1 Samuel Lesson 48

David Battles Enemies – 1 Samuel 29 & 30

Before we turn to Samuel we have two questions. One, how does a Christian come out of compound carnality when his heart really desires it. This is a problem I’m finding that is more widespread than I thought, but compound carnality is just our word for some of you Baptists that have been raised with the word “backsliding.” Others have been in different environments where it’s been known by other words and some of you have come out of secular areas and have your own terminology for it. Compound carnality is a special form of carnality; it is just my attempt to get some term to differentiate serious carnality, all carnality is serious but compound carnality carries more damage with it; there’s an actual damage done in the soul, a damage done in the human spirit. And so what I call compound carnality is just simply my attempt to describe whatever you want to call it in your vocabulary.

But when you have a believer who’s negative toward God, it shows up in many, many areas in his life. In answering this question let’s look at compound carnality first and then we’ll talk about getting out of it. The first manifestation of compound carnality will be in a lack of thanksgiving. If you want some simple indicator in your life, I can’t think of a more simple one than this. Just a simple lack of thanksgiving. It goes back to Romans 1, there they speak of “when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations” and so forth. So the lack of thanksgiving to God for what He has done. And in place of that you notice if you’re in compound carnality there’s a bitterness, a resentment toward God, God is actually to blame; no matter how much you say up and down you don’t believe it, in practice you do, you really believe that God is to blame, He is morally to blame for things that have happened in your life. You are claiming that God is wrong, that God has violated the standards of justice and fairness in your case. Now that attitude is a sign of compound carnality.

Compound carnality begins to show up in other areas; it begins to show up in a gradual decrease in sensitivity to the leading, in other words your conscience. This is hard to think of some specific things where this shows up. My observation would be one place where this shows up, a lack of sensitivity to conscience, is it will show up in an erratic character. In other words, in some areas you will be going along fine in carnality simply because you know you ought to be doing and you kind of put it on, you put on a façade. And when we’re in this kind of condition we’re very successful at putting on the façade in certain areas, and then there’ll be some other area in life where we don’t put the façade on, and it shows up like a sore thumb, and then we put the façade on. This kind of thing, and you’ll notice that. People who are in compound carnality are not always gross, that’s not the point, but their behavior every once in a while is like an orchestra playing along, you hear it play in harmony and all of a sudden, clunk, there’s instruments that aren’t right in it. It shows up in attitudes to other believers, this is another place. The reason for it is that other believers remind them of the Lord’s authority. And so the compound carnality shows up here in changed relationships with other believers.

Now an immature believer may be doing the same thing, but he’s not in compound carnality. Here’s the difference; in compound carnality the person has at one time understood these things, and has been observed consistently at one time to get along with believers, and now all of a sudden there’s a change. So this is not the same as an immature Christian who’s just growing up. This is a case of a person that’s already grown and then has turned away into compound carnality. And because of this you’ll find them react to a local church, that’s the next thing. And you’ll find them reacting to the authority in the local church, and this is a sign of compound carnality. It’s always an attack upon God’s authority. The reason is it starts out with an attack on the authority to the Word, and so it shows up in an attack on the authority of the pastor, an attack on the authority of the Board, always an attack on somebody’s authority. Why? Because that’s the heart of a rebel; rebels always like to downgrade authority.

So compound carnality shows up in these ways, and it will also show up ultimately in what we’ll call, I’ll put it in quotes “uncontrollable sin.” And by that I mean just almost uncontrollable, almost like an alcoholic, for example; uncontrollable sin, sin passions that become so violently strong that you just don’t seem to have any success whatever in dealing with it. And that is a result of compound carnality.

Now all of that is compound carnality, it goes on, this doesn’t develop overnight. Compound carnality appears to develop over months and years. Jeremiah says the heart is deceitful, and the tragedy of compound carnality is oftentimes the people who have it think they’re in fellowship because they appear to be using 1 John 1:9 but they’re really not. And all the time they’re kidding themselves, and the way they can tell is just look at some of these relationships objectively from the standpoint of the Word of God and there it is.

Now once this state is reached, God is still calling. He’s still calling the person back to Himself. And the original question is how does a Christian come out of it when his heart really desires it? My response to this question is that if your heart really desires it you’re not going to have much trouble; the problem is, does your heart really desire it. And that is the central problem. Now I’ll give you another illustration; I’ll use alcoholism because it’s something that you can easily see, I’m not picking on alcoholics. In that case, a person cannot recover from alcoholism until they reach the absolute nadir, and they actually go down into the pigpen and get so low, and get so smashed that every piece of self-confidence is lost. Now a similar thing happens on recovery from compound carnality; you cannot recover until you are willing to do away with bastions of pride that remain in the soul. Pride that insists on “I’ll get out of it somehow,” and as long as you think that way, no matter how bad you may be suffering, I say, from my own observation of the study of Scripture, that the prognosis is pretty dim.

The prognosis only becomes hopeful when the last bastions…all right God, I can’t do it, no way; I don’t care what changes you make, no little but/except, don’t change here and don’t change here, apart from these two areas God, change everything. But that isn’t the way God plays the game. When you recover from a compound carnality situation, it’s all hands off; God I’ve got to agree that You can make any change that you want to make in any place in any part of my soul, any part of my life, any part of my personal relationships I have to agree to any changes You want to make. God will not get you out of compound carnality unless you have that kind of willingness. Now if that kind of willingness is there you have a battle because you have –R learned behavior patterns. And it takes time to replace those with +R learned behavior patterns. Those are not learned overnight, but you will be successful on those things; those things aren’t half as bad as getting down to that last bastion, because always there’s one little place, God, change everything except this, I have to have this. God doesn’t work that way.

So in answer to the question, how does a Christian come out of compound carnality when his heart desires it? If his heart really desires it, he’s already on his way.

The other question: if a believer like Saul is in great rebellion against God’s will, are there always extreme signs and sufferings, progressive stress and trials, like Saul’s, before God begins to decree cursing? In other words, if there is an area of faith that you’re not sure of, can you take comfort from the fact that the rest of your life is in order, is peaceful, and take it as an encouragement that this questionable area is according to God’s will? Yes, there will always be these signs. When you get in a compound carnality situation it’s going to show up because God’s discipline begins to take effect. And when God’s discipline takes effect it is noticeable; it becomes noticeable. The problem with it is, we know it’s discipline but we don’t like to admit it’s discipline and so we always tend to think of something except the obvious. And this again is the deceitfulness of the human heart. We feel the pressure, we know we’re suffering, in our conscience, if we are really honest with our self, in our conscience we know the real reason, because David said in Psalm 51:3, “My sin is ever before me,” but the problem is we don’t like that and so we want to say well, I’m not feeling myself, or I just have to go to a doctor, or I have to do this or I have to do that. And the last thought that’s ever free to circulate in your mind is the right one, and that is, it’s probably due to discipline.

The Corinthians had the same problem, 1 Corinthians 11, they were all getting sick. Some were dying, they had all sorts of epidemics in the city of Corinth, particularly the Corinthian believers. And Paul, apparently they had asked him, because it’s written as though he’s answering a question, and when he goes to describe the communion, he adds, he says watch out because he says that’s the reason you’re having all the problem you are in the congregation with sickness. Now the way Paul answers the question suggests that what was happening to the Corinthians was something like this: you know Paul, we’re having lots of sickness, we haven’t been too active as a local church recently, because everybody’s sick, and so and so died, and so and so died, but there was no conscious connection between what was happening over here and their own congregational spiritual life over here. And Paul just said that’s why, he pulled the two together and said don’t you see, look over here, look over here, and pull them together, that’s why.

Turn to 1 Samuel and see where God delivers David. Before the witch of Endor incident you recall David was in a jam. The order of the chapters again: chapter 27, 29, 30, 28, 31. That is the chronological order of these chapters. Chapter 28 is out of place, that’s the witch of Endor incident. And it’s not a mistake, like the liberals would have you believe. Chapter 28 is just the witch of Endor problem to show you why certain things are going to happen.

Now let’s just review where we left David in chapter 27. David was left with certain problems; first, he left Israel without divine guidance. He left Israel because he was being pursued; he said well, I know God has delivered me a dozen times from Saul’s hand but number 13 is coming up, I’m superstitious and God might not work the 13^th time. So David left Israel; it was foolish, God had delivered him in every situation. But he just couldn’t trust God for the next time, so he left. For 16 months he has been working with Achish in Gath, and falsifying military records. He’s been raiding in the south, in the Negev, it’s part of the area here, and there’s a boundary that’s very approximate, Philistia is here, Judah up to the north, and to the south there are Arabic tribes, various types of tribes. And there’s constant harassment here. David’s city of Ziklag is right on the border, and he is moving his soldiers down here and raiding these Arabs. But when he reports back to Achish he’s saying here’s my real trajectory, I went over here and I went over here; he is just simply falsifying the targets. So David was falsifying military records for 16 months.

During this period of time he thought he was solving his problem, but you see, it was one of those wicked devices; it was a human viewpoint device to solve carnality and human viewpoint devices never solve carnality. He didn’t get away from his problem, because as we saw at the beginning of chapter 28 Achish says David, we need your men, bring them over here, we’re going to go up and hit Israel. Hit Israel? Right, you’re coming with us, you’re going to help us clean out the Jews. Oh! And so this is the problem of David at this point; you can obviously see he’s in one of his worst jams, because remember what Abigail had stopped David from doing? Killing Saul. What is David about to do again? Kill Saul. Same old problem; Satan wants David to have blood on his hands before he gets to the throne.

So now we pick up the story at 29:1, “Now the Philistines gathered together all their armies to Aphek; and the Israelites encamped by a fountain which is in Jezreel.” Now the fact that the Philistines have landed at this place tells us a lot about their tactics. Aphek is right here, if you have a map of Israel you notice there’s a protuberance out just west of Galilee, the modern city of Haifa is there, that’s one of the seaports of the nation Israel today, one of the few seaports they have. Aphek is the rendezvous point for many, many armies. Notice the verse says not “soldiers” but “armies.” This is a major invasion, this is not just one army, it is many armies. Armies are pretty large groups of people and the Philistines had many armies, many of them. So this invasion is a vast, vast army. And their armies gather at Aphek.

Now the Philistines actually are 60 miles down the coast from this point. Why do they pick Aphek to invade. Two reasons, one there is a valley that runs here, and there is another valley that runs like this. This valley on the east is the valley of Jezreel, and this one is the place where Armageddon is going to be fought, out in this open valley here, the valley of Esdraelon, so there’s a natural terrain where you can cut Israel in half. And they know that to the north they’re weak; the strongest part of Israel is to the south, so what they’re going to do is isolate the northern part and march their troops across the valley. You have to understand the military tactic fits the geography. But there’s another reason why they’re starting at Aphek and that is the Philistines had a tremendous navy; the Mediterranean at this point in history was called the Sea of the Philistines because they had a vast naval force. And this means that they had the ability to establish a beachhead and protect it with their naval force.

Furthermore, because they had so many armies in this campaign they had a tremendous problem with logistics; there wasn’t enough way to transport logistics 60 miles up these roads by animals, so they did it by boat. And they supplied their armies from the sea. That’s why they’re landing at Aphek. The Israelites are camped at a place that’s called Jezreel. Mt. Gilboa is over here; that’s the strong point of the Israelites.

Verse 2, “And the lords of the Philistines were passing by,” the word is in the participle, meaning that it is a word indicating motion going right on in the present, they are massing their armies; maybe some of them have landed in boats and others have marched up the road, but they’re massing and maneuvering their armies into position to move up the valley. So they’re in this act, and they “passed on by hundreds, and by thousands;” the various units and their armies. But then it says, “but David and his men were passing on in the [back] rear with Achish.” Now that means that David had a position of honor, he came along with Achish, who was the king, and that little note is put in there to explain the next two verses, because this is like a military review, the troops march by and the dignitaries are out and so forth, and as they marched by this last unit, who is this, and you can just see them all in the review stand saying hey, they’re Hebrews, look at them, Jews in our army. And not only Jews in our army, they’re with Achish, in a key position. So obviously there’s a little conversation in the review stand.

Verse 2, “Then said the princes of the Philistines, What do these Hebrews do here? And Achish said unto the princes of the Philistines, Is not this David, the servant of Saul, the king of Israel, who has been with me these days, or these years, and I have found no fault in him since he fell unto me unto this day.” The word “fall” is not fall, it means turn traitor. And Achish is saying look, this guy is a turncoat, he came over to our side with these men, he’s worked with me 16 months, and I haven’t noticed anything wrong. Now of course a lot’s been wrong but it’s just Achish hasn’t seen it. Now the Philistines don’t know about it either because you remember what David did to all the evidence? He slaughtered it; David murdered everybody, men, women and children, when he went on these raids so that nobody would ever report back. David eliminated all the evidence. So David here is in a position of growing concern.

Verse 3, “And the princes of the Philistines were angry with him; and the princes of the Philistines said unto him, Make this fellow return, that he may go again to his place which thou has appointed him,” that’s Ziklag, the city that Achish gave him, “and let him not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he be an adversary to us; for wherewith should he reconcile himself unto his master?” In other words, they’re worried that once a turncoat always a turncoat. And I might say that the wisdom of verse 4 is very much justified… very much justifiable. People who are traitors to one cause are generally going to be traitors to all causes; they have no loyalty. People who turncoat and run are going to cut and run; don’t ever try to build a loyal organization on people who cut and run from somebody else, because they already have some quirk in their soul that makes this way. Watch those kind of people and never trust them. You can work with them but don’t ever put them in a position where you trust them because they’re the kind of people that will one day rat on you. This goes from Christian organizations and local churches all the way to the military and into civil government. Don’t build on turncoats, people that hop, skip and jump from one place to the next are not worth building on.

Now in this situation they have another point and that is that during the battle he might be a double agent, in other words, he might already be a turncoat; he might be just playing along. And the reason they’re so concerned is the last clause in verse 4, “Should it not be with the heads of these men?” In other words, look, David’s 600 are in a vital position. Now we don’t know exactly what kind of maneuvers the infantry used when they moved up this valley but we know that whatever the maneuvers are, David’s men are in a key position, so that they can really foul up the whole operation. And the Philistines are very smart at this point. We’re not going to bother with them, so they say let’s get them out of here.

Verse 5, Now get a load of verse 5, “Is not this David, of whom they sang one to another in dances, saying, Saul slew his thousands, and David his ten thousands?” Remember that song and how it’s come to haunt David over and over and over again in this book. The first time they sang it what happened? It was in the parade with Saul and they were marching along the cities of Judah and the cities of the tribes and everywhere they went the women would come out and they’d sing these songs, and as they would sing the songs David would be praised more than Saul. And Saul would look back and say hey, what’s the deal. So Saul, the first time the song was sung, became jealous and that’s what led him into his jealousy. The second time the song came to plague David was in the mouths of the people of the city of Gath, when he decided to take a short vacation with Goliath’s sword, to Goliath’s home town, hoping to be inconspicuous, and while he was there they said, this is David, the one to whom they sang, etc. etc. etc. And now the third time. You see, it was a popular song, it had gotten around.

Now this is one of three or four pieces of evidence, I want you to notice, in chapters 29-30, because this will help some of you deal with this problem, what about the heathen who have never heard, etc. The fact that the Philistines heard this song showed that Bible doctrine was permeating other surrounding cultures. It was doing it by means of song, it was doing it by other ways, and we’ll see some of the other ways. But the Philistines knew some of the Word of God; the Philistines could have been saved if they so choose to be saved; the Philistines had access to the gospel of Jesus Christ known under the dispensation of Israel. They could have been saved if they chose to.

Verse 6, “Then Achish called David,” and this is a little political deal in verses 6-8, and I want you to notice how David can really put it on. “Achish called David, and said unto him, Surely, as the LORD lives,” there’s your second piece of evidence that the Philistines knew Bible doctrine. By what God is Achish swearing? Yahweh, the God of Israel; he’s not saying as Dagon lives, he’s saying as Yahweh lives. So you see, the so-called heathen who never hear know quite a bit. “Surely, as Jehovah lives, thou hast been upright, and thy going out and thy coming in with me in the host is good in my sight; for I have not found evil in thee since the day of thy coming unto me unto this day; nevertheless, the lords favor thee not. [7] Wherefore, now, return, and go in peace, that thou displease not the lords of the Philistines. [8] And David said unto Achish,” and here’s where he really rubs it on, you know the last time he rubbed it on, remember, David was playing the part of a nut the last time he was putting it on with Achish.

Remember the first time he came to Gath, and Jesus Christ appeared to him when he was a prisoner and told him hey, here’s some evasive tactics that you can use to escape from this place, feign insanity. This has been used; during the Korean War a number of GI’s found out that the Koreans couldn’t stand homosexuals and so they would feign homosexuality and the Koreans would have nothing to do with them, so they got out of doing a lot of prison work; the Koreans would just leave them alone. That’s exactly what they wanted. And that was just a tactic, act as gross as you could be and they couldn’t stand it. David did the same thing, he just feigned insanity. Now he’s doing another thing, he’s always a phony to Achish. He must have had a real great testimony, the first time he’s a crazy person and now he’s an outright liar.

Verse 8, “And David said unto Achish, but what have I done?” Well, he just murdered a couple hundred people, wiped out their village, killed men, women and children, that’s all. “And what hast thou found in thy servant so long as I have been with thee unto this day, that I may not go fight against the enemies of my lord, the king?” Now he knows his Lord isn’t that king but look at what he puts on. Of course he knows by this time that he’s been eliminated, it’s kind of safe to act this way.

Verse 9, “And Achish answered and said to David, I know that thou art good in my sight, as an angel of God,[ notwithstanding, the princes of the Philistines have said, He shall not go up with us to the battle.]” now that does sound kind of idiotic today but in that day this was a technical expression that had a lot of meaning to it. The angel, the molek Elohim, the angel of God, connoted deep wisdom. Turn to 2 Samuel 14:17, you’ll see it was a technical expression, it wasn’t used the way we use it. “Then thine handmaid said, The word of my lord,” now this is later on in David’s career, he encounters the wise woman of Tekoa, and she says, “The word of my lord, the king, shall now be comforting, for as an angel of God, so is my lord, the king, to discern good and bad.” Then if you’ll notice also in the same passage, in verse 20, she says “To fetch about this form of speech [change the face of the matter] has thy servant, Joab done this thing; and my lord is wise, according to the wisdom of the angel of God, to know all things that are in the earth.” Now that is a common expression, apparently in the Semitic areas of the ancient east for a person that’s very, very wise. David has a reputation for wisdom.

By the way, a little footnote here, this shows you that abilities that God gives you can be used while you’re carnal; there is not one spiritual gift that the Holy Spirit gives a believer that cannot be exercised, with benefit to other believers, while you are carnal. This is why in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul is talking about, “if I speak with the tongue of angels and have not love,” what he’s talking about is if I exercise all the gifts that God has given to me, and I’m not filled with the Holy Spirit, I’m not doing it in fellowship, it doesn’t count as far as I’m concerned. So don’t be deceived, being out of fellowship does not mean you don’t use your gifts; you use them all the time. And this is another way, incidentally, you can check on your carnality. You take some of the gifts and they tend to be very, very detrimental in times of carnality, for example, take somebody with the gift of exhortation; when normally the gift of exhortation is something that uplifts you, you always kind of seek that person out for an uplift while you’re depressed, and persons who have the gift of exhortation often times when they’re carnal will be more of a nag. And they’ll kind of seek you out and but in and so forth, that kind of thing. They’re still using their gift of exhortation but they’re using it in the wrong way. So David is using his gift of military skill; Achish considers David a brilliant man, brilliant man from the military point of view and he’s right, David is. Too bad they’re not both on the same side.

Verse 10, he orders him, you get up early and get these soldiers out. [“Wherefore, now, rise up early in the morning with thy master’s servants who are come with thee; and as soon as ye are up early in the morning, and have light, depart.”] Verse 11, So David and his men rose up early to depart in the morning, to return into the land of the Philistines. And the Philistines went up to Jezreel,” that means they started marching up this valley, apparently unopposed. Saul’s men fell back, fell back, and fell back thinking they could make a last stand on Mt. Gilboa. They’re going to make a last stand all right, it’s not the kind they think. They’re going to fall back all the way up to the highlands, and then down into the valley of Jezreel itself, and by this time the Philistines have totally cut the nation; the nation is in a very, very bad state by this point. Now we’re going to leave and not return to this part of the story until chapter 31. So the story leaves the north and drops down to activities in the south. So chapter 30 continues with David, but the center of attention has shifted to the south.

30:1, “And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day,” it was sixty miles, they marched twenty miles a day, “that the Amalekites had invaded the south, and Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire. [2] And had taken the women captives, that were in it; they slew not any, either great or small, but carried them away, and went on their way.” Now who are the Amalekites? They’re this group of Arab tribes, one of the tribes. The Amalekites are always a picture of the flesh in Scripture; they are the satanically energized flesh, and they are always Israel’s arch enemy. If Velikovsky is right, then they answer to what we know in history as the Hyksos.

Now these Amalekites are very interesting for four reasons, at this point. Number one, David, before had been in Philistia out of fellowship. What is the king’s job? To save the nation; now the king was supposed to save the nation; where was he? Out of the nation, he was in Philistia, not in the nation, so that’s the first situation that has to do with this Amalekite raid; David wasn’t in his place. The second point is, turn back to 27:8 and just notice who it was that David was hitting when he was falsifying the military records. “David and his men went up and invaded the Geshurites, and the Girzites, and the Amalekites,” see what he’s doing? So who started the raids, the Amalekites or David? David did. So second point, he was the one that brought this whole thing on in the first place, he was the one that was raiding them.

Third interesting point, to contrast with 30:2, the third point is that what did David do when he attacked the Amalekites? He killed everything, men, women and children. Now the Amalekites in history were known as very vicious and cruel people. If Velikovsky’s identification is correct and the Amalekites are the Hyksos, they had very cruel forms of torture because where the archeologists have dug into their fortification they find dismembered skeletons. So obviously they pull their people apart or chop them up or something because the bones are just smashed to pieces and this is something different from bones in other cites. So the Amalekites had various cruel tortures, they were very cruel people. They would wait until harvest time and get all their cattle and just drive them forward as kind of a gigantic armored force, and just trample down everything before them. And then they’d steal; they’d wait until the farmers got their crops in and then just steal them wholesale. So the Amalekites had the reputation for cruelty.

Now I want you to see the irony of verse 2, faced with the fact that the Amalekites are normally very vicious and never do this, and faced with the fact that David asked for it, don’t you see God’s grace here, verse 2; it’s loaded with grace. This is an unusual thing if you know history; the Amalekites just don’t do this kind of thing. So when you read verse 2 you are actually reading God’s restraining hand of grace. Do you know why we know it’s grace? Because did David and his men deserve it? No. Did God protect them any way? Yes. God’s gracious.

Now there’s a fourth point to make about this and that is both David and the Philistines were superior military tacticians. What did they have in their head when they went away and left the whole southern boundary unguarded? In other words, somebody had a lapse of military wisdom, you just don’t walk away and leave the place unguarded. David did a very stupid thing; he went off and left Ziklag with all the women and children there with no guards, on a border that had all these tribes on it, after he had been involved in raids for 16 months. That shows you something else about carnality, that shows you that you just don’t think like your normally think, you overlook things, your perception is radically destroyed and altered. You don’t use common sense.

Verse 3, “So David and his men came to the city and, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their daughters were taken captives. [4] Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep.” And this is the genuine emotion of sorrow that they expressed. Verse 5, “And David’s two wives were taken captives, Anihoam, the Jezreelitess, and Abigail, the wife of Nabal, the Carmelite. [6] And David was greatly distressed,” now look in verse 6, here’s he champ again coming out of carnality. “And David was greatly distressed; for the people spoke of stoning him,” and they had every right, it was his mistake, “because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters. But David encouraged himself in the LORD his God.” Now right there David gets back in fellowship. Saul would have had some excuse, it wasn’t my fault. David had no excuse; he had no excuse, I know I’ve done it, I’ve blown it.

And so now what does he do? In the face of disaster does he panic? No. Does he deny he’s wrong? No. Does he come up with excuses? No. He moves on; that’s David’s response, no excuse. And that’s what makes David great; over and over and over and over again in Scripture, it’s not that this guy is a plaster saint, look at his life. Look what he’s just done, he’s murdered people by the dozens; he’s not a plaster saint, but why is he a man after God’s heart? Simple, he knows what to do with his sin, that’s all, that makes the difference. Saul and David both sinned, one knew what to do with his sin and did it; the other one may have known and if he did he certainly didn’t do anything about it. That’s the difference. So David gets back in fellowship. The word “encouraged himself” means strengthen himself. It means that he paused for a time; it means that he used 1 John 1:9; he used the kind of confession outlined in Psalm 51; he experienced the disasters outlined in Psalms 32 and 38, though these are used later in his life, this is a format. Those are the Bible passages that you ought to study if you’re in compound carnality or you ought to know them anyway as a believer. Every believer ought to know 1 John 1:9 and Psalm 51. 1 John 1:9 is your handle, so to speak; you don’t have anything if you don’t know how to confess your sin, you can’t get back in fellowship… [tape turns]

…Confession isn’t perfectionism; just confess that one and God will cleanse you from all unrighteousness, all the rest of them. Confession isn’t perfectionism, it’s not saying you’ve got to be perfect before you come to God; it’s not that at all. Sin is like an iceberg, most of it is under water in your unconscious mind; you don’t know your own sin, I don’t know mine. It’s all underneath, and so what do we do? We confess the part that sticks up, and God is very, very gracious. Now that’s David here in this verse. And now watch what he does; David changes. See, true confession always results in a change; if there has been genuine restoration there will be an observed change. Some of you object and say wait a minute, I get out of fellowship over something in the family or something, I get out of fellowship, and here I am, negative volition, and I confess, 1 John 1:9, and then five minutes later I’m doing it again. So I confess, five minutes later I’m doing it again; I confess, five minutes later I’m doing it again. It’s true, we are going to do this, but genuine confession, when the Holy Spirit’s been working in your hear to confess and acknowledge something, I seriously doubt you’re going to be doing it five minutes from now. I think what happens is that when we got to use 1 John 1:9 in these kinds of situations, and we all have them, but there’s another little thought that comes in just as we’re saying Father, I’ve done this and I’ve done this, there’s another little parallel heresy that begins to creep in as we’re confessing that goes somewhat along the line, but I kind of want to keep on doing it. And I’m going to confess it but I really don’t share Your attitude toward it, You say use 1 John 1:9 so there it is and we’ll move on. Now you see, if you read Psalm 51 and Psalm 32 and Psalm 38, where do you find that attitude in those Psalms? It isn’t there. If you read those Psalms that’ll correct this habit, and David has a change.

What does he do in verse 7? Something that he hasn’t done in quite a few chapters. “And David said to Abiathar, the priest, Ahimelech’s son, I pray thee, bring me here the ephod.” And Abiathar brought there the ephod to David. [8] And David inquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop. Shall I overtake them?” That’s the first time he’s gone back to divine guidance in quite some time, at least since chapter 27. Do you see the change? What happened? He goes back to the Word, the ephod is his Bible at that point. He goes back and he’s asking the Lord about something. And it’s not just that issue, it’s the whole thing, God what am I going to do with my life at this point. Now there’s the sign of restoration, real restoration. And you can tell when that sign appears. David inquired and he got a yes, and at the end of verse 8 you’ll notice God gave him a promise.

Now just to show you how specific the Hebrew saints were, they took God’s promise and then they said okay, now God promised this and He promised this and He promised this. We’ll remember that God, we’ll write it all down, You promised this, You promised this, You promised this, and we’ll keep a record of it and just see if You are true to Your word. And this chapter is written in part to prove God keeps His promises exactly. So the end of verse 8 is a critical verse because you’re going to have later verses comment on verse 8. Verse 8 is put in here to say look, God promises this. Now does it come true empirically or does it not? [“And he answered him, Pursue; for thou shalt surely overtake them and without fail recover all.”]

Verse 9, “So David went, he and his six hundred men who were with him, and came to the brook Besor, where those that were left behind stayed. [10] But David pursued, he and four hundred men; for two hundred abode behind, who were so faint that they could not go over the brook Besor.” This is a brook down about in this location. Here’s Ziklag, it’s about ten to twelve miles southwest. His troops are hurting, they’ve just completed a twenty mile march for the day and David takes off immediately and he wants his army to march ten miles more. He’s pushing them at this point to pursue.

Verse 11, “And they found an Egyptian in the field, and brought him to David,” now that one verse has a very important historical implication because if this note seems to say what it really says, it means that the Egyptians are under bondage to the Amalekites. Now when could this have been in history? This is one of the verses Velikovsky cites for his theory that all this was going on when Egypt was in a time of absolute collapse, it was like a dark ages all over the whole Middle East, turbulence, confusion, chaos politically. And even the Egyptians were victims at this time.
And they “gave him bread, and he did eat; and they made him drink water. [12] And they gave him a piece of a cake of figs, and two clusters of raisins. And when he had eaten, his spirit came again to him; for he had eaten no bread, nor drunk any water, three days and three nights.” So that tells us immediately that the Amalekites are on the move and they’re moving fast, and this explains why David is so anxious to get to them.

[13] And David said unto him, To whom belongs thou? And from where art thou? And he said, I am a young man of Egypt, servant to the Amalekite; and my master left me, because three days ago I fell sick.” So they interrogated him, and then he says something interesting in verse 14, he says, “We made an invasion upon the south of the Cherethites,” now who are Cherethites? This is a noun that is attached by many scholars to Crete, and it’s one of the evidences for the theory that the Philistines were Cretans. And he says we made an attack on “the south of the Cherethites, and upon the border which belongs to Judah, and upon the south of Caleb; and we burned Ziklag with fire.” In other words, we made a three-pronged attack he says. So since later on in the passage we know they are attacking the Philistines, then we can identify the Cherethites in verse 14 as the Philistines.

Verse 15, “And David said to him, Can you bring me down to this company?” and he said okay.

[And he said, Swear me by God, that thou wilt neither kill me, nor deliver me into the hands of my master, and I will bring thee down to this company. [16] And when he had brought him down, behold, they were spread abroad upon all the earth, eating and drinking, and dancing, because of all the great spoil that they had taken out of the land of the Philistines, and out of the land of Judah.”] So David, in verse 17, “And David smote them from the twilight even unto the evening of the next day,” that means from noon, from noon to the time of the going down of the sun, the idea of the going down of the sun started at noon when the sun was at it’s peak and all the time the sun was going down David was slaughtering them until it got too dark. “…and there escaped not a man of them, save four hundred young men, who rode upon camels and fled.” The fact that only four hundred escaped, that that number was equal to David’s soldiers, shows you that David had a very outnumbered force. David had four hundred men, he pursued them, and it took three days to go where David took half a day, or at least a day. Now that shows you how fast David moved and the fact that this whole battle was again a battle which God honored. Why did God honor it? Grace. Did David deserve it? No. Did David make mistakes? Yes. Did God honor David any way? Yes. God honored David in spite of his mistakes. God blessed David in spite of his mistakes.

Verse 18, “And David recovered all that the Amalekites had carried away; and David rescued his two wives.” Verse 18-19 are put in there to confirm verse 8; see how detailed it is. [19] “And there was nothing lacking to them, neither small nor great, neither sons nor daughters, neither spoil, nor anything that they had taken to them; David recovered all.” You see how careful the narrator is to say see, he’s waving the flag; God’s promises come true. [20] “And David took all the flocks and the herds, which they drove before those other cattle, and said, This is David’s spoil.”

Now an interesting event occurs that is going to mirror the work of Jesus Christ. In verses 21-25 after the battle is fought, after the spoil is taken, obviously jealousy breaks out. The two hundred men left behind shouldn’t get their share, say the four hundred that went on; look, we’re the ones that did the fighting, those guys fainted, we are the ones that keep the spoil, not them. [21, “And David came to the two hundred men, who were so faint that they could not follow David, whom they had made also to abide at the brook Besor. And they went forth to meet David, and to meet the people who were with him; and when David came near to the people, he greeted them.”

Verse 22 gives the divine viewpoint of that, “Then answered all the wicked men and men of Belial [worthless fellows], of those who went with David, and said, Because they went not with us, we will not give them any of the spoil that we have recovered, except to every man his wife and his children, that they may lead them away, and depart. [23] Then said David, Ye shall not do so, my brethren,” now watch the terminology, he has not used this, this is a fresh term that’s occurring in the text here, “Ye shall not do so, my brethren, with that which the LORD has given us, who has preserved us, who has delivered the company that came against us into our hand. [24] For who will hearken unto you in this matter? But as his part is who goes down to the battle, so shall his part be who tarries by the stuff [baggage]; they shall divide alike.” Then verse 25 adds a historic note, “And it was so from that day forward, that he made it a statute and ordinance for Israel to this day.” In other words, when the nation went to war and received spoils taken in war, it was distributed equally to the citizens of the nation.

Now what is the principle behind this? How does this mirror Christ and His work. This principle is nothing else than the grace principle all over again. You see, it was traditional in the Ancient Near East that only the soldiers, they’re the ones that partake of the spoils; the spoils could be anything from girls on down to baggage, and it was their thing, they were the ones that fought for it, they were the ones that earned it, they were the ones that got it. Now in David’s case the soldiers and those that stay at home get it. Why is there a difference between the way Israel handles it and the way the other nations handle it? Because Israel is a culture built on grace.

Principle: Who gave them the victory? You see, the soldiers didn’t get the victory, therefore it’s wrong for them to get the spoils. The Lord was the one that gave them the spoils, it was the Lord that gave them the victory, and because the Lord gave them the victory therefore the soldiers should not claim I got it; no you didn’t, the Lord got it. Now there’s two ways it was usually handled. Under the charam principle, all the spoil would be burned, now the reason for that was God gave them the victory, it was polluted, kill it, destroy it, burn it, all of it, the army has no right to live off the spoil, it is Mine, says God. Then on the second area it was done like David’s doing it here. If it was not a charam type battle, if the people were not placed under the ban, then the spoil went equally, share and share alike. Why? Grace; this acknowledges that the army was not the ones that got the victory, it was God that got the victory.

There’s several principles we can draw out of this. Jesus Christ gained a victory for us in history. And Jesus Christ is going to distribute gifts to us and He’s going to distribute these gifts in strange and peculiar ways. I am sure that there will be, when gifts are distributed, many of us who will say now just a minute, so and so is getting more than I’m getting, or so and so is getting the same amount I’m getting and I did more for you God than they did. Huh-un, every victory we’ve gotten is a victory because of grace. And therefore God, in order to keep us eternally in remembrance that the victories were obtained sheerly by grace, will so distribute the rewards to believers that it

will be an eternal monument to grace. You have gotten the victory because I gave it to you and I give the rewards the way I like to. God’s rewards are given, not in answer to our works, they’re given by grace.

But another point about this that ties this chapter together, is this a battle that God authorized? Yes; didn’t he go to the priest and talk to the ephod? Yes. Wait a minute, if this is a battle that God authorized, how come we haven’t had the imposition of the charam principle here. A most interesting point. You would think under the Amalekites and having God ordered the battle that David would have been instructed to kill them all, destroy them all. After all, remember what happened to Saul when he was ordered to kill everything of the Amalekites. Now doesn’t it strike you as a bit strange that at this one point in the Old Testament, different from every other point, God does not command total destruction of the Amalekites. Does that principle ring a bell with what just went on in chapter 27. What was going on in chapter 27? Who was destroying all the Amalekites? David. What is God saying? David, when you kill and slaughtered all the Amalekites, you did it out of personal vengeance, now I order you to kill the Amalekites and I don’t want you to destroy the spoils. In other words, God was milder on the Amalekites than David was. And I think that was deliberately put in there to teach David a lesson, that if it had been David he would have destroyed everything, just slaughtered everything, even burning the spoil, put it under the ban God, wipe them out. God surprised him; not in this case, in this case I’m going to be mild with it to teach you a lesson David, that I don’t want you fighting My battles for your vengeance. Keep your vengeance to yourself, don’t bring it into my battles. These are My enemies, they will be vanquished My way, not because of your personal vengeance.

And then the chapter concludes with this list of gifts, verses 26-31, and the point, actually the last part of verse 26, “[And when David came to Ziklag, he sent of the spoil unto the elders of Judah, even to his friends,] saying, Behold, a present for you of the spoil of the enemies of the LORD.” Not the enemies of David, the enemies of the Lord. Who is it? “To the elders of Judah.” Here the king begins to reign and how does he begin? All those towns that are listed in verses 27-30 are cities and towns that were sympathetic to David during the time of his conflict with Saul. All those are believers who were the loyal and faithful remnant. And the loyal and faithful remnant are rewarded by gifts. And David gave them just as Jesus Christ has given gifts to the church in Ephesians 4; it’s his victory, he dispenses the gift. This is David’s victory unto God, he dispenses the gift.

Next week we’ll find out the tragic end of Saul, that was going on as David was ascending the throne, so to speak, exercising his kingship, obtaining a deliverance under God, the de facto king, Saul was experiencing defeat and down fall. With our heads bowed.