Well, this evening we're going to take a look at a time in the life of David, and so I invite you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Samuel 22. We're going to just read the first couple of verses of 1 Samuel 22 and then all of chapter 27. That would be found on page 289 if you're looking at the Pew Bibles, 1 Samuel 22, verses 1 through 2. Hear the word of the Lord. David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about 400 men.
Now turning to chapter 27. Then David said in his heart, "Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines. And then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand." And so David arose and went over, he and the 600 men who were with him, to Achish, the son of Maok, king of Gath. And David lived with Achish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail of Carmel, Nabal's widow. And when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer saw him. Then David said to Achish, "If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns that I may dwell there. For why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?" So that day Achish gave him Ziklag. And therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day.
And the number of the days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months. Now David and his men went up and made raids against the Geshurites, the Gerzites, and the Amalekites for these were the inhabitants of the land from of old, as far as sure to the land of Egypt and David would strike the land and would leave neither man nor woman alive but would take away the sheep, the oxen, the donkeys, the camels, and the garments and come back to Achish. And when Achish asked, "Where have you made a raid today?" David would say, "Against the Negeb of Judah," or "against the Negeb of the jeremiahites or "against the Negeb of the Kenites." And David would leave neither man nor woman alive to bring news to Gath, thinking, "Lest they should tell about us and say, so David has done Such was his custom all the while he lived in the country of the Philistines. And Achish trusted David, thinking, "He has made himself an utter stench to his people Israel; therefore he shall always be my servant."
Here ends the reading of God's holy word. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever.
Well, this evening I'd like to look again at the life of David. In this instance tonight, I'd like to look at David as preparing to be king. But then I'd also like to look at David in the wilderness. And then I would like to look at David and his people in the wilderness.
David, at the beginning of chapter 27, says, "Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul." He's very concerned about his life. He has been fleeing from Saul for many years, and he's gotten to the point where he thinks, "I'm just going to die." And the word "therefore I will perish" means "I will be swept away." And that has reflections back, to an overtones overtones of God's judgment. For instance, if you look back in chapter 12, Samuel reminded the Israelites that if they did not remain faithful to God, that they and their king would be swept away; they would perish. Then in chapter 26, verse 1, David says he refrained from killing Saul and said God could take care of it, because Saul would enter into battle and perish, or be swept away. All of these instances where it says "perish" have that overtone of God's judgment that somehow God would judge these people and would cause them to be swept away.
And so David now is fleeing from Saul, and he's so afraid for his life that he says, "I may be swept away by God." It sounds risky. But David has now been established as a leader. He has a sizable group of people. He's no longer this lone fugitive running from cave to cave. But there are now 400 people we read in chapter 22. And so David on the run, but now with households of people, with wives, and with his parents. So it's very difficult for him to get around. And he leaves and goes to Gath.
Gath was one of the five Philistine uh major cities they would call them the Philistine Pentapolis, right? So they're five strongholds of the Philistines. So you kind of scratch your head and say, "David, what are you up to? Why are you going to one of these strongholds of the Philistines?" But that's what he's doing. Gath means "wine press," and it's as if David is going to be pressed. He and his people.
David has already taken on, as I said, the appearance of a king. He's beginning to have this entourage of people. And in verse 4, he it says when he told Saul that David had fled to Gath, Saul no longer sought him. And so David begins to make arrangements and agreements with King Achish. He thinks, "Hey, if I can get an agreement with him, I can live peacefully at least for a short time." And that's what he does. And now we find out that the 400 people that have come around David have has now become 600 men with the household. And Achish sees this large group of people coming, and he does not want them to be mixing with his own people, causing a stir, maybe ethnic tensions arising. He doesn't want these 600 people with all those children to be a strain on the resources of that city. And so Achish is very open to making some kind of arrangement with David, and he does so. And he actually gives him this smaller town, Ziklag, within the territory that had been allotted to the tribe of Simeon, 25 miles south of Gath. So it's a pretty good distance away from that town. And so Ziklag becomes the location where David and his people dwell.
So think about what's happened. It's already been about David's seven and a half years of his reign, not yet as king, but having been anointed as a future king. It's a perfect location for David. So for 16 months it says, "For a year and four months david used this remote location to attack not the people of Israel, of course, but other pagan nations surrounding him in that place. And in raiding Geshur, David was continuing to fight the Lord's battles.
You see, in chapter 25, Joshua had left the Geshurites for Israel to conquer as part of receiving the promised land. And in conquering the Amalekites, David was finishing off what Saul had left undone. If we were to read chapter 15, we would see that Samuel criticized, the prophet Samuel criticizes Saul for not wiping out the Amalekites and their king and all their livestock. He's actually criticized in verses 18 and 19 of chapter 15 for failure as in this leadership. Let's read that right now: chapter 15, verses 18 and 19. "The Lord sent you on a mission," he's talking to Saul, "and said, go devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed. Why did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you not pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?" And basically, Saul argues back and says, "I did that. I did that." And Samuel says, "No, you didn't. You did not accomplish the mission." And therefore, the rain that you have will be taken away from you.
And so you kind of look at this story. You see David is getting the upper hand. He's defeated Goliath, right? He is now outwitting Achish one of the, we would call him a mayor of one of the major cities of the Philistines. And he is, uh in contrast to that, and in contrast in contrast that Saul is being seen as someone who has failed the people of Israel. He's reluctant to engage the Philistines. He's reluctant to finish the battles of the Lord. He's lacking in faith. By contrast, David is seen as confident in God's salvation.
Saul had failed as king. And not only that, we're going to see in the next chapter that he begins to consult a medium. He's not consulting the prophets. He's not consulting the Spirit. He's consulting a medium. And so at the end of Saul's life, he was actually confronted with his apostasy, and he was told that the Lord would deliver the Israelites into the land of the Philistines and that he and his sons would be among the dead the next day.
Saul, if you think about it, was a perfect anti-type of the Lord Jesus Christ. David would be a better king, wouldn't he? David would defeat the Lord's enemies. David would consolidate the tribes. He would centralize the the capital jerusalem He would make a future place for the temple, for the worship of God. So that by the end of David's reign 40 years, as it says in second Samuel chapter 8 quote "So David reigned over all Israel, and David administered justice and righteousness to all his people." That's a contrast that we're meant to see in this brief picture. Saul is failing as king. David is fulfilling the things that Saul has failed to do.
But when we look further at David's life, we also recognize in the coming chapters of his failures as well. He's not a perfect king. He has moral failure after moral failure. He is deceptive, manipulative, calculating, and ruthless. All that to say that when we arrive in the New Testament and the church begins to look back in the Old Testament at redemptive history and it sees David, it makes judgments about David. It says, "David was a great king. He fulfilled his purpose, but he was not the Savior, was he?"
So, for instance, as an example of that, reading Acts chapter 13, Paul is preaching a sermon in Antioch, and he's announcing the good news to the people. The news that Jesus Christ had come to deliver them from their sins. He lived a perfectly obedient life. He died on the cross for them, for their forgiveness, and that He was raised for their justification. So He says this in Acts 13, 32, "We bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, that He has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as it also is written in the second psalm, You are my Son; today I have begotten you. And as for the fact that He raised Him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way. Quote, I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.
And therefore, he says also in another psalm, "You will not let your Holy One see corruption." Do you see what's being said here? The Holy One of God, the Son of God, will not see corruption, has not seen corruption. It goes on in verse 36: "For David, after he served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption. Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses."
David was a great king, but he was not a perfect king. David was a signpost. David pointed forward to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the perfect King, who lived a perfect life, who died for our sins, and was raised so that he did not see corruption. God vindicated Him and raised Him up so that He would reign with Him. All that so that we could have forgiveness of sins and, as it says, be freed from the things that the law of Moses could never give us. We can be people who are forgiven and freed through the perfect kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ.
David was a great king, but the Lord Jesus Christ is a perfect King. The Lord Jesus Christ, as a perfect King, fulfills something for us that we need. You might be asking, "Why do I need a King? I need a Savior. I need someone to save me from my sins. I need Jesus to do that. I need Him as my priest, that high priest to offer prayers for me. I need Him to atone for my sins. But why is it that I need Him as a perfect King?"
The Heidelberg Catechism actually addresses that in question 31, where it asks, "Why is He called Christ that is, anointed?" And the catechism tells us, "This is what He is for us as prophet and priest. And then as King, it says, He governs us by His Word and Spirit. He defends and preserves us in the redemption obtained for us
Why do you and I need a king? a perfect king Because only the Lord Jesus Christ can govern us, oversee us with His Word and Spirit, and He can defend us and preserve us in the salvation we know through Him. That's why we need a perfect King. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can govern us and defend us and preserve us in the redemption that we have, in the forgiveness of our sins, in the freedoms that we enjoy as His children.
That's the first aspect I want to look at tonight. The second is David as a man of God. David as a man in the wilderness.
Think about David's life. He spent a decade in around his 20s in the wilderness. He was an outlaw. He was running from cave to cave to cave. Saul was trying to kill him. And so for roughly 10 years of his life, he lived a fugitive life in the wilderness. In the last 16 months, as we read earlier in this passage, David's life is spent in another wilderness in this Philistine camp.
David had despaired of his life. And so he goes to Gath and eventually to Ziklag. David was a veteran of living in the wilderness. If you were here this morning, you heard Pastor Gordon talking about the people of Israel in the wilderness. When we think about wilderness, we think about the people in the Old Testament going through 40 years of dwelling in the wilderness. We think about the Lord Jesus 40 days, 40 nights in the wilderness. And we think about David. David having gone from wilderness to wilderness to wilderness.
What was it about the wilderness? Well, the wilderness could be a good place. It was a place where God would call people and test them. It would be a place where he removed some of the non-essentials in their lives. Oftentimes, people lost things. God drew them into the wilderness. But the wilderness could be a place where someone might want to go for a short time. The wilderness is not a place you want to live the rest of your life. It's it's a place for an intermittent period.
For instance, David says in Psalm 55, verses 6 through 8: "Oh that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. Yes, I would wander far away; I would lodge in the wilderness. I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest." So the desert could be a place where God drew people to speak to them. It was It was a a tense place it was a place of testing it was a place where your faith could be magnified through suffering.
The wilderness was also a place for instance, that the prophet Hosea mentions in chapter 2 where he he says to the people of Israel, "Because of your sins, you're receiving this punishment. But the Lord says to you: i will draw you back to the wilderness. Oh, that I would take you back almost like a honeymoon like I would take you back to where we first had that encounter And so the wilderness could be a good place. It could be a safe place. But it could be a very difficult place that God would draw His people.
And when we think about David in the wilderness in this situation, as we look at this and try to make sense of this passage, we have to ask ourselves: "Where's God in all this? Where's the mention of God? What is God doing? How are we to interpret that?"
Well, one approach, as I looked at commentaries, is the what we would call the the moralizing approach, where they would look at David's life and they would say, "Well, look at all the terrible things that he was doing. He was He was murdering He was lying He was being deceitful he really wasn't a very good person." You know, we could moralize the story because uh there's there's no mention of God in it. Well, that's not a very effective approach. It's not a good approach.
Another approach is what we would call maybe the secular approach to it. And there we would say, "Wow, David is a really shrewd guy. He's very clever. He knows how to make alliances with people. He's making all these wise decisions. He's He's hid his parents away He's raising the the standard of living for his family he's a really shrewd leader he'd be the perfect candidate for the TV show The Survivor. He knows how to make alliances. He knows how to lie at the appropriate times. He gets by."
Well, that's not the right approach to this text either. We're not interested in moralizing this text. We're not interested in just looking at it in a secular way. What we need to see in this text is that even though the name of God is not mentioned, that God is everywhere there. God is everywhere. We're dealing with the text that is observing the undercurrent of God's providence, of God's governance, without being explicit. God is everywhere with David. The storyteller doesn't say anything about "he did this right" or "he did that wrong." It just says David was living his life, and God was accomplishing His purposes through it all. He is guarding David's faithfulness to his anointing. He's working out David's salvation.
It reminds us that the primary concern in our Christian life is not what we do for God. It's what God has done and is doing and promises to do for us Christ Jesus.
This undercurrent of God's provenance reminds me years ago, it's probably been 40 years now, that I was a youth pastor in Los Angeles. And I had started working with the middle school kids. And so in the summertime, I would take them in the church bus, the church van, and we would drive to Huntington Beach. and They all have their boogie boards in there, and go to the beach. And they would, and, you know, here's this kid from North Dakota what I didn't know anything about it. But I knew they wanted to go to the beach, so I took them to the beach. They're having fun, and then it was time to leave. So I got them all out of the water, and I'm still out in the water and I'm swimming. in all of a sudden, something just pulled me away, and I'm ending up underwater, just spinning, and I've lost my sense of what's what's up what's down. Um, I didn't know, but I was in a rip current a riptide, right? And I didn't know what you were supposed to do with that. And so I ended up just kind of going with it and ending up way out, and eventually coming back.
But, uh, I saw my life pass before me. It was a very scary time for me. And as I observed that instance, I realized that there was this undertow, that something was very powerful moving me. And I didn't know what was up or down, what was top or bottom. It was very confusing for me. And yet, through it all, I was preserved.
I think that's what's happening here with David. David is confused. He's saying, "My life is going to be taken away from me by Saul. I'm going to die. He's going to kill me. I'm on the run." And he goes to the wilderness. His life is just swimming, but it's swimming in this vast ocean of God's grace, of His providence, of His governing David's life.
David didn't always know exactly what was happening. Have you been in that situation before? Are you in that situation now in your life? Confused? Not sure where you're going? What's up? What's down? What you can find in that wilderness experience is to trust in God's providence. He is governing your life. That's His promise to you. He is preserving you in your salvation. He is watching over you.
David trusted in the providence of God. Remember, David praying in Psalm 16, verse 8: "I have set the Lord always before me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken."
When Calvin commented on this passage, he said this: "The meaning therefore is that David kept his mind so intently fixed upon the providence of God as to be fully persuaded that whatever difficulty or distress shall befall him, God would always be at hand to assist him."
David didn't know what was going to happen next, but he always set the Lord before him.
Sometimes I think we're living in that land of Achish and Gath. We're living amongst peoples that are very different from us. Different values, certainly not Christian values. And we're wondering, "What is going on in the world? Why are things so crazy?" But God is faithfully working out our salvation, even in the midst of our wilderness experiences.
I think if we can trust God in His providence, we will find the same thing that David found. For if you read that next verse after Psalm 16 8 Psalm 16 9 says: "Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices. My flesh also dwells secure." There is joy and there is gladness, even when we don't know what's happening in our lives. The providence of God is guiding us.
Well, the third aspect of David's life I'd like to look at real briefly this evening is David at Ziklag. I'd like to think of him as a pastor he was a shepherd, of course. But something really improbable and unexpected happens.
As David is running, right? He's running in the wilderness. And all of a sudden, God starts assembling a people. First His family which was incredible, the way it was because remember, his his brothers did not take a shine to him. They weren't real happy with him when they got passed over and he was anointed as the future king. They weren't too happy about that. And remember, when he came to the battlefield with Goliath and his brothers looked at him and said, "What are you doing here? What are you trying to do? Avoid your work as a shepherd boy?" They weren't real happy with him.
So to see his brothers and his family beginning to follow with him is incredible enough the way it is. But God begins to assemble a people. And all of a sudden, there's 200, and then there's 400 people. All of a sudden, they're holding up in a cave, and that's not going to work very long. This is the most unlikely thing that's happening. God begins to gather a people in the wilderness around David.
And what kinds of people were they? Did you catch the description of these people? It described them as "everyone who's in distress, everyone who's in debt, everyone who's bitter." That's the profile of David's congregation. People whose lives were characterized by distress and debt and discontentment. It wasn't the cream of the crop. These people hadn't gone to Christian school. They were misfits. You almost wonder if they would have fit into a culture, right?
But these are the people that God brought to be with David. And so this context, as we look at David's life, God is working out His salvation, isn't He? God, in His providence, is making sure that David is being kept and being preserved and being used for His purposes. And then all of a sudden, we see this company coming up around him of of misfits of distressed and debtors, bitter people A people not defined by where they came from or what they had done, but by what God had done in them and for them.
Friends, the church of Jesus Christ is constituted by God. It is not something that we can manipulate. The church is not the group of people that we get to pick. The church is the people that God gathers with us.
I think one of the the most difficult things that especially newer christians have is they're very excited about their faith. I've seen this over the years: so enthusiastic they are, they have become on zeal for the Lord. They are looking for that army of dedicated disciples of Jesus Christ. And they come into a church, and they find people who are more concerned about the color of the carpet and the crabgrass growing outside. It can be very disappointing for people. We are looking for that perfect church where there are people that are as committed, or even more committed, than we are. And what do we find? People who are spiritually in debt, people who are in distress, people who are needy. It's a serious disappointment.
I think it's one of the most pressing issues that's happening in the church today. People are so disappointed with the church. They don't realize that God is the one who calls people to the church. Ziklag was the place. We might as well call every church Ziklag. We could call this place Ziklag United Reformed Church. It's hard to get over that disappointment.
One pastor said, "The church is not a Victorian parlor. It's a messy living room."
I think back to the early church on this. I think back to St. Augustine and Pelagius. Pelagius was a well-known British monk who was living in Rome. And he had gathered people around him, and they liked him because he was kind of like a spiritual guru, right? He would be the kind of guy that you'd meet at the gym, and he would be the one that would say, "Here's your regimen. You just do these things, and look. You can become like me, and we can be spiritual athletes together." In fact, for Pelagius, his favorite image of the church was the gymnasium. Work hard at your spiritual life, and you can see these results.
Well, Augustine came along, and he said, "No. There's this thing called original sin that you've got to deal with, Pelagius."
So, for Augustine, do you know what his favorite image of the church was? It was the hospital. He saw us as recovering patients rather than spiritual athletes. When you enter the Christian life, for Augustine, you begin a lifelong process of convalescence. a lifelong process of convalescence that's what the church is maybe a helpful image for us on this is the Queen Mary, you your folks are familiar with the queen mary right? was a British uh, ocean liner beautiful and uh when first created, was used to transport people across the ocean, large, lovely, transporting people on cruises. But then the war came out, World War II, and they transformed that cruise liner into a troop ship. So it was hauling troops, and I think at one point it hauled a record number of 16,000 troops. And then the war ended, and they returned it back to a cruise liner and kind of a hotel.
So oftentimes I feel like we think the church is the Queen Mary cruise liner. We're about luxury, contentment, smooth sailing. But we are in a time of warfare. spiritual warfare. We are not the church victorious. We are the church militant. We're engaged in spiritual battle. So we are not the Queen Mary cruise liner. We are the Queen Mary troop ship.
And if we're a specific kind of troop ship, I would say we are one of those hospital ships. That's what we are. We are a hospital ship where people gather for the healing that they can find only in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Friends, this evening I urge you to trust in the providence of God wherever you're at in your life today as an individual, but then as a congregation. Let's trust in the providence of God. Let's lean into the fact that He is our perfect King, that He will govern our lives with His Word and Spirit, that He will defend us, and He will preserve us. He will keep us in Him all the way to the end. Set the Lord always before you. Lean on His promise of providence.
Let's pray.
Almighty God, we thank You for the life of David because he is pointing to You. And he points to Your perfect lordship and kingship. And we ask, O God, that You will rule over our lives even in the midst of wilderness experiences where we don't know where we're actually at or where we're going. But we trust in You. We trust that in Your good favor, You will watch over us, care for us, govern us, and preserve us all the way to the end. We commend ourselves and this congregation to You in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, Amen.