Clough Manhood Series Lesson 31

David: The Blocked advance; Lessons about tactical errors in the Christian life – 1 Samuel 21-27

…in the life of David and we noticed how David’s life runs in stages and that David shows many traits of the strong Christian man; men that we need desperately in today’s body of Christ. We’ve seen how God arranged history so that David would follow quickly on the heels of Saul to provide a maximum contrast between what a man does not have to be as a believer, and what he ought to be in David. Saul is the picture of the legalist uptight man who cannot relax, who insists upon building his life on human good; who insists that the highest or the summum bonum for him is what people think of him, his reputation in the community and so on. But at base he is a man who is very stubborn toward God’s Word. He has heard God’s Word time and time again, and he insists whether he has heard it time and time again or not he is going to go his own way.

The Saul’s of this world always have another characteristic; they cloak their rebellion against the Word of God with a pious set of fig leaves and thus Saul is always talking about the Lord did this and the Lord did that, we’ll watch that tonight. That’s standard fundamentalist cliché, well, do you know what the Lord did; the Lord did this, the Lord did that and it sounds so pious to go around saying that. Sometime when people do this and they keep on saying it I’m often tempted to say how do you know Satan didn’t do that? You see, that becomes an empty cliché; now sometimes we can say firmly the Lord did this, but we ought to save that for the times when the Lord really did something we can praise Him for. Save that expression so you don’t kill it by over use.

Saul, then, was a man who went on negative volition, he was a man who wound up on the funny farm; today he would, negative volition toward God, he found out he was nuts. And that’s the source of mental illness in the world. It is not because your mother dropped you on your head when you were a baby. It is not because as a businessman you were faked out by some business partner and therefore you’ve got this complex against people; it is not because you got a bad deal when you were going through college and some of the other things that are touted today in the name of environmentalism; denying personal responsibility; denying that God will make a way of escape that you may be able to bear the trial. Saul’s of this world say that God doesn’t make any escape; poor ole me, full of self-pity. That’s Saul!

David, we found last time began his career as a youth; he began as a youth because as a youth through discipline he developed his talent. That’s why, when Samuel went to anoint David, the Lord said Samuel, don’t worry about David’s brothers, just concentrate on this guy because you look on the outward appearance, I look on the heart. And in the heart of David God saw a disciplined soul. God looked on the heart of David and saw something worthwhile that hadn’t yet blossomed out. God knew the potential of David; Samuel did not. Therefore, David was anointed.

Now the application, we said last time, for men today is the problem of discipline and developing their talents. Talents are not developed overnight; it takes a long time to do it. Skills require practice and failure and practice and practice and practice. Now the New Testament and the Old Testament too shows us certain ways in which the man develops. Again, as we saw this morning, if we draw the divine institutions in concentric circles, and we have the last one, the sphere of the church, we find that the New Testament, in passages like 1 Timothy and in Titus where the qualifications of a bishop or a deacon and elder are outlined, that those qualifications have to do with skills developed in these divine institutions.

For example, is the man responsible? Does he assume responsibility? Now in any organization you’ll always have two kinds of men. I’ve always noticed this, I think you generally always have this. Once you skim off the freaks and the people that just are never going to amount to a hill of beans you have the last two categories, and one category is what I call the officer class, and the other category is what I call the enlisted class. Now the enlisted class of men will do anything you ask them. They are the kind of men who are very faithful, very loyal, very diligent workers but they never can really initiate. If they go in the john and there’s not toilet paper they wonder what to do about it. Whereas the officer understands, well, we know Leo’s running around here some place so we’ll call Leo, and Leo’s in charge of the toilet paper among other things, and so we’ll call Leo in and get this problem solved. Now there’s an officer. You see, he sees there’s a problem and he does something about it. You’ll always have these kind; the officers make the committee chairmen; the enlisted type make up the committee members. Now it doesn’t mean that men always have to be enlisted types; it just means at certain stages in their life they just manifest that kind of a character; they are loyal faithful stewards but they don’t have real leadership, the ability to see a problem and do something about it without running to somebody else; they anticipate problems.

Now David was the kind of man who had developed this; he was responsible and he solved problems. When he was out with the sheep if he saw a problem he didn’t run to his brothers to wonder, what should I do now. Rather, he understood what he should do now and he did it, and so when he took on a lion he killed it; when he took on a bear he killed it, very simple reasoning, I’m in charge of this flock, this flock is money to my father; my father has his capital invested here and I am the shepherd and I am supposed to protect this and I am going to protect it, at the cost of my own life. So David, very early, developed in the first divine institution, responsibility. That is, in our own generation, particularly young men, this is one of the hardest areas to develop. It is because our whole generation rewards irresponsibility. We give food stamps to every Hottentot that walks instead of the people who desperately need help, and some of the people in this country who are poor who desperately need help can’t get it and all the bums go and buy their steaks in the supermarket with food stamps. So this rewards irresponsibility.

Men involved in government positions, whether it’s at Tech, whether it’s in the service, whether it’s some place else and they have $8,000 of the taxpayer’s funds and after all, they want to show, because next year’s appropriations are going to be cut if he doesn’t spend all the money allocated to him this year so he’d better just siphon it off some place, so he buys himself a few colored TV sets along the side, you know, secretaries need that in the powder room and so on, and bloats the system using monies of the taxpayers, and it goes on, and thousands and millions of dollars are wasted because of this kind of thing.

And so wherever you look irresponsibility is rewarded, and the responsible person today stands out like a sore thumb. In any competitive business a man who is responsible ought to submerge his competitor because people are so desperate that when you have a plumber and you bring a plumber to the house you expect that plumber to fix the plumbing; you don’t expect next time you turn the facet to have it turn into a geyser of Old Faithful or something. And when you take the car you expect to have it fixed, and often times, of course they fix it, they fix it so you can bring it down next time. And it goes on, whether it’s fixing cars, whether it’s fixing plumbing, whether it’s fixing something else, irresponsibility, crumby work attitude, and we live in a generation of it so that hurts the church, because the church depends upon men who have handled the first divine institution’s responsibility.

And then the second one and the third one, marriage, that’s one of the greatest sanctifiers on earth, that’s why Martin Luther said if the Pope had been married he’d never have thought of the doctrine of papal infallibility. So always, when you have two irresponsible people and they come tripping down the aisle and get in a marriage situation, if they aren’t sanctified they will very quickly experience the pressure. Two sin natures cannot live in a marriage without sparks, and that’s the source of sanctification. And then you add children and that’s a sanctifying experience. So all these experiences develop the man. Now David did not have divine institution two and divine institution three down; and he went directly from divine institution one to divine institution four much like Paul, the apostle, went. But that’s all right because David had available to him such great assets of responsibility in his soul, so many +R learned behavior patterns that he had developed taking care of the sheep of his father, that he was qualified, like Paul, to be a leader.

So on down to the time we get to selecting deacons and the time we select church leaders and so on, we need men who have had experience at subduing the earth in these zones. And we said last time, by way of application to this particular congregation, when we come to our annual meeting and we find we have another one of those Russian elections, where we have four slots and four candidates, don’t think I pushed and pulled levers or the nominating committee pushed and pulled levers to get our people in the office. It wasn’t that at all; it was when finally the qualified people stood out that was all there was. So that’s the way we have to operate and hopefully as time goes on we won’t have to operate that way.

Now the first phase of David’s life, summarized, is the disciplined development of his talent. Today, in 1 Samuel 21 we are going to look at a second stage in his life. After he develops his talent, and so to speak, after he got employed, then the second great era of growth hit. 1 Samuel 21. Now men often go through this and to young men oftentimes it can be a devastating experience. Here you are and you’ve got your schooling; maybe you’ve gone through the service and you’ve got all that out of the way, you’ve pretty well thought you got your stuff together; you have your first real job and then it seems like you get stuck in a clinker; how in God’s name did I ever get this job? And you feel the pressure, and you’re the last man on the totem pole; because you’re the youngest guy in the firm anybody who wants a crud job they dump it on you, and so for a year, maybe, or two or three years, you go through kind of an initiation into the business world, by picking up all the cruddy jobs.

Now David had exactly the same stage in his life. He had a stage, after he was anointed, which we call the persecution faze; it lasts from 1 Samuel 21-27. All during that time David picked up the crud jobs. All during that time David had to put up with all kinds of guff from Saul; he had to put up with treachery, he had to put up with his own mistakes, and all during this process of sanctification, this persecution faze, during the early days of his career, he was learning. Men have to go back to the doctrine of suffering. Remember we say there are six reasons why Christians suffer. One reason is because of the fall. A second reason is because we rebel, further against God’s Word. A third reason is because we are identified with someone else who is being disciplined, they may be a husband or a wife; they may be a father or children, because we are identified with them in a divine institution of family or marriage or country, we may be identified, for example with people who are against the military and then we get in a good war and the Russians start coming into eastern Europe and well, where are all our solders, where are all our weapons? On, don’t you know, we turn them in for food stamps a long time ago. See how many food stamps it will take to keep the Russians out of eastern Europe. And so that will be a suffering situation where we suffer because of idiots in the divine institution with which we’re associated.

Now there are three other reasons why Christians suffer; reasons which are more indirect. One is because of satanic attack. We are identified with Jesus Christ in Satan’s world, like Job, and therefore he’s looking around to disprove the gospel and if he can pick you off and he can turn you into a bad testimony and he can cause you to trip and stumble, then that’s points for him. So Satan, it says in the Bible is “a roaring lion, looking whom he may devour.” Now I don’t know whether you’ve ever watched a roaring lion but he doesn’t come dancing up to you with a red pennant and say you wanna sin? It’s not quite that overt. First of all, a lion stalks its prey and then leaps at the last minute and destroys it. And that’s the way Satan is, he stalks us and then he leaps and tries to destroy us. That’s category four suffering. And then category five suffering is learning. We suffer in order to learn a doctrine or two, or application of doctrine to a situation and that’s what we call category five type suffering. And then category six suffering is suffering because we are to be witnesses for Christ.

Now that’s maybe not all the reasons but that’s a pretty good run down on the reasons the New Testament gives for our suffering as Christians. We’re not talking about non-Christian, we’re talking about Christians. Now the Christian man during this portion of life, this persecution phase, is going through that kind of situation, where he is learning, and it’s kind of humbling sometimes to think that after you’ve been through college you still have a whole bunch of things to learn but that’s just the way it is.

Let’s look at two lessons David had to learn. The first one, in 1 Samuel 21 and the passage will go like this, I’ll give you the verses because we’re going to skip a section here; 1 Samuel 21:1-9 skipping to 1 Samuel 22:6-23. You’ll notice there’s a gap in there because the narrative discusses something else which we don’t want to get into tonight. So 1 Samuel 21:1-9 skipping to 1 Samuel 22:6-23. Now here’s a passage that deals with David’s lesson about tactical errors in the Christian life. David knew the goal. He was squared away on the goal. Now let’s see what the goal was first. The goal was that in order to be king, to function with credibility in the society, David had to attract to him the loyalty of two bodies of people. He had to have the priests on his side and he had to have the prophets on his side. Without either the priests or the prophets the king was severed because you see, without the priesthood he had no Urim and Thummim, which was the yes/no answer from God. Without the prophets he had no correction upon his ministry and his dynasty. So the king needed both of those elements.

Now David wants and needs the priests, and the first lesson is, his goals, is to get the priests. He needs that; he’s got to win them away from Saul to himself. But the means he uses to do this causes tremendous suffering, and in the final analysis David does get the priests on his side, but at a tremendous cost, a horrible slaughter occurs, and David, if we are to believe some of his psalms, never forgot this the rest of his life; the tragedy of a hasty decision that he made. He knew the goal, and he wanted to get there too quickly. Instead of patiently waiting on the Lord to get him to the goal he tried a shortcut. It was disastrous. Let’s watch what happens.

1 Samuel 21:1-9, “Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech, the priest; and Ahimelech was afraid at the meeting of David, and said unto him, Why are you alone, and no man with thee? [2] And David said unto Ahimelech, the priest, The king has commanded me a business, and has sent unto me, Let know man know anything of the business about which I send thee, and what I have commanded thee; and I have appointed my servants to such and such a place. [3] Now, therefore, what is under your hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever there is present. [4] And the priest answered David, and said, There is no common bread under my hand, but there is hallowed bread, if the young men have kept themselves at least from women. [5] And David answered the priest, and said unto him, Of a truth women have been kept from us about these three days, since I came out, and the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in a manner common, yea, though it was sanctified this day in the vessel. [6] So the priest gave him hallowed bread; for there was no bread there but the showbread, that was taken from before the LORD, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away. [7] Now a certain man,” and verse 7 is a parenthesis in the Hebrew text, “Now a certain man of the servants of Saul just happened to be there that day, detained before the LORD; and his name was Doeg, an Edomite, the chiefest of the herdsmen that belonged to Saul.”

All right, what’s happened here is that Nob is a place just north of the city of Jerusalem. It is the place where the temple or the tabernacle is functioning at this point in history. David comes up there because he’s fleeing; he doesn’t have any business with the king, this is just a put-on, this is a lie. He is lying to the priest at this point. He does not have business with Saul, he is fleeing from Saul and Saul wants to know where he is. So he flees first to the priest. He’s already spent some time in Samuel’s seminary so that he has contact with the prophets. He goes here and he asks for bread and weapons, really, is what he wants. He says, verse 8, “And David said unto Ahimelech, And is there not here under thine hand a spear or sword? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste.” Well, that’s kind of true, the king’s business, he’s trying to kill David, so you could say that it did require some haste.

[9] “And the priest said, The sowed of Goliath, the Philistine, whom you slew in the valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you will take that, take it; for there is no other except that here. And David said There is none like that; give it to me.” What we’ve got is David lying his way into the priesthood, trying to get the priesthood to cooperate. There’s more to the text than meets the eye. What he’s asking this man who isn’t a lone priest, Ahimelech is the high priest; Ahimelech has hundreds of Levites under him. What David is doing as a competing dynasty, he’s making political overtures to the priest; do you want to support me, I need your support; shall we work out a political deal. He does it through the vehicle of food and weapons but it’s not just to provide David with a hamburger and a sword, at that point. He’s interested in a much more long-lasting agreement. He wants logistic help from the Levites. See, the Levites are scattered all through the land of Palestine and they’d be excellent materiel sources for his army. So there’s ulterior motives in all this.

But the thing that he does, and he later tells us in the text that he knows he did wrong, is in verse 7, that little note, he knows when he walks sin and talks to the high priest, he knows that Doeg is an informer; he knows this. He says my conscience told me that, I should have known better than this but I didn’t carry out what I knew to be right. Verse 7 shows us his hastiness as a young man. He knew that he ought not to discuss business around an Edomite; an Edomite is not a Jew, he’s part Esau. “Esau have I hated, Jacob have I chosen.” Doeg is an informant for the other side; he hears the whole deal. The bread, in verses 3-4, is the sacred bread that the Lord Jesus Christ mentioned. The idea of keeping themselves from women has to do with their wives and whenever they had sexual relations, according to Leviticus 15, they would be unclean for a certain period of time, that’s what that’s all about. The reason for this is something we’ll get into when we get into the Song of Songs about the biblical idea of sex and why it is in itself tends to be treated as its polluted. There’s a reason for that.

But the long and the short of it is that he did get the bread, he did qualify for eating it, and the second thing is, you’ll notice the weapon that he takes—Goliath’s sword. How tragic; neither the food nor the sword really are David’s. The bread is the Lord’s and the weapon is his enemy’s. He doesn’t really have his own supplies; he’s dependent on these outside things, hastily conceived on the spur of the moment. Let’s watch the results.

1 Samuel 22:6, David flees to a place called Adullam; If this is Jerusalem, Adullam is south of Jerusalem; here is a great cave, it’s still there, you can walk into the caves at Adullam; gigantic things; the ceiling on some of those caves would be twice the height of this ceiling here; vast caverns, and it was in these caverns that David developed his army. Many of the psalms in the Book of Psalms are psalms that were used to teach these men how to fight and how to live as believers under the Old Testament system. But it was in that cave of Adullam where the nucleus of David’s guerilla force is developed.

So verse 6, Saul, through his informers, hears. “When Saul heard that David was discovered, and the men that were with him (now Saul abode in Gibeah under a tree in Ramah, having his spear in his hand, and all his servants were standing about him), [7] Then Saul said to his servants that stood near him, Hear ye no, Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give everyone of you fields and vineyards, and make you all captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds, [8] That all of you have conspired against me, and there is not that shows me that my son has made a league with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you that is sorry for me, or shows unto me that my son has stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?”

You see the sob, sob, sob song, tragic character of Saul, full of self-pity; everybody’s against him. You see this both in verse 8 and you see it in verse 6. In verse 6 why does the author describe him standing there with a sword in his hand. We know other occasions when Saul had his sword in his hand—paranoia. He’s afraid that someone’s going to get him, so he always carries his weapons with him. This is an advanced state of his mental decline. Notice he says in verse 7-8 I have trouble in my own third divine institution, I have trouble in my own family. Now comes the spy in verse 9, the man that you saw in 1 Samuel 21:7.

1 Samuel 22:9, “Then answered Doeg, the Edomite, who was set before the servants of Saul, and said, I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub. [10] And he inquired of the LORD for him, and gave him victuals [provisions], and gave him the sword of Goliaths, the Philistine. [11] Then the king sent to call Ahimelech, the priest, the son of Ahitub, and all his father’s house, the priests, who were in Nob; and they came all of them to the king.” Notice how many people are involved, not just one. [12] “And Saul said, Hear now, con of Ahitub. And he answered, here I am, my lord. [13] And Saul said unto him, Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread, and a sword, and has inquired of God for him,” there’s one reason why he wanted the priesthood; David wants to inquire of the Lord through the Urim and the Thummim so he knows God’s will. Saul is angry that he has given God’s will to David, “that he should rise against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?

[14] And then Ahimelech answered the king, and said, And who is so faithful among all thy servants as David, who is the kings’ son-in-law, and goes at thy bidding, and is honorable in thy house? [15] Did I then begin to inquire of God for him? Be it far from me; let not the king impute anything unto his servant, nor to all the house of my father; for thy servant knew nothing of all this, less or more. [16] And the king said, You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father’s house. [17] And the king said unto the footmen that stood about him, Turn, and slay the priests of the LORD,” look at this now, what a fantastic order for the king of Israel, “Turn, and slay the priests of Jehovah,” wipe the priesthood out, “because [their hand also is with David, and because] they knew when he fled, and did not show it to me. But the servants of the king would not put forth their hand to fall upon the priests of the LORD. [18] And the king said to Doeg, Turn you, and fall upon the priests. And Doeg, the Edomite, turned, and he fell upon the priests, and slew on that day fourscore and five persons who did wear a linen ephod. [19] And Nob, the city of the priests, he smote with the edge of the sword, both men and women, and children and infants, and oxen, and asses, and sheep with the edge of the sword. [20] And one of the sons of Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub, named Abiathar, escaped, and fled after David. [21] And Abiathar showed David that Saul had slain the LORD’s priests. [22] And David said unto Abiathar, I knew it that day, when Doeg, the Edomite, was there, that he would surely tell Saul; I have occasioned the death of all the persons of thy father’s house. [23] Abide thou with me, fear not; for he that seeks my life seeks thy life. But with me you shall be in safeguard.”

Now before looking at some of the details of this narrative watch the big picture. What was David’s goal? David’s goal was to get the priests on his side. Why? Because he needed the Urim and Thummim to run the country. Now, who does he have on his side by the end of chapter 22? The priests; there’s only one left but he has the priests. So all things do work together for good; David did get the priesthood, but look at the price that was paid for a foolish decision. In other words, David learned something about the will of God. There is a time and there is a place to be aggressive, and there is a time and a place to let up and be passive and just sit on it and relax. And this is part of the training of the man, to know the one from the other, when to faith-rest and when to faith-do.

You’ll notice he says here several inclinations of what’s going on. In verse 9, Doeg is always called the Edomite; he’s a non-Jew, he’s not in the Abrahamic Covenant; like Goliath, he is uncircumcised, he doesn’t belong in the community. You’ll see the order that was refused in verse 17, the footmen refused to carry out the order. This, by the way, is a biblical illustration of loyalty to God over against a superior officer when the office gives a command contrary to the Word of God. But then the guy that does it is the non-Jew, the uncircumcised Gentile.

The significance to Saul, of verses 17 and following, is that now he has not got the Urim and Thummim; as a result of this lesson God is very gracious to the young man, David. See, David’s learning category 5, God is lenient with us when we learn; He lets us make mistakes. He lets us fall in the trough and slop around and picks us up and we fall in the trough and slop around some more and He picks us up again. God is lenient and gracious with us while we’re learning. And He’s lenient and gracious with David because David does get the Urim and the Thummim, and the Urim and Thummim are no longer with Saul, and when Saul no longer has the Urim and the Thummim, what has happened to him? What has happened to his whole dynasty? It’s cut off from the will of God. He has no tool, no device to find out God’s will for the decisions, the political decisions that have to be made. So what you’ve got here is the creeping power of David over against the diminishing power of Saul. It’s very slowly, but piece by piece the picture is falling together.

Now this is an illustration of a Christian man today. If we will be patient the pieces will fall together. Think of David at this point in his career. He’s getting the crud job; he’s having to flee, trying to live in a cave of Adullam instead of palace in Jerusalem, walking around with 400 malcontents that he describes in other portions of the Word of God, just horrible people to be with day after day after day after day. And his is what God wants me to be as the King of Israel? Not ultimately, David, but at this time that’s your training, just bear with it fellow; bear with it and you’ll get there. So David learned something about hastiness in this little incident; he learns that his tactics are wrong. He learns that you can’t be promoted before God promotes you, or disaster happens.

A second lesson occurs with David in 1 Samuel 23; this is a lesson that was necessary for him as a leader to learn; every leader has to learn this at one time or another; it’s the subject of many of the Psalms. This second lesson of David is a lesson in human treachery. A leader always has to have a sort of jaundice eye towards people; he can’t completely ever depend upon people. People are fickle; a leader has to have the stability come from God’s character. A leader has to have the stability to come from God’s character. God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is loving, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable and eternal; God is immutable, that means he is perfectly stable and the leader has to seek source of stability there, not in people. People will fail him; David speaks to this in many, many psalms.

Now in 1 Samuel 23:1 we have the Keilah incident. The Keilah incident was a case where on home ground the… to see what the story is as far as terrain, let’s look at the map of Israel and look at their territory. The territory occupied by the Jews corresponds to this mountainous terrain. The Philistines occupied all the flat area. The land in between was a no-man’s land where see-saw battles raged back and forth for centuries. Today it’s called the Shephelah, and it’s in those valleys where David killed Goliath. Also in those valleys is a place called Keilah, the place of our incident here in the text. It is one of those borderline villages. The background is that David is the savior of the nation, right? If he’s the messiah, if he’s the king, what is the function of a king? To give freedom to his people; he is to save his people. He is in particular to save his people by destroying their enemies who are the Philistines.

Now what David is going to do is destroy the Philistines and free up to Keilah, which was a major grain producing city in southern Judea, but no sooner does he free up the city, drive the Philistines off, than they betray him. In other words, he does a good turn for somebody and they spit in his face. And this is a lesson David has to learn early in his career so he doesn’t develop bitter mental attitudes when this happens again. See, it’s very real training. Watch.

In verse 1, “Then they told David, saying, Behold, the Philistines fight against Keilah, and they rob the threshing floors. [2] Therefore David inquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I go and smite these Philistines? And the LORD said unto David, Go….” [3] And David’s men said unto him, Behold, we are afraid….” Verse 4, “Then David inquired of the LORD again. And the LORD” said go. [5] “So David and his men went to Keilah, and fought with the Philistines, and brought away their cattle, and smote them with a great slaughter. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah. [6] And it came to pass, when Abiathar, the son of Ahimelech, fled to David at Keilah, that he came down with an ephod in his hand.” That confirms that the priesthood now has aligned itself with the Davidic dynasty over against the Saulite dynasty.

You’ll notice the “threshing floor” mentioned in verse 1; this was the granary, it was the place where the Jews had raised their grain and took it from the fields round about to this place at Keilah. Now what the Philistines did, we know what they did because if you look in the text of verse 5 you’ll see one of the things that David had to take was their cattle. You say wait a minute, what’s that talking about? Cattle, the Philistines at Keilah? Yes. What the Philistines would do is wait until harvest time when the Jewish farmer had done all of the raising of the crop, when he brought the crop to the granary, when the crop was all being ground, then they’d pull of their raids; they didn’t touch them until harvest time, and they would bring their cattle in long caravans to rip off the grain and carry it back on their cattle. That’s what the cattle are in verse 5; it’s like a convoy of trucks. So David goes into Keilah and destroys their convoy and destroys them.

You’ll notice, though, in verses 2-4 that David is beginning to inquire of the Lord more and more; Saul no more. Why? Who has the priest? You see the power is shifting to David; even though it’s crud jobs still, the power is gradually shifting. So David asks twice out of consideration for his men, this is the first battle in verse 3, they’re afraid. David has a problem here, he’s got the problem of every army that has ever been trained has this problem. At a certain point in military training the military training becomes non productive if there’s not a real war. It not something realistic happening. And so David faces the problem whether he holes up in the cave of Adullam and lets his army fail or whether he risks taking the men out of Adullam with a hit and run raid. And hope that as a result of the hit and run raid they get some battle experience. Well you can see the dilemma, in verse 2 and 4 you’ll see that David is vacillating here. He doesn’t want to commit his men unless he knows for sure it’s God’s will.

But it turns out it is God’s will, and so the incident goes on. 1 Samuel 23:7, “And it was told Saul that David was come to Keilah.” Saul’s G-2 system, you see, is function. “And it was told Saul that David was come do Keilah. And Saul said, God has delivered him into my hand;” now isn’t that a striking way of describing it; here’s the pious Saul; God has done this, the Lord has done this; you see the human good leaking out all over. So Saul says “God has delivered him into my hand, for he is shut in, and he is hindered in a town that has gates and bars.” See the problem with David was he had a roving band of guerillas, and now he’s got them cornered, sort of like the Vietnamese had the French walled up in Dien Bien Phu and wiped them out mile by mile and they collapsed the French perimeter until the French finally surrendered; it was a horrible thing. And they caught the French in these strongholds. Well, the same thing is happening here, he’s got David walled up.

Verse 8, “And Saul called the people together to war, to go down to Keilah, and to besiege David and his men. [9] And David knew that Saul secretly practiced mischief against him;” notice again he had his spies. By the way, there’s the biblical justification for your intelligence service. “…and he said to Abiathar, the priest, Bring here the ephod.” How many times have you noticed David consulting the ephod? You notice, this is the third time so far in 9 verses; you see the vibrancy of David over against the lethargy of Saul. David is getting directions from God. [10] “Then said David, O LORD God of Israel, thy servant has certainly heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah, to destroy the city for my sake. [11] Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand?” In other words, are they going to be traitors to me? “…O LORD God of Israel, I beseech You, tell thy servant. And the LORD said, He will come down,” that is Saul. [12] “Then said David, Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the LORD said, They will deliver you up.”

In other words, David, you’ve got traitors, you have risked your life to free up this grain producing center in southern Judea, and they’re going to reward your freedom by turning you back over to Saul. See, before they were under the Philistines. Now did Saul help them when the Philistines raided their granaries? When the Philistines came up at harvest time was Saul there? Never. Now they’ve got their freedom, David’s bought it with a price, and now they don’t care, now they turn it back over to Saul. It’s just a very frustrating thing for young David and his career. “And so David and his men,” verse 13, “who were about six hundred,” he’s got 200 new recruits, they evacuate Keilah, and this begins a game of cat and mouse that lasts for the rest of chapter 23. “… arose and departed out of Keilah, and went wherever they could go.” In the Hebrew these are imperfect tenses, and the picture is first David would go down in this valley and hole up, then Saul would come down chasing him and pursue him; then David would go over to here, and Saul would go over to here. Then David would go over here and Saul would go over here, they were just going round and round, all through the area of Judea, “whithersoever they could go,” a picture of fleeing; “and it was told Saul that David was escaped from Keilah;” that he evacuated.

1 Samuel 23:14, “And David abode in the wilderness in strongholds, and remained in a mountain in the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day,” the word “every day” here has reference to patrols. He would send out armed reconnaissance patrols to find out where David’s men were, “but God delivered him not into his hand. [15] And David saw that Saul was come out to seek his life; and David was in the wilderness of Ziph in the forest. [16] And Jonathan, Saul’s son, arose, and he went to David in the woods, and strengthened his hand in God. [17] And he said to him, Fear not; for the hand of Saul, my father, shall not find you; and you will be king over Israel,” and they made a covenant.

What Jonathan is doing is providing David with encouragement. Jonathan knows that the Saulite dynasty, he is the Crown Prince, remember, Jonathan. The Saulite dynasty is going to be destroyed and if the Saulite dynasty is destroyed he can’t be Crown Prince. His making a covenant with David at this point is testimony to David’s growing spiritual power. We call it today a charisma, when a leader kind of sways people. But what you’ve got here is by the Holy Spirit David is beginning to sway people, and the strength of his ability to sway people reaches right into the Saulite dynasty itself. He’s even swaying the Crown Prince to come over to his side. So by this point we have two allies of David. The priesthood is now solidly in this camp; the Crown Prince is solidly in this camp.

1 Samuel 23:19, “Then came the Ziphites to Saul at Gibeah, saying,” the second treachery in these chapters; once again David lives among his countrymen and they betray him. They say to Saul, “Does not David hide himself with us in strongholds in the woods, sin the hill of Hachilah, which is on the south of Jeishimon? [20] “Now, therefore O king, come down according to all the desire of thy soul to come down, and our part shall be to deliver him into the king’s hand.” And then Saul comes up with this very pious language, [21] “Blessed be ye of the LORD,” tra-la tra-la. You see, the guy’s full of this stuff; he’d make very good grades in some evangelical circles. “Blessed be ye of the LORD, for ye have compassion on me.” You see this strain of self-pity, everybody is against me, poor Saul; now you Ziphites, you’ve had pity on me, not whether they were right or wrong, not what God’s will is, but you’ve had pity on me, [22] “Go, I pray you, prepare yet, and know and see his place where his haunt is, and who has seen him there; for it is told me that he deals very craftily.” So he wants a further intelligence report.

[23] “See, therefore, and take knowledge of all the lurking places where he hides himself….” The long and the short of verses 22-23 is that he has employed the Ziphites to map out the terrain. So let’s say we have a ridge line here, and another ridge line here, and a stream in between, a water hole perhaps located here, another terrain there, a path located here, David may have certain camping spots. For example at nighttime his men may congregate around this lake, this spring; at daytime to protect themselves they may lie up in the woods on this ridge line. And what the Ziphites are doing is mapping all the ridge lines, all the valleys, all the little wadis, all the water sources, all the places where David and his army may be. And it’s going to result in a disaster, a very near disaster for David.

The disaster comes about in 1 Samuel 23:26, and it’s a picture of a second lesson David learns. You remember the first one was that David had to learn that his goal, that is to gain the priesthood, must be accomplished on God’s time schedule. David screwed up, but David was a learner; he was a young man, early in his career and God gave him the priesthood, with a price, with suffering, but he made it. Now we come to a second lesson, the lesson of treachery. David almost goes under, but God is faithful. Remember what we found this morning? God is faithful, He won’t allow you to be tested above that which you are able, but He will with the testing make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it. Every trial is bearable in Christ.

So here, 1 Samuel 23:26, “And Saul went on this side of the mountain, and David and his men on that side of the mountain. And David made haste to get away for fear of Saul; for Saul and his men surrounded David and his men [round about to take them].” And what we’ve got finally is he’s walled them up, we don’t know the terrain, we don’t know exactly the features, but somehow David must be blocked off. Apparently Saul’s come up, he’s mastered and controls the ridge line, he’s blocked the valley, he’s blocked the valley at the other end and he controls the other ridge line and he’s got David’s men walled up in here. It’s a bad scene because all he has to do now is get his archers out and begin to advance; all is lost for David, except “God will make a way of escape, that ye may able to bear it.”

And what, at verse 27, just as the surrounding occurred, just as the trap is about to spring, what happens. “And there came a messenger unto Saul, saying, Hast thee, and come, for the Philistines have invaded the land. [28] Wherefore Saul returned from pursuing after David, and went against the Philistines…. [29] And David went up from there, and dwelt in the strongholds at En-gedi.” See, he got out; he got out very, very thinly, but he got out. God is gracious to the man at this point in his career.

Let’s make some applications of these two lessons to the Christian man. David’s second lesson, learning about people and their treachery, has to be learned by leaders, but not all guys are at a point in their career where that’s the key lesson to learn. Maybe with you, in your business, in your situation, instead of learning not to trust people God would have you learn not to trust business indications, and to put all your eggs in one basket. And maybe, instead of the scene that we’ve seen here in 1 Samuel 23 God will put you in your early career through a situation where you bank completely on this economist, or this business authority; you trusted them, you went along with it, you bought capitalization, you invested, and everything went down. But God is faithful and He kind of got you out of it. What’s the meaning of that kind of trial for a man? It’s a trial to give him wisdom—be careful who you trust! So that would be an analogy to the kind of lesson David had to learn.

In short we can summarize this period of David’s life; if you can visualize a pyramid with a lot of dirt, just imagine a land covered up with debris and imagine that under the debris you’re building a pyramid, which represents you as a man, and your career, and your life. For a while nobody sees anything. It’s just debris, and it can be very discouraging, but God says don’t worry about putting up a little tower so you can get visibility. Just build your foundation; keep plugging away at the basics. Have that foundation structured and firm; know the Word of God and all the basic doctrines. In your own field, get experience across the board in many, many different areas, so if you’re a doctor you’re not a specialist in one particular area and you don’t know how to set a bone or something. You have a wide diversity of experience. When you’re young you can get that; different kinds of jobs, different kinds of people and you diversify. Meanwhile, maybe your contemporary is trying to impress people and he’s built this big long edifice and boy, he’s in his business, and his business is rolling and look at mine, it’s falling and all the rest. And you can get very depressed by comparing yourself with your contemporaries and competition. God says just be patient and build your pyramid; it will become visible. But when it becomes visible it’s got a lot more that no one will ever know, except you and the Lord.

That’s the position of David. David’s character is going to be under the debris. Most men will never see under the debris. Now we do, but it’s only because the Holy Spirit chose to let David spill his guts out in the Scriptures. You wouldn’t know, and I wouldn’t know anything more about King David unless the Holy Spirit took us into the debris and saw the foundations.

The opposite thing is what most men do; in order to show (quote) “success,” and after all, a real man must be a successful man by the world’s standards, and Christian men have this pressure put upon them, why you’re not a real man until you’ve really succeeded, and so the pressure is to prematurely succeed. And this is what their life looks like; in inverted pyramid. And inverted pyramids are one of the most unstable of all forms. That’s what some of your contemporaries may be, inverted pyramids. Let them build their big buildings that shows above the debris; you just go along putting block by block by block, so that when the pressure comes, eventually, when you, so to speak, get to be the king, like David was, you’ve got a backlog of experience; it won’t throw you because you’ve been promoted on God’s time schedule.

David took ten years for this kind of thing and that was with perfect upbringing at home, as far as his experience raising sheep and so on before that. I would rather say in men today this would probably, this faze would probably take close to twenty years… close to twenty years from the time a man leaves college to the time that he really has his feet on the ground and knows his field, and knows where he wants to go, knows where he can get information, the time that he’s built a family, that he’s had some children and he’s worked with the system, and he’s got that baggage.

In short what we’re saying from David is that this second period of his life, category five suffering, is prolonged. It is not quick; this evangelical I want to do it yesterday-ism can’t be in your soul or you’re going to be a frustrated man. You’ve got to bank on the Lord’s faithfulness over many, many years. And don’t get discouraged; don’t get discouraged if you here a non-Christian say well what are you doing? What great honors have you got recently? Well, I haven’t got anything. Don’t worry, you just build away block by block with the Scriptures and the Lord will reward, finally. You see, that’s why when we put the kingdom of God first, then all these things shall be added unto us.