Clough Manhood Series Lesson 32

David: Praise under Pressure – 1 Samuel 23-24; Psalms 63, 54; 57

We are continuing in our study of David, and we’re going to go back to the passage that we left with last week in 1 Samuel 23. You’ll also note in Mike’s talk how he said that you must get in the Word of God for yourselves; you simply cannot command any kind of authority in a discussion if you personally haven’t sat down with the Scriptures and thought it through yourself, so you can articulate it in your language; not mine, not someone else’s but yours because then it becomes part and parcel of your position.

Let’s go back to 1 Samuel 23:13 and we’re going to look tonight at David’s trials during the second period in his life. Remember that David’s career as a Christian man began with first the early period when he develops his talents and he develops these talents through discipline; disciplined use of time. While he was out earning money as a shepherd, David at the same time was practicing his musical instruments. He could do both at the same time and he learned something that very few people seem to learn and that is basically you ought to be doing two or three things at the same time; you ought to think ahead so when you make a move you are basically accomplishing something that can be used over here, can be used over here, can be used over here, so you don’t waste time doing 400 different separate things.

You’ve got to lean down and do several good things. David did this. As he was shepherding his flock, coterminously with doing that job, he was also perfecting his music and perfecting his warfare, his military skills. And he did that with a simple device of a slingshot. It doesn’t sound like much but every time he’d go out in the field to the flock, the other shepherds probably just had six pack, they probably were taking that along with them. But David instead decided he would take his slingshot and he would go take his lyre, and he would use these, over and over again out in the field. The sheep couldn’t figure out whether they were getting stoned or they’re going to have a concert but David always had activities going while he was conducting his flock. And it paid off; daily, day after day after day after day after day he practiced and he practiced and he practiced and he practiced, over and over. And then finally there was a day of his promotion when Goliath came across the valley of Elah, and it was the day of his promotion when Saul needed someone to play, so that he would have calmness during his (quote) “mental illness” (end quote).

Well, then David came to the second stage, the persecution phase which is the phase that we studied last time and the persecution phase we could even call by another name, we could call it by the name of a stalled advance; that makes a lot more sense as far as a man and his career is concerned, where it seems like he’s got the talent, it seems like he’s got the breakthrough but yet it seems like also there’s just a stall, where it seems like circumstances block any kind of progress in his career. Many men are very frustrated by this position where it seems like all the preparation is there and yet there’s just… the door is always closed in their face. Why is this? Well, David went through this period and as far as we can put the facts together, at least ten years of David’s life were in this period of a stalled advance where it just seemed like everything he did he couldn’t get to the throne. Saul was there, not only he couldn’t get to the throne he was lucky to get away with his life on occasion.

So out of this period of the stalled advance, David sang many psalms; he composed psalms that spoke about the life of his heart. These psalms are subjective, deliberately so because they reveal what was going on in the spiritual battle on the inside of him. And so tonight we’re going to skip from 1 Samuel 23, we’ll read a little bit and then we’ll go to a psalm. Then we’ll come back, we’ll read a little bit more, we’ll go to a second psalm; then we’ll come back, read a little more and go to a third psalm. All these three psalms show something, a struggle that was going on in David’s life during this trial. Now the importance of these psalms for men is that during this period, when the advance is stalled, oftentimes men can get bitter about it, they can figure that God’s angry with them to the point where they’ll never get promoted, they’ll never get out of this situation, and get very soured out spiritually. It can be a time of great, great disaster for a Christian man. And this is where, again in marriage, a faithful wife must understand that men go through this period and during this period being an ‘ezer to a man means being able to sustain him, at times when he’s thinking like David was thinking; why, oh Lord, why when I prepare, why when I do this, won’t You open the door for me. And the wise ‘ezer will encourage her husband to keep on trusting the Word, lest he fall away and go into a compound carnal type situation.

In 1 Samuel 23:13-15 we have the setting for the first psalm. “Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah,” now Keilah was the place, you remember, where the bands of men had been betrayed. David had found in Keilah after he went up to Keilah and stopped the Philistines from going over the threshing floor, they had a grain area. On this map it was located, it’s not indicated, but it’s down in this area of Hebron. Keilah was a major grain threshing area, and the Philistines would wait until the grain had been harvested, and all the grain brought to the threshing floor. Then they would even let the Jews do all the threshing, and then after all was done and the crop was harvested, then boom, along came the Philistines and brought their oxen up the road, their logistics, their trucks of the day, and hauled it all off. And it was a very disheartening thing.

And remember David and his band, acting as a true messiah, the true anointed, delivered his own people. These were his people at Keilah; they weren’t Philistines, they were Jews, and David protected them against the Philistines and he drove the Philistines off. And what was David’s reward? Treachery. The Keilahites reported him to Saul. And that’s where we pick up here in verse 13, “And it was told Saul that David had escaped from Keilah; and he forbore to go forth. [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, 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 woods.”

The psalm that he sang, that he composed in this period, out of this contemplation as he thought through, Lord, Lord, as I go through this struggle how do I apply the Word to the situation. It’s one of the most famous psalms in the book of Psalms, Psalm 63. Some of you will recognize immediately the first verse. Eusebius, Athanasius, St. Chrysostum all testify that Psalm 63 was used again and again in the worship of the early church. They said it was decreed and ordained by the primitive fathers that no day should ever pass without the public singing of Psalm 63. And Psalm 63 begins with that famous first verse. And keep in mind, this is the man in this period of his career when he’s being stalled out in his advances. “O God, thou art my God, early will I seek Thee; my soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh longs for Thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.”

I traveled in this area of Psalm 63 in the wilderness of Ziph, and we want to see what some of the terrain looks like, when he says I traveled “in a dry and thirsty land,” let’s look at that dry and thirsty land, and remember the trials of David as he’s in this area. Some of these pictures are not in the exact location, this is more of a composite situation, but believe me, they are representative of the terrain. This is a map of the area around Jerusalem. This is the Dead Sea area, and up here, in the center of the map you see a dark spot; that’s Jerusalem. South of Jerusalem is Bethlehem, just about 10-15 miles south, and then all the way down here is Hebron. This area is called in the Hebrew Midbar Yehuda, or the wilderness of Judah. And just to the west of Hebron, located in these two areas, are the signs of the wilderness of Ziph. It is here that David was wandering around and we will see later on in 1 Samuel, not only did he wander back and forth here but he finally came out to this little peak, which is called En-gedi. We’ll look at some of the slides of these things to just get a feel for the terrain of this area. When you read Psalm 63, I searched for “Thee in a dry and thirsty land,” that’s the land. And that’s where David and 600 men wandered. Now there is one correction and that is that in David’s day the land was more moist than this and there were some small scrub forests. We believe the climate has significantly shifted from that of the 10^th century BC.

Here is Herodium which is a place that Herod built, by the way, it has natural air conditioning; the top of that hill is so structured that the prevailing wind blows in a frontal way through the building it and cools it. There are baths inside and he had a nice evaporative cooling system. But apart from that one place you can get an idea of the land all around. That is Midbar Yehuda, the wilderness of Judah. Now some of the caves in the area; these happen to be the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found; in fact this one here, is cave 4 where some of the most famous manuscripts were found. But this gives you an idea of some of the caves that will come up in the story, what they look like, where the men hid out. They’re quite formidable; if you have a small band of men you can hold that terrain quite easily; as you can imagine somebody trying to climb up here and you’re rolling rocks on their head. Here is another picture of these, you can also get into them by coming down from above.

But just look at this terrain here, you see why Saul had some problems finding David. One day Saul would go on one side of the mountain, another day David would go on that side of the mountain, and so it was that they’d chase each other all over these mountains. Sometimes David needed a place of relaxation and he went into these big caves. Now these are not the caves of Adullam, in this area, but they’re like them; but notice here, here’s a man’s size and here’s the size of that cave, so when you read in the Psalms when David was in the cave with 400 men, understand that these are not the small caves but the caves of Qumran, they’re quite large caves. Here’s a shot from the inside, and you can also see that holding these caves would have been quite easy with a small amount of infantry. Things got pretty and so therefore the text will say in 1 Samuel 23, David finally fined a place and he holed up at En-gedi; En-gedi is that place on the map right next to the Dead Sea. Here is En-gedi and you have the hint there’s water there, notice the green growing up in this valley. And so you walk through this wadi or crevasse, and walk in about a half a mile, and finally you reach it. This is the spring at En-gedi; it was there that David holed up at the end of 1 Samuel 23. And if you had a “dry and thirsty land” I think now you can understand why he liked to hide at En-gedi; it’s easy to hold militarily, and there’s plenty of water.

Let’s look at the text. Psalm 63 is what is known as a descriptive praise psalm. By that we mean the psalm doesn’t concentrate on a particular; it concentrates on God’s general character. And it’s can be divided up different ways, but for our purposes tonight we’ll divide it in two parts; verses 1-2, and verses 3-11. In verses 1-2 David is seeking God’s presence. Verses 1-2 describe the mental attitude of a man in the time of his career when he’s being frustrated, when God is slamming the door in his face and he’s experiencing just that general depression that men are so liable to experience. Verses 1-2 shows you what’s happening on the inside of David’s soul, that while doors are slamming in his face as far as his career is concerned, what’s happening on the inside is very, very necessary. God is going to use David; God is going to promote David in due time, but when God promotes David He wants David to be ready to run and to subdue the kingdom as he ought to. And so therefore, mental attitudes have to be formed in David’s heart. Psalm 63:3-11, we’re just giving you the general broad sense, we’ll go back and look at the details in a moment, verses 3-11 David is praising God for His loyal love. Now this again is more of an idea, as we go through this, of watching David’s inside character develop in response to outside pressure.

Let’s look at the details in Psalm 63:1; in the Hebrew the title is part of the verse: “A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.” You saw the wilderness of Judah so you ought now to be able to very easily visualize verse 1. He speaks of “God”, not as Jehovah but God, and therefore draws emphasis to God’s essence, God’s attributes. There’s one thing that a man has to fall back on, and he’s got to learn this. There’s no way to pick this up in a Bible class, no way to write this on a note, it just seems that we all have to learn the hard way. We have to have the door slammed very, very hard in our face repeatedly, before we will learn the elementary lesson of going back in times of loneliness and times of pressure and times of disappointment, and think through the attributes of God. This is the only source of refreshment, but it’s an instant source of refreshment. In the darkest hours of depression if you have the mental attitude, the habit pattern established, of going back in your mind and going through God is sovereign, and what does this mean? It means that God is in control of all things; it means that “all things work together for good,” even this mess that I’m currently in, “works together for good, to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose.”

And then thinking through that God is righteousness, and God is just, and though the world around may not be righteousness and just, and though we may be victims of treachery in business deals, disappointments in all sorts of social relationships, God is righteousness, God is just, and we have assurance therefore that if we are on the righteous side, ultimately we’re on the winning side. And God is love, and we have to have patience to let Him express His love to us on His terms; God is going to love us but God is going to love on His sovereign terms. You can’t dictate love out of a person and less so can you dictate God’s love out of God. And we have to learn to be receivers.

And then God is omniscient; God, in the final analysis, really does know what He’s doing. And this may sound like a very trivial truth but when you’re in the darkest hours of depression and frustration, particularly when you think you’ve followed the Lord’s will and it’s done nothing, seemingly, except get you in a bind and it’s gotten you no place except the hard place, where the door has slammed ever even tighter in your face; then there’s a real battle to believe that God does know after all what He’s doing.

And then God is omnipotent, and God is omnipresent, that God in His omnipotence, the way I express it in the revised framework pamphlet is His omnipotence means that God is an energetic being; that is, He’s full of energy. And certainly in a time of depression the man feels like the last ounce of energy has been squeezed out of him, and then that’s the time to think of God and all of His power, that God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think.” That God is omnipresent, and whether David is at En-gedi or the cave of Adullam, or out in that dry and thirsty land of the wilderness of Judah, it doesn’t make any difference because God is wholly there; He’s wholly here and He’s wholly there; He’s not partly here and partly there; God is completely at every point. That is omnipresence. God is immutable, and God is eternal; God is perfectly stable when your friends aren’t stable, when even your loved ones aren’t stable, and when you get frustrated looking around for a platform on which to stand when everything else seems to cave in, God is stable. And God is eternal, God has all eternity to view the fast moments of time, when things happen so quickly it leaves your head spinning, remember that God had all eternity to view it in slow motion. So God dwells in eternity while we dwell in time.

Well, this is the kind of thing that God wanted David to develop, a mental attitude habit pattern of going back over and over and over and over again the very, very simple things. There’s nothing theologically difficult about this. This is elementary; elementary basic doctrine. But yet we fail time and again to apply this habitually. When I was on active duty one time I had an interesting discussion with my commanding officer. We were discussing something about various weapon systems and I made the remark that well, so and so couldn’t have done a good job because they didn’t have good weapons; if they only had a more advanced weapon. And this Major looked at me and said, Lieutenant, just understand one thing about war; he said you give a man a weapon and he knows how to use it well and he will always out perform the most sophisticated weapon that can’t be used effectively.

And that colored my own teaching of the Word of God time and again, in that I would much rather drill and drill on the simple basics until these simple basics are caught and become habitually in our application, so that at least a believer who knows this little doctrine of divine essence, and knows it well, and has grilled within his soul a habit pattern he will apply this here, he will apply it there, he will apply it in every situation, that believer will out perform a seminary student who has studied all the details of theology but has not developed a habit pattern of application, application, application, application. A little basic doctrine consistently applied will always win over sophisticated doctrine sloppily applied.

So David learns the basics; “O God, Thou art my God,” notice he appropriates the essence of God to himself, “Thou art MY God,” those attributes are my privilege to enjoy, and in this period in my career, when I’ve been stalled in my advance, I use Your assets; “early will I seek Thee,” and that refers to his daily habit pattern, daily he got in the Word for himself. And can you imagine how he ever did it? He didn’t even have a cassette tape recorder; in fact, David didn’t have a bound Bible. For all we know, David might have had only oral tradition to go on; yes, they had writing in those days, but as far as getting the Scriptures together, he probably went to Samuel and there memorized great portions of the Word of God. So what he had, he had up here; he didn’t even have a loose-leaf ring binder to carry notes in the cave with him; he had a little doctrine but it was well memorized.

“…early will I seek Thee,” and looking out in that dry and dusty land that we saw in the slide, he saw that as more than just simply dry land. He said Lord, if You take me and make me and You rub my nose in it, as it were, as I’m forced to sleep in those rocky mountain to rocky mountains, in little caves and little caves and big caves and back to the little ones, all through the dusty land, he says Lord, this is a picture, a physical picture of where the world’s at spiritually, and I must understand this and I must never forget it. When I finally get to my castle and I finally am king over Israel, and I finally have trees and great gardens around me in Jerusalem, and no longer am I dwelling in a dry and thirsty land, I must remember that the land basically on the face of the earth is dry and is thirsty because the world is dry and thirsty spiritually. There is no water, and water here carries the metaphor of the water of eternal life; the same water that Jesus promised the woman at the well: Drink of the water that I shall give you, woman, and you’ll never thirst again; powerful spiritual metaphors in very simple observations of nature.

Psalm 63:2 describes his positive volition in another way. “To see Thy power and Thy glory, as I have seen Thee in the sanctuary.” This talks about the ark, and it talks about David’s great desire to be where the presence of God was; he was excluded, remember, he’s down in the wilderness of Judah, he’s not up north in Nob where the tabernacle is at this point; so he’s separated physically from the location of where the Word is.

Now Psalm 63:3-11, we can more quickly go through this section of the psalm but this section of the psalm deals with his praise. Notice what it is that during this time in his career keeps David from going bitter; keeps David from rebelling and becoming angry at God for not promoting him. Notice what he’s thankful for. “Because Thy loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee.” And that’s talking about public life… public life my lips shall praise thee. Notice, “Your loving-kindness is better than life,” in other words, God if you slam the door of my career closed right now, and you take me to heaven, then that’s better than living like this. So I am willing to have my career come to a screeching halt at this point and come face to face with You, because You and Your loving-kindness are better than life. So he gets his career in perspective. No matter how important his life is, God is always better than whatever his life might be.

Psalm 63:4 “Thus will I bless Thee while I live; I wilt lift up my hands in Thy name. [5] My soul shall be satisfied with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips,” describing his attitude. He’s got nothing, verse 1 shows you his circumstances, “a dry and thirsty land,” but his soul on the inside, verse 5 is of “marrow and fatness.” That’s a picture of prosperity; David is in a horrible situation in the external world around him but in his soul he is learning the secret of prosperity and depressing, and he must learn that, and then after he learns that God will promote him.

Psalm 63:6, “When I remember Thee upon my bed, and meditate on Thee in the night watches, [7] Because Thou hast been my help, therefore, in the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice.” Verse 6 describes his career in his management of time. David was extremely busy during the daytime, in several ways, busy avoiding the patrols of King Saul; busy training those 600 men, because remember, he started with 600 men who had never been in an army before, and he trained them so effectively that by the end of 2 Samuel we read the honor list, the great military men of David’s career; they all lived, the medal of honor winners, and many of those men got their professional military start in that horrible situation at the cave of Adullam. So all during the day David is busy as a leader, he has this problem, he has that problem, where do we get enough water for 400 men, where do we get food for 400 men, how can I send somebody out for food without leaving tracks and bringing one of Saul’s patrol into my bivouac area; how can I keep my perimeter defense going tonight when I’ve got to take 20% of my force and run them down there to see if we can find the next water hole. So he’s got this worry, concern, worry, concern, worry, concern, day after day after day after day.

So therefore when does David have time to all this meditating that he describes in verses 1-2. Verse 6 tells you the answer; he’s a busy man and the only time he has a chance to think, even about God, is when he goes to bed. “When I remember Thee upon my bed, and I meditate upon Thee in the night watches, that’s when he pulls watch; with his men he would pull night guard duty and he would patrol the perimeter of his camp along with his men; sometimes they would do it, other times David would do it. And so whether he was asleep or whether he was out on the night watch, he would think of God. The sky in that portion of the country, in that portion of the world, like west Texas away from the city, there’s very little dust in the atmosphere under normal conditions, very little pollution and so therefore you can see up; the salt of the Mediterranean does not go inland this far and you don’t get what we call back scattering, and so therefore you can actually see the stars very clear, just as clear as can be. By the way, that’s how he wrote Psalm 19, when he talks about the stars and “the heavens declare the glory of God,” that was written during the night, when he would go out, he would look up.

Psalm 63:7, “Because Thou hast been my help, I will therefore in the shadow of Thy wings rejoice.” The “shadow of Thy wings” pictures the heat of the day. And he pictures the idea of God hovering over him with wings, and David walks under that shadow. That’s the metaphor of physical experience, developed out of his physical experience; here it refers to protection. [8] “My soul follows hard after [close behind] Thee, Thy right hand upholds me.”

And now his assurance at the end of his praise, notice these last few verses, Psalm 63:9-11, he expects God to help him. Remember, he’s still under the pressure of Saul looking for him. “But those who seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth.” You see that fierceness, remember this morning I said there’s a militancy to the Scripture, and I saw some people here in the 11:00 o’clock service that I know were just vibrating and couldn’t wait to get out the door this morning, because to them that was the most unbiblical, unchristian approach you could possibly take; that’s why I took it, because I knew they were here. And the reason is because David in these psalms, we always talk about the psalms so sweet, the sweet psalmist; just read verse 9 and what he’s talking about. That’s not a sweet psalmist; he is in a war and he expects his enemies to be destroyed; like any good soldier, you don’t win by negotiating, you win by destroying the enemy. And he is thanking God for killing the enemy at verse 9; and that includes Saul. David’s not going to kill Saul but David’s thanking God that God will take care of Saul. The throne is mine, David says, you told me so God, now get this clod off the throne.

Psalm 63:10, “They shall fall by the sword,” there’s a prophecy, Saul fell by his own sword. “They shall fall by the sword; they shall be a portion for foxes,” these are the animals that actually eat up the dead bodies in the field. [11] “But the king shall rejoice in God; everyone that swears by him shall glory, but the mouth of them who speak lies shall be stopped.” You see, finally in his praise he gained assurance in verses 9, 10 and 11 that his career would go on. Yes, he was in that period of the stalled advance of his life, and yes, like all men he was very depressed and frustrated, but what he did that most men don’t do was he went back to the essence of God, and went over this and over this and over this, day after day, until he could honestly sing Psalm 63.

That’s what was going on in the wilderness around Ziph area; turn back to 1 Samuel 23:19 and let’s pick up an introduction to the next psalm that he wrote. This is when the Ziphites come to Saul and they’re the second group to betray him; the people at Keilah betrayed him and said hey Saul, he’s down here, go get him. The same thing came with the Ziphites; they lived right close by. “Does not David hide himself with us in strongholds in the woods, in the hill of Hachilah, which is on the south of Jeshimon? [20] Now, therefore, O king, come down” and we will help you. We saw David’s address, as I described it last week in verse 20-23, he asks them for map information, and finally in verse 26 you get to that crisis point, when “Saul went on this side of the mountain, and David and his men went on that side of the mountain. And David made haste to get away…. But Saul and his men surrounded David, and his men, surrounded them to take them. David is in a position of total annihilation. Saul has him surrounded, he’s caught him, somehow he’s finally caught him. David has not eluded Saul. And we saw last week what happened; word comes that the Philistines have invaded and God answers David’s prayers to break the siege.

We know in verse 28, after Saul returned from pursuing David, we know verse 28, so to us the tension of verse 26 doesn’t seem real. See we can read… all we have to do is in a split second our eye reads verses 27-28 and so we kind of get to the end of the story. But let’s pretend this is a moving picture and all of a sudden the action stops at verse 26 and we don’t get to the end of the story. Now we’re stuck in the same bind that David was stuck in; fortunately during this time he tells us his thoughts.

Turn to Psalm 54; you see now why the Psalms are often the most comforting passages of Scripture. Many of you have known this before, but the reason the Psalms are so comforting is because they’re written during times of pressure. They let you see how a godly man encountered pressure. Psalm 54 is a lament psalm; that means it’s a psalm that is written about a problem, it’s not a praise psalm like the other one. Now David’s in a bind, so by studying Psalm 54 we actually can look inside, like an X-ray machine, into the heart of this leader and watch what is developing there in this man.

“To the chief Musician on Neginoth,” this is a musical instrument, apparently, “A Psalm of David, when the Ziphites came and said to Saul, Does not David hide himself with us?” So from the Psalm heading we know when this Psalm was written and we know the circumstances. This Psalm can be divided into three parts. The first part, verses 1-2, is David’s petition. David is asking God for judgment and salvation here. The second part of the Psalm, verses 3-5 is that David describes the situation; he describes the people who are seeking his life, and he asks for God’s judgment as his helper. And finally in verses 6-7 David’s vow that he makes to praise God when it’s all over. So three sections; verses 1-2; verses 3-5; verses 6-7.

Let’s look at Psalm 54:1-2. Remember he’s surrounded by Saul and faces extinction; we don’t know the answer, the answer to Psalm 54 is verse 28 back there, but David didn’t know that answer when he prayed this prayer. “Save me, O God, by Thy name, and judge me by Thy strength.” Now you see, he’s picked up what we have said before of taking the attribute of God and using that as the modus operandi in his thought pattern. Notice the words carefully in verse 1, “Save me by Thy essence,” the word “name” connotes the character of God. So David says Lord, I know your attributes, I, from the human point of view can’t do a thing, we’re totally surrounded at this point. So God, it’s all up to you now, if You’re going to shine with all Your attributes You’d better start shining—save me by Your character! You couldn’t ask for more of a grace orientation than this. David learns in the school of experience to trust the Lord. This is a faith technique in operation. [2] “Hear my prayer, O God’ and give ear to the words of my mouth.” By the way, it shows you his prayers, in this case, appear to be out loud, they weren’t silent prayers.

Now in Psalm 54:3-5 the description; here’s his reasoning with God, he doesn’t just say “Lord, save me, Lord help me,” but here he gives God reasons to come to his help, come to his aid. And this is what we ought to do when we pray; when men are in a situation where it seems like every door is slammed in their face, it is an excellent exercise to even write out your petition, that you’re going to talk to God about, on a piece of paper, before you even say it. There are some benefits in doing this. The first benefit is that it will force you to visualize the situation of you coming in and visualize God sitting at a desk as the grand executor, and you are coming in with a business proposal. Now God isn’t going to sit there and have you going well, uh, well, uh, like this to Him, He wants something intelligent said to Him. And He wants reasons, and so if you can visualize the scene of presenting God with a well-organized petition, Lord, I need Your help because of this, this, this and this. So watch what he does here. Here is his reasons.

[3] “For strangers are risen up against me, and oppressors seek after my soul; they have not set God before them. [4] Behold, God is mine helper; the Lord is with them that uphold my soul. [5] May You reward evil unto mine enemies, and cut them off in Thy truth.” Now the key is in verse 3; there’s his key reason, “For strangers,” the word “stranger” here is a person who is a stranger to the covenant. It was a word, a derogatory term; the stranger originally meant a non-Jew or a Gentile, but it came to mean the unregenerate of the Jews, those who were strangers to the Mosaic lifestyle, to the lifestyle of the Lord. So he’s applying this to the people of Ziph. Now the people of Ziph are fellow Jews; in fact, what did we say this is the wilderness of? What tribe? The tribe of Judah. What tribe is David in? The tribe of Judah. So by calling these people strangers he is saying my blood brothers in my own tribe have betrayed me, and in their act of betraying me they have shown the fact of their insensitivity to God’s plan in our own generation. They are totally insensitive, so I called them strangers. The author of Hebrews uses a yet stronger term than stranger. In Hebrews 12 he uses the word “bastard” as it originally meant, the strange child, the bastard, and the author of Hebrews says that you’d better watch out Christian, that if you sin and don’t get discipline, that’s a sign you are a bastard and you are not in the covenant. And so here he’s saying these are bastards, they’re strangers, who have risen up against me.

Now the key is at the end of verse 3, “they have not set God before them.” That’s his case; the problem isn’t a personality conflict. The problem is a spiritual conflict. David recognizes this isn’t a case of simple guerilla activity. This isn’t a case of international terrorism. This is a case that involves who is the lord of the land; is Jehovah and Jehovah’s anointed one, is He the authority, or is man’s own idea of authority going to rule. So therefore, because “they have not set God before them,” David can pray this. He has, shall we say, a fulcrum, a lever, that he can get with God.

And then he goes on, [4] “Behold, God is min helper,” and this is very interesting. This word is used mostly in two context’s in the Old Testament; it’s our old familiar term, ‘ezer, and it’s used for a wife and it is used for God in this situation, and it shows you what an ‘ezer does; God is my ‘ezer. David didn’t have a wife and if he had one she wouldn’t be much help in this situation. So at this point David realizes that his true ‘ezer can’t even be his own wife. They can be derivative ‘ezers, but no man can be fully dependent upon his wife, simply because she’s another finite limited creature. The man has to learn that his real ‘ezer is God Himself. And under that, through God as an ‘ezer, then God as the ‘ezer can help through the little ‘ezer, but all the ‘ezer-ing is coming from God. So “God is my ‘ezer; the Lord is with them that uphold my soul.” “Them that uphold my soul” are the 600 men that’s in his band, that are about to be massacred by Saul’s ambush.

Now verse 5 is a petition; it’s not, as in the King James, an indicative sentence, it is an imperative. “May he reward evil unto my enemies and cut them off in Thy truth.” Notice it is not mere simple vengeance, but “cut them off in Thy truth,” according to Thy plan, O God. And then he promises God something in the end, a promise of a public testimony; he is not going to remain silent when the promised help comes. [6] “I will freely sacrifice unto thee; I will praise Thy name, O LORD; for it is good.” Notice the character of God again, [7] “For He has delivered me out of all trouble, and my eye has seen His desire upon mine enemies.” So this psalm, this individual lament psalm shows you how David was able to take a pressure situation, use the very simple doctrine of the essence of God, apply that very simple doctrine to the problem, and come up with a reasoned petition: God, I ask you to do this because of this reason, this reason, this reason and this reason. That’s the mentality that is being developed for ten years in frustration, in disappointment, in depression, as it seems like he’s got all this talent and he’s going absolutely nowhere in his career. He IS going somewhere in his career, inside. And that’s what God is looking at. And so during this period of time He is developing David’s inside soul.

Now let’s turn back to 1 Samuel 24, shortly after this, and this is why I showed you those slides because now, unlike a congregation who hasn’t seen what En-gedi looks like, now you can read something more into verse 29 than you could before. You see, verse 28 is God’s answer and God’s answer is super abundant grace. God not only answers David’s prayer which was what? We saw in Psalm 54? Destroy the enemy. God takes Saul and gets rid of him and then what happens in verse 29? David gets a vacation at that waterfall. You see the blessing. Now only did he escape Saul’s trap but he has some R&R; he had R&R in a perfectly defensible perimeter; a military guy couldn’t ask anything more than that. Good night, you’ve got your own private water fall, pool, all the guys can swim, and you can hold the area up around the top part of it, no problem with an ambush. Fantastic! So you see, verse 29, when you see En-gedi is God’s super abundant grace. What does the Bible say? He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. And so David asked merely for an end to the ambush and God gave him over and above that a vacation.

Now in 1 Samuel 24:1 we find a similar situation. “And it came to pass, when Saul was returned from following the Philistines, that it was told him, saying, Behold, David is in the wilderness of En-gedi. [2] Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats.” Remember those rocks, remember when you went into that waterfall I showed you where the green was going, and the sheer walls in that valley and you walk up there. Well, you don’t really climb up those too much but interestingly, while we were walking into the waterfalls of En-gedi, there was a goat, a wild goat, I didn’t have my camera read in time to take it, but it was very interesting, no problem. Now it was amazing to me to watch because I’d never watched one of these things climb a cliff like this, and he was just hopping and skipping away up there, and it looked like for all the world he was going to come down, slide down that 50 foot embankment, but no problem, he just went right on up.

As he’s there, and the wild goats are there, Saul gets a tip. [3] “And he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where was a cave,” and this is the famous scene where Saul is going to get caught with his pants down, we’ll return to that after we get through the psalm, because while this happens, before the Saul in the cave incident happens, if you stop the action about verse 2 you have the setting for the third and final psalm for tonight, Psalm 57, which is another individual lament psalm. Here again, while it appears during this time of blocked advance that David’s career is going nowhere, on the inside David’s career is going everywhere. David is becoming a spiritually powerful man, though to the world’s point of view it doesn’t seem to be that way.

Psalm 57, “A Michtam of David, when he fled from Saul in the cave.” Now there’s some discussion whether Psalm 57 literally happened at this time or it happened at another similar event in David’s life; we’re not going to be nitpicky about it, we’re just going to take the mentality of Psalm 57 as the mentality that happened that I said in 1 Samuel 24. Psalm 57:1, “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me; for my soul trusts in Thee.”

Psalm 57 can be divided in two parts; it is a lament psalm, describing what happens to a man under pressure. The first section is verses 1-5; the last section verses 6-11. The first section, David expresses his trust in Jehovah while in the middle of his enemies. So this represents a sort of advance. You see, Psalm 63 that we showed you before was when David was focusing on God’s character. Then we looked at Psalm 54 where he took God’s character and he applied it to the situation. He said Lord, save me in Your name. Now in Psalm 57 he’s basically confident that he’s cruising here, spiritually. He’s got a pressure situation but he’s basically confident he can handle it, with grace, but he’s basically confident. And in verses 6-11 he praises God for the deliverance.

Let’s look at Psalm 57:1-5, “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me; for my soul trusts in Thee. Yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge,” remember, see that metaphor again, “the shadow of the wings” in that hot land, I’m going to stay in the shade until these calamities be over-passed.

[2] “I will cry unto God most high; unto God who performs all things for me.” Look at that, you see how far he’s come in his career. Yes, from the world’s point of view he hasn’t got a promotion, but look what’s happening on the inside of his soul. He is able to say, in verse 2, literally, “the God that avenges me,” that’s what the Hebrew would read, “the God that avenges me.” So he’s very confident, he’s described with a Hebrew participle and a Hebrew participle describes God’s essence or His character. So it’s part of God’s character to be David’s avenger. “I will cry” to that God, [3] “And He will send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of him that would swallow me up. God shall send forth His mercy and His truth.” So here’s his confidence, notice. Look at the tremendous… it’s just exuding confidence. “He will send from heaven,” that means that God can miraculously interpose, that’s what he’s saying. He doesn’t know exactly how but he’s already had one very good experience. Remember the experience of praying Psalm 54, and what happened when he prayed Psalm 54? All of a sudden the Philistines move into the land and he gets to… hey, Philistines, you got to go get them Saul and he breaks off his attack. Now that wasn’t an accident, that perfect timing. And so David says yes, I know God, “He can send from heaven, and He can save me from the reproach. God will send forth His grace and His truth,” notice, or “His mercy and His truth,” or His chesed and His truth.

But in Psalm 57:4 he describes the situation; you’ll notice, by the way, in all these Psalms David is not naïve. There’s something around non-Christian men when they think of a man trusting, I don’t know what it is, it’s just part of their mentality, they think what we’re saying is that we don’t look at the problem. I’ve watched this time and time again with men. Their interpretation of trusting is that you close your mind off to the problem, you don’t really see the problem, you just kind of cruise blindly through it. But these Psalms refute that because here in verse 4 he’s describing the real pressure. David’s eyes are not closed. In fact, we would say the unbeliever’s eyes are closed; he only sees the circumstances, he doesn’t see the Lord over the circumstances.

[4] “My soul is among lions,” lions is a word for warriors, in this case Saul’s warriors. “My soul is among warriors, I lie among them that are set on fire, the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword. [5] Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let thy glory be above all the world [earth].” You see how confident he is, that if God would show His glory, that is His attributes, no sweat for David, no problem. All God has to do is show His glory and this problem is solved. Now you see, that is an advance in David’s career. When a person can think this way they can really start to cruise under pressure.

Now Psalm 57:6-11, this is just downright praise, and it’s praise because he visualizes the deliverance as having occurred. He doesn’t know what the deliverance is going to be, but he is so confident the deliverance is going to come that if you want to diagram what’s happening in this section of the psalm, it looks like this; on a timeline David is located here, the problem and the deliverance is located on down the time line. And this psalm looks like David is transported in time, ahead of the solution and he’s looking back on it. That’s how confident he is; he can actually visualize the whole problem solved by the intervention of God. He’s already not thinking of the problem, look at this, this is why he can eventually cruise in the middle of these pressures and not be depressed because he can look forward over this; if he just stops here at the problem, depression. But the reason he gets out of depression is because he can cruise all the way down here and visualize the situation solved. Now that is a tremendous advance, to actually be under the pile and visualize yourself out from under the pile, with such vivid imagery that you’re already thinking how you’re going to thank God for getting you out from under the pile.

Psalm 57:6, “They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down. They have dug a pit before me, into the midst where they are fallen themselves.” In other words, he’s saying that evil always trips itself up. Saul and his advisors have now gotten themselves in a very weak position. Now I don’t know what David, after he finally wrote Psalm 57, in particular verse 6, knew about the kind of deliverance we’re going to look at again, but what more fulfillment could you have than verse 6 in Saul getting caught, totally vulnerable in the cave. That’s what verse 6 is talking about; “they have dug a pit,” and they have fallen into it themselves.

Psalm 57:7 “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.” Do you know what that means? It’s stable. See that word “fixed,” in other words, David has got to the point now in his spiritual growth where facing just as great a disaster as he did before he has an inner stability, “my heart is fixed.” And so, instead of sitting here and going into a panic I’m going to “sing and give praise.” Sergeant, go get my musical instruments. That’s what he’s saying, the General wants to play a song. Well, you can imagine the effect this has on the men, for their C.O. to be in the kind of a pressure situation and he calls for his musical instruments, and we’re going to thank God for the solution to the problem. This kind of thing is very contagious among a group of people.

[8] “Awake, my glory, awake, psaltery and harp. I will awake early.” And here he’s talking to his musical instruments, the Sergeant has brought him the instruments, and David looks at it and he begins to play, and he talks to his instruments. “Awake, my glory; awake, my psaltery and my harp…. [9] I will praise thee, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing unto Thee among the nations.” Now to show you how fantastic his confidence is in verse 9, if you look at that last phrase, “I will sing to you among all the nations,” do you know what that visualizes? That not only visualizes the solution to the immediate problem of getting caught, that visualizes David as king already having commerced with the other kings, Pharaoh, the King of Assyria, the kings all over the earth. That’s who he’s going to praise Him to, so God, thank You for getting me out of this problem, I can see it now, I’m going to be sitting on that throne and I’m going to be declaring Your Word to all the kings of the earth. Do you see what’s occupying his mind. Right now he’s still stuck in a cave some place; visualize that big cave that I showed you, the last one, where the people were inside and I showed you that little guy and how big the cave was; he’s stuck in the back of that thing. That’s where he is, but in his soul he has the ability to visualize and transport himself into another time in another place. This is not some magic teleportation or whatever it is in the science fiction movies. But in his soul he can teleport himself to a time when God has been gracious, and he visualizes here him sitting on the throne.

Psalm 57:10, “For Thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and Thy truth to the clouds.” He even shows the fact that God is in total control of the universe. [11] Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; and let Thy glory be above the earth.” So I think this third psalm will show you the advance that David is making during these times when it appear his career isn’t going anywhere.

Let’s conclude by turning back to 1 Samuel 24 and watch the answer to Psalm 57. For those of you who weren’t here in the 1 Samuel series, you have to visualize this theme, in thinking of Saul as a very proud and very dignified individual, full of human good. And God has His ways throughout the book of Samuel of ridiculing. 1 Samuel is a humor book where God is laughing. It’s really an expression of Psalm 2, where God is looking down from heaven and He has in derision them that defy Him and His Messiah; God’s laughing at them. You know, Saul, you think you’re real… come on. And so this is why his daughter gets stuck with the foreskins for dowry, and this is why he now gets caught with his pants down in the middle of a cave. See, God has a sense of humor. Bob Thieme, when he writes the essence box now adds SH after sovereignty; sovereignty, sense of humor, and goes on.

All right, so let’s look. 1 Samuel 24:3, “And he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where was a cave,” now the thing is, is that David’s in the back of that cave. See, that’s the setting of this whole thing. If you want to be a dramatist and visualize how you’d film this it’d be amazing, because you’ve got all these guys hiding there and they’re worried this guy is going to come down with a spear and he’s going to kill them; so all these men are sitting down here wondering what’s going to happen, what’s going to happen, and Saul comes in and relieves himself in the middle of a cave. I mean, it’s just totally incongruous, 400 men worried about their lives and somebody’s using the front of the cave for an outhouse.

All right, so while he’s there, verse 4, “And the men of David said unto him,” see, they’re in the back of the cave, hey, David, look, you’ve got him, “Behold the day of which the LORD said unto thee, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand, that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good to you.” So they urged David to assassinate him. Wouldn’t that make headlines? Assassinated in the outhouse. But then “David arose,” and he crawled up to the guy, and he apparently laid his clothes off to the side while he… so on… and so he “cut off the skirt [of Saul’s robe].” Now why did David cut the clothes and not kill Saul? What did we say we saw in Psalm 57; remember what the theme of Psalm 57 was? Lord, I’ve got total confidence that you can handle the problem, so I am not going to put blood on my hands by assassinating a man that You have chosen. You have promised, God, to get him off the throne, so I’m going to sit here and I’m going to let him know that I could have gotten him, but I am not going to raise my hand.

This is why in verse 5 David even has a pang of conscience over cutting the royal garment because the skirt is the royal garment that he has cut. [5, “And it came to pass afterward, that David’s heart smote him, because he had cut off Saul’s skirt.”] [6] “And he said unto his men, The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the LORD’s anointed,” you see his respect? “…to stretch forth my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the LORD. [7] So David restrained his servants, and he permitted them not to rise against Saul. But Saul rose up out of the cave, and went on his way. [8] And David rose afterward, and he went out of the cave, and he cried after Saul…”

Now the commentators when they get to this point don’t understand the military situation that’s happened here. You can see something else about David and his wisdom and his love for his men. Do you notice that though he begins to talk to Saul in verse 8, he waits until Saul is out of the cave. Why? Because if something goes wrong and Saul turns around and orders his soldiers to get David, his men are still hidden away. David, this is an act of protecting his men. He doesn’t want to risk them. Though he trusts the Lord he doesn’t want to risk them; he tells them you stay back. [9] “And so David comes out and said to Saul, Why hearest thou men’s words, [saying, Behold, David seeks thy harm,]” and it goes on, if you want to read the end of 1 Samuel 24 David confronts Saul with his sin, and Saul backs off and for a while the pressure is relieved.

Well, this is the period that characterizes a man, a Christian man or believer, in a time when it seems from the world’s point of view he has his advance stalled, it’s blocked. Remember, your career may be blocked on the outside, but ask yourself, men, what’s going on on the inside. Are advances being made there. In David’s case a lot of advances were made there. In fact, that’s why there were no advances made on the outside; the inside had to be advanced first.