1 Samuel Lesson 40
Third betrayal and Deliverance – 24:1-4; Psalm
57
We continue our study of David and to refresh out minds as to where we
are in the book, the first seven chapters of the book of Samuel deal with how
God prepares the nation for deliverance.
The nation at the beginning of Samuel is in a low point of spiritual
status, and this low point has never been resolved, and this is why David,
you’ll see tonight, had such a tremendous problem in trying to become leader of
a carnal nation. And then from chapters
8-15 the emphasis is upon the office of messiah, and the book of Samuel first
establishes the first speaks of the office of messiah, the king’s duties and his
person are established. And then from 1
Samuel 16 through chapter 1 of 2 Samuel you have Saul decreasing and David
increasing. And during this period, you
can break it up into smaller units; chapters 16-17 deal with David’s anointing;
chapters 18-20 deal with David’s rejection.
Remember the only person that accepts David is, of all people, the crown
prince, the one person who will be officially bumped out of his office, out of
his rightful office by David is precisely the believer that bows to God’s will
in this area. Jonathan is a fantastic
believer at this point, he is able to gracefully accept the will of God, even
though it means he, as it were, gets fired from his job. Jonathan is a testament of grace. Then from chapters 21-27 we have the
persecution phase of David’s life.
We are studying chapters 23-24 of this persecution phase. And the theme of these two chapters is the
theme of treachery. David, as a future
leader of men, must learn carefully the lesson of treachery.
Now in verses 6-18 we dealt with the first betrayal and the first
deliverance, and in this situation Saul could not get proper intelligence for
his military because God had rendered his intelligence system blind by removing
both the priests and the prophets. Saul,
very stupidly, cooperated with Satan in this in that he destroyed all the
priests at Nob, with one exception and that one exception defected from Saul
and went with David. So David is now in
possession of the priest, one. And David
is also in possession of the prophets.
This is a very significant movement.
If you were the commentator of the times you would always pay attention
to which king had the prophets on his side; this would be a clue as to which
clue was really the Lord’s choice. And
so to any sharp political observer it would be clear by this point that David
is none other than the proper king. And
you remember how God delivered him in this thing, he kept Saul from gaining any
intelligence and as a result David escaped, then was blessed by Jonathan’s
visit.
Then in
And we left with the Philistines moving in on the land and Saul moving
after the Philistines, an ironic way in which God worked. You have David down here who is in the will
of God, so David is a believer who is spiritual at this point. He is filled with the Holy Spirit under that
age, and he is in God’s will. You have
Saul who is a believer that’s out of fellowship and he is carnal and at this
point highly influenced by Satan. Saul,
therefore, persecutes the spiritual believer; the Philistines also are trying
to kill the spiritual believer, but God is under the Romans
Now tonight we come to 1 Samuel 24 and we find the third betrayal and
the third deliverance. David is learning
a lesson, and by the time he is betrayed the third time he has mastered the
technique of meeting treachery. Now we
ought to all pay careful attention to how David mastered this thing because
there will always be a time in your life as a believer when you are going to
come under fantastic persecution, if you stick your neck out for the Lord Jesus
Christ. If you are following His will,
if you are submitting regularly and systematically to the Word of God, sooner
or later you can expect some persecution.
Now don’t go around looking for it, but when it comes you’ll know it;
it’s very, very clear. This happened in
David’s life.
Now David is going to learn something in this that is very valuable and I’m
afraid not too many of us learn this lesson the easy way. David learned that
the best way of handling treachery is to do nothing about it, to leave it
completely in the Lord’s hands, that you do not try to get in the way of the
Lord’s paddle and try on your own to administer discipline to another believer
who you think is out of line. That is
the Lord’s business and you leave those believers to His paddle, but if you
begin to but in, what happens is, if this is a believer that’s out of it, and
you think that believers deserves to get it, and you step in to kind of help
the Lord along, what happens is number one, the Lord stops disciplining him,
and number two, starts disciplining you.
So it’s a very stupid thing for you ever to do, to try and add to the
Lord’s insight by trying to straighten out believers. Now there is a place for mutual exhortation,
but I’m talking about butting into somebody’s life and trying to administer
discipline. Now there’s one person that’s
got the authority to do it in the New Testament, that’s an elder, a pastor-teacher,
and in that situation I have the authority to do it in some cases. But I have learned that about 90% of the time
when I step into something I’m wrong and so I’ve learned to back off and in
most cases let the Lord handle the problem.
Now, in this situation there is a temptation at three points and these
three temptations that we face are probably the worst kind of sins that we can
possibly commit as far as the Lord is concerned. It’s been my observation and from my study of
Scripture that one of these temptations we’re going to find David involved in,
but all three of these temptations suggest [can’t understand word] like in
practice the Lord really lowers the boom.
Now why I am not sure, I don’t know exactly why He makes a federal case
out of these three kinds of sin, but it is an observed fact that he does. And none of these sins involve immorality;
all of them are what would pass on the social scene as something totally
acceptable in most social circles. And yet each of these activities calls down
the wrath of God upon you faster than any known thing.
The first sin is a simple rebellion against God’s main direction in your
life; by “main direction” I mean that associated with your spiritual gift and
so on. If God has given you a gift and
called you to do something and you rebel against it, you are in hot water. And you can expect fantastic discipline in
this area. It may not involve one single
social sin at all, it may not even involve any sins of the tongue or sins of
overt activity. But it involves a strong
stubborn mental attitude and I have seen more believers made miserable by this
one sin than any other sin. You can’t be
pastor without coming across about everything anybody can do; anything gross
going on, guess who learns about it. But
I’ve noticed something, God the Holy Spirit doesn’t make those things the
issue. God the Holy Spirit makes this
kind of thing the issue, always He makes this kind of thing the issue; the
other things are just effects. Now we’re
not condoning those other things but I am here to say by personal testimony and
study of the Word that this is the thing that really angers the Lord. And He’ll just clobber you for rebellion in
this area. And you can try a cop out and
say well I’m not going to study the Word because I know I might find
something. You’re afraid you might find
something but you’re going find something anyway when you enter phase three, so
you’ll find something either way you work it, so you might as well find
something on a grace basis and find something out now so you can do something
about it, make some changes, orient to the leading of the Holy Spirit while
you’ve got time to do it, and not wait until the last gun’s fired before you
think about it.
The second sin that seems to be one that calls down the wrath of God is
the sin of gossip and maligning, the sins of the tongue. Again we can deduce
why God makes this a federal case because it disrupts the unity of the
body. But I observe this in my experience
as a pastor, this is another one where Christians get involved in something and
they just get walloped every time. Some
of the worst times we’ve had in this congregation have been over this area,
sins of the tongue, and people are out of fellowship and take four or five
months to get back in because of this kind of activity; and yet other kinds of
activities the person confesses their sin, they’re back in fellowship, move
right on, no problem, and yet this seems to be a big hang-up.
And the third one is the one that David is almost convinced he’s going
to in this passage, in fact, he starts to commit this sin and he stops short.
So I’m explaining the third one in the context of these three to lay the
background for 1 Samuel 24. And the
third kind of sin is maligning spiritual leaders who have authority over
you. This is the kind of sin which again
calls down the wrath of God. I don’t
know exactly why He makes this such a federal case but He does. This is the sin that David was about to
commit here. For a little background on
this sin, hold the place in 1 Samuel 24, it also explains a passage in Hebrews
13:17.
Hebrews 13:17 says, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit
yourselves, for they watch for your souls as they that must give account,” now
that is one of the hints, apparently why the Lord supports leaders in local
churches. The reason He does is because
He holds us responsible for what happens to you and so we’re going to get it if
we don’t do our job to help you. And
when you malign, or criticize such as parents who go home and run down the
pastor to their children, and their children learn to malign from watching
their parents do it, and their children pick up this pattern and they begin to
do it, and they get to be teenagers and all of a sudden, oh pastor, could you
help my son, he’s in jail. How did he
get in jail? Well he sassed a cop. No, I’m not going to go down and get your son
out of jail; he’s in jail because he never learned a lesson that you should
have taught him. It all goes back to
parents who like to malign. You may not
like what I say, you may not like what other pastors say if you’re from another
church and you don’t like your pastor, but you have no business spreading it
around in front of other believers. You
can do it, you have the freedom to, but I’m just telling you what the Word says
and what’s going to happen, and we’ve seen some results of this. So Hebrews 13:17, the last part says, “that
they may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you,”
in other words, you are going to get it, not the spiritual leaders, not them
that have the rule over you; you are going to get it, it’s unprofitable for
you.
Another passage in the New Testament that relates this principle is
James 5:14 and it’s a similar thing, here you have people who are sick
physically and they have to call the elders to help them out. Now why do these sick people have to call the
elders? We can infer, and it’s an
inference, but we can infer from this principle that one probably reason they
have to call the elders is because they’ve been running the elders down, and
that’s why he says, “Confess your faults one to another,” these people have
sinned in the local body by maligning those in authority. And as a result they’re being physically
disciplined and they can’t get out from under it until they admit it to the
person they maligned. That’s what James
says, pretty strong language. I didn’t
write it but that is just the principle and we have seen it operational.
So this is something that David is very conscious about. I give you that background so you can
understand why he acts like he does toward Saul. Otherwise you’re not going to understand why
he starts to do something to Saul and then he backs off. It’s this principle David does not want to
get involved with. David is a smart believer.
Now let’s turn back and see the situation of 1 Samuel 24. Verse 1, “And it came to pass, when Saul was
returned from following the Philistines,” Saul had worked them over and
apparently had been victorious. The word
“was returned” is perfect tense, meaning by this time he had returned, but
there’s a little trick in this verse that you want to notice. Saul has already returned from the
Philistines; remember he left David down in the south, he moved to the west, he
hit the Philistines and then he pulled back and he is now up north. He is not going back to David at this
point. Saul has broken off the siege and
moved back into position. So “Saul had
returned from following the Philistines,” so after that event, it is a perfect
tense, after that returning had finished, not while it was being done, not
while he was coming back from the Philistines, but after he had arrived at a
point, after he had settled down, after he had calmed down, after he had
forgotten about David and wanted to leave David alone, after all this, “then it
was told him, saying, Behold, David is in the wilderness of En-gedi.”
Now there’s a whole theology at this point in the book of Samuel that
scholars have called by a Hebrew word which means to stir up. We’ll call it the stir up motif, because it
occurs again and again here. And you
want to observe certain principles here.
Saul is a believer in compound carnality; that’s the first thing you
want to understand. A person who is in
compound carnality has rejected the authority of his conscience so his mind
rebels against his conscience and his emotions are in revolt against his mind. You have a complete breakdown in the
authority in the soul. That’s the
picture of the believer in compound carnality.
Now under this state his mind is very weak, he has very little
perception, since your conscience perceives through your mind. Saul has forgotten for a while about David,
he’s gone home and he’s relaxed. Now he
is stirred up again. Now notice who it
is that stirs him up. They are the other
compound carnal believers. See this is
how carnality works. You get a group of
believers and the compound carnality settles down over here and then you get a
group of troublemakers over here and they go over here and stir these people
up, and then when these people get calmed down, these people come over and stir
them up. Everybody is trying to stir up
trouble, troublemakers.
And so Saul has calmed down but immediately he’s stirred up again. This is this motif that repeats itself and
repeats itself. There seems to be in the
book of Samuel two mechanisms for this stirring up. One way in which believers in compound
carnality are stirred up to trouble is through demonic activities on them as
individuals, demonic activities usually denoted in the book of Samuel by the
Lord stirred up, and we know from 1 Kings 22 how the mechanisms operate that
the Lord uses to stir up. Under God’s
sovereignty he appoints certain domain for Satan to operate on these
individuals and He says okay, have at it Satan, stir them up a little bit, and
he goes ahead and promotes temptations in their mind to stir them up for
trouble. That’s one way.
A second way in which this operates is through people, when you have a
whole group of people stirred up. Now
they are stirred by up individuals, but there will be whole groups of people
that are stirred up. Here we have a
group of people that come to Saul and once again start in. Remember they came to him before. And now they say hey Saul, come on, come on
down and get David, you’ve got a chance, let’s go, come on. And so they work on him and get him going.
Now to see the accountability and the distribution of responsibility
under this stir up concept, turn to 2 Samuel 24. We’ll watch here how individual demonic
powers stirred up David himself. Now I’m
showing you this to head off at the pass a false conclusion; I’ve been
misquoted and I’ve taught enough to know how people walk out of here hearing
what they want to hear and then somebody says Charlie Clough is teaching
that? No, Charlie Clough didn’t teach
that but that’s what somebody thought they heard, so let’s get clear under this
principle. Whenever you have a demonic
agency operating on a compound carnal Christian to stir him up, the compound
carnal Christian is responsible, not the demonic agency. There is no transfer of responsibility, the
individual believer is held accountable.
Example: In 2 Samuel 24:1 we again have the same Hebrew verb to stir up,
“And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved
[incited] David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.” Now the Lord in His sovereignty is said to
have done this, but if you study carefully a parallel passage and if you have a
marginal reference they refer you to Chronicles [1 Chron. 21:1]. And if you check that passage out you see
that it says there Satan stirred David up.
Who is it then, the Lord or Satan.
Both; the Lord is the one who is sovereign, the Lord is the one who
gives Satan permission to do this. And
because the Lord is angry at Israel He gives Satan permission to test Israel
through its king. So although verse 1
teaches the mechanism that it comes from the Lord through Satan to David, David
is the one who was responsible. Look at
verse 10, after David does it, it says, “And David’s heart smote him after he
had numbered the people. And David said
unto the LORD, I have sinned greatly in what I have done; and now, I beseech
Thee, O LORD, take away the iniquity of Thy servant; for I have done very
foolishly.” David accepts the
responsibility, he does not pass the buck and say oh, the devil made me do
it. The proper version of that
Biblically speaking is the devil made me do what I wanted to do anyway, or the
devil helps me do what I had already decided to do would even be a better
rendition, but that’s the proper Scriptural principle. He helps us do what in our carnality we love
to do.
Now in this verse you see “David’s heart smote him after he had numbered
the people,” we’re going to see that very same phrase in 1 Samuel 24, but I
take you to this chapter to see the principle first. You have David straight up, he commits the
sin, and immediately “his heart smote him.”
That’s the sign of a great believer, incidentally. Do you notice something about David’s
character here? What do you notice
different about David and sin and Saul and sin?
Saul commits a sin and goes on fat, dumb and happy as always. David commits a sin, because David has a sin
nature just like Saul, but what immediately happens after he does it? His conscience is tender; his conscience is
sensitive and he knows he’s sinned and he does something about it. That’s the difference between a clod and a
great believer. The difference is not
that one sins and one doesn’t; every believer sins. If you don’t think you sin you don’t know
what the word “sin” means. Every person
is going to sin, that’s not the issue, the issue is what do you do with it
afterwards, and David takes it directly to the Lord.
Now back to 1 Samuel, this is going to be a long chapter, we’ll spend
two nights on it to get the point. We
have Saul stirred up now; now you know the principle from 2 Samuel 24. What’s the principle? Saul is, passive voice, stirred up. But it’s going to be Saul’s sin. Saul is on negative volition, so Saul,
whatever sin he commits, Saul is going to be responsible. That’s going to come out
in this chapter.
Now here’s another principle parallel that’s going to come out in this
chapter. Again, let’s get the principles, it’s easier to present the hand first
and then we’ll play the game of cards afterwards, to use a
fundamentalist…. All right, David is
also going to be stirred up in this passage by the same principle that Saul is
stirred up. David is going to be stirred
up by his men. Saul is stirred up by
people around him; David is stirred up by people around him. And David begins to sin and then David
recognizes he is on negative volition, but David does something about it. Saul tries but isn’t too successful. But David is.
That’s the story of this chapter in a nutshell. Both men experience the
same kind of testing; both men experience the same kind of temptation and they
differ completely, they are miles apart in how they handle it. One man is an idiot spiritually, that’s
Saul. Saul allows himself to go right
on, plowing ahead at full blast. David stops short because he recognizes what’s
happening. Now there’s a believer in the
process of sanctification, he’s learning something. Don’t know David because he’s sinning; you
knock him in the wrong place. David’s learning, yeah, he’s responsible for his
sin, but David’s learning while he’s sinning.
And that’s also part of sanctification.
95% of your lessons are going to be when you’re out of fellowship or
when you’re coming back in. You learn
very rarely from in fellowship; you learn most of them when you’re out of
fellowship and when you come back; that’s when you really learn the spiritual
principles.
Now let’s look at verse 2, “Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out
of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild
goats.” Now Saul selects a hand picked
force of three thousand men; he outnumbers David five to one. David has six hundred men, Saul has three
thousand and Saul has the best men, the best trained, and the best armed men in
the Hebrew army, and what does David have?
The group that have emerged from Adullam, the six hundred raw recruits
that began military training with Psalm 34, and yet men that have come a long
way, and as 2 Samuel points out, out of the six hundred men, at least ten, and
probably dozens more turn out to be generals before their military career is
finished, an excellent group of men.
At this point, somewhere between verses 2-3 I place Psalm 57. This is a prayer that David prays because he
knows Saul is coming to get him again.
Saul’s been stirred up. Psalm 57
is a Psalm that technically could have occurred in 1 Samuel 22 or 1 Samuel 24, I
interpret Psalm 57 as occurring in 1 Samuel 24.
This is an individual lament Psalm.
David has a difficulty and therefore this Psalm emphasizes it, but this
Psalm has a peculiar feature that most individual lament Psalms do not. When we divided up an individual lament Psalm
we said it had five parts, an address, a lament, somewhere along the line it
had a trust section or a confidence section, he had petition, and then a vow of
praise. In this case, the individual
lament, at the point where it usually has a vow of praise, doesn’t have the vow
to praise, it actually has the praise itself.
There’s a whole section of declarative praise here, which tells you
what? What is the Holy Spirit
emphasizing in this particular Psalm.
You’ve got a big trust section, you’ve got a big declarative praise
section. The Psalm is a story of
distress, the Psalm is the story of a believer that has mastered the situation,
has trusted in the Lord, and the Lord has already delivered. The first part of the Psalm is written before
the deliverance; declarative praise has to occur after the deliverance. So Psalm 57 was written after the answer to
prayer, so there’s a chronological problem here, in that Psalm 57 was written
after the event you’ll read about in Samuel 24.
And it’s written before, during and after those events.
Look at the heading, do you notice something that’s common to Psalm 56,
57 and 58 in the heading? “To the chief
Musician,” but then it says, “Al-tashheth,” now what is an Al-tashheth or a
“Michtam of David.” The King James
translators who were a committee of people who operated under certain
constraints by King James. And they
represented the Baptist types and the Presbyterians, and the Anglicans and so
on. And when they came to a
controversial word they developed a principle that when in doubt you
transliterate, you don’t translate the word, you just leave it the way it
is. The best example of that is the word
baptize. “Baptize” is not a translation,
that’s the Greek word, that’s what the word says, baptizo, and they have done another thing by bringing it into the
English; they could have translated it sprinkle or immerse but when you get
Presbyterians and Baptists together you can’t get agreement on the point so
therefore the translators simply transliterated the Greek and said baptizo or baptize. And it was kind of a cop out but that’s the
way they got the translation off the presses.
This is another one except this doesn’t involve a theological problem,
it just involves a strange use of this word.
You notice “al,” that is the
Hebrew word that means not, it’s a negative particle. It is attached to a verb when you want to
give a negative command. So when you see
“al” that is the prefix on the Hebrew word; that’s exactly the way it sounds in
Hebrew. The next word, tashheth, the
word means destroy, so the whole expression means “do not destroy.” And you say wait a minute, this is said to
the chief musician, what does he care, “do not destroy,” does this means he’s
not to rip it out of his hymnal? “Do not
destroy” indicates to the chief musician the theme of the song. This also gives us a clue as to why some of
these headings are here. Apparently some
of these songs, when they were actually sung in the nation Israel could not be
sung properly unless the performing musicians understood the mood and the
circumstances behind it. In order to
sing it correctly they had to convey, to communicate the problem, and the
problem in Psalm 57, 58 and 59 you’ll see the same thing, and Psalm 75
also. All of these deal with David’s
attitude toward enemies that are after him.
David prays damnation upon his enemies, yet David does not ask the Lord,
Lord, let it be my that does it.
Al-tashheth indicates, then, something critical in David’s
mentality. David says Lord, those people
are wrong. You’re going to see this,
because Saul in this chapter, chapter 24 is going to make a confession to David
and you look at that and it looks like bona
fide confession, it looks like a reconciliation, and then at the end of the
chapter David goes his way; Saul goes his way, you say why don’t they get
together after the great reconciliation?
Because David isn’t fooled, David knows Saul is still his enemy and
truth is still truth and nothing has changed the truth. So there’s not wishy-washiness on David’s
part to say “don’t destroy.” That’s not
the point so get that out of your mind.
He’s not saying well I feel so sorry for my enemy, Lord, pat them on the
head. That’s not what he’s saying. He is saying Lord, they in truth they are my
enemies and not just mine but since You have anointed me to be king they have
become Your enemies; for that reason I can’t say Lord, pat them on the
head. I can’t say that because Lord,
they are your enemies and You don’t pat Your enemies on the hear; You pat them
somewhere else but You don’t pat them on the head. So David then says I leave these enemies in
Your hands, I am not going to destroy them.
Now this becomes an operational policy with David in seeking public
office. That’s what I told you earlier,
those of you who’d like to be interested in politics and a political career,
you’ve got gobs of principles in this book on the subject. Here is one of them. David himself does not
seek personal vengeance on his political opponents; he deliberately, by an act
of faith, identifies them with God’s plan and says all right Lord, they’re
Yours, I’m going to let You take care of them but I am not. I’m going to let You do the dirty work.
Now let’s look at the Psalm in detail and see how David works. The Psalm is divided into two parts, verses
1-5 and 6-11. Both are repetitious. For example, look at verse 5, “Be Thou
exalted, O God, above the heavens; let Thy glory be above all the earth.” Look at verse 11, what do you see, “Be Thou
exalted, O God, above the heavens; let Thy glory be above all the earth.” So
obviously you have two parts in this Psalm.
The first part of the Psalm emphasizes petition or the lament. David confidently expresses his trust in
Jehovah; that’s an expression of his trust, verses 1-5. Verse 6-11 are all praises for what God has
already done. Verses 1-5 are written
before God’s deliverance; verses 6-11 are written after God’s deliverance. So there are two halves to this Psalm. The first part ahead of the event; the last
part after the event.
He says in verse 1, “Be merciful unto me, O God,” remember his position,
his position in history; what is happening is Saul is coming down with three
thousand men. David sits here with six
hundred, he’s outnumbered five to one; he’s got traitors over here at Ziph;
he’s got traitors in Keilah, by this time it’s very clear to David that he
cannot trust other believers. Sad to say
but here is a king who is ordained by God to lead believers and he can’t trust
one of them, except his six hundred faithful men, the six hundred clods that
showed up in answer to Psalm 142, the six hundred men that he thought Lord, how
do I build an army out of that mess. And
God is showing him David, they’re the only people you’ve got, because these
other people are busy cheating, informing on you, tattling on you, maligning you and criticizing you. One of the big things that these people
maligned that we’re going to find in 1 Samuel 24 is that they kept insisting
that David was out to get Saul and that was a lie. David was simply protecting himself against
Saul. It was Saul out to get David, it
was precisely the opposite.
So he says, “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me;” this is a
call for grace. Again notice David’s
grace orientation, he recognizes that he did not earn it, he did not deserve
it, and so he asked for grace. “…for my
soul trusts in Thee,” the word for trust is an unusual verb in the Hebrew, it’s
chasah, a verb that is not used
frequently; usually it’s batach, batach
is that wrestling term, remember I said how it’s the word for advanced faith
where you pick up something and you throw it down on the mat, and the idea is
picking up your troubles and casting them on the Lord’s promises. That’s batach,
but this isn’t batach, this is
another word, chasah. What does chasah mean? Why is this a different word here. Because the kind of faith David expresses at
this point in his life is a fleeing, chasah
means to flee into a cave for protection.
It’s oriented to the situation.
What is the situation here. The
situation is he needs protection, so the emphasis is upon the fact he must have
a place to flee. Just like, you are
going to experience pressures in your life when you are completely surrounded,
you have no other options, you’ve got to flee somewhere. And if you operate on human viewpoint you’ll
interpret it I’ve got to geographically flee, I’ve got to get out of the
situation geographically. Oh no, this fleeing is not geographical, this flee is
spiritual.
Let’s look at it, “I from my soul, flees in Thee,” the idea you flee
inside a cave, and David has a picture that God Himself is a fantastic cave,
I’m just going to flee right inside Him.
“Yea, in the shadow of Thy wings will I make my refuge,” same verb, to
flee, “until these calamities be passed.”
Now that’s the picture of how he’s going to handle the treachery. The idea, here’s the cave, David goes in the
cave and the calamites are outside. And
David says I’m just going to go in my little bomb shelter and wait this one
out; that’s David’s mentality. That
expresses how he views the situation, I’m not going to retaliate, I’m not going
to go into mental attitude bitterness, revenge or anything else, I’m going to
get in my cave and let the calamities go.
And what is the cave? Not an
escape, it’s God’s own character.
So in verse 2 he says “I will cry unto God most high: unto the God” and
it says in the King James, “who performs,” it literally doesn’t mean that, it
means the God who avenges, “the God who avenges for me.” In other words, the God who protects those
who malign me. See here he’s using an
interesting principle that he almost violates himself in that he sees himself
as a spiritual leader; here’s the principle operating, spiritual leader, you
have believers on negative volition maligning spiritual leader, so what does
David do, he says I am going to cry unto the Lord most high, my avenger, and
I’m going to let him clobber these people.
Verse 3, “He shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of
him that would swallow me up.” “…shall
send from heaven may indicate the fact that God has angelic means of delivering
David, that elect angels will be dispatched in this situation and he’s going to
send them from heaven and they’re going to deliver me from the reproach of him
who would swallow me up. “God shall send
forth,” and notice those two words we have seen over and over, David loves
these two words, “mercy and His truth.”
We sang that hymn, loving-kindness, that’s chesed, that’s the Old Testament concept of love that is loyal to a
previous oath or promise, chesed
love. God shall send forth His chesed.
What does that mean? God is going
to be faithful to that which He has promised.
What has God promised David?
Hasn’t He promised him, David, the throne is going to be yours. David, you’re going to be king. David could say well now Lord, it doesn’t
look like my chances of being king are too great at this point, I’m outnumbered
five to one, I’ve got new soldiers versus the elite force and now I’m getting
trapped geographically. But if God is
the God who is loyal to His promise, chesed,
He will send forth His chesed and His
truth.
Verse 4, here’s his lament, “My soul is among lions,” the word “lions”
is used by the Arabs today for fierce warriors, it means the elite force and
also carries a sinister connotation in the New Testament, Satan is a lion and
seeks whom he may devour. “My soul is
among lions,” he says “I lie among them that are set on fire,” and now notice
what it is about his enemies that David fears most, not their weapons, but
their mouth, look, “even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows,
and their tongue a sharp sword.” Why
does David fear their mouth more than the weapons? Simple, if they would shut their mouth for
five minutes Saul would forget about it, the guy is so confused he’d probably
forget about within an hour or so, he’s nuts at this point and if they’d just
leave Saul alone it’d be fine. But these
people constantly got to rub salt into the wound, constantly have to irritate,
constantly have to tattletale, this kind of stuff and David fears this. This is the worst thing as far as he’s
concerned, and notice what he says, he uses a particular term in verse 4, very
important for our study of David, “the sons of men.” Do you know what that means? David is learning something, you know, all
men do this, “the sons of men,” the sons of Adam,
beni Adam, the sons of the fallen Adam do this. David is gradually getting
his perception enlarged and enlarged and enlarged until he sees the cosmic
dimensions of what’s going on here. It’s
not just a group of Jews running around with their mouths, it’s all men have
this characteristic, the “sons of men,” the beni
Adam, they all are this way. And
David sees this.
And so he asks in verse 5, “Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let Thy glory above the earth.” He
doesn’t plead for himself; notice again, this is why he can pray so boldly in
these Psalms. Remember the principle
we’ve learned in the Psalms if we haven’t learned anything else you certainly
should have learned this: that the praise of the Psalms are built on one
concept, God must show His essence into history. He must show His character, God must earn His
merit in our eyes. That is the master
plan of God. Grace from Him to us works
the other way; God earns our approval by His acts and words in history, and so
the prayers are strong because they say O God, You must be exalted, You can’t
let this go on, You’re untrue to your character.
Now verse 6, here is all past tenses, the Psalm at this point suddenly
shifts by turning a corner, everything from this point is passed, deliverance
has come, God has been exalted. And so
he looks back to the deliverance. “They
have prepared a net for my steps; my soul was bowed down. They dug a pit before me, into the midst
whereof they are fallen themselves.” In
other words, God has allowed them to trap themselves.
Verse 7, “My heart is established [fixed], O God, my heart is
established,” it’s a work of perfect stability, the deliverance has occurred,
David is rejoicing, “I will sing and give praise.” And verse 8, another insight into praise and
music, “Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp. I will awake early.” Now what does that mean? “Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and
harp.” The word “glory” has a strange
use here. Glory in the Bible means a
manifestation of that which is normally not seen. Christ, when He walked the face of this earth
was not glorified; we call that the doctrine of kenosis, that He gave up the
free use of His divine attributes during the period on earth, but there were a
few minutes when, if you were one of the disciples and you were standing near
Jesus Christ, you could have seen His glory—the Mount of Transfiguration. And the disciples were standing around
talking with Him and all of a sudden in front of their eyes Jesus Christ
changes. One moment He looked like just
a normal Jewish man, and the next moment, suddenly a blinding light from
Him. Another time when Christ showed
forth His glory was when they came to arrest Him in the Garden of Gethsemane
and the tough temple police moved in and they were about to arrest Him and they
asked, “who are you,” and He said eimi,
“I AM.” Which is a translation from the
Old Testament, “I AM,” I am Jehovah. And
with that everyone falls down, you have armor clashing, swords dropping all
over the place, and they just fall flat.
Why? Because in a moment, just in
a split second, probably if you’d been there you’d just have seen it quick
[snaps fingers], like that. And Christ
manifested His glory. Now that’s the
meaning of glory.
But what does the word “glory” mean here, “Awake my glory, awake
psaltery and harp.” The glory that David
says here is what is in his soul, his character, his love for the Lord; he is a
mature believer and he wants to express his love for Jesus Christ, and so he
says “Awake, my glory” and then immediately he says my “psaltery and
harp.” Why does he use musical
instruments? Because they were the means
David used of expressing his innermost character. Let me get my musical instruments, I must
play, that’s what he’s saying, I must express this. And David, with the ability
that he had in the area of music expressed it, and so he says, “Awake, my glory,”
I must show myself how I love God because of this, and so he calls for his
instruments. And he says, “I will awake early.”
Verse 9, “I will praise Thee, O lord, among the peoples; I will sing
unto Thee among the nations.” In other
words, this praise will extend into the international relations, the sphere of
foreign relations. Verse 10, “For Thy
mercy is great unto the heavens, and Thy truth unto the clouds.” Verse 11, “Be Thou exalted, O God, above all
the heavens; let Thy glory be above all the earth.” Now that is the prayer that he made for
deliverance.
Now let’s turn back to 1 Samuel 24. Saul
closes in, and then we have one of those passages where I told you you’d better
have your seat belts on because as we have seen how God has a sense of humor in
the book of Samuel, and from the hemorrhoids of the Philistines, to the
foreskins of Michal, to Saul lying naked on the seminary floor, we find God has
very humorous ways of handling proud self-righteous believers. I think God does it for His own amusement,
frankly. You know, these guys think
they’re so great, oh I’m so great I don’t need God’s grace, just part those
doors for me Lord, I’m coming through.
So God just humiliates them. And
Michal just took after her father, her father was a clod and she was a clod and
she thought just like her father did; she inherited this as a learned behavior
pattern in the Saul family, and she was proud and so God fixed up that at every
social occasion Michal went to and they started talking about dowry’s she had
to be embarrassed by talking about well, my husband gave my father 200
foreskins. And this is the kind of thing
that went on. Now why do you suppose God
put that burden on a very proud girl?
Because this girl never understood grace, and so she had to realize… she
had to be taken down a few notches, and humiliated until she understood her
true position.
Now Saul is going to get taken down a notch right here; let’s look at
verse 3. “And he came to the sheepcotes,
by the way, where there was a cave.” Now
the sheepcotes, or what this was, was a long cave apparently. And in the front of this cave the shepherds
would place their flocks, during a thunderstorm or rain and so on, they would
pull their flocks into the edge of this cave; it was a long deep cave. Now it’s in this area that is the sheepcote,
but back in the recesses of the cave David and his men are. It’s a large cave, he’s got six hundred men
he’s got to hide, maybe not all in this one cave, but David and his men are
there. “…and Saul went in to cover his
feet; and David and his men remained in the sides of the cave.” Now the idiom is defecate, that’s what he was
doing, and he wasn’t sleeping like you see in the Sunday School literature,
Saul’s taking a snooze and while he’s sacked out David comes up and cuts off
part of his garment. Huh-un, it’s more
embarrassing than that, and that’s because we have some fundy that got
embarrassed by God’s Word and couldn’t paint it the way it was, and here again
Saul is caught, this time literally with his pants down, and David has him in
the cave. And this is the deliverance
and answer to Psalm 57. Now what more
humiliating position can the King of Israel be in; imagine being assassinated
in that situation. “…and David and his
men remained in the sides of the cave.”
That’s the back recesses.
Verse 4, “And the men of David said unto him,” now here is where David
is going to get the same thing Saul got, “Behold, the day which the LORD said
unto you, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand, that thou mayest
do to him as it shall seem good unto thee.”
Now I’m going to stop tonight right there because I want you to think
about the pressure that David is under at this point. These are men who have fought for him; these
are men who have gone into battle, some have died, some have lost their best
friends fighting, loyal to David. They
have been killed by men under that guys command, Saul, they hate him with a
passion. He has been their arch
foe. Right now David, with one swift
spear, could terminate the whole conflict and be king, they say. And so the pressure is on; humanly speaking
God has worked it out so Saul is in David’s hands.
But I want you to notice a flaw in this verse, and it’s a flaw that is
oh so subtle that we have to be careful of this all the time. “The men” say to David, this is the day which
the Lord said unto you. In other words
David, we interpret this circumstance to lead you to kill Saul. They are wrong, and David is going to have to
straighten his men out, after he starts to act on their advice, he is going to
straighten them out. This is a picture
of believers who operate on the basis of circumstances alone without using the
principles of the Word of God. Oh the circumstances
are that the Lord is leading me by the open door. Not necessarily, Satan can open doors. And in this case Satan has opened the doors;
Satan has allowed David to be in a situation where he could slaughter him and
if he did he’d be completely out of the will of God. And we’re going to see why; we’re going to
leave Saul in his embarrassing position until next week. I won’t say what the lesson title will be
next week, Bob Thieme calls it the defecation devotional. But we won’t go with that because I know some
have tender minds so we’ll just stick with the text of 1 Samuel 24. With our heads bowed….