1 Samuel Lesson 30
David’s and his emotions – Psalm 59, 1 Samuel
19
Shall we continue our study in 1 Samuel by turning to Psalm 59 and we’ll
finish the Psalm that David wrote while he was encountering his sixth
trial. David had a series of trials, a
series of tests; in 1 Samuel 18:5-20:42 there are many unsuccessful attempts by
Saul to kill David. By this time Saul is
pretty much psychotic, because of his carnality, he’s in an extreme situation
of compound carnality, and it’s beginning to show. When a person who is a believer, who has
become involved in a prolonged period of being out of fellowship, who has
failed to use 1 John 1:9 to regain fellowship, who has failed to follow the
will of God for a long period of time, then that person develops an accretion
of carnality. And the result of this is
that the human good façade drops off.
You can usually tell it’s coming because a prolonged period out of
fellowship will breed this kind of situation.
And whereas Saul appeared as a perfectly moral and ethical person at the
first part of 1 Samuel, no longer is he appearing now; the human good façade is
dropping off as his carnality comes to the surface.
The first two attempts he made on David’s life was during the music
therapy, when David was using the harp to calm his soul by means of music. The third attempt was when he wanted David to
go out and kill one hundred Philistines as dowry for his daughter. He thought it was going to result in David’s
death. The result was, that God so
greatly worked on it, in His sovereignty God worked it out so David killed two
hundred Philistines and then brought the foreskins back as a dowry for his very
proud daughter, Michal. And every place
that this girl in high society had to go she had to say what the dowry was
given to her father by her husband, and this was God’s way of humiliating a
very self-righteous woman. The fourth
attempt on David’s life was when Saul put out a general order to the army to
assassinate David and Jonathan knew of the order and he convinced his father
not to do this. The fifth attempt on
David’s life was again under conditions of music therapy and the sixth
condition was when David was sleeping in his home and Saul ordered some
professional assassins to occupy the front and back doorsteps for the morning
assassination.
It was during this abiding in his home that these thoughts came to his mind and
the Holy Spirit preserved the thoughts in David’s heart in Psalm 59. So for that reason Psalm 59 is a picture of a
believer under tremendous persecution, using the faith technique. And for that reason Psalm 59 is very
important. It shows you, with reference
to 1 Samuel 19, the historical situation and the theological thinking in
David’s mind.
One of the first two verses was the introduction and the address; verses
3-10 was David’s description of the situation and his confidence in the
Lord. And we stopped around verse
4. Verse 5, “Thou, therefore, O LORD God
of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the heathen [nations]; be not
merciful to any wicked transgressors. [6] They return at evening’ they make a
noise like a dog, and go round about the city.
[7] Behold, they belch out with their mouth; Swords are in their lips;
for who, say they, does hear?”
Now beginning in this verse David shows God the situation, he contrasts
it because the word, “therefore,” there is a strong adversative construction,
and so here he is moving from a lament to a source of hope, and it heightens
the power of his faith here, so when he says “Thou, therefore” it means in
contrast to the bad situation, “You, O God,” so when you see this “therefore”
it means that David’s mentality is off of his problem and onto the sovereignty,
the righteousness, the justice, the love, the omniscience, omnipresence,
omnipotence, immutability and eternality of God. These are the attributes of God; this is what
God is like. And David is a believer who
has great finesse in applying the faith technique because he was able to move
from his problems to the essence of God.
And this is occupation with the character of God and this is the test
and source of our faith; this shows that faith is operating.
“Thou therefore, O LORD God of hosts,” “O LORD” is O Jehovah, which is
God’s proper name in the Old Testament.
Then he amplifies the proper name with two terms or two titles, the next
two phrases are actually two titles, the first title is “God of armies,” and
this means that God is sovereign over angelic forces and He is sovereign over
the armies under the fifth divine institution of history. So when it says God is a God of armies this
is His military title. God has a
military title in God’s Word, as well as Jesus Christ, this is Jesus Christ’s
military, “O God of armies.” There is no
pacifism taught in Scripture. So this is
God’s title, “God of armies,” and then it is set in apposition with another
title, “the God of Israel.” Why is this
title here, it’s certainly an obvious fact that the God of armies, the Lord, is
the God of Israel.
Why, then, is there emphasis upon
Now we have the reverse, there are Jews who can manifest Gentile natures
and here we have Psalm 59 where you will take a Gentile who is racially a Jew
but actually spiritually he is a Gentile.
And this is why the Gentiles come in here, and because they do, David
introduces us by the term, “the God of Israel,” meaning that He is the God who
rightfully belongs to those with the national character of Jacob. Remember the word “
“…awake to visit all the Goiim,” or the Gentiles, and the word “visit”
is the word that refers to final judgment; that means a call to eliminate them,
to deal with them, to judge them in history.
And so it’s a call upon God to utilize the law of temporal effect and
bring it into action at this point. Why? Because from David’s perspective it’s not
being brought in at this point. You
remember we reviewed the problem of suffering and showed there are six
categories of suffering.
There are six reasons the believer in Jesus Christ suffers; three are
direct suffering, suffering that we earn, that we bring upon directly
ourselves. The last three reasons are
indirect suffering and this is a new category.
The first reason is Genesis 2:17, we have all failed to uphold to that,
we all are in some way, though the Bible does not go into details, we are in
some way identified with Adam in the Garden.
So by Genesis 2:17 we know that we have violated the commands and
therefore we live in a fallen world.
This is nothing but the doctrine of the fall. So since we all are to blame for that, we all
share in physical and spiritual suffering.
The second reason Christians suffer is because after the fall we
continue to reject God’s grace, this is taught in Romans 1:20 and following by
application and taught by interpretation in 1 Corinthians. 11.
o the second reason we suffer is because we go on negative volition to
God’s grace. God’s grace offers you a
perfect way of restoration; God’s grace says if you will confess your sins you
can be immediately restored; when you perceive the issue that God is making in your life and you confess that, that is
immediate and it is not something that you have to do, something you have to
work up. Nevertheless we have believers
who exercise in self-pity, in making excuses, do everything they can except use
1 John 1:9 and they are generally miserable and make everyone around them
miserable. So this is the second reason
for suffering, it is a rejection of God’s offered grace.
A third reason for Christian suffering is association with others who
are suffering under the divine institutions.
Example: women marry men out of fellowship; man marries woman out of
fellowship, compound carnality case. And
so they suffer. Another illustration, in
the fourth divine institution nation believers will suffer with unbelievers
when God judges a national entity.
Though He can preserve to some degree, the believers suffer because the
nation is apostate. So it’s association
with others in the divine institutions.
Those are all direct ways of suffering, reasons one, two, and
three. But reasons four, five and six
are indirect; reason four, we suffer because we are in Satan’s world, John
15:18; that means because we are in hostile territory, we are in Satan’s world
and Satan is the god of this world, and obviously he doesn’t take too kindly to
subversives. And every system of society
will always have its taboos, things it cannot and will not tolerate. Satan will not tolerate believers; the only
reason why you are here, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, is because of
God’s grace in protecting you from the wrath of Satan. The grace of God only explains why you are
surviving. There is no reason why, if
you are exposed to the very wrath of Satan, you have survived, but you are
alive because of God’s grace, and no other reason.
The fifth reason for suffering is to learn truth experientially, such as
in Deut. 8:2-5 where God applies pressure to drum home lessons. This is the musar to their form of training.
And then finally, the sixth reason why we suffer is to produce a
historical testimony. And this reason
includes a historical testimony to angels; Eph. 3:10, to believers, 2
Corinthians. 1:3-6, and a historical testimony to non-Christian, 1 Peter
2:12-20 and 3:13-17. So you have a mass
of reasons and every situation you will face has at least one of these reasons
as it’s cause. If you pray carefully you
can pin some of these down some of the time, but whether you can or can’t, have
faith in the Word that there are one of more of these reasons operating in your
life; there is a cause for it.
Now David in Psalm 59 is exercised because now he is suffering under
category four, five and six, particularly category four. He is suffering under category four because
Satan knows that David is going to deliver Israel; Satan knows that through
David will come the royal lineage of Jesus Christ and so Satan launches an
all-out attack upon David, he wants to kill David. Satan is a murderer from the beginning. And so that is one reason why David is
suffering. Another reason is to produce
a historic testimony to believers, to you and to me. This is interesting if you think of it for a
moment. Three thousand years ago David
was trapped in the attic of his home; at the front door were guards, at the
back door were guards, and David had no human way of escaping from that
pressure situation. Thirty centuries ago
he thought Psalm 59. And God the Holy
Spirit as sovereign and omniscient knew that we would need this lesson today. And therefore the Holy Spirit arranged, one
of the reasons, He arranged the trial to be at such a force that it would drum
home to you as a believer the use of the faith technique in meeting the
pressures of life.
And so we have this petition in verse 5, “…God of Israel, awake” and
visit the Gentiles, visit “the heathen,” and by the word “heathen” he means not
only the Philistines but those who, like Saul and others, who are acting like
heathen. They are acting like they are
not members of the regenerate community.
“…be not merciful to any wicked transgressor,” and this sounds like a
very vicious prayer, it is an imprecatory and imprecatory prayers are
legitimate in the Old Testament dispensation.
Actually in one sense they are legitimate today. Imprecatory prayers are simply petitions to
God to damn sin and to damn evil. And
they are a legitimate revelation of God’s righteousness.
Verse 6 describes the situation in very picturesque terms, “They return
at evening,” this indicates that although this was the fifth formal attempt to
assassinate him, the goons that Saul has hired have been coming around David’s
house for several evenings. “They return
at evening; they make a noise like a dog,” in other words, by the way, the dog
was not the kind of dog you think of as a pet in the ancient world, a dog was
used for the garbage cleaning squad; dogs were used to eat up the garbage that
was left in the streets, so dogs are usually in the Bible classified as
undesirable. That is why Gentiles in the
Gospels are called dogs. Dogs were God’s
garbage collectors in the city. So he is
making an analogy with a dog, they act like dogs, “and go round about the
city.”
Verse 7, “Behold, they belch out with their mouth.” What that means is they burst out with speech
that is unthought-of, in other words, their “swords are in their lips; for who,
say they, does hear,” or who is one who hears.
It is the Hebrew participle and what this means is no one hears, there
is no one to judge us. This phrase in
verse 7 teaches us that these men are all in chaos of the heart status; they
have a maximum of scar tissue on their conscience and therefore they have, at
this point, turned off any light from their conscience that would tell them God
is hearing. They defy God to hear, no
one hears, I have no conscience, we do what we wish, period. This is the archetype of the person who is
full of chaos.
Verse 8, we come to the confidence section, here is another “but” and
it’s a shift into the confidence section, “But Thou, O LORD, shall laugh at
them,” and we’re going to find out just how God laughed. I told you 1 Samuel had a revelation of the
laughter of God and God’s sense of humor.
And some of you had a very difficult time appreciating God’s sense of
humor because it doesn’t seem to line up with your sense of humor. But God has a tremendous sense of humor, and
David says I want you to use your sense of humor God, I want you to get me out
of this jam in such a way that we both can sit there and laugh at them. This is a very mature type of prayer; he’s
not just praying that the enemies would get clobbered, he’s praying make them a
joke God, so you can get a laugh out of it and I have a laugh out of it. As long as you’ve got to clobber somebody you
might as well do it joyfully and do it with humor so that everybody can relax
while it’s going on. So this is a very
interesting petition; it is a petition to get him out of the jam in such a way
that it’ll be a joke. And God is going
to answer verse 8 very literally as I’ll show you tonight. “You shall have all the heathen in
derision.” And this is again a synonym
for laughing at them; the Lord is going to be up there laughing. Psalm 2 is another Psalm that teaches God’s
sense of humor. God laughs at idiots
with human viewpoint. Proverbs 7, the
portrait of an idiot, is actually the divine viewpoint picture of human works
and it shows there God’s sense of humor.
Verse 9, “Because of his strength will I wait upon Thee,” this is not
correct, the proper way in verse 9 of clarifying this, you notice “because of”
is in italics, it’s there in the original, and there’s a problem with some of
the text and it’s very difficult to do the translating here. It’s best translated “My strength, I will
wait upon You. “My Strength” is a title
for God, it is an expression of David’s use of the faith technique, because he
has a divine viewpoint of the problem In
other words, he turns to God in the middle of this situation where he can’t get
out of the house, he’s trapped, and he says, God You are my Strength. This is the same thing if you have a problem
today, you could say O my Solution, and that would be a title for God in the
middle of your situation, God is your solution, “O my Solution” with a capital
“S”, you’re using that as a proper name for God in the situation. “O my Solution” or “O my Strength, I will
wait for You,” or “upon You,” it is a Hebrew word, shamar, and shamar means
to keep one’s own property. In other
words, keep what belongs to you.
And this is very interesting, he’s saying: “O my Strength, I will hold
on to You because You are mine.” If God
is His, why does David have to hold onto Him?
It means use Him, this is the use of the faith technique. By position David has the right to use these
promises. David’s top circle is
expressed in the Abrahamic Covenant, and so David, when he received Jesus
Christ under the Old Testament dispensation, David trusted in the Lord Jesus
Christ as far as it was revealed in the Old Testament, and under that he had
various promise that would accrue to him under the Abrahamic Covenant, and one
of these is that positive volition leads to blessing. So he is using positional truth, to apply in
this situation. So he’s saying “my
Strength, while I am doing Your will I am trusting You to carry out Your covenant,
so my Strength, I hold onto You as my own.”
He is not trying to claim something that is not rightfully his. Just like we, when we are in trouble, we have
a right as believers in Jesus Christ to appropriate the promises of the
Word. Those promises are ours, and
they’re not someone else’s. Don’t go
using Romans 8:28 on unbelievers who have problem. You may have some person having a problem on
the job or some place and you say, “well, all things work together for good,”
to this unbeliever. Well all things
don’t work together for good the unbeliever and you are apostate when you’re
using Romans 8:28 that way. You have no
right ever to say Romans 8:28 to a known unbeliever.
So it is “my Strength,” it is mine by virtue of my position, “I will
wait,” or I will hold you as my own, “for God is my defense.” The word “defense is one that has been used
in verse 1, the word “defend me” is the same verb, here it is in verse 9 and it
is used in verse 16, “my defense” and in verse 17, “my defense.” So David has a tremendous mentality here. Now picture the situation. He’s upstairs in this house, there are guards
in the street, apparently this house in near the wall of the city and there are
guards all around it. The house is
surrounded; now David at this point could panic. Just think of the temptation if you were in
David’s situation. You could go human
viewpoint route; what would you do in human viewpoint. You could kill yourself, that’s the old
suicide copout, God is a meany, therefore I’m going to get back at God, I’m
going to kill myself, He’ll feel sorry for me then. That’s a copout; that’s one thing he could
have done. But he didn’t do that. Another thing he could have done was go to
Saul, bow his knee, kiss his feet and make everything better again. And that would have been another compromise;
he didn’t use the suicide approach, he didn’t use the state department
approach. So therefore what is he going
to use? He is going to use the only
thing he’s got going for him and that’s the faith technique. And from the divine viewpoint God is his
defense, God is his strength, and he’s going to let the Lord take care of
it. So he casts his cares upon the Lord
because he knows that the Lord cares for him.
By verse 9 David declares to us that he rejects human viewpoint, he
rejects panic, and he rejects his emotions.
One of the words in the Hebrew for emotions is kidneys. Now kidneys, apart from the fact they can do
things to you when you’re scared, the “kidney” isn’t what is really meant by kilyah; kilyah refers to the fat pads above the kidneys and that is the
adrenal glands. Now the Hebrews knew,
this is amazing, but they knew that the palpitations of the heart, the racing
of the heart, the increase in respiration and so on when you’re under fear type
situations, the tremendous physiological changes that occur in your body were
due to these adrenal glands. It shows
you, by the way, they were not medically [can’t understand word]. They had a pretty good scope of what was
going on. Also by way of observation
they knew what happened to their stomach when they were scared so they used the
word “belly” for emotions, “kidneys” for emotions, and “bowels” for
emotions. And the bowels include the
bladder and the intestines. So you can
tell physiologically they knew what would happen when you’re afraid; you feel
it. Now these three words, therefore,
came to refer to emotions. The Hebrew
language has no word for emotions; the Jew read his emotions
physiologically.
David knows at this point, his emotions are going. He wakes up, Michal is there, she nudges him
and says David, David, wake up, they’ve got the house surrounded, if you don’t
get out of here you’re going to be dead.
If you were woken up at night and looked out the bedroom window and
there was a guy down there with a .45, you looked out the back window and there
was somebody else with an automatic weapon, I think your adrenals would be
working overtime too. David has, he
experiences these things, but David, because he’s an advanced believer, because
he has maximum divine viewpoint in the soul, he uses his heart, which is his
mind, and not his emotions. His emotions
are there but right now his emotions are in line, they have to be controlled;
emotions are effects, not causes of spirituality. This is why the Bible never says Jesus Christ
sanctifies your emotions; they are results of spirituality, always. The only time that they are used in other
ways are in certain situations during the Old Testament and in the
millennium. But apart from that the
[can’t understand word/s] God sanctifies the heart, not the emotions; the
emotions follow, the emotions respond and they are part of the members of the
body, just like your hands, fingers, feet, and your emotions; they’re lined up
Biblically with organs of the body.
So David has all these emotions, but verse 8, 9 and 10 are the way he
dealt with his emotions. He was a man
and felt afraid, and he knew the emotion of fear, but verse 8, 9 and 10 are his
battle. This is what went through the
mentality of his soul. There is a battle
while this was going on in the middle his soul; a battle that we face and here
it is. His mind and his emotions; his
emotions had fear and his emotions wanted to take over and destroy his mind,
because when your emotions take over they do destroy your ability to
think. And so his mind answered the
emotions with what? Divine viewpoint
framework. David had it and because
David had it his mind was victorious over his emotions. It doesn’t mean he killed his emotions, he
channeled them so that now instead of fear his emotions rather developed aggressiveness
to do battle. He turned his emotions
around and gave them orientation, so he didn’t destroy his emotions, he used
them as a weapon, instead of something that would be a [can’t understand words]
inside him he turned them around. He
developed momentum to be able to do what he had to do.
“The God of my mercy shall go before [meet] me,” “my mercy” is the word chesed, it is the Hebrew word for
covenant love. And chesed means loyalty to a relationship that has already been
established, that is chesed
love. “…my mercy shall go before me,”
now that’s another title, and here it is “my Chesed,” do you see the names he’s calling God; this is sanctified
name-calling. He’s called Him “my
Strength,” he’s called Him “my Defense,” he’s called Him “my Chesed.”
Have you ever identified God this way, with those kinds of adjectives
when you’ve met a problem. It’s a good
exercise to try, it goes along very well with the faith technique. So “my Chesed,
the One who remains faithful to His promises.
So therefore David is saying look God, You promised me, back when You
anointed me, when Samuel came that day and You had me brought in out of the
sheepfold, when you brought me back in to dinner and everybody else couldn’t
stand me because I was a stinking young shepherd, when Samuel poured that oil
over my head that was a promise from you to me that I would reign as king; now
God, I am going to cash in on that promise right now. My life is at stake, those guys are out
there, not for target practice, they’re out there to kill me, so therefore
since You have promised by my anointing that I am going to survive as the King
of Israel, then I claim that promise and I’m cashing in on it right now.
So “the God of my Chesed shall go before me;” “shall go before” means
that when I walk out that door and those go to shoot, they’re going to have to
shoot through you first, because Lord, you walk out first and I’m right behind
you. Now this is the picture that he had
on his mind, that God was going to open the door and God was going to walk out
and he was going to go right behind him; You are going to before me. “God shall let me see my desire upon my
enemies,” it refers to his escape.
Now verses 11-15 deal with the petition that David made. Up to this point, though we have seen some
minor petitions he hasn’t really concentrated on it; he’s had to get into a
kind of mental frame of reference to get up his petition. And that’s a lesson that we’ve been learning
on Wed. nights; before you can shoot off a real good petition to the Father, it
takes time to think through what kind of a petition you’re going to ask the
Father. Just think of who God is; when
you go into His presence, if He were physically here in the person of Jesus
Christ, what would you do? Go up and
stammer and stutter and finally after fifteen minutes come up with something,
or would you say now listen, there is Jesus Christ, He is here, He understands
my problem, He created me with a mind, and I’m not going to go in there and
make a jackass out of myself, I’m going to go in there and communicate as a
mature believer. Now he knows that I am
a jackass but nevertheless I can at least show Him that grace does help. And therefore when I come before Him in
prayer I can at least show Him that I have received His Word and thought about
it a little bit, and give Him a good petition.
So up to this point in the Psalm David has thought through. You see, he has had to battle his emotions in
this situation, he’s had to get them under control first before he even tried
to make a petition to the Father, because David wasn’t the kind of believer
that gets into a pressure situation, oh God help me, help me God, something
like this. That wasn’t the kind of
petition that David made. David would
calm down first as he does in verses 8, 9 and 10, until he could calm down
enough to think a logical petition, and when he calmed down and when he thought
the thing through, then he came up with this petition. And it’s a most interesting petition that has
a most interesting answer.
Verse 11, “Slay them not, lest my people forget; scatter them by Thy
power, and bring them down, O Lord, our shield.” Now here is where he begins to think of
himself, not just as David trapped in the house but David the king. You see what the faith technique did for
him. He’s calmed down enough so now he
gets his problem in the perspective it should be in. It’s not just “oh God help me” kind of thing,
but it’s related to God’s plan for his life; it’s related to his role of king
over an entire nation, and this petition shows that David is thinking not just
of himself but is thinking of other believers who are watching him for
leadership and modeling. He is a
spiritual model and he’s aware of this, and so he says, Father, take those
goons outside, whatever you do, don’t kill them, just let them stand around for
a while under the law of self-destruction and let them make public asses of
themselves in front of all the believers so they can see what happens when
believers go on compound carnality; leave them around. “…scatter them by Thy power, and bring them
down,” in other words, weaken them, “O Lord, our shield.” “Our” is plural which means David is
expanding his horizon of consciousness to refer not to himself only but to
other believers who are with him.
Verse 12, “For the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips, let
them even be taken in their pride; and for cursing and lying which they
speak.” Notice, “taken in their pride,”
what is that? It’s the law of
self-destruction, isn’t it. See what David’s
doing here? He’s saying look God, those
guys already got such a healthy case of compound carnality, just take them a
little bit further, just let them get grosser, and just let them fall apart;
let them be taken with their own devices.
Verse 15, “Consume them in thy
wrath, consume them, that they may not be,” now that’s not talking about
non-existence, this means put an end to their particular work at this moment,
in other words, consume them with their plans, “them” is in italics, literally
in the Hebrew it just means “consume, consume,” put an end to their plans,
“that they may not be; and let them know that God rules in Jacob unto the ends
of the earth.” You see the net result of
his petition; see what a tremendous petition this was. In the middle of a pressure type situation
David calmed down through the faith technique enough so when he went to the
Father he engineered a most beautiful petition.
It fits in with God’s plan, His grand strategy, His master plan of
glorification because we know that the Father’s ultimate purpose is to glorify
Himself to His creation and so the net result of this petition is: “Father, let
them know that You are ruling,” participle, “You are continually ruling in
Jacob, unto the ends of the world,” which shows you that David believed that
Yahweh was not just a tribal God but that Yahweh had universal global dominion
over all nations of the earth, that God is actively ruling in Israel to the
ends of the earth. And that “to the ends
of the earth” means show them in other lands, which would mean military victory
and so forth.
Verse 14, he says, “And at evening let them return, and let them make a
noise like a dog, and go round about the city. [15] Let them wander up and down
for meat [food], and grudge [keep on looking all night] if they are not
satisfied.” This last one means let them
be beggars, they haven’t gotten their food, let them be beggars, and if you
compare verses 14-15 with verses 6-7 you’ll see that he just prepares, under
the law of self-destruction, he says let them keep at it Father, just let me
get out of here and You just let them keep on looking at the house and go
grubbing; that’d be a good picture of carnal believers.
Verse 16-17, the vow of praise, David says when You do this, and I
anticipate You will, as a result of Your deliverance in my life I will use that
as a testimony because every time God delivers in the Bible it adds one more
unit of revelation, and therefore one more unit of praise. So David again is saying look, I’m in a jam, but
I’m praying that as a result of this my deliverance will be a historic
testimony. See, here’s your sixth
category of suffering operating to produce a historic testimony and he’s asking
that there would be a historic testimony produced, and verse 16, when You
deliver me, “I will sing of Your power; yea, I will sing aloud of Your mercy in
the morning,” because it’s in the morning when he’s going to escape. “…for Thou hast been my defense and refuge in
the day of my trouble. [17] Unto thee, O my Strength,” there he’s name-calling
God again, “Unto thee, O my Strength, will I sing; for God is my defense, and
the God of my chesed.”
And that’s the theme of Psalm 59, that is what was on David’s mind as he
was trapped in this house. Now let’s
come back and see the answer to this great prayer in 1 Samuel 19. This prayer was answered in verse 12, [“So
Michal let David down through a window; and he went, and fled, and escaped.”]
the house is apparently on the wall, the reason we say that is because he
escaped by a window, and either the guards weren’t there or it was a house on
the walls, because houses on the wall had open windows toward the wall and
that’s, by the way, how the spies escaped from the prostitute’s house in
Jericho. Well here we have a situation where
David exits and he escapes, because in verse 18 it says, summarizing, “So David
fled, and escaped, and came to Samuel at Ramah, and told him all that Saul had
done to him. And he and Samuel went and
dwelt in Naioth.” At this point David
finishes, and successfully, his sixth encounter.
We are going to have one more attempt on his life. The goon squad is going to come again, Saul
is going to send them out to assassinate, he hasn’t given up. But this time it’s going to be a most
fantastic deliverance; before it was his agility during the music therapy
sessions, the javelin came and he just ducked.
And then at other times it was his own military ability that saved him
from battle and so on. But this time God
is going to arrange this seventh deliverance like you can’t believe because
when it finishes everybody will know that God Himself has intervened to protect
this man. So David fled, and he came to
this place called Naioth,” that is a Hebrew plural, “oth” is a Hebrew plural
ending, “Nai” is the stem. And there’s a
whole question of what it actually is but the best meaning appears to be a
school, or a training academy. Plato had
his academy and Samuel had his, and he has developed a small theological
seminary. [tape turns]
…the priesthood would be the school that would help the nation, so
normally most of your Bible teaching was through the priesthood, but at times
of great national apostasy the prophets would get together a group of men to
form seminaries; this was done at two points in the Old Testament, one under
Samuel and the other one we find under Elijah and Elisha. So these three men formed these schools. This is the only place that they’re referred
to in this specific form, so we deduce from that that they must be schools that
specialize in crash courses in the Word of God for young men who wanted to
exercise and stand in the gap in the time of national crisis. They couldn’t go to the normal seminaries
because the priests had been infiltrated and were teaching apostasy, the
National Council had taken over, and therefore there was no freedom of
education from the conservative viewpoint there.
So therefore these prophets would form their own schools, and they would
be hand-picked and personally trained on a 24 hour basis by the prophets. Samuel is in retirement now, because remember
Samuel’s ministry lasted toward the end of the period of the Judges, it
continued into the time of Saul, and here it’s almost up to the time of David. He’s going to die before David takes over,
but Samuel is an old man at this point.
In 1 Samuel 8 he had seen his nation give up freedom for centralized
power. 1 Samuel 8 is one of the most
magnificent speeches on the power of politics that you will ever find
anywhere. Those of you who teach school
ought to keep that in mind. If you want
to get some divine viewpoint in the classroom, just give them 1 Samuel 8 and
tell them we’re just studying great political speeches and therefore we have to
study the first speech that was given against the centralization of political
power and it was given by the prophet Samuel; of course, we’re just treating
the Bible as “literature.”
Now after Samuel gave that speech, and after he’d seen the country vote
away its freedoms, then he decided that the game was up as far as he personally
was concerned, the people are on negative volition, and he could do nothing
except build for another day, and so he quietly withdrew off to this place at
Ramah, and quietly brought young men to him.
And without any fanfare, without announcing it to the nation, he began
to train these men in the Word, over and over and over again; apparently it was
at this school that the book of Judges was written. One of the projects for Samuel’s seminary was
writing the book of Judges, which was an analysis… and by the way, the first
book of history in the world is the book of Judges. That is the first historical analysis, the
first example of a philosophy of history in any nation is the book of Judges. It is a first in the civilization of
man. No other nation can claim priority
at this point.
So Samuel’s seminary had a lot of things involved with the national
crisis. Now it involved primarily of the
Torah, and the book of Joshua, and probably the writing of the book of Judges. What was their curriculum? Their curriculum included music. How do we know this? 1 Samuel 10:5 and 2 Kings 3:15; we’ve already
dealt with 1 Samuel 10:5 so let’s go to 2 Kings 3:15 because this is the
seminary under Elisha and it shows you they used music, and they were able to
use music for a certain purpose under the Old Testament dispensation. Elisha is going to prophesy but before he
prophesies, he asks to “Being me a minstrel, and it came to pass, when the
minstrel played, that the hand of the LORD came upon him.” That verse has been used to justify all sorts
of spiritual pump up services where we all clap our hands and go through some
sort an emotional jag with music. That
is not what is mentioned in verse 15.
Verse 15 is a particular musical ministry of which we know little
actually, but the music, as it did with Saul’s soul, was able, somehow to
organize the thoughts of the soul to allow a maximum of spiritual
perception. This is why it worked,
musical therapy worked with Saul, and here it’s working with Elisha.
We concluded when we dealt with 1 Samuel 10, we dealt with it again in 1
Samuel 16, that music must therefore be some form of language which extends
beyond the range of our conscious minds and somehow enables our human spirit to
assume more control over the soul.
That’s the most I can conclude from these passages. But it does have that affect, good music that
is, not all music. Why does good music
have this effect? Because music
preexisted man; the angels were the first musicians; in fact, one of the greatest
musicians was Satan, that is before he fell.
In Job 38:7 we find the angels singing and using music before the
creation of man. In Revelation 4 and 5
we find music used for eternity future.
So music is used both in the ancient past and in the forward future and
it shows that music is a very, very important medium indeed. All right, that was one of the things that
was taught at the seminary, music plus the Word of God.
Now turn back to 1 Samuel 19 and see what’s going to happen. David comes to Naioth, he goes to the place,
the only place, where he can get the Word.
Now this is a lesson. David is
king; David could get very uppity at this point. David could say now look, I’m the boy that’s
going to take over around here, and what I have to do is go out and raise an
army, but isn’t it interesting that David does not do that right away. What does David do? He goes to the only place where the Word of
God is taught first, before he raises his army, before he undertakes any
prolonged campaign against Saul, David himself goes to the place where he can
get Bible doctrine. David, in other
words, isn’t like a lot of workers for Christian organizations that are too
busy doing God’s work to anchor themselves in a local church that teaches the
Word of God. We have people engaged in
many, many missionary activities and other things, service organizations,
evangelistic organizations and they’re too busy with their (quote) “ministries”
(end quote) to involve themselves in the authority structure of the local
church under a pastor-teacher. David
didn’t share that mentality, he said I have to go some place where there’s a
pastor-teacher who’s putting out the Word of God, so he goes directly to the
best one of his time, he goes to Samuel, the place where the Word is
taught.
Verse 19, “And it was told Saul, saying, Behold, David is at Naioth in
Ramah.” The spy system was operating,
Saul by this time has spies all over the place, he has a fantastic spy system. Verse 20, “And Saul sent messengers to take
David.” Here is the seventh attempt on
David’s life. “And Saul sent messengers
to take David, and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and
Samuel standing as appointed over them, the Spirit of God was upon the
messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied. [21] And when it was told Saul,
he sent other messengers, and they prophesied likewise. And Saul sent messengers again the third
time, and they prophesied also.”
Now what is happening here. I
want you notice something very interesting.
The first thing to notice is what did they see when they came to the
school? What was it they saw before they
began to prophesy. They saw the
authority of the pastor-teacher; it was Samuel.
What does it say, “they saw the company,” that is the class, this is the
seminary class, “of the prophets prophesying.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean ecstasy, I’ll deal with that problem in a
moment. But right now I want you to see,
“and Samuel,” participle, “standing” taking a position, it’s the Hebrew word to
take an authoritative position. It’s
actually a military term, “as one commissioned [appointed]” participle, two
participles together, emphasis on the action going on and on and on. They saw Samuel as one who had the authority
and who was teaching the Word of God.
This is not to be identified with the modern charismatic movement. These are people who are inside an authority
structure. They are being taught by
Samuel and it’s Samuel’s figure that impresses these men. So as they walk in there, they’re hired goons
is what they are, some of them unbelievers and so on, they do not have to be a
believer to prophesy in the Old Testament dispensation. Unbelievers did it all the time. So you have unbelievers and you have compound
carnal believers coming; they are not spiritual men at all, in any way, shape
or form. So they walk up to the seminary
and their intent was to capture David.
And they see that it’s a class teaching the Word of God. And they see Samuel in authority, and then it
says, “the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul,” now how could the
Spirit of God come upon compound carnal believers and how did He come upon the
unbelievers?
Well, again we have to go back to the structure of the soul. Under the structure of the soul we have the human
spirit here; the human spirit occupies the body and produces the soul. But when we are regenerate, let’s take a
regenerate case first, the origin of the human spirit, new birth, and as a
result of regeneration the human spirit affects the soul; it affects the mind
because of Bible doctrine, divine viewpoint framework; it affects the emotions
as they respond to doctrine in the mind.
And so progressively the soul is, you might say, conquered, like the
land of Israel was conquered by expanding Israel, so the human spirit, as it
were, conquers through spiritual growth the domain of the soul. This is actually how we all grow spiritually;
our human spirits actually get bigger, and stronger and more powerful and they are
able to control this thing better. Now
under this situation there are gaps in the soul that are left, they’re all
there and every Christian that’s growing has gaps. And under God’s restraining grace He keeps
demonic forces from going into the gaps except under conditions of chaos of the
soul. But these gaps become the place
where the Holy Spirit Himself suddenly invades the soul independent of the
volition of these people.
This is not a sign of spirituality, this kind of prophesying. The prophesying of the company of these
prophets is a forced manifestation by the Holy Spirit, He takes over
sovereignly through them, because… and it goes back to the seventh deliverance
concept, He takes over because what is the issue here? Protection of David; isn’t that the big
picture of this chapter? The protection
of David! So these men are going to come
and they come, three parties come, company one, company two, company three. The first company comes, they’re going to
capture David; they’re knocked out by the overtaking of the Holy Spirit and
they wind up teaching the Word of God because that’s what prophesying is. Don’t you see God’s humor? Remember what Psalm 59 said, God, however you
deliver me do it so they would be a big laugh.
And so company one comes up and they could care less about the Word
because from Psalm 59 you already know they’re people with chaos in the
heart. They are the same people that
just a while ago in Psalm 59 were saying [can’t understand words]. So what happens, they come to the seminary
and the first thing they know they’re teaching the Word of God. And this must have been a tremendous jolt;
people said look it you guys, here you were going around, coddled, out of it,
and you come to Samuel’s seminary and you fall right in line, what’s the matter
with you? Chicken out? So company one fell under this ministry of
the Holy Spirit; it was actually the humor of God in turning around an apostate
and having the apostate preach God’s Word.
That’s a switch, but nevertheless, God is a God of humor and He got a
big laugh out of doing this, and so they didn’t learn the point.
So company two came on the scene and so they got it; company three came
on the scene, they got it. Now, it was
told to Saul, verse 22, “Then went he also to Ramah, and came to a great well
that is in Secu; and he asked and said, Where are Samuel and David. And one said, Behold, they are at Naioth in
Ramah. [23] And he went there to Naioth
in Ramah; and the Spirit of God was upon him also, and he went on, and
prophesied, until he came to Naioth in Ramah.”
Now look at this. This is really
going to be double trouble because the Holy Spirit pulled off a joke here. This is actually a joke, by the way, it’s a
nice joke because the charismatic movement would go through this passage and
say why, what a wonderful time of spirituality.
Well, you’re going to see some things shortly that wouldn’t pass even in
their circles. But here we have the Holy
Spirit taking over. And He’s taken over
and made a joke three times, and now Saul comes and Saul starts teaching the
Word of God before he even gets to the seminary. So while he’s walking up here, he’s carrying
on a big sermon, it might take him a half hour to get to the seminary from this
well and all the time he’s walking up to the seminary he’s teaching the Word,
teaching the Word, teaching the Word.
And later on this is going to be a big joke all over the nation.
Well then he comes, and in verse 24, “And he stripped off his clothes
also,” now under these conditions the first three groups evidently took their
clothes off when they taught the Word, now I thought that would be a very
interesting thing, imagine that. We
don’t do that here… but again this is the humor of the Holy Spirit, talk about
making jackasses of themselves, this is exactly what he’s doing. So they sit there and they strip, and the
word means to strip, it doesn’t mean walk around in your shorts like some of
the prissy commentators on this passage.
Every other place this means naked, it means like Adam and Eve, they
didn’t have any clothes in the Garden.
But you get some commentator that says oh, well, it doesn’t really mean
that; what it means is they took off their outer garments. They didn’t take off just the outer garments,
they took off everything. And this means
they took off all their clothes and sat there teaching the Word of God. Now this was, under some conditions, oddly
enough, used by some of the bona fide
prophets. Why? Because the prophets were illustrating a
point, that it was a shame upon the nation that the Word of God was an
embarrassment to the nation, and oftentimes the prophets under the Old
Testament economy, to get the point to the people visually and dramatically,
would walk around without any clothes on, Isaiah was one, and he said the Word
of God is an embarrassment to you, all right, then you can have it from me in
the nude; how do you like that?
So again, this is how God dealt with people in the Old Testament, but
here it’s not any legitimate operation, in the sense of a bona fide prophet with a message, here it is He just wants to make
a laughing stock of Saul and his men in response to Psalm 59. So they all take their clothes off, “and
prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and
all that night.” Now it’s interesting that Saul takes his clothes off, but only
he is the one that lies naked all night, “naked all that day and all that
night.” So whereas all the other men
stopped teaching the Word, probably at sundown went in and put their clothes
back on and had supper, Saul, everyone’s looking and where he is he’s still
going at it. And here is the king;
you’ve got to see, this is the dignified, moral, righteous king of Israel, who
wouldn’t do anything to violate social protocol, stripped on his back blabbering
all night.
And this is how God the Holy Spirit protected David. Don’t you think that was a very funny answer
to Psalm 59; David got a good laugh out of it, God got a good laugh out of it,
and finally, from the last phrase, verse 24, we find the nation got a good
laugh out of it. This is good old Jewish
humor. “Wherefore they say, Is Saul also
among the prophets?” “they say” refers
to that joke, and it was built partly on chapter 10 and partly on chapter 19,
take that guy Saul, remember how self-righteous he was, he was our first king,
the first time we found him he was under a pile of baggage; the last time he
goes out and he’s nude in Samuel’s seminary all night.
So you see how God copes with self-righteousness? You have to see the humor of all this. God laughs at us in all our proud
self-righteousness, with our do-goodism, with our human good, it’s our fig
leaves and He strips the fig leaves right off.
And here you have a graphic demonstration as you’ve seen so often with
first Michal, Saul’s daughter, she has to go around all the social functions
and announce her foreskin dowry, and Saul forever after this has to announce…
hey Saul, what about the time you were nude up in Samuel’s seminary. So this was the King of Israel and that was
God’s sense of humor.
Next week we’ll deal with the further adventures of David and Saul.