah, and similarly Satan today does not
bother believers who take Christ as Savior but have never grown and never
submitted to Christ’s authority in other realms. They are no threat to Satan and therefore
Satan usually doesn’t bother them. The people that Satan most bothers are
believers who are submitting to Christ’s authority in many, many areas of their
life. And therefore we have an analogy
between David’s being hounded by Saul and believers today being hounded by Satan. It is done for the same reason, Saul cannot
stand David because he’s a threat; Satan cannot stand believers applying the
Word because they’re a threat.
Now let’s turn to a Psalm that David wrote during this period of time,
then we’ll come back to verse 16. I’m
placing Psalm 63 between verses 15 and 16; it could also be placed after verse
18, it’s hard to place it but for tonight we’ll just take it as though it’s
between verse 15 and 16. This, down
through history, has been considered by great men to be one of the most
beautiful Psalms in the entire book of Psalms.
In fact, at least three men from the ancient church confessed this fact:
Eusebius, Athanasius and Saint Chrysostom.
All three of these men write that this Psalm was used over and over
again in the early churches worship services.
On Sunday morning it was used as the first Psalm that was sung, which
incidentally tells us what the early church sang; they sang Psalms. And this was always their first song, that
they opened their morning worship service with.
In fact, Chrysostom says, (quote): “It was decreed and ordained by the
primitive fathers that no day should pass without the public singing of Psalm
63.” And so we have a Psalm that was
sung not only on Sunday morning, but it was sung by the Christians in the
first, second and third centuries every day of the week, over and over,
wherever they met together, they would sing Psalm 63.
Now let’s look at the structure of Psalm 63. This is an individual descriptive praise
Psalm. Praise is divided into two parts,
declarative praise and descriptive praise.
Praise in God’s Word is not “praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise
the Lord,” something like that that you use and it is not somebody flapping
their tongue at both ends. It is a
rational verbal expression, generally in public, to not subjective experience
but objective historic deliverance. It
is not primarily centered on what I feel about God; it is centered on what God
objectively has done for me. And
therefore if someone trots up to you and say “oh praise the Lord, you don’t
have praise at your church,” and so on, because we don’t wave hands, roll down
the aisle or have something like this going on, a four-ring circus. That is not praise; you can just tell them we
have praise from the time we get in to the time we leave because we emphasize
the historic objective revelation of God; that’s praise. So praise is a recitation in public of God’s
works.
Now this praise can be of two parts; it can be declarative or
descriptive. The declarative centers on
an event and that is the first step of praise; praise always starts with an
event, it doesn’t start with somebody’s speculation or somebody has a great
idea about God and they begin to praise God for it; it starts because of some
specific historic event. And then we have descriptive praise; descriptive
praise deals with principles and is an advanced form of praise. You start with an event and you begin to see
God is this way because He has done this thing and then you begin to work it
over more and more until you finally say God is a God with this kind of
character. So as one would deal with a
specific act of God, one would deal with His attribute. Descriptive praise is advanced praise; declarative
praise is elementary praise.
Psalm 63 is not declarative or elementary praise; Psalm 63 is advanced
or descriptive praise. It, therefore, is
a very advanced form of a deep spiritual expression. And therefore Psalm 63 tells us what David
has done with his soul, that at this time, when he is being hounded in the
wilderness, he comes up with a descriptive praise Psalm, meaning he has grown
spiritually. David has grown all during
the time that we saw him in Gath, the time when he goofed, from that point in
Gath when he prayed Psalm 56, and he was answered, and you remember the
declarative praise Psalm, Psalm 34 that he taught his soldiers, until he prays
Psalm 142, and this Psalm is the answer to Psalm 142, Psalm 63. So as Psalm 34 answered Psalm 56, Psalm 63
answers Psalm 142.
Now Psalm 63 is very critical for seeing what praise is. This is why the church fathers ordained that
this Psalm be sung over and over and over.
Why out of 150 Psalms did the Christians for three centuries pick this
one? Why is this the epitome of the
Psalms? Because this one shows David’s
heart to praise more than any other Psalm.
Let’s look at the outline of Psalm 63.
The first two verses depict the following point: David seeks God’s
presence. Verses 1-2 teach David seeks
God’s presence. And then verses 3-11,
David praises God for His loyal help.
That should immediately clue you to something, why do you suppose the
theme of this Psalm is God’s loyal help?
What’s David’s historic experience during all this? Man’s treachery and so Psalm 63 emphasizes
God’s loyalty, the opposite.
So God, by putting David in a situation where he is going to receive
treachery at the hands of his so-called friends, believers, David is going to
learn that the proper place of trust is not in other believers. The proper place of trust is in God. Now believers are fine to relax with and we
can enjoy and have fellowship one with another, but the moment we start placing
our trust in one another we’re going to be in trouble. And every once in a while, as a pastor I run
into this and you will too, you’ll find some sour grapes believer who’s been
let down, they say, by another believer.
Well, I thought so and so was a fine Christian, but… and then they go on
to relate some obnoxious thing, at least something obnoxious to them. And what has happened, they have sinned,
they’re the ones that have sinned, not the person they’re chewing out; they
have sinned because they are the one that was wrong in the first place, they
put their trust in another believer; they never should have, they should have
put their trust in the Lord. And because
they didn’t put their trust in the Lord, they put their trust in someone else,
and that’s idolatry. And it was God’s
grace that… this shows how stupid they are, here they are, they are putting
trust in some other Christian, that’s idolatry.
So what does God do? God allows
this other Christian to sin a good one, just to make it manifest to this
Christian that they shouldn’t have their trust there in the first place; that’s
idolatry.
So what’s actually happened when these sour-grapes believers come up to
you and tell you, do you know what so and so did? Now I’ve been done in bad by believers, I
wouldn’t go to church because I know Christians, this kind of thing. What they’re telling you and they don’t
realize what they’re telling you, they’re letting you in on how God the Holy
Spirit has worked in their life. From
that point you can tell at least three things about that kind of a person. You can tell #1 they have tendencies toward
idolatry, that’s the first thing you can tell by a person who says that. The 2nd thing you can tell is that
God the Holy Spirit has been very gracious to them by showing them the roots of
their idolatry very clearly. And the 3rd
thing you can tell that they have by now been involved in compound carnality because
they misinterpreted the work of the Holy Spirit, and now are going against
it. You can evaluate people Scripturally
by what comes out of their mouth; it shows you their thoughts and their
stupidity and so forth in these kinds of situation. So don’t ever be impressed because someone
says well, I know so and so and they were supposed to be a good believer. The moment you hear it, it should be a red
flag, you’re an idolater. That’s
exactly what you should think; never listen to somebody like that, they’re out
of it.
Verses 1-2, David seeks God’s presence.
Notice the heading, that’s part of the first verse: “A Psalm of David, when he was in the
wilderness of Judah,” and this places it, the Holy Spirit at least puts it
somewhere in 1 Samuel 23 and that’s as close as we can come, that’s why I say
you can’t dogmatically put it between verse 15-16 or after verse 18, you have
to kind of guess at it.
Verse 1, “O God, Thou art my God,” remember David is seeking God’s
presence. Watch how he expresses it. “O
God, Thou art my God, early will I seek thee; my soul thirsts for Thee, my
flesh longs for Thee in a dry and thirsty land, where not water is. [2] To see
Thy power and Thy glory, as I have seen Thee in the sanctuary.” Verses 1-2 are very, very, very important, so
important that we want to pause at this point and show you that all praise is
Theocentric; never experience centered.
Experience is only a means to the presence of God; all salvation centers
on the presence of God. Salvation in Scripture is never finished until you are
brought into God’s presence. The Jew
would never partake of what passes for evangelism in evangelical circles. Having psychological difficulties, try Jesus,
He’s a bigger and better tranquilizer and He’s free. That’s not Biblical evangelism. Biblical evangelism is how can I attain to
the presence of God Himself, no less a question than that. And people who are not asking that question
can really never appreciate the gospel.
Ultimately the gospel is not even saying to be saved from your sins;
that in itself is only a step to something else that’s greater. You are saved from your sins why? In order to be in the presence of God. You are not saved from your sins that you can
enjoy life; that is a byproduct but that’s not the reason for salvation from
sin. We are not saved to enjoy
ourselves; we are saved to be in God’s presence. There we do enjoy ourselves and it is
certainly a by-product of standing in God’s presence. The Westminster Catechism expressed it
beautifully when it said: Why has God made man?
Man is made to worship God and to enjoy Him forever. And the enjoyment comes because we are in
God’s presence.
So verses 1-2 orient us to the proper goal of salvation. So far David has been saved from Gath, that’s
the first salvation. He has been saved
from Keilah; he has been saved from Saul.
He has had these three steps to his salvation but David isn’t satisfied,
his salvation is not yet complete and won’t be until this condition, “early
will I seek thee, O Lord,” verse 2, “To see Thy power and Thy glory, as I have
seen Thee in the sanctuary.” David will
not consider his salvation complete until that state is reached, nor should
we. No area of the Christian life is
ever complete until finally in eternity we are face to face with God Himself on
a personal, eyeball to eyeball plain; that is the final end of salvation. It’s the most profound question that any
creature can ask, and the gospel is the answer to that question.
Let’s look at the details of these verses. “O God, You are my God,” this
is his personal possession, David confesses his salvation and confesses his
position as a believer, that there is no other God but Jehovah. “Early will I seek Thee; my soul thirsts for
Thee,” “early will I seek Thee” is a word that was carried over from his days
as a shepherd, when early in the morning he would with the flock of sheep, and
so here, “early” will he seek God. We’ll
see just how early in a few more verses.
“Early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You,” now that’s a
tremendous and powerful expression but you’ll never catch it if you’re not
familiar with “soul.” “Soul” in the
Bible refers to the spirit plus the body.
It’s not some immaterial thing like the Greeks thought; that’s the
spirit, not the soul. The soul in
Scripture includes the body and bodily desires.
It includes the desire for drink, it includes the desire for food, and
when he says “my soul thirsts,” he means I want to see God in my flesh. He is not talking about the soul leaving the
body and to be absent from the body is face to face with the Lord, that’s one
way but that’s final salvation either.
This is why we are not fully saved until phase 3 when we receive our
resurrection body so we can physically be in God’s presence with a body. And here David talks about my soul, not my
spirit, “my soul seeks God,” it is thirsty for him. “…my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty
land,” that’s the wilderness of Ziph, as he is being hounded by Saul, as believers
today are being hounded by Satan in history, while we are incomplete in our
deliverance, David looks forward to phase three when he will have God’s
presence.
And then to define it further, in verse 2, the last clause, if you’re
looking at the King James translation, the last clause is actually first. So you should reread it: “as I have seen Thee
in the sanctuary— ” (dash) “to see Thy power and Thy glory.” Now the meaning is okay, if you have a King
James translation, the way it’s translated, that’s the meaning. But the emphasis on the Hebrew is “as I once
saw You.” When did David last see the
sanctuary? It was at Nob wasn’t it,
When he went in to the tabernacle, at the ark, that was the place he
last saw it. Now there’s a little
historic point about verse 2 that only comes if you know the original
languages. When I say this I don’t want to discourage you from studying God’s
Word in the English. You can obtain 99%
of doctrine from the English, you don’t need Hebrew, you don’t need Greek, we have
good enough translations today. But if you’re in a position of teaching the
Word and you want to get at some of these fine points the languages help and
here is an obvious illustration.
The verb “to see” in verse 2 is not the normal Hebrew verb to see. It means to study and therefore, since it is
perfect, it means that for some time in the past David, as a boy would walk
into the ark and sit there and study it, over and over and over and over again.
For an illustration of how it must have gone, turn to 1 Samuel 3:3, Samuel did
the same thing when he was a young boy and what a lesson it is for us
today. Remember how the little boy,
Samuel, slept near the tent, and remember the point that we made when Samuel
slept in the tent. It says, “ere the
lamp of God went out in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was,
Samuel was laid down to sleep,” and I mentioned that that was a Hebrew
participle meaning he continually laid down, it was his character to go to
sleep right there are the foot of the tabernacle. Why did Samuel do that? Why did Samuel habitually, night after night
as a young boy go in there to sleep by the ark?
The reason he did is because of verse 1 where it says, “And the Word of
God was precious in those days; there was no open vision.” The boy Samuel went there because he wanted
to be the first man to hear God when He spoke.
The vision was rare, and the little boy, Samuel, as a regenerate
believer, thirsted after God’s presence, and so he deliberately slept there
because he wanted to be number one; if anybody was going to see a vision of
God, he wanted to be there when it happened.
And so every night he used to sleep there. Now that’s the zeal of Samuel.
Now apparently the same thing happened to David; Psalm 63 hints it when
it says … [tape turns]
From one year that Hannah brought him there when he was three or four,
so let’s just take age 5 on down through age 25, while he was in training year
after year after year after year after year, what did Samuel do? Studied God’s presence. And he studied it in a place, and he didn’t
have any Bible, he studied it where it was all laid in the furniture of the
tabernacle and so on. What did David do
all his early life? Spent his time
studying. How many years? 10 to 20.
And then these men became great men of the faith. Notice they did not have just a summer course
in advanced studies; they did not have just a five-week follow-up from becoming
a Christian. These men studied for years
before they were ready for a public ministry.
And when that opportunity came they were equipped. It’s obvious today why we don’t have more
people equipped; nobody is doing what David and Samuel did.
Turn to Psalm 63, “To see Thy power and Thy glory.” David hungers for God’s presence again as he
used to study it over and over and over.
Now the last section of the Psalm, verses 3-11. Verses 1-2 show you the object of praise; the
object of thirst is the presence of God, nothing less. Verses 3-11, David praises God for His loyal
help. Before we get to verse 3 there’s
something else here that’s interesting to think about. If you think about your attitude, if you were
to die tonight, and you knew that within an hour or two that you would have to
face God, face to face, what’s your reaction?
I’d rather not. If it is, that’s
a signal that right this moment there are things in your conscience that aren’t right before
Him. If you have the attitude I don’t
fear to see Him, I kind of look forward to seeing Him, then, unless you’re
really deceived, it shows your conscience is clean. And David’s heart, in verse 1-2, obviously is
the heart of a man with a clean conscience.
He anticipates with joy, he doesn’t try to avoid seeing God, he wants
to, he looks forward, that’s going to be the highpoint of his life, when he can
see God face to face.
Now verse 3, David vows to praise God for his loyal help, the whole section is
that David praises God for his loyal help, here is his vow. “Because Thy loving-kindness is better than
life; my lips shall praise Thee.” Now
the “loving-kindness” is chesed, this
word means loyal love, love that is loyal to a promise; the other word, ahav, was just sovereign love, but loyal
love means that God has entered into contract and He is faithful to His
Word. So David says “because Your
faithfulness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee.” Again a test that we can check on our own
souls. When David says “Your faithfulness is better than life,” imagine what he
is doing now when he’s writing Psalm 63; he’s out in the dusty, dry wilderness
of Ziph; he’s surrounded by treachery, he never knows if beyond the next hill
there’s going to come a patrol of Saul and behind them the armies of Saul. He doesn’t know if he goes west whether he’s
going to encounter the Philistine menace with their patrols. He doesn’t know if he saves the village of
his own brethren whether after he saves them they’re going to turn against
him. See, that’s the historical
experience of David, surrounded people and
you can’t trust people, you can only trust God. That’s why he says “Your loyal love is better
than life.” He’s just learned it. Life has to do with other people and loyal
love of God is better than that. It’s
more reliable. So because that is the case, because “Your loving-kindness is
better than life, my lips shall praise Thee.”
And here you have the aspect of public praise.
Now verses 4-8 describe how David visualizes himself praising; a very
instructive passage of God’s Word.
Verses 4-8 tell us what David thought when he said I’m going to praise
God. In other words, what did David
intend to do. It’s fine to say “praise
God.” How? Verses 4-8 tell us how David did praise God,
in detail. There are a lot of details
about David’s life in here. “This” or
“Thus will I bless Thee,” this is the way “I will bless Thee while I live,”
so this means how he’s going to do it, and following this comma are a series of
sentences that tell us how David praised God.
I challenge you to find one in here where he went around among six
hundred men, praise the Lord men, just praise the Lord men. He didn’t float around that like some
idiot. Can you imagine six hundred
soldiers out there and some goof going around like that. They wouldn’t have him as their commander,
the guy’s nuts. Now David did praise
God, but it wasn’t that way.
Here’s how he did it; remember he’s in the presence of six hundred
soldiers. “I will lift up my hands in
Thy name,” “in Thy name” means at that point he was having a worship service,
so this first way is that in the middle of the worship service David’s posture
for praying was to hold his hands up.
And this was often a sign of prayer in the early church. In fact, Tertullian tells us that one reason
why we Christians hold our hands up to heaven, that you Romans never can
understand, is because that holding your hands up to heaven we show God
Almighty that we are clean, we have been cleaned in the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and so we hold our clean hands up before Him, not because we appeal to
Him to be in our presence because of our cleanness but we show Him the finished
work of Christ His Son by cleaning our consciences, and so that was
Tertullian’s explanation for the psychology of holding the hands up in
prayer. It was simply the statement that
I have confessed my sins, 1 John 1:9 has been appropriated, and now I stand
cleansed and I am ready to worship.
So the first way that David praised God was not really, so much as his
lips, it says in verse 4, “I will lift up my hands in Thy name,” it’s not so
much the lips here as it is the posture.
It has nothing to do with lips here, it has to do with posture. Why?
Because the posture was a type of 1 John 1:9, I am clean in God’s
sight. Why is that praising God? Why is it a praise of God to say I am clean
in His sight? Because how can you get
clean in His sight except by the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So
when you claim cleansing and you claim the authority to enter into God’s
presence clean, you are praising God by that very claim. That claim of thought is praise to God’s
finished work. So that’s one way that
David praised God, by posture in worship.
We would say in our day we have, in our point in time in history, is
that we praise God when we use 1 John 1:9, it’s the same thing.
Verse 5, we go to another way in which David prays, this even hits
closer to home. “My soul shall be
satisfied as with marrow and fatness,” and the word “shall be satisfied” is a
Hebrew imperfect meaning it will be satisfied over and over and over; among
those six hundred soldiers out in the wilderness of Ziph there’d be a lot of
complaining, there’d be a lot of bad mental attitudes and how David would
praise Jehovah’s work in front of his six hundred men is that “my soul will be
satisfied,” over and over and over; at morning report, something happened at
noon, something happened in the afternoon, something happened in the evening,
“my soul will be satisfied with Jehovah.”
And some soldiers would complain about this, we don’t have enough water,
we don’t have enough food, the patrols are going to get us, I don’t think we’re
going to win the war: “my soul will be satisfied at all times.” And so here we have the second way that David
considered praising God, a thankful attitude; mental attitude thanksgiving. “In everything give thanks for this is the
will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”
It’s the same principle; thanksgiving is praise to God.
If you stop and think for a moment, isn’t it interesting that the tenth
commandment is the reverse of the first one.
The tenth commandment says “Thou shalt not covet.” The first one says “Thou shalt have only one
God.” That’s saying the same thing,
isn’t it, because if you only have one God aren’t you saying that He and He
alone fulfills my needs, I don’t need to covet.
So covetousness is the opposite of thanksgiving and you can always tell
your spiritual state by testing with verse 5, is your “soul satisfied as with
marrow and fatness?” It’s talking about
eating a good meal is what it is and as the body is satisfied it doesn’t covet
any more; you come away from the table full. Someone says do you want another
helping? No, I’m full. Now that’s the opposite; you don’t covet food
if you’ve had a good meal, you’re full.
Same thing, in the middle of the pressures of life it’s not saying I’m
not going to covet, I’m not going to covet, I’m not going to covet. Try saying I’m not going to be hungry, I’m
not going to be hungry when you are. You
can’t fake being full of food when you’re hungry and somebody sticks something
right in front of you—I’m not hungry thank you.
Ha! You see women on diets doing that all the time, no thank you, I’m
full. Ha, you wish you could eat
that. The point is though that when you
really are full of food you don’t covet any more food. Now that’s what David’s saying, I am so full
of God’s loving-kindness I don’t covet a thing; I’m relaxed. Now that’s another way he praised God, how
about that one for praising God.
The second item to praise God, to express your thanksgiving, not to be a
phony about it, not say you’re thankful when you’re not, but getting into the
state spiritually where you really are thankful, where your soul really is
satisfied as you walk away from a table full of food.
Look at the last part of verse 5, another way he prays. Now the last part of verse 5 continues into verse
6, “my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips, [6] When I remember Thee upon
my bed, and meditate on Thee in the night watches. [7] Because Thou hast been
my help,” and it really should stop there.
This thought, although it’s broken down into verses, the thought starts
in the middle of verse 5 and continues down to the middle of verse 7. If you read all of those together you’ll get
the full thought of what he’s saying here.
This is the third way he shows praise of God; the first way was his use
of 1 John 1:9; second way was his tremendous satisfaction and thanksgiving; the
third way, “my mouth shall praise Thee with joyful lips.” Here he expresses joy and satisfaction. “When I remember Thee upon my bed, and
meditate on Thee in the night watches.”
Now I want to tie this together to verse 7, “Because You have been my
help” and it doesn’t say help, it says “helper.” And here’s our word that is used in the Bible
for the wife in Genesis 2, the ‘ezer,
now what’s this saying? It’s very
interesting. Bluntly stated you can see
the connection between verse 6 and verse 7 and the wife; when I remember you on
my bed, I know that I am satisfied because you are my ‘ezer, David is single at this point and his right woman has not
yet come along. So therefore, although
he was originally married to Saul’s daughter, we’ll go into that later on when
he meets another woman, his right woman has not yet come along.
And since his right woman has not yet come along at this point he is
relaxing instead of whining and crying because he doesn’t have a wife, he’s
relaxed about it, You’re my wife, You’re my ‘ezer. I don’t need a right woman, right now You’re
my right woman, You fulfill my needs and I’m not going to worry about my right
woman at this point, I’ve got an army to lead, I’ve got six hundred people out
here that I have to lead and do the mission that God has given me and I don’t
have time to worry about my right woman.
So what he is saying here is that You have been my right woman, and so
“when I remember You on my bed,” it means that he thinks of the satisfaction
that a wife could give him and he is simply saying God, You have given me that
satisfaction. That’s his
thanksgiving.
And then he says, when I “meditate on Thee in the night watches.” This is when he stood guard at night and he’d
be lonely, not just the sexual aspect of marriage but just for the personal
companionship of marriage, and he says when I’m alone, when I’m walking around
guarding the camp, because any time over the hill may come one of Saul’s
patrols, all this time and I’m out alone and lonely, even then when I remember
You I meditate upon You and my lips give thanks. Can’t you see the depth of the spiritual life
of this character? Do you see now why he
is the one man who stands as a type of Jesus Christ in history? Sure he had his faults, but look what he had
going for him.
Verse 8, this is a confession of what he learned from chapters 21-22,
remember he learned to follow after God; he says, the last part of verse 7-8,
“therefore, in the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice; [8] My soul follows hard
after [close behind] Thee; Thy right hand upholds me.” “My soul follows hard after You,” is the
picture, and “the right hand upholding,” and “the shadow of the wings” is that
God is One who’s moving; the bird moves with his wings. If you’re going to stand under his shadow
you’ve got to move with him. In verse 8,
“My soul follows hard after You,” it’s the Hebrew word to cling to the back of
somebody as they’re running. God is moving and David has to hold onto Him, he
has to stand under His wings, the bird is constantly moving and David has to…
it’s a picture of divine guidance.
Remember the lesson he’s learned, always seek the Lord, find out what the
Lord’s doing and move with Him. And here’s
David, following wherever the Lord leads, constantly in motion.
The Christian life is never status quo, if you’ve got the idea that the
Christian life is just kind of like a machine crank, crank, crank, boom bang,
something happens, that’s not the way it works.
The Christian life is constant change; within a framework, yes, but it’s
always constant change. If God isn’t
changing your life at this point, there’s something wrong with you. If you aren’t, every day, experiencing some
change there’s no presence of the Holy Spirit.
That’s what His job is, to change.
“…Thy right hand upholds me,” and there’s the picture of God’s grace and
his strength that David looked at.
Now verses 9-11, the last part of this section, David anticipates the
fulfillment of God’s royal help. We said
in verses 1-2, David was not going to be satisfied with incomplete salvation,
and so from verses 3-8 we’ve had Him pray what God has done to date, but now
verses 9-11 is what God will do in the future.
“But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower
parts of the earth. [10] They shall fall by the sword; they shall be a portion
for foxes.” Now some from more delicate
backgrounds may be revolted by what this is saying. Do you know what verse 10 is saying? Their body is going to rot and the wild dogs
of the field are going to come and eat their flesh, blood, skin, toenails and
all. That’s what verse 10 is saying.
That’s simply a word to mean that their bodies rot in the field, don’t
give them a burial. Oh, a Christian
can’t pray these things. Well then David
wasn’t a Christian because he prayed it and he looked forward to it with
joy.
These were his enemies and verses 9-11 teach that at this point David is
now functioning as king. He has saved
Keilah by the verb to save, which I pointed out at the beginning tonight. He has functioned as king and now he can
anticipate the destruction of his enemies.
Failure to accept David becomes failure to accept God. It is not arrogance, verses 9-10, this is the
rightful anticipation of the king.
Christ Himself anticipates this.
And in this case the enemies in the Church Age, someone asked about
imprecatory prayers toward people—no, imprecatory prayers in this age are
directed to the principalities and powers of darkness, the rulers of the
darkness of this world, they are our enemies and we can pray damnation upon
them. We can ask God to judge them,
crush them, burn them, fry them; this is a legitimate imprecatory petition. And you as a believer priest have that right
to pray damnation upon Satan and his devices around about you; in fact, you’re
foolish if you don’t. But verses 9-10 in
history were directed toward Saul and God answered verse 10 and Saul died by
the hand of the sword.
Now verse 11, “But the king shall rejoice in God;” David obviously
considers himself a king at this point, “everyone that swears by Him,” this is
God now, not the king, “everyone that swears by God shall glory, but the mouth
of those who speak lies,” this is the treacherous crowd, “shall be
stopped.” This is the people of Keilah,
the people that won’t join him, the people that he saved and then they turn
against him. “Their mouths will be
stopped,” he says, I will be king. That was Psalm 63.
I want to conclude by turning back to the historical context and show
you that apparently after he meditated on this God gave him a very, very
gracious encouragement. What was the
theme of Psalm 63? It was the theme of
loyalty. Now who shows up? The epitome of loyalty in David’s life,
Jonathan. What other person could David
trust in the human realm than Jonathan?
What person that we have studied in 1 Samuel shows the attributes of
loyalty? Jonathan. And so verse 16, “And Jonathan, Saul’s son,
arose, and went to David into the forest, and strengthened his hand in
God.” Here’s the crown prince, deserting
his father, it’s fascinating that many commentators have sought to wonder how
did Jonathan make it, how do you suppose that he made it through his father’s
own line; perhaps he took a patrol out and said I’m going to look for David,
but that’s dubious because his father didn’t trust Jonathan. Saul kept Jonathan at home but somehow
Jonathan escaped from his father, went out, and somehow in the wilderness found
David and he came and encouraged David, “strengthened his hand in God” means to
make him strong spiritually.
Verse 17 describes what he told David, and this was the
encouragement. “And he said unto him,
Fear not; for the hand of Saul, my father, shall not find you; and you shall be
king over Israel,” so the point is that he has the confidence that David is
going to be the king in actual practice as well as potential. “You will be king over Israel and I will be
next unto you,” now that is a fantastic claim; as crown prince, Jonathan had
the right to be king. This is a
confession of bowing the knee to God’s plan.
Jonathan saw, as it were, the handwriting on the wall, that it was not
God’s plan for him, Jonathan, to be king over Israel. And so therefore Jonathan said I will accept
God’s plan, I will not be stubborn like my father, and say king or else. I will not be king or else, I will accept
God’s plan; God’s plan is that David be king and I will be his assistant. “…and I shall be next unto thee; and that
also Saul my father knows.” In other
words, what he is saying is that Saul is a defeated man on the inside, all this
Saul knows, he’s well aware of this, it’s eating him and he knows it.
Verse 18, “and they two made a covenant before the LORD; and David abode
in the forest, and Jonathan went to his house.”
Now we conclude this passage with a puzzle. Nowhere in God’s Word are we given a clear
indication of the Holy Spirit’s evaluation of this strange man, Jonathan. Remember he came seemingly out of nowhere,
and he’s going to disappear. This is the
last time we see him and talk to him, so to speak, the next time he dies,
fighting a battle that was wrong, next to his father who dies the sin unto
death. The question that has always plagued students of the Bible
at this point is: is this a mistake? We
can’t be dogmatic, we can only infer it, but I think the weight of the evidence
is that Jonathan is making a mistake at this point. You can’t obtain doctrine from books of
history; this is a beautiful example of it.
This is why it’s foolish to obtain doctrine from the book of Acts; Acts
is just a historical book like Samuel.
You have to be very careful what you do with it.
And here we have a situation where the following are the evidences: Jonathan knew David would be king; Keilah
people were held responsible for betraying David, they should have gone over to
David. The Holy Spirit seems to be
indicating at this point in David’s life the crowds, city by city, man by man,
is to come, to reject Saul and take up David.
Why isn’t it that Jonathan doesn’t do this? He comes out to encourage David but he
doesn’t go all the way and say I’m through with my father, I will go with
David. Jonathan, it appears, and this is
a mild suggestion, that his strongest point has become his weakness, what has
been Jonathan’s strongest point over and over in his character? He’s a loyal man, he never breaks a promise,
he’s loyal to you to the end. The
tragedy is that he’s loyal to an apostate father until his death, and perhaps
Jonathan’s strongest point is actually his weakest, and this man who is a great
Christian was a man who failed to separate from apostasy and wound up dying
with it.
Perhaps Jonathan did make a mistake; I say only perhaps because we can’t
be dogmatic. But we have a further
evidence that this is a mistake, and it’s the fact that all during David’s
administration he lacks a strong man to help him. It’s conspicuous and commentators who haven’t
even discussed this problem here, have pointed out again and again, why is it
that such a godly man, David, had missing in his administration a strong second
man? It is never, in David’s
administration, from one end to the other, did David have an ample assistant. He never had a competent assistant, he always
had somebody that was eccentric, somebody that was doing something goofy. He always had trouble with his own family,
and it looks like at this point the Holy Spirit is saying Jonathan could be the
man, but Jonathan being too loyal to an apostate situation, fails to separate
in time and as a result dies, he loses his own ministry and other believers are
hurt because they need his ministry, because he didn’t separate.
Shall we bow for prayer…