1 Samuel Lesson 29
Saul’s Children Protect David – 19:1-18; Psalm
59
In the outline which we have followed, in 18:5-19:24, I gave the title
for that: Saul tries to kill David five times; change that, Saul tries to kill
David seven times. This was interesting
because this shows how when Saul is finally stopped in his pursuit of David
he’s going to be stopped in a most embarrassing way, and this again is going to
contribute to God’s working in grace with the man to get him to see his
carnality.
Now up to this point, to the beginning of chapter 19, we have seen that
Saul is a believer who typifies many believers today with human good. Saul is a person who on the outside has
adhered to the social norms and standards of his society; he has not violated
any of them in a gross way, but nevertheless, underneath he’s a seething
caldron of rebellion, and stubbornness against the Lord. It’s all done with pious phrases and pious
language, and yet on the inside this man is a very vicious person. And although at this point his mental
attitude sins have not yet become visible, they will shortly become visible in
a very gross way as the natural results of his rebellion just spill out into
the overt pattern of behavior. It might
be good to remind ourselves what this man’s accomplishments are to date. He has lost two armies, he has lost a chance
to destroy the Philistines forever, he lost a chance to start a dynasty, he
finally disqualified himself from being king over
Now why is Saul behaving in this way? It
goes back to what his soul looks like on the inside. He is a believer who has been on negative
volition for some time, the Holy Spirit has removed His illuminating ministry
so he is very dull spiritually; he has acquired a tremendous amount of human
viewpoint, so much so that in the Psalm that we’re going to study tonight David
refers to them as Gentiles, that’s the word for human viewpoint in the Old
Testament. And he is filled with hatred
toward God, hatred toward those who represent God, and therefore he is
exceedingly jealous of David. Anytime
David does a work for the Lord Saul is there to try and destroy that work. And then we finally have frustration and we’re
going to see how God frustrates him. But
not only does God frustrate Saul but he is a God with a sense of humor and
you’re going to see how God very humorously frustrates this man.
Now God has a sense of humor, and I hope that as we have studied the book of 1
Samuel you’ve noticed that this is a rare situation where people can glimpse
God’s humor and they can laugh with God.
And always when we encounter these passages there’ll be somebody that
can’t relax and enjoy the Lord’s sense of humor. We’ve had some very marvelous displays of
this, all the way from the time that God gave an outbreak of hemorrhoids to all
the Philistines on down to last week when He had David chop two hundred
foreskins off the bodies of the dead Philistines. And of course this is designed, lest you get
too irritated by this, God in His omniscience has deliberately designed this to
humiliate self-righteous proud believers who think this is beneath their
dignity to talk about these things. And
so in last week’s episode at the end of chapter 18 you’ll recall that the wife
of David, the first wife, Michal, who was a stuck up like her father, she
learned it from living with him, Michal was a woman who potentially could go
either way and someone raised the question about Michal and why David doesn’t
seem to be interested in who he marries, he’s just interested in the matter of
the dowry.
That isn’t really the case; that’s the case as far as the emphasis of
this point of the text is concerned in the text we have before us because the
dowry is the issue, but to understand what’s really happening you have to understand
that the best woman, the issue of the best woman, is an issue that goes back to
who is going to decide the best woman.
And in the ancient world oftentimes the parents were the ones who
decided the best woman and the best man because the children married very
young. And in David’s situation the
people he is trusting to ascertain the best woman and the best man are
apparently his father and Saul and others.
He respects their authority and therefore as far as he is concerned he
is going to accept their decision in these areas. Now that may seem very strange but that was
the way it operated in all civilizations in the ancient world. Now this doesn’t mean that the couple couldn’t
get interested in one another in various ways.
We have Genesis 34, when Shechem becomes interested Dinah, we have
another illustration of Samson in Judges 14, when he falls in love with a
Philistine woman. But the children
generally speaking were not left to decide for themselves, it was the parent’s
decision. And this is why throughout the
Mosaic Law the parents are charged with this responsibility.
Now you say this is strange, I thought marriage had to start with
love. No it doesn’t; the best man and
the best woman do not have to be in love when they marry, and in the Old
Testament there are numerous illustrations of this, where they learn to love
somebody over a time period after marriage.
And they did not love one another when they were first married. The concept of a marriage by love is
something that came out of English history and American history. But in the ancient world this was not always
the case. They approached it
realistically and therefore in this situation you don’t have that much of an
issue made of it.
However, you did notice last week that Michal, to the best of her soul,
which wasn’t very much, did appreciate David and like him, but “like” would be
about as strong a word as we could use for Michal’s love toward David and she
had a choice before her. She could stay
Saul’s daughter or she could become David’s wife. And that was the choice up to Michal. If she remained on negative volition she
would reflect the soul of her father; if she went on positive volition she would
reflect the soul of her husband. And
this was the choice that she had before her and we saw last week in the
character study how she wound up.
Now God had provided in advance for this woman. When she finally wound up in 2 Samuel 6 as
Saul’s daughter she didn’t have anybody to blame but herself. God had provided every single thing, all the
way from a dowry on down to humiliate this girl and get her straightened out
with regard to God’s grace. She was a
very proud individual, a very self-righteous girl and as a result of that God
worked it so her dowry was two hundred foreskins; a hundred foreskins, another
hundred added for grace, and everywhere this girl went, to the parties and so
on, they’d say hey, what did your husband give when he married you? Oh, he counted out two hundred foreskins to
my father. And so this was something
that she had to withstand, all the embarrassment at the social parties and so
on, when everybody would be trotting out, look at the riches, my husband gave
me this great treasure, my husband gave my family this great moment, and she
has to say well, David gave my father two hundred foreskins. This was designed to humiliate her in the
right way; it was designed to make her see that she was worth that much in
God’s sight, and therefore she should rely on grace.
This, you see, is exactly what a self-righteous person cannot
stand. They cannot stand grace. They always hate grace, and you can tell that
self-righteous people hate grace because they do not want to admit that they in
themselves are worthless. And until you
admit that morally speaking you are worthless in God’s sight, you are not ready
for grace. So God provided a most
interesting dowry for this woman to humiliate her and try to get her started on
the grace road, except she obviously rejected and we saw last week where that
left her.
Now in 19:1 we come to the fourth time that Saul tries to kill
David. The first two times, 18:10-11 is
during his music therapy sessions. While
David is playing the harp, he feigns madness; actually Saul does this, he
deliberately goes under, the demon takes over and he throws the spear of the
javelin at David twice. David escapes
two times because of his agility. And
then in
Now we come to the fourth time when Saul is going to kill him. And in verse 1 we have him giving a general
order to assassinate David. Now here is
where the human good facade drops off.
And if you are around people who are like this, who are self-righteous,
who are proud, who are engaged in religious piety, sooner or later the facade
is going to drop off and you will see some very vicious, very dangerous
people. And here in verse 1 you see
it. “And Saul spoke to Jonathan, his
son, and to all his servants, that they should kill David.” This means it goes out to the army that David
is persona non grata and he is going
to be removed directly. Now what’s the
change? The first few trials had been
trials of indirect attack, during the music therapy sessions it was an indirect
attack. During the dowry incident it was
again an indirect thing in that Saul hoped that David would never have made
it. Now he is tired of the indirect
approach and he is going to try a direct approach. He begins by issuing an order.
Then in verse 2 we have Jonathan come into play. Now the fourth time that Saul tries to kill
David, in the direct approach, God is going to humiliate him by his own son’s
betraying him. You recall that Jonathan
has not been on quite the highest terms with his father. In fact, both of these men are very antagonistic
to one another. The father gets nowhere
with the son and the son can’t stand his father. In fact, at one point Jonathan just outbreaks
to the army while they’re standing by getting some honey, he says my father has
damned this nation. And it was a very
strong statement coming from the crown prince.
So beginning at verse 2 the crown prince along the lines of human
viewpoint is going to meet the crown prince along the lines of divine viewpoint
and in studying the relationship between Jonathan and David, we’re going to see
a tremendous love between two men that is not homosexual. That’s what the liberals always like to make
this passage out to be; there’s no homosexuality in this whatever; this is a
tremendous attraction that these two men have that is based on the work of the
Holy Spirit in their lives. Jonathan is
by human viewpoint the crown prince of the nation; however we know that he is
not the real crown prince because of two things. Number one, Samuel has already said that the
Saulite dynasty will never start, it will not be. So that has eliminated Jonathan from the
throne, whether Jonathan knows this or not or whether he’s conscious of it is
another question. The second we know
that shows us that Jonathan is not the crown prince is because David has
already been anointed by Samuel. So you
have, then, David as the divine viewpoint crown prince.
Now there’s a tremendous attitude of grace. Jonathan is a tremendous believer. He is a believer in the Old Testament that
corresponds to Barnabas in the New Testament.
In the New Testament you have a very similar situation. You have Barnabas and you have Paul. Barnabas was on the scene first; Barnabas was
a great Christian leader; then after him came Paul. And when Paul showed up in the book of Acts,
Barnabas recognizes that Paul is going to replace him and be superior to
him. And it becomes a test of his
gracious attitude to step back and let someone else take the place of glory and
take the place of great public notice.
And it is the mark of a tremendous person who is meek, who recognizes
his position in God’s plan and willingly and thankfully steps back and let’s
God’s person take over. And Barnabas was
that kind of tremendous believer in the New Testament; Jonathan is the same in
the Old. Jonathan is a great believer
and he recognizes that David is going to, apparently, at this point replace
him. At least he recognizes David is
worthy of salvation.
This leads to a most interesting thing; the human viewpoint crown prince
by grace protects the divine viewpoint prince and Saul can’t stand this; this
infuriates Saul, that his own son is going to turn around and help this other
person who is not a member of the Kish family, and he is going to let him take
over the throne. Jonathan and David’s
friendship consists of a true spiritual love between the men. And we will define that as this: Jonathan
loves David to the extent that he prefers God’s plan for David to Jonathan’s
natural plan. Now that is love, and you
remember that definition, it gets rid of all the sentimentalism that you pick
up in our culture, all the stuff that you read about and get bombarded with,
that’s not love that you get bombarded with, that’s just sentimentalism and it
just goes along with the rest of the sick American society at this point. Love, according to Scripture, is when you
love someone, you prefer first of all God’s plan for their life over and above
your plans for them. And this means that
you can love many different people, but it means that you love them so much
that you want God’s plan for their life and therefore you are willing to back
down in subordination to that plan for their life. That is true love. And that is the love that Jonathan has for
David. The crown prince is going to step
down because of God’s plan for David.
Now, Jonathan then, warns David.
Jonathan, Saul’s son, who was in on the conference immediately betrays
his father. This is a betrayal, it is
treason but it is spiritual and he is filled with the Holy Spirit as he is a
traitor to his own father. He is not
responsible for betraying his father here, his father was the one. This is when the fourth divine institution is
out of line and when it’s out of line then believers are authorized to disobey
the authority. So Jonathan can betray,
and actually Jonathan is going to start a spy net inside his own father’s camp
that is going to report every single move of Saul’s soldiers to David. Jonathan is going to be an informer. And Saul will be undone by his traitorous
son, a son who loved the Lord, who was a traitor as unto the Lord, who was a
spy for his father’s enemy as unto the Lord, because he recognized God’s
plan.
Verse 2, “But Jonathan, Saul’s son, delighted much in David;” and the
emphasis here of course is on the divine viewpoint of it, it wasn’t just a
human relationship, “and Jonathan told David, saying, Saul, my father, is
seeking,” participle, meaning the orders are cut and they are in operation,
present participle, “is now seeking to kill you, therefore, I pray thee, take
heed to thyself until the morning, and abide in the secret place, and hide
thyself.” There’s an article in the
Hebrew, “the secret place.” Apparently
they had forebodings of what was going to happen and Jonathan established a
secret place where David would go. It’s
mentioned again in 20:19, they had a rendezvous point, it was established
outside the city of Jerusalem, and there apparently were supplies and arms at
the rendezvous point. And he said you
get out to that place that we have arranged.
So obviously here you see the son in a full scale program of betraying
his father. He is going to completely
out maneuver his father at this point.
And please notice it is done as unto the Lord and it is alright to
violate the authority of the third and fourth divine institutions in this
situation.
He said you go and you hide in the rendezvous point, “And I will go out
and stand beside my father in the field where you are,” so he’s going to call
for a field conference with Saul. And
the field conference is going to be located somewhere in their military
camp. The rendezvous actually is within
the confines of the military camp.
“...and I will commune with my father of thee; and what I see, that will
I tell you.” In other words, Jonathan
wanted to have the conversation nearby where David was.
Now in verses 4-5 Jonathan is going to give an argument to his
father. Verses 4-5 are important because
they give us an argument that occurs about 150 times in the Psalms; over and
over and over this argument appears in the Psalms and this is the argument
Jonathan is going to use with his father.
It is a key argument because it shows us the office of Christ. “And Jonathan spoke good of David unto Saul,
his father, and said unto him, Let not the king sin against his servant,
against David; because he has not sinned against thee, and because his works
have been toward you very good. [5] For he did put his life in his hand, and
slew the Philistine, and the LORD wrought a great salvation for all
Israel. You saw it, and you did rejoice;
why, then, will you sin against innocent blood, to slay David without a
cause?”
The first thing you notice about the argument in verses 4-5, an argument
that occurs again and again in the Psalms, is point one, David is innocent, so
the suffering that David faces at this point is not deserved suffering; this is
not disciplinary suffering upon David’s soul.
This is undeserved suffering upon David’s soul. So at this point we’re introduced to a new
category of suffering which I will expand as we start to work with the
Psalm. So the first thing is that
David’s suffering is undeserved suffering.
The second thing you’ll notice in verses 4-5 is the fact that David is
an instrument of judgment and salvation; both those words go together. You cannot have salvation without having
judgment. Go back to the archetype of
all salvation and all judgment, Noah’s flood.
You had to have a total mass destruction first before you could have
salvation from it. And so in the Exodus
you had to have a destruction of Egypt first before you could be freed from
it. And so here, in order to lead the
nation into blessing, into salvation, into prosperity, David must be an
instrument of God’s judgment upon the nations round about. And that judgment, mentioned in verse 5, is
an argument that occurs over and over in the Psalms. Remember those two words, you cannot have one
without the other. Judgment/salvation,
and David is God’s instrument of judgment/salvation. Remember we have spent weeks and weeks at the
first part of Samuel in establishing the office of king. Now here’s where it’s going to pay off
because you must understand this office is not man made, this is not just any
political office. The office of king in
Israel was especially designed to reflect the work and ministry of Jesus
Christ. Therefore, David, in order to
fulfill the office of king must fulfill the roles of judgment/salvation. Therefore, Jonathan is arguing, since David
is an instrument of judgment/salvation, David himself must be preserved.
So the third point in Jonathan’s argument is that to benefit from
David’s ministry we have to preserve David.
And David himself is going to use this as an argument to petition the
Lord for his own personal survival.
Now verse 6 we have the end to at least the fourth time that Saul tried
to kill David. He’s issued general
orders, and then in verse 6 he cancels them.
So this is the end of the fourth incident but again this end in verse 6
is going to show you something about the fall of a carnal Christian. “And Saul harkened unto the voice of
Jonathan; and Saul swore, As the LORD lives, he shall not be slain. [7] And
Jonathan called David, and Jonathan showed him all those things. And Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he
was in his presence, as in times past.”
So the orders have been cancelled and thus ends the fourth
incident. However, here you have a
believer in compound carnality and a believer in compound carnality is one who
is very unstable.
This is why we do not have dedication services at Lubbock Bible Church
because this kind of behavior pattern you are watching in verses 6-7 is exactly
what goes on in most of those services.
You have carnal Christians who have gotten human viewpoint in their
souls, who actually, therefore, hate God, and they won’t tell you that, they’ll
go through all the pious lingo but in effect they hate God. Do you know how we can tell they hate
God? They don’t give thanks for His work
in their life; they don’t give thanks for the pressures and the trials, and
there’s no thanksgiving, therefore there’s no love, therefore there must be
hate, no in between. So you have hate,
then, toward God in compound carnality and you have frustration. Part of the frustration is a tremendous guilt;
guilt over everything, guilt over anything but tremendous quantities of
guilt. Now along comes someone who
offers a glimpse of hope, some gimmick, something that they can use to assuage
the sense of guilt and they’ll jump into it with all due sincerity.
Now at this point Saul is not lying; Saul really means it in verse 6, he
really wants to swear that David will never be harmed. Saul is sincere, he has the best of
intentions. He has a spirit, a Holy
Spirit motivation, he is operating at this point in the divine viewpoint. So for a moment in his life Saul is in
fellowship. But when a carnal Christian
uses 1 John 1:9 and gets back in the bottom circle, they do actually get back
in fellowship but they get back in fellowship for only a short time. But while they are back in fellowship they
start doing things that are beyond the circle of their faith. Let’s illustrate this. When we become Christians God the Holy Spirit
puts us in union with Christ. That never
changes; but down here we have a circle that indicates the sphere of our
belief. This is the sphere of your
relationship at any time. When you first
become a Christian it’s like this; as you mature in the Lord that circle gets
bigger. That means that you can believe
God over a greater and greater area.
Now suppose you get on compound carnality. What happens to the bottom circle under
conditions of compound carnality? They
start reducing back again and so that circle gets very, very small and so the
believer, used to believing God over large areas in his life now no longer
can. So Saul is here and he has a very
small circle; at one time he could have sworn that David would have never been
harmed, trusted God to enable him to keep that oath and it would have been
kept. At one time Saul could have
possibly made that oath legitimately as unto the Lord, but at this point as a
compound carnal believer his sphere of faith is so small that he is asking
himself to do something that he cannot do by faith. As a result he is operating outside the boundaries
of his bottom circle. He is way out; he
thinks he’s doing this sincerely, and that is why sincerity doesn’t cut it with
the Christian. Sincerity is wrong in the
Christian life, sincerity is human good.
Sincerity doesn’t mean a thing.
So when someone comes up to you and says so and so does this and so and
so does that but they’re sincere, sincerity doesn’t mean anything because what
it just says is that so and so is living outside the circle of their
faith.
Saul can’t make this oath in verse 6, he isn’t capable of making this
oath in verse 6. Saul, right now, has so
much scar tissue on his soul that he can’t believe something like this, this is
trying to do too much, and that’s always my observation from counseling what
happens. Carnal Christians who have been
out in the toulies for a long time and have accumulated a lot of scar tissue,
try to come back too fast. They try to
get back in fellowship and immediately they’re going to start rocking on like they
always did, and then boom, five minutes later they’re out of it and very
discouraged because they’re out of it.
Why? They can’t do what they used
to be able to do, they have to recover slowly.
So if the compound Christian is back in fellowship, he gets back in that
bottom circle and does just what he can; he can barely stay with the Word and
that’s all he should be asked to do. A
person who is going on the many months that it take to recover from extensive
compound carnality cannot do Christian service.
They cannot be expected to perform, they cannot be doing things that
they would normally otherwise do and do easily because they are so injured by
carnality their soul must be restricted to very simple activities. And that is how compound carnality is
overcome.
Saul violates the principle and as king, since he is king and he thinks
therefore he can do anything, which is again human viewpoint, he issues this
oath. Not only does he rescind the
general orders but he invokes an oath which is a very serious thing, because in
the Law once you swear an oath, even if it’s wrong, you have to carry it
out. He is not going to carry it out and
this is going to be one further plank in his downfall.
Verse 8, here we have the next incident.
Here’s the fifth time Saul tries to assassinate David. We just finished with the fourth incident,
verses 1-7, and now we come to the fifth incident. “And there was war again; and David went out,
and fought with the Philistines, and slew them with a great slaughter, and they
fled from him. [9] And the evil spirit from the LORD was upon Saul, as he sat
in his house with his javelin in his hand; and David played with his hand. [10]
And Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin,” now what’s
all this about, why are we back to music therapy again. What is the intervening verse between verse 7
and 9; it is verse 8 that describes an incident that sets Saul off into
compound carnality once again. What is
David doing in verse 8 that would knock Saul back out of fellowship?
You see, Saul’s soul is very interesting to study for a lot of
reasons. Saul has a mind, he has a
conscience and he has emotions. Now all
the time that we operate we’re training our mind and our emotions. Now you may not think that you’re doing it
but you are, all of us are. You can’t
help this, you are automatically doing it.
You parents, you are training your children to react just by the way you
act. They model off of you so therefore
you should have double motivation to stay in fellowship. Not only are you living your life for
yourself but you’re living your life for your children. Now you have the mind and the emotions of
Saul. That mind and that set of emotions
have been trained in numerous –R learned behavior patterns, in particular one,
jealousy. He has trained himself by
reacting this way to situation after situation after situation after
situation. All right, Saul gets back in
fellowship, here he is, here’s his small bottom circle. For a moment Saul is right with the Lord, for
a moment he is, if he were in the New Testament dispensation, filled with the
Holy Spirit. For a while he goes on and
he is all right, and he could even be growing spiritually during this time
period. But what happens? He meets the same old situation once again,
all over again. David is a hero.
Remember the last time he got out of fellowship was when the women used
to dance in the streets and one of them made up a song, and as the front of the
parade would go by they would sing Saul, Saul, you have killed your thousands;
and then as David’s contingent would march by, David, David, you’ve killed your
ten thousands. And somebody reported,
hey Saul, they’re singing a different line back there, they’re singing
something about ten thousand and you’re only getting a thousand. And that set Saul off. Well, he has reacted this way again and again
and again. So even though as a compound
carnal Christian he got back in fellowship, he didn’t stay in fellowship long
enough to work on this, almost now, habitual reaction pattern. So he faces the same situation. Here David is, he’s a hero and Saul
automatically reacts. Now why? He is a compound carnal Christian; as a
result his soul is trained to act this way.
It takes time to unlearn these kinds of behavior patterns.
This is why a dedication service is wrong; you have groups of believers
who feel guilty and they want to do something like Saul; I’m going to dedicate
my life and so I’ll get rid of all my guilt, I’ll just trot down the aisle
while they’re singing this hymn and I’ll dedicate my life to go to the mission
field and I’ll do this and I’ll do that.
They have no right to do that; if they are so guilty and so screwed up
that they think coming down an aisle is going to help, they have no business
dedicating their life for the mission field.
People on the mission field need trained workers, not people who have
dedicated their lives because they feel guilty or something. So here is a compound carnal Christian and it
means months; my observation as a pastor, this is a process of months, not
days, not weeks, months, possibly years.
Months, at least, to overcome patterns of compound carnality.
Saul has not had time to unlearn the mental attitude pattern of reaction
of jealousy and so immediately we find him out of fellowship at the end of
verse 8. Verse 9, “And the evil spirit
from the LORD was upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his javelin in his
hand; and David played with his hand.”
And we’re back to music therapy again, Saul is under demonic oppression;
notice this. And why? Is it the demon’s fault? No it is not, it is Saul’s fault, Saul has
reacted with this –R learned behavior pattern mental attitude jealousy. As a result, he has opened up his soul to
this kind of demonic infestation again.
And so we have an evil spirit, which is a demon, and the demon begins to
oppress him and cause him tremendous grief and agony. And he calls for musical therapy from David
and David comes in and plays for him.
Verse 10, “And Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the
javelin, but he slipped away out of Saul’s presence; and he smote the javelin
into the wall. And David fled, and
escaped that night.” Here you have a
person who pretends to be mentally ill, like this business about somebody being
mentally so they go off their rocker and shoot somebody and then we put them
away in the psychiatric funny farm.
That’s a bunch of bologna, a person who is mentally ill is responsible
for their actions and here’s a passage that proves it. Saul is guilty of this sin. Why is he guilty? Because he was guilty of the sin which was a
mental attitude sin of jealousy that led him into the state. So Saul is responsible for what he does while
he’s mentally ill. Some of you that get
on a jury, just forget the mentally ill business. The person you see who is mentally ill is a
person who has violated the norms and standards of God, barring certain cases
of organic complications.
So we have, then, the evil spirit, the demon, begins to oppress
him. And then he uses the mental illness
thing. So here is the fifth time he
tries to kill David. You get the
impression David wasn’t wanted; here’s the fifth time that his father-in-law
has tried to kill him. He escaped, verse
11, so “Saul also sent messengers,” and now we’re introduced to the sixth time
his father-in-law tried to get rid of him.
Hopefully those of you who are getting married won’t have this problem
with your in-laws but if you do, we have an answer for it and it will be found
in the Psalms, so you pay attention. You
can even handle in-laws that are this bad.
Verse 11, “Saul also sent messengers unto David’s house, to watch him,
and to slay him in the morning;” and this is the incident we briefly reviewed
last week where Michal, David’s wife, notice here, she is following divine
viewpoint and called David’s wife, “and Michal, David’s wife, told him, saying,
If you save not your life tonight, tomorrow you shall be slain.” So at this
point David escapes, you’ll notice verse 17, Saul is frustrated, he can’t find
him, Michal lies to her father and covers up for her husband. Again a violation of the third divine
institution but done to justify David.
So we have a most interesting situation.
Just look at the record, look at the scorecard, we’ve got 6 different attempts
on David’s life. Let’s look how they
panned out; the first one was a music therapy session and Saul missed. Why?
David was agile. The second was
at music therapy session, missed again.
The third one was the dowry, not only wasn’t he killed but he came back
with a hundred extra, so he missed there.
Now he comes to the fourth incident and the fourth incident was general
orders and he was undone by his son Jonathan.
So he has Jonathan against him, and Jonathan the crown prince of human
viewpoint is the one who delivers the crown prince of divine viewpoint. And then the fifth time after this is another
music therapy session and he misses again.
And then finally, the sixth session, his own daughter, Michal, betrays
him. So doesn’t that look like a real
good record? You get the impression that
Saul, if he had any moxy, which he doesn’t at this point, but if he had any
maturity he’d kind of ask himself, how come the Lord is frustrating my attempts
to do away with this guy. But obviously
that would be too profound a question for Saul to raise at this point.
So let’s turn to a Psalm that David wrote during this last incident,
Psalm 59. Psalm 59 was written to teach
us how to use the faith technique against in-laws that try to kill us. Notice the heading of Psalm 59, it tells us
exactly when and where this occurred.
“To the chief Musician, Al-tashheth,” now that is a Hebrew term which
means do not destroy, we don’t know why that was attached there, it was attached
to about five Psalms in the Old Testament.
Whether they kept it at the end of the music packet or what, we don’t
know, “don’t throw it out” in other words.
“...Michtam of David, when Saul sent and they watched the house to kill
him.” That is part of the original text;
that should not be fine print at the top; that should be verse 1 in your
Bibles. If you’re reading a Bible that
doesn’t have that heading you’re reading a wrong Bible, because they have left
out part of the inerrant text of God’s Word.
So the Psalm heading tells us this was written during that night.
Now it may have been written in its final form later but the incident
described in Psalm 59 is what went on in David’s mind when he was trapped in
his house that night. Outside you could
see the secret police; outside he could see the assassins, inside was just one
woman, the king’s daughter, his wife.
And there was no human way out of the situation. Sure, it says Michal let him out the window
but that’s only part of it, that’s just to show you that Michal helped him but
that didn’t solve David’s problem, it said spies are down at the bottom when
she let him out the window wouldn’t have done much good. So don’t get too flippant about reading 1
Samuel 19, it wasn’t that easy, he just dropped down the window and ran down the
fire escape. That’s not the point.
The point is that he was faced with a tremendous jam here.
Why is he back at his house? I
thought we had left him out in the secret place. He was lured back. Remember after the fourth time when Saul
rescinded the general orders he came back out of the hiding place, he is now
trapped in the city; he is trapped in his own house, they have guards watching
his house day and night, and he knows that in the morning he’s going to get it. So this is the situation and from the human
point of view it looks hopeless. These
spies and assassins were specially trained to make things look like an
accident. They wouldn’t just kill him
with a sword or anything like that, that wasn’t the way they did it. They pushed them off the roof or something
and made it look like he was sleepwalking or something that night and had a bad
dream. They were trained as professional
assassins to make it look like an accident.
You don’t murder a national hero, you make it look like an accident and
David knows exactly how these teams of professional assassins have been
trained.
So Psalm 59 teaches us how David responded to the crisis with the faith
technique. This is an individual lament
Psalm, and is divided up. The first two
verses are your address; here is where David turns to the Lord. Verses 3-7 are the lament, that’s when David
describes his problem. Verses 8-10 is
the trust section which shows you how he viewed the Lord Jesus Christ and how
he relaxed in God’s promises in the middle of pressure. Verses 11-15, the petition that David
made. Finally, verses 16-17, David’s
praise. So it’s a typical individual
lament Psalm.
Let’s correlate Psalm 59 with 1 Samuel 19. David composed this Psalm under inspiration
in order to show us how to use the faith technique. So the Psalm has a purpose for us today and
that is to train us in David’s mentality; it is to give us a model to imitate,
that when you are in the middle of similar pressures you will respond the same
way David did.
The second point about this Psalm is that the Holy Spirit abstracts
spiritual truths to make it easier to apply.
The Holy Spirit is abstracting or generalizing spiritual principles;
therefore there is a lack of details here that may confuse you. If you wonder why there aren’t more
details—the reason is the Holy Spirit wants this Psalm to teach you how to do
it in many, many different situations, situations that will be far different
from the situation David faced.
The third point is that David’s survival at home is linked to his
ministry of defeating Israel’s foreign enemies.
David’s survival at home is linked to his ministry of killing the enemy. David, apparently thought this Psalm after
Michal told him to leave.
Now let’s look at the first two verses, the address to the Psalm. Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God;
defend me from those who rise up against me. [2] Deliver me from the workers of
iniquity, and save me from bloody men.”
The verb “deliver me” is imperative, as is the verb “deliver me” in
verse 2. That marks the address and
shows us immediately that David did not panic.
It shows us that when David looked out the window he probably looked out
the back and said I wonder how many they’ve got at watch in the back; oh,
they’re got three guards back here. And
he pushed the curtain away and looked at the side and they had guards down
there, looked to the other side, they had guards there. They knew where David’s house was, they had
the place surrounded that night. And so
David surveys very calmly the situation, and now in verses 1-2 instead of
saying oh, Michal, Michal, where is the tranquilizers, or let’s call the
psychiatrist, or let’s do some other goofy thing.
No, he didn’t do that. He immediately
went to the Lord in prayer. It was a
well thought out petition. “Deliver me
from mine enemies, O my God,” immediately he begins to apply the faith
technique, “defend me against them who rise up against me.” The ones that “rise up” is a title to illustrate
that these are members of his own country, they are former men in his army,
they are men who were once his friends.
As you will experience, undoubtedly, in your life, hopefully not, but
inevitably to be realists you will. You
will experience believers who were one time your friends and will turn against
you under conditions of compound carnality, because they violate the principles
of the Word, they won’t stay with the Word, eventually you’ll reap this kind of
thing. “...them that rise up against
me,” those are friends, at one time these were men that he shared with in
battle, they fought together and so on.
And now they’ve turned against him in this click that’s surrounding King
Saul.
“Deliver me from the workers of iniquity,” now the “workers of
iniquity,” it’s a Hebrew participle meaning that is their nature to do this,
and that illustrates that these men too are in compound carnality. It shows that the men that Saul has gathered
around him are carnal like himself. It
is part of their nature indicated by the Hebrew participle, to be continually
doing this kind of thing. Troublemakers,
and again, because they have this same chaos in the heart, because they hate
the Lord, they also hate David. So as
Saul, so with his servants, they are all a group of believers on compound
carnality. They are workers, habitual
workers of iniquity. “...save me from
bloody men,” now that’s not written by an Englishman, “bloody men” is literal
men of blood, and it is talking about murderers. This is a title of the fact that they are
assassins. These are the assassination
squad that was sent out in the ancient world to do away with political
competition; they didn’t “bug,” they just cut your head off and that way it
saved a lot of investigations. So we
have assassination teams spreading out in the city to do away with David.
Now in verse, beginning in verse 3 and going to verse 7, he describes
the situation, and we’ll get as far as we can through this section and next
time we’ll finish Psalm 59 and go back and see the answer to this Psalm at the
end of chapter 19 of 1 Samuel. But
verses 3-7 describe the situation from David’s perspective. “For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul; the
mighty are gathered against me, not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O LORD.
[4] They run and prepare themselves apart from any fault of mine; awake to help
me, and behold.”
All right, “they lie in wait,” this means that they are setting up
ambushes around the house, around his front door so that in the morning when he
walks out he’s going to get it. It will
be done in some very smooth way, again, to make it look like an accident. They don’t dare to kill him outright because
David is too much of a national hero so they’re going to stage a little
accident on the front porch, he’s going to go out and get the paper and he’s
going to trip. “...the mighty are
gathered together,” now the word “mighty” is a word from the Hebrew which means
very strong.
And there’s a play on the word “strong” in this Psalm. Let me show you where this word occurs
elsewhere. The “mighty” in verse 3
refers to the strength of the compound carnal believers. If you go back down through verse 9 you will
see “His strength” which refers to the Lord’s strength, same noun. In verse 16 the word “power” is the same word
for strength, and in verse 17, “O my strength.”
So there’s a theme that is picked up with the repetition of this word
“strength,” and it’s the idea and issue of the human viewpoint versus divine
viewpoint, here is the strength of David’s enemies, versus His strength. Now, who’s stronger, David or his
enemies? From the human point of view
David’s enemies are stronger than David but David has the Lord on his side and
infinity plus one is always a majority.
So David is going to say that “You are my strength,” so he identifies
himself with the Lord’s strength.
Now this should tell you about how David reacted to pressures in his
life. Instead of whining and crying
about it, what did he do. He said
listen, my strength is the Lord’s strength and I’m just going to relax in His
strength. I don’t have the strength to
do away with those assassination teams out here, but I have enough trust that
the Lord is going to do something, and the beautiful thing about this word
“strength” is just doesn’t mean brute strength, it means clever strength. And the petition he’s going to make is
something fantastic. The petition has to
do with continuing this word play of strength.
“For, lo, they lie in wait for my life,” “my soul” means my life, “the
mighty ones” or “the strong ones are gathered together against me.”
Then he introduces something that is bothering David. Now David is bothered in this pressure
situation, but what is bothering him is not what would normally bother you or
me. We would normally be bothered by the
pressure, oh Lord, how are we going to get out of this kind of thing. And we’d come up with oh God, help me or some
other idiotic prayer. And David is not going
to pray “O God, help me.” He is going to
pray in the name of the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the commander in
chief of the angelic host, to have an indirect strategy to wipe these guys out
on the front door. And this is how David
is going to pray. It is a very well
thought through prayer. But before he
prays it he first has to analyze the situation and in analyzing it he does find
himself irritated. The thing that
irritates David, and we know this irritates him because he’s going to go and
complain to Jonathan about it in chapter 20, is the last part of verse 3, they
are not doing it “for my transgression, nor for my sin,” and with this we are
introduced to the doctrine of suffering.
Why do believers suffer? There
are six reasons which I have given for believers suffering. By way of quick review, the first three reasons
why we suffer have to do with the fact that we earn it. The first reason we suffer is because of
Genesis 2:17, we have imputed to our account Adam’s sin; we fell with him and
with that we violated Genesis 2:17, since we violated Genesis 2:17, which is
“in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die, we reap the results of
the curse. So the first reason we suffer
is because we are in union with Adam and we suffer as his sons; we are still beni Adam, the sons of Adam.
The second reason believers suffer is because they reject grace. This is taught in Romans 1:20 and 1 Cor.
11:30, 32. Believers suffer because they
reject God’s grace. After God’s grace
has ameliorated some of the curse, as for example in giving you physical
health, to use one illustration, if it were just for the curse and we had no
grace operating, we wouldn’t make it.
Most of us would be dead by now, our bodies would be deteriorated, the
genes in our bodies would be so screwed up with mutations that we would be all
mongoloid; if it were not for God’s grace we would wind up all as mongoloids;
we wouldn’t even make it to that stage.
That is the outworking of the curse.
Now God is gracious and gives us the gift of good health in a fallen
world; you remember that, good health is NOT your right by virtue of the
law. Good health in a damned world with
a damned body made from elements of the damned earth is grace all the way. Have you thought of that in giving
thanks? So there is a gift. But believers who reject God’s grace and
aren’t thankful for the gift of physical life, and violate them by stupid
behavior patterns in the area of physical health are going to reap more
suffering. And this goes for body, it
goes for mind, and it goes conscience.
So the second reason why we suffer is by rejection of God’s grace to us
in a fallen world.
The third reason why we suffer is because we are in association with
other believers in the divine institutions who are suffering. You may be married to a person who under
category one and two are suffering, therefore since you’re married to them you
suffer. That’s what you owe when you
tripped down the altar and you said “for better or for worse.” Well, that’s the worse, when your partner
goes under and you’re locked in the divine institution with them, and that’s
the way it is. So that’s the third way,
association with other believers who are under the pile and you’re under the
pile because you’re holding hands with them.
So now we come to the fourth reasons.
Beginning with the fourth reason for suffering we approach the
undeserved suffering. In category four,
five and six type suffering, it is not a direct result of your personal sin.
And this is the kind of suffering that upsets David because in his life now
it’s this kind of suffering that begins to occur to him. David, as king, is being persecuted and he is
under pressure. See, when David was
fighting the lion out with the sheep, that didn’t bother him because that was
part of category one suffering and he recognized it; it was just part of living
in a fallen world, so that was pressure that he understood. When he faced the Goliath thing, that was
category two type suffering on the nation Israel because the nation Israel was
being judged by the Philistines, so that didn’t bother David. David had faced pressure and suffering before
but not in this new category. Here was a
new category of suffering and in the fourth category of suffering we suffer
because we are identified with Christ in Satan’s world. This is not due just to the curse; category
four is because we are identified with Jesus Christ in the middle of Satan’s
world, John 15:18-19, category four type suffering, and here is the category
type suffering that is new to David.
He’s struggling with it in this Psalm.
The fifth reason why we suffer, to learn truth. This is not due to personal sin either. To learn truth, Deut. 8:2-5. Jesus Christ experienced category five
suffering. Hebrews 2 says though He were
a Son, yet learned He obedience through suffering. So Jesus Christ experienced category five
suffering, Christ experienced category four suffering. Look at the principle, of whom is David a
type? David is going to be a type of
Christ. If Christ is going to suffer
category four suffering, category five suffering, then shouldn’t David? Yes, and this is why David is now, in his
life, having to face category four suffering and category five type
suffering. Category five is to learn
truth.
Category six suffering, Christ also suffered this; David also suffered
this. You will also suffer this, and
that is to produce a historic testimony to grace toward believers, unbelievers,
and angels. Three categories: believers,
2 Cor. 1:3-6; unbelievers, 1 Peter 1:12-20; and angels, Eph. 3:10. So God puts the heat on us because He is
using us to produce a historic testimony, so other people can see our lives and
see how God’s grace works. People cannot
think abstractly, we all need concrete illustrations and therefore the Bible is
filled with this, and God today is working to produce believers who will be
able to help other believers, either directly or indirectly. You, by facing the pressures of life with the
faith technique can win people to Jesus Christ.
Here’s the way the Holy Spirit works, category six suffering, and it’s a
very powerful instrument of evangelism.
People who would never darken a church door can be vitally changed by
watching a life that responds to pressure through the faith technique and they
say whatever they have, I want. So
that’s another reason for suffering.
Now it’s category four, five and six suffering that David is
encountering. We know this by his remark
in verse 3, “the mighty are gathered against me,” that’s the pressure, “not for
my transgressions, nor for my sin,” so that knocks out the first three type
sufferings. David says I’ve checked this
out, I do not deserve this. And David is
right, this is not piousness, this is not pseudo righteousness. David is absolutely correct, I haven’t
deserved this; I haven’t deserved this pressure, I have been faithful to Saul,
I have done my job as unto the Lord, I have killed when He has ordered me to
kill, I have married his daughter according to the agreement. I have been as faithful a soldier as I
possibly could. I have done everything
for that man that he could want, and yet now he wants to kill me. I am not in the wrong here. So David is very right and this Psalm is one
of the first Psalms David wrote, even though it’s Psalm 59, a high number, it
is one of the first Psalms that David wrote and it is one of the Psalms that
was coming to grips with this second type suffering, category four, five and
six.
Verse 4, “For they run and prepare themselves without my fault,” again
showing category four type, category five type, category six type
suffering. It is not part of the first
three categories. So he makes a
preliminary petition, “awake to help me, and behold.” “Awake” means for God to put into action some
plan that is visible to him historically, that is, that he can look at. And next time we get together we’ll see, as
he finishes his analysis of the situation, as he works further and he works to
apply the faith technique, he is going to design in the middle of this
tremendous pressure a tremendous prayer request. And it is a model for us to follow in our own
personal dealings with this kind of pressure.
With our heads bowed....