1 Samuel Lesson 39
Second Betrayal and Deliverance – 23:19-29;
Psalm 54
Turn to 1 Samuel 23; we are still in the persecution phase of David’s
life. So far in chapter 21-22 we dealt
with the lesson he learned about the danger of hastiness, of charging in where
only fools should be and ignoring God’s divine guidance. And then in chapters 23-24 David is learning
a second lesson that as king he’s going to have to use over and over, and every
leaders, sooner or later has to learn this one, and that is the danger of
treachery. And we saw in verses 1-18 he
had relieved the siege of Keilah and these people of the city who welcomed his
salvation did not welcome his lordship, therefore they cast an allegiance with
Saul. They did not shift in the middle
of this political revolution from aligning with Saul to aligning with David;
they stayed with Saul. In this case they
were conservative and it was bad because they did not move, they stayed with
apostasy and failed to move out.
Beginning at verse 19 we have a section that deals with his second
betrayal and from verse 19-29 we have the second betrayal and the second
deliverance of David. Remember how David
was delivered from this betrayal very graciously, Saul tried to catch him day
after day after day and failed; he failed largely because he had no
intelligence. David had all his systems
of intelligence; he had the priest, the ephod, he had the prophet Gad and he
had a number of patrols that he sent out.
So David had the advantage. Now
in verse 19 we start a second episode, lesson repeated, and this lesson is
going to be repeated a third time and that is for some of you who may be
influenced by certain theories of education and do not believe in repetition,
God is not influenced by those theories and therefore He insists upon teaching
by repetition. And so for the second
time He’s going to take David through the same rigmarole.
In verse 19, David is in the southern end of
But in verse 19, “Then came up the Ziphites to Saul in Gibeah,” Gibeah
is to the north, so they send a delegation of elders from the city of
One of the best Old Testament commentaries, Delitzsch, has a comment by
a problem; he went and he studied the terrain around the hill of Ziph, and he
reported back this point: he said there is no spot from which you can obtain a
better view of David’s wanderings backwards and forwards in the desert than
this northern viewpoint, the hill of Ziph, which affords a true panorama. Now the interesting thing about this is, if
that’s the case, and since we observed from the text that David never bothered
to check the loyalty of the Ziphites, we can come to a come to an inference
that helps us understand the point of the passage; that was that David trusted
the Ziphites. You see, before he was
hiding in caves; now he is having maneuvers out in the open hills where he
knows he can be observed. David is a skillful military leader; he’s been
leading soldiers for several years and if he had not trusted the Ziphites he
obviously wouldn’t have his troops running back and forth in an open field,
that was open to these people from the city of
So the very fact that these people see David confirms to us that David
trusted them, and therefore he did not camouflage his movements; he allowed his
movements to be known, thinking all the time that he was with friends, that
they were fellow believers, they had Yahweh in common as their Savior and
therefore he could trust them. And here
they turn against him. Now the Ziphites
represent compound carnal Christians whenever the Holy Spirit begins to move. Where you have a bona fide movement of the Holy Spirit you are going to have some change;
you will always have change because in a fallen world the Holy Spirit can’t
move without changing something.
Whenever the Holy Spirit works in your life, He is changing; there is a
certain ungodly form of conservatism that will not and cannot stand change for
change’s sake, true, but it goes on and says I can’t stand change even when God
directs the change. And this is a
stubborn rebellious insistence upon what is familiar, upon what I am used to,
upon my past behavior patterns, and I will not break away from those even if
the Holy Spirit asks me to. So the Ziphites were the conservative compound
carnal believers of their time; conservative in the bad sense, not conservative
in the sense we usually mean, conservative in the sense we hold to the traditional
absolutes of Scripture.
Therefore, whenever you have believers in compound carnality, faced with
a movement of the Holy Spirit, they always feel threatened. This is one of the chief
characteristics. They feel threatened,
they feel insecure, so therefore they are going to try to put down the movement
of the Holy Spirit. They will always do
this. We have had people who have
trusted the Lord and they have had this kind of resistance from their family;
their family has been believers who have been out of it for many years; their
family now feels threatened to see another member of that same family unit
going on with the Lord Jesus Christ, taking in the Word of God. And then you
find they begin to generate petty jealousy, and say things like you’d better
not study the Word of God too much because you’ll get spiritually fat. Now isn’t it strange this problem of
over-studying never comes up with any other subject; people can study all sorts
of subjects and that doesn’t seem to bother anyone, but if you begin to the
Bible all of a sudden people raise these startling new objections that study
strains your brain or something. That’s
ridiculous. The motivation behind it is
the same kind of motivation that the Ziphites had, they couldn’t stand the
movement of the Holy Spirit in this new political regime that was going to come
in and change the whole nature of things and replace Saul by David. In other words, they were threatened by
David’s presence.
Now they had some reason to be threatened, let’s look at the tally
sheet. The city of
And so they faded out and now we have in verse 20 their report. And this shows you what they appeal to in
Saul’s character. See they sent a
delegation north to Gibeah, and here’s what the delegation says to King
Saul. “Now, therefore, O king, come down
according to all the desire of thy soul to come down, and our part shall be to
deliver him into the king’s hand.” Now
notice the phrase, “according to all the desire of thy soul.” Now what’s in Saul’s soul. Again, let’s review.
In Saul’s soul we have negative volition; Saul has gone on negative
volition for many, many years in his life.
The result has been a darkness that has come into his soul and this
darkness is shown in his behavior by a dullness. You can spot compound carnal believers
because they just have no spiritual common sense, they have no common sense at
all in a nutshell, absolutely none. They’ll be going along and they’re erratic in
their life, that’s about the best word I can use to describe it, just generally
erratic. The Lord leads me to do this, or the Lord leads me to do that and you
wonder, how does the Lord lead like this all the time. The Lord doesn’t lead that way, the Lord
leads in smooth paths, sometimes there are changes, yes, but the Lord never
leads somebody to do this and then six months later to do this and four months
later to doing something else. There’s
something wrong with that kind of system.
So Saul has darkness and he is dull and insensitive to the leading of
the Holy Spirit through his conscience.
As a result, Saul’s soul has pulled in human viewpoint so that he no
longer uses the faith technique. This
was an early affliction in his career as king, this is why he is being bounced
and being fired from the office of king by Jehovah. He failed to use the faith technique which
was the only way a king could operate in that day.
As a result, the fourth step on the hierarchy of chaos in the heart is
hatred; hatred primarily toward God but hatred toward anything that represents
God, therefore hatred toward David. Why
hatred toward David? Nothing personal,
it’s just that David represents Jehovah and Saul can’t stand Jehovah so he
can’t stand David. So he hates David and he will hate anybody else associated
with David. Another symptom of this
hatred in the heart is, and this is going to show up in the Ziphites, is they
become victims to pseudo authority; it may be the authority of their emotions,
people who are compound carnal Christians always use their emotions, or most of
the time, use their emotions as criteria; it’s how I feel about something, how
does God bless, whether I feel, I get up in the morning and feel great so this
is going to be a good day; I get up in the morning and feel lousy so this is
going to be a bad day. Your feelings
have nothing to do with God’s blessing.
Nothing whatever! But to use your
emotions as a criteria, you’re in trouble, and Saul did; he also used the
pseudo authority of approbation, he could be praised by various people and so
on.
Another characteristic of hatred in the heart is jealousy. Saul cannot stand David and the expose of the
jealousy in Saul’s heart is shown by the behavior of Jonathan. Jonathan and Saul, throughout this entire
series of chapters, represent two men from the same background with the same
blood, with the same family, with the same name, with the same upbringing, and
yet both of those men react differently.
Saul reacts in jealousy toward David.
Jonathan loves David and is willing to remove the crown from his own
head and put it on David’s head and take second place, as we saw last
week. Jonathan is meek and meek does not
mean weak. Meek means that Jonathan is
prepared to take his rank in God’s command structure.
Now the final phase is frustration.
And at this point we’re going to see how Saul is in this phase and it
just goes from bad to worse because when we see him in a few more chapters he’s
going to be conducting séances with the nearest witch. So frustration is always the result of
negative volition over a prolonged period of time. And this usually can be seen by demonic
assaults in the person’s life, the strong ones.
Now obviously Satan attacks us all at times, but the frustration here
means this is habitual, day in and day out thing. It also is shown by the fact that when a
person reaches this stage they are frantic to find something somewhere somehow
that pleases them. And they will search
and search and search for happiness. And
the person who is in this state of frustration, if you watch them in Christian
circles, they jump from one church to another church to another church, to
another group, to some other thing, always hopping around trying to find
something that will make them happy. And
then when they exhaust all the possibilities then they go to something else,
and usually it’s occultism or liquor or drugs or something, and this is a
person who has very, very deep spiritual problems.
Now notice Saul’s response, see they appeal to this, they say, now king,
we know you can’t wait to kill David.
This is one compound carnal Christian and then you take a whole group of
them, the Ziphites, and they get together and fan each other’s carnality. And that’s what the Ziphites have in common
with Saul, carnality. And so they come
and they say hey Saul, you know we can’t stand to be threatened by David, we
can’t stand this movement of the Holy Spirit in this man’s life and so we want
to get rid of him, and so lets make a deal.
We know you’d love to kill him, and we’d love to get rid of him; after
all, we look out our south side picture windows and we see him maneuvering his
soldiers back up and down the hills; we don’t like that, it makes us
uncomfortable. So let’s make a deal
Saul, we’ll all get together and kill him.
So verse 21, notice this pious phraseology, “And Saul said, Blessed be
ye of the LORD; for you have compassion on me.”
Now this shows you something about a compoundly carnal Christian. The fruits of the Holy Spirit go out of that
person’s life very quickly in compound carnality. They’re replaced by human good, but one of
the last things to go out of the life of a compound carnal Christian is
fundamentalist phraseology. That is one
of the last things to go and just because somebody comes and tells you, oh how
I love Jesus, etc. and they’ll use all these terms, it doesn’t mean a
thing. Was Saul in fellowship when he
said “Blessed be ye of the LORD?”
No! It’s a big bunch of
phoniness, that’s all it is. And Saul is
out of fellowship, as far out of fellowship as you can be and yet all during
this time he’s using the pious phrases, the religious terminology.
And then, to top it all off, notice the verb, “you have compassion on
me.” Now turn back to 22:7 and you’ll
see something interesting about this man Saul. Remember when he was talking to
his men, this is back at Gibeah, his command post, “Then Saul said unto his
servants who stood about him, Hear now, ye Benjamites,” see those are
Benjamites, another tribe, they’re not Judahites, they’re not of the same tribe
as David, they’re of his own tribe, Saul comes from the tribe of Benjamin,
David from the tribe of Judah. So all of the soldiers that he has around him
he’s picked from his own tribe, Benjamin.
And he says, “Hear ye now, ye Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give
every one of you fields and vineyards, and make you all captains of thousands,
and captains of hundreds, [8] That all of you have conspired against me, and
there is none that shows me that my son has made a league with the son of
Jesse, and there is none of you that is sorry for me,” now that shows you
something about him. You see, he’s
always looking for pity from somebody else, he’s in self-pity.
And that’s another feature of compound carnality, continual self-pity,
all the time, always wanting somebody to pity them. And some people you will find will make
friendships with you on this basis. As
long as you show any interest in them by way of pitying them, they want your
friendship. Watch out for people like
this, you may think you’re having fellowship with them; not necessarily, all
they’re doing is using you to fan their self-pity and they will hop, skip and
jump across the congregation going from one person to another until they can
find somebody that will just pour out pity all over them. And eventually what happens is that they hop
to one believer and this believer gets taken for a while, and then they
suddenly realize what the name of the game is, and they decide forget it. So this person is lost and so they’ll hop to
somebody else over here and work on them, always looking for pity. Well, this is a sign of compound carnality.
And Saul, you can see it all over the place, always wanting pity from
somebody, everybody is picking on me, paranoia.
Notice in verse 13 of this same chapter it comes out again, he comes to
the priest, “And Saul said, Why have you conspired against me,” now nobody’s
conspiring against Saul. How did this
whole thing start? Because Saul
conspired against David. Now what’s
another feature of compound carnality?
They’ll always accuse you of what they’re doing. This is always the
situation. The only conspiracy here has
been one in which Saul has tried to conspire to plot the overthrow of
David. David hasn’t plotted a thing, all
David’s doing is amassing an army to protect himself, and the reason is because
he’s been driven to do it. Who started
it? Saul did.
But Saul in his wretched state of mind, where he has gone on negative
volition, his mind is now rebelling against his conscience, his conscience has
the standards, his conscience knows what is right, what is wrong, what is true
and what is false, but his mind says I know what is true but I don’t want to
believe it. And so the mind begins to
suck in self-defense mechanisms and excuses, and one of these is projection,
the idea of blaming it on somebody else; it’s somebody else’s fault, they are against
me, and so forth. In extreme form we
call it paranoia. Saul at this point is
paranoid, definitely. He shows all the
classis symptoms of it, the man is neurotic and he’s bordering on psychosis at
this point. Saul is a mental case.
Now this should be a lasting example in your mind of what causes mental
illness in most cases. There are some
cases where chemical imbalances do cause mental illness, granted. But in most cases, according to Scripture,
there is no such thing as mental illness; there’s nothing ill at all; there’s
such a thing as sinfulness, that manifests itself in the mind and that
masquerades in our day for mental illness.
A person, genuinely speaking who is mentally ill is one who has been on
intense negative volition for a long time.
They have rejected God’s grace at point after point after point in their
life and now they’re simply reaping the results of it. Our minds were never built to constantly be
involved in sin, constantly be rebelling against our Creator. He didn’t make us that way, He made us to
have fellowship with Him. And if we’re going to constantly rebel we’re just
misusing the equipment. We ruining the
machinery. We are not following
operating instructions and the machinery is going to break down, and that’s why
the mind breaks down, falls apart, because it’s not being used correctly.
One of the tests that you can use to test the way your mind works with
your conscience is when you’re involved in situations, such as Saul is involved
in, and you’re involved in social situations where you have some question about
other people’s relationship to you, ask yourself, is this true? What is true, is the word true, is it really
true that this person is like this or isn’t it.
And by constantly making your mind think on the question of what is true
you’re forcing your mind to submit to your conscience; it’s a very healthy
exercise to keep your mind in subordination to your conscience. What is true, what is true, what is true,
what is true, over and over and over.
But Saul has gone beyond that and his mind has gone into rebellion
against his conscience. But, when that
happens the mind loses control over the emotions so you have the second stage
to the revolt where the emotions rebel against the mind. And at this point the person becomes very
open to demonic factors that operate in various influences. And this has all happened to Saul at this
point. Notice when he says in verse 21,
“Blessed be you of the LORD,” “of” means “from,” and what’s he’s talking about
is that he’s viewing something; let’s say the report, that’s the event. So he takes an event that he sees in his life
and he interprets that event as from the Lord.
Now we know, with the background of the Holy Spirit that is given us in
1 Samuel, we see the same event; how do we interpret it. Under God’s sovereignty that it’s really from
Satan. Now notice what’s happening. The
compound carnal Christian goes astray and when he does he can take things that
are satanic and put God’s name on them, because by this time his power of
discernment is so weakened, his ability to see right and wrong, truth and
falsehood, is so deteriorated that he takes something that is satanic and
attributes it to the work of God the Holy Spirit.
Conversely, he will take a work of the Holy Spirit and attribute it to
be the work of Satan. The Ziphites have
done this, haven’t they? They have seen
David out there patrolling; to them that’s bad, to them that is not a move of
the Holy Spirit, that’s upsetting the common wealth of Israel, it’s a threat to
the nation; it has to be done away with.
So instead of attributing that event that can be seen, felt, touched,
communicated with, instead of interpreting that event as the work of the Spirit
of Jehovah, they have turned around and attributed that to Satan. Then they come to Saul, with this, which is
from Satan, and he turns and says “Blessed are ye of the Lord,” you have been
sent to me by Jehovah. But God in His
sovereignty permitted this to happen, but not in the sense Saul means in verse
21. Saul means to imply by these words
that God the Holy Spirit is really working here. Now a spirit is working but it’s not the Holy
Spirit.
Verse 22, now he tells the Ziphites what he wants, and this background
of verse 22 sets us up for a little event that’s going to come up shortly, “Go,
I pray you, prepare yet, and know and see his place where his haunt his, and
who has seen him there; for it is told me that he deals very subtly.” Now the whole point of most of verse 22 is
that he wants the Ziphites to go back; here’s Gibeah, he wants them to go all
the way back to the hill of Ziph, David is maneuvering south of the hill of
Ziph, he wants them to get a detailed map of the area. You see, this area borders on wilderness and
it’s awful to try to find someone out there.
It’s very, very difficult terrain, it’s an awful place to look around
even if you know the land; and Saul knows this and he knows that if he’s going
to get David he’s got to have a map. So
he’s assigned the people that live in the area to prepare him a map. And the reason we infer that this is a map
because of the clause, “see his place where his haunt is,” the word “is” means
wherever it is, in other words, there would be many, many places, so he says
take all the places where he camps with his soldiers, take all the hideaways, I
want a complete layout of the terrain.
Now the Bible doesn’t tell us whether he got the map back or not, but
the Bible tells us in a few verses that something happened that tells us they
did get the map back. The map is made,
the Ziphites, brought it back to Saul, and Saul later used that information to
track David. Notice the last part of verse 22, not only did he ask the Ziphites
to make a map for him, he said I want you to go and double check this thing,
“because it is told me that he deals very subtly,” very craftily; now this is
impugning David’s character. This is the
same word that was used of the serpent in the Garden. And you see here again
you have a compound carnal Christian looking at a person filled with the Holy
Spirit and they are accusing the person filled with the Holy Spirit of being
satanic. And conversely, make it seem
that Saul is filled with the Holy Spirit.
Saul considers himself at this point absolutely right. And he is saying that it is David that is
very satanic, he is very crafty, this guy is a slippery character, watch out
for him.
Now God the Holy Spirit so far in the book of Samuel has taken pain to
show us that David’s military skill, as well as his musical skill, comes from
God. This is part of his equipment to be
the anointed king. So when Saul says,
David’s skill is very, very clever, the word has a bad taste to it. He is taking an ability that God gave to
David and he’s attributing it to Satan.
Now verse 23, “See, therefore, and take knowledge of all the lurking
places where he hides himself, and come ye again to me with the certainty,”
there’s the report, and we again take verse 23 as well as verse 22 to infer
that they actually made a map of the area.
“…and I will go with you; and it shall come to pass, if he be in the
land, that I will search him out throughout all the thousands of Judah.”
And then in verse 24, “and they arose, and went to Ziph before Saul,”
now let’s just stop a moment and look at the phrase, “before Saul,” because
we’re going to deal with a Psalm shortly and the phrase is going to be used
again the way it usually is used. Here
is the way you see it, “before Saul.”
This phrase “before” often occurs in Scripture like this: “before the
Lord.” Now sometimes when you read this
in the Old Testament and it says “before the Lord,” what do you think it
means? The most obvious meaning is that
in the presence of the Lord at the tabernacle, where the Shekinah glory
is. But this phrase should show you that
that does not always hold true, because in verse 24 you can tell the Ziphites
are not in the physical presence of Saul; they’ve left Saul, they are moving
south to make this report. They’re not
at Saul’s up here, the Ziphites are down here, the Ziphites are nowhere near
the physical presence of Saul, yet the Bible says they are “before Saul.” Now that clause and its use here is very
important because it will give you insight what this means, sometimes when we talk
about “before the Lord.”
“Before Saul” means that they are in his service, that they are occupied
with him, even though they’re not in his physical presence, Saul is very much
on his mind. So it would be like, the Hebrew means in the face of Saul; the
picture is they’re walking along, and sometimes after you’ve looked at a bright
light or something you close your eyes and you can see the image for a few
seconds in your eye. The picture here is that they have left the
presence of Saul but when they close his eyes they can see his face. They are “before Saul,” they are in his
service, they are carrying out his orders.
They have, in other words, totally apostatized where they are not under
the control of a demon energized believer.
Verse 24, “…but David and his men were in the wilderness of Maon, in the
plain [Arabah] on the south of Jeshimon.”
He’s moved his soldiers a point further south.
When they arrived, they report back and now in verse 25 they send for
Saul. “Saul also, and his men, went to
seek him. And they told David,
Wherefore, he came down to a rock, and abode in the wilderness of Maon. And when Saul heard that, he pursued David in
the wilderness of Maon.” Now the
pursuing here means that he constantly went after him, apparently most of the
time had visual contact with him. Now
look at what Satan has done in the background here. Saul started out moving his intelligence; he
lost his priesthood, he killed most of them and David found the only
survivor. So that killed off that part
of his intelligence system. He lost all
the prophets; Samuel won’t cooperate with him, the new prophet, Gad, won’t
cooperate with him. So Saul lost
that. David gained all these; what was
Saul’s loss was David’s gain. Now Satan
doesn’t like to see his people deprived and so he always manages to provide
something and now Satan has provided a fantastic intelligence to Saul, the
treachery of the Ziphites. They have
come to Saul and placed in his hands a map.
Now Saul doesn’t need his prophets, he doesn’t need the priest, he’s got
a map and he’s got David trapped. Now
that’s the tactical situation as we turn to a Psalm that David wrote in the
middle of this that indicates how he prayed.
Psalm 54, this is an individual lament Psalm. It’s very short, very easy to analyze, verses
1-2 are the address, verse 3 the lament, verse 4 the confidence section, verse
5 the petition, verses 6-7 the praise.
The outline of the Psalm, the first two verses, David asks God for
judgment/salvation. Verses 3-5 David
prays God’s damnation upon the apostates; and verses 6-7, David vows to praise
God when deliverance comes.
Let’s look at the first two verses.
In the Hebrew they are the first four verses because in the Hebrew the
first two verses are the heading. “To
the chief Musician on Neginoth,” and Neginoth means musical accompaniment with
a certain kind of a musical instrument, which we don’t know exactly what it
looked like, but it was a stringed instrument.
“Maschil,” Maschil means a skillfully written poem and draws emphasis to
God’s wisdom. “A Psalm of David, when
the Ziphites came and said to Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us?” That’s a quote of 1 Samuel 23:19. So that places the Psalm for us in history,
tells us what the situation was. Now
verses 1-2, here’s how David responded.
Remember David is a model believer; David is a man who by this time has
had lots and lots of experience with getting out of jams and God is still
putting him through training for the throne by putting him in yet another
jam. And so here is how David uses the
faith technique.
In verse 1 he says, “Save me, O God, by Thy name, and judge me by Thy
strength.” And the way the syntax reads
in the original language the emphasis is upon the noun “name” and the noun
“strength,” in other words, “By Thy name, O God, save me, and by Thy strength
judge me.” Now the word “save” means
exactly what he did at Keilah, he expects God to work physically, not just
psychologically in his head, make him feel better about it. David doesn’t need to feel better about it,
David needs a physical deliverance. So
God has to work externally to David, not just internally, externally. So therefore this is not just some Norman
Vincent Peale type thing where we think ourselves into a better state. This is a petition for God to work externally
to David. “Save me, O God, by Thy name,”
“by Thy name” means that David is referring to the essence of God, the name
means the description of God, God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just,
God is love, God is omniscient, omnipotent, omniscient, immutable and eternal
and these are the attributes of God and that is what constitutes the name. So when he says “by Thy name You save me, O
God,” he means I rely at this point, God, upon every one of Your attributes.
So what was on David’s mind now? He was in a jam, a tremendous jam, and David
just sat back. There are two things that
David didn’t do; watch this; the first thing he didn’t do was panic; there’s no
sign of panic. Do you notice something
about Psalm 54, an individual lament Psalm; there’s only one verse to the
lament. What does that tell you? It tells you he is not unduly shook in this
situation, he only devotes one verse to it and moves on quickly. So that carries that he is not in a
panic. The second thing David did not
do, is that he did not just lie back, ho hum, I’m going to snooze on the sand
dunes until God does something, because God could not have done something, and
this is that other rule that we have found in the Psalms; though God
sovereignly promises us certain things, it appears in practice He expects us to
ask for those things. He expects us, in
practice, to claim possessions that He has sovereignly promised to us. He expects us to ask Him in many situations
for His guidance, for His illumination, for His salvation in these
situations.
So he asks, “Save me, O God, by Your essence, and judge my by Thy
strength.” The word “judge” means to
vindicate and means to hit the enemy. He
isn’t asking for judgment upon himself, that’s not the concept here. The concept is rather vindicate me by
destroying my enemies. And so you see,
those twin words that appear over and over in the Bible, judgment/salvation,
you can’t have one without the other. Always
remember that. When you get around the
lovey-dovey crowd, isn’t Jesus so wonderful, and oh how I love Jesus, He just
pours His love into my heart, and they go on like this. Now look, that’s taking one of these
concepts, salvation, and totally divorcing it from judgment. There is something bloody, horrible, dark and
black about God’s salvation. The first
picture we have of salvation in history, though it’s not the first salvation
it’s the first picture of salvation in God’s Word is the flood of Noah. And what came first? In order to save, God had to judge. In order to save Noah out of the world He had
to smash that world that held him and trapped him.
Now that holds true at every point in the Christian life. God does not deliver unless He also at the
same time judges. Let’s look at it in
the Christian life at two points. When
you become a Christian, when Jesus Christ died for you on the cross, we say
“Jesus saves.” Yes, He does. How?
By judging. How? Here are our sins, Jesus Christ took those
sins and He had them judged upon His own back on the cross, so in order for us
to be saved there was something, in fact, it was so horrible about the cross of
Christ that God the Father very merciful put the cross in a blackout condition
for some three hours while it was going on so nobody saw what was going on. No member of the human race saw what was
going on on the cross; it was a very critical time interval, it was totally
obscured from human view. Why? Because whatever it was God did not want any
person, including angel, demon, person or anybody else to look and see what His
Son was bearing; they mystery of judgment.
Theologians refer to this as the central mystery of the cross; no matter
how much revelation we have there are some things we are never going to
understand about the cross of Christ, never; even in heaven we will not
understand everything about the cross of Jesus Christ. There will be things that happened in those
hours and those minutes when He bore the sins of the whole world, your sins,
every one of them, past, present and future, and contemplated, every one of
them, there was something in that transaction that occurred that God has never
permitted a creature to see. Only
Christ, His only Son has seen those and experienced them. Now that was judgment, and out of that we
have salvation that is very precious, but don’t divorce salvation from
judgment. There was a horrible price
paid to secure forgiveness; God does not forgive sin apart from the judgment of
the cross. It’s blasphemy to walk around
and say well doesn’t God forgive so and so because so and so is so
sincere? No, God only forgives on the
basis of the cross of His Son, period.
No one is ever saved except through this judgment.
Let’s take it one other step in the Christian life. When we have sanctification in the Christian
life, Romans 6, what does the Bible say happens to the flesh? The flesh is crucified with Christ? What does that mean; it doesn’t mean we all
trot back to Jerusalem and hang on a cross, but what it does mean is that the
bondage of the flesh and anything that the flesh can produce is excluded. This is why human good is excluded; the flesh
can produce human good. Any unbeliever
can produce this; what an unbeliever can produce is human good. And human good doesn’t cut it in the
Christian life, so look at your life; if there are things that you think you’re
doing for the Lord that any unbeliever can do, you might have some questions.
There are some technical questions of comparison, granted, but just beware of
the fact that if you think something is very, very wonderful and a mighty work
of the Holy Spirit, you’d better just check, because if you find an unbeliever
able to do exactly the same thing with exactly the same… [tape turns; verse 2,
“Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth.”]
Now why do that, why is that attitude in Scripture? Because God respects a creature that exists
and moves, we’re not rocks, machines, automatons, but yet in many ways
Christians react this way in a time of trial, oh, I’ll just float on
through. There’s no personal action, and
you just wonder what goes on in God’s mind sometimes. He allows some believer to get clobbered and
He says gee, I wonder when they’re going to react, they don’t even
breathe. But in the Old Testament these
believers came alive, when they got hit God heard about it. And God appreciates that kind of thing. So David is that kind of believer.
So in verses 3-5 here is his call for judgment. He analyzes the situation, verse 3, very
neatly. Remember he’s talking about the
Ziphites, fellow tribal members, and what does he say? “For strangers are risen up against me,” and
the word for “stranger” is zurim, zurim is often used for whores in the
Old Testament. Now this is what he’s
calling them. “Those whores, they have risen up against me.” And that’s exactly how David expresses it,
and the King James translators are very gentlemanly about it, “strangers,” but
that’s all right, the point is that the Scripture is recording David’s attitude
toward people who were fellow believers; this isn’t even talking about
unbelievers. This is talking about
fellow believers. So don’t be naïve,
just because somebody is a believer. If
you haven’t been faked out by a believer really good, look forward to it, it’s
an exciting experience.
“For strangers are risen up against me, and oppressors seek after my
soul,” the “oppressor” is another name, this is name calling here, zurim is one name, “oppressors” are
another name, this a word that means strong foes, fierce people, people who
worship violence. That’s what this name
means, so this is the second label he calls the Ziphites. He name calls, no question about it. Probably have a few people, oh David, you
shouldn’t use that language, you can’t be filled with the Spirit. “…they have not set God before them.” That word is the one I wanted to prepare you
for when I commented back [can’t understand word] I told you to watch it
because it says they walked and they went down to Ziph, because Saul was ever
before them, they went down “before Saul.”
All right, David picks the same theme up here at the end of verse 3,
“they have not set God before them,” in other words, here they are trotting
south, as believers they should be occupied with Christ, he should be the focus
of their venture, and what have they done; they’ve let Saul do it, and it’s
ungodly for them. So that’s the first
thing he sees about it, but the thing I want you to see, do you see how David
knew how his enemies felt. This is what
made David such a formidable believer.
Hell quivered when David prayed. And
the reason is that David could psycho out his enemies; he knew how they
thought; he knew their attitudes. And
woe be to the believer today that does not appreciate, walks on in a very naïve
way, and thinks that the atmosphere around us is just neutral, no demon forces
that are trying to influence us, there are no ideas being constantly injected
into our minds to cause us to absorb human viewpoint. Not David.
Verse 4, here is your confidence section, here’s where he’s telling us
the promise, the thing that occupies his mind, “Behold, God is mine ‘ezer, the same word we had in the other
Psalm, it’s the word like saying God is my wife, this shows you conversely how
high a wife was esteemed in God’s Scripture.
In the ancient world a woman was considered to be a little bit better
than a horse or something, as far as property and that was the way she was
treated. And yet in Scripture a woman is
called an ‘ezer, and most of the uses
of the word ‘ezer if you check your concordance, most of the time that this
word occurs it doesn’t occur of a woman or a man; it occurs of God. It occurs with God, and in the Bible,
therefore, when God says to Adam, I want to make an ‘ezer for you, what He is telling that lone man is that I have got
a woman, the right woman for you and she is going to help you in the same way I
help you. Now that is the calling of the
woman in Scripture, a tremendous calling, a tremendous position. And you see, this is what kept the dignity of
the woman in Israel, that no matter the men may have wanted to put her down, no
matter how infuriated they get every once in a while, they have to remember,
well, she is an ‘ezer, after all, she
is an ‘ezer and that makes her, by
virtue of her position, valuable, so valuable that God calls her by something
that most of the time in Scripture is reserved for God Himself. So here is one of those cases.
“God is my ‘ezer,” He’s the
one that’s alongside and helping me, “and the Lord is with them that uphold my
soul,” now a bit of interpretation is needed on this last one. It doesn’t mean he has many upholding his
soul and God is with them, this is an idiomatic expression that… maybe the best
way to translate it would be like this, we use this phrase in the English when
we say something like, of all the things that I use to help me the promises
count first. Now we may not even need
other things to help us, but the way we phrase it, it sounds like we have many
things that help us and yet the promises
are the first thing. That’s what this
idiom means, so don’t be confused as you read verse 4, it doesn’t mean there
are many things upholding your soul, it’s just simply God, the Lord, He’s the
One that upholds, of all the things I can think of to uphold my soul, the Lord
is the One. It shows you the heart of
David again, versus Saul. One man is
perpetually absorbed in a gimmick, always floating from one gimmick to another,
and David just sits there and say no, no gimmicks, the Lord’s my helper.
Verse 5, this is a petition, remember what I told you, the future verb
tense can be translated “may” and if you’re sharp on our form you’ll see this
has to be here because you’ll notice the last part of verse 5 is an imperative,
see, “Cut them” down, “Cut them off in thy truth,” it’s an address to God,
that’s a petition, so the first part of verse 5 also has to be a petition, so
it should be: “May He reward evil unto mine enemies,” “May He,” and this is an
imprecatory petition for judgment; he is asking for judgment upon the
enemies. “May He reward evil unto mine
enemies.” This is David’s conception of
the law that we studied in Proverbs, the law of final effect and the law of
temporal effect. Remember what he said,
those two laws simply say that the universe in a broad scale runs morally, that
cursing and negative volition are always judged; positive volition is
ultimately blessed. And so why he is
going to petition this way is that he says now look, God, this guy is on
negative volition, now I know by the law of final effect that that’s got to end
in judgment, so all I’m asking God is kind of speed it up. But I want you to notice, the prayer has
insight here because he knows how God works.
You see the insight of this whole thing?
He knows how his enemies think, verse 3; now here he comes to petition,
he makes a petition that’s wise because he knows the ways of God. And so God, he says I know that evil is going
to come, but just speed it up, may the evil come on my enemies.
And then a very vehement protest, this is just really strong language
here, it doesn’t mean “cut off,” in verse 5, the word means to totally
annihilate; this is a tremendously strong verb.
Actually one of the strongest verbs in the Hebrew language for just
destroy, it means utterly and totally annihilate them.
And then verse 6-7, looking forward to the time after the prayer is
answered, remember, salvation is not complete until God receives the credit for
the deliverance. In the Old Testament
and in the New Testament salvation is never finished until the creature
responds with praise. This is why in the
book of Revelation 4 what do you find believers doing for all eternity? Singing a new song unto Him that sits on the
throne, the Lamb that sits on the throne.
Why? Praise, the Lamb is worthy,
the Lamb is worthy, why? He has
delivered. And now the Lamb receives
just praise. So verses 6-7 finish out
David’s response to salvation, “I will freely sacrifice unto Thee,” it means I
offer a free will offering of thanksgiving.
It would be equivalent to day if we offer free will sacrifices in the
sense David did it would be equivalent of sharing with other God’s deliverance;
that would be considered a modern day equivalent to this. “I will praise Thy name, O LORD; for it is
good.” And the word “good” means
attractive or beautiful, and again David’s tremendous capacity to enjoy
God.
I want you to notice, as Saul’s character deteriorates how David’s is
building up; positive volition enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit, he’s
taking in divine viewpoint, he is loving God, and he is being fulfilled. Where does David’s happiness come from? This verse told you where his happiness comes
from. The word “good” means I enjoy
it. Miles away from the secular image
that some song singing religious kook has to generate his religious ecstasy by
psychological exercise; not at all, David is simply saying God, I enjoy Your
character, it’s fantastic, and that’s exactly what he means, from the depths of
his soul David means this. He has a
tremendous capacity to without phoniness, without all the hypocrisy, I just
enjoy you God for what you are.
Verse 7, “For he has delivered me out of all trouble, and mine eye has
seen” blank, you have it in italics in the King James, “mine eye has seen upon
mine enemies,” and it’s true, his desire is judgment upon the enemies. But let’s think the things, “all trouble,”
can you think back to the various times we have seen in the last five chapters
of Samuel, let’s do a little catalogue here, to think back what’s going on in
David’s head now. What are the things
that he has seen; every trouble that David has had? Saul tried to kill him seven times. God delivered him seven times. David got caught in
Let’s go back and see what happens in number 10. We left David being trapped by Saul and his
armies. Now verse 26 is just fantastic,
and it’s translated correctly. It’s an
action picture and again, to be fair to the translators, many of these verses
are hard to bring over into the English.
But when you study Hebrew, first year Hebrew usually this happens, that
the Hebrew professor will take you through a passage and he’ll show you some of
these vivid pictures and this is one of those vivid pictures that occurs, maybe
once every 15 or 20 chapters, but they’re very worthwhile to look at. “And Saul went on this side of the mountain,
and David and his men on that side of the mountain. And David made haste to get away for fear of
Saul; for Saul and his men compassed David and his men round about to take
them.”
Now the first part of verse 26 describes the general situation; there’s
a gorge that lies to the southeast of this area and where think this Maon is,
the wilderness of Maon is. And there’s a
hill here; David is trying to get around this hill to get down the gorge and
get away; the only exit he’s got is go to the east with six hundred men. Saul is cutting him off and coming around
this way with two thousand men. And once
he cuts off David and cuts the gorge off, David is finished; there’s no way he
can get out of that. They have a map and
they can just systematically cover this area, and just pick them off one by
one. And that is the tremendously bad,
bad tactical situation David finds himself in.
But in the Hebrew to add intensity to this, the verb where you see “made
haste is a participle, it means David is making haste, it’s like the Hebrew
father would be talking to his son and he’d be telling his son this story, and
he’d say son, I remember, here’s Saul and here’s David, and he’s making haste,
and it would be a present tense, he’s right now in the process of making haste
to get away.
“…for fear of Saul, for Saul and his men compassed,” this would be
another participle, Saul and his men are surrounding, that’s what that verb
means, they are surrounding him. So
David is making haste to move on one side of the mountain to get to the gorge
and flee to the east and Saul is already surrounding him. This verb means that as David’s six hundred
men come around the north side of the mountain, Saul has already set the
block. So David has already been cut
off at this point. And this would have
doomed David, his army would have been killed, and that would have been the
last you would hear of David. Except for
the fact that Psalm 54 had just been prayed, and David prayed that Psalm. And so does the God of history do?
Verse 27, “But there came a messenger unto Saul, saying, Haste thee, and
come; for the Philistines have invaded the land. [28] Wherefore Saul returned
from pursuing after David, and went against the Philistines; therefore they
called that place Sela-hammah-lekoth.”
Now besides the beautiful timing of this, consider why do you suppose
the Philistines invaded the land? When
was the last time we mentioned the Philistines?
When David clobbered them at Keilah; they got burned, they lost half
their logistics force, and so they’re going to go up to get David. And here’s
how beautifully the Lord works. David
clobbered the Philistines at Keilah, the stragglers went back to
Next week we’ll deal with the third and final deliverance.