1 Samuel 21–22

We're going to be in 1 Samuel tonight, but I would like to start by reading a passage in Proverbs 3, if I could, with you as, again, a springboard passage for us to think about. We are going to be talking tonight about David and Saul again, but, and we're going to be reading about probably some of the most difficult passages in the actions of King Saul. By the way, I think the lights are down just a bit. Mackenzie, can we go up the rest of the way then? There you go. Now you can, it's like, hey, the words look a little bit better on my page. These were tough chapters by the way, for me to study. Have you ever had an emotional reaction to reading something in the Word? I was reading through these passages, and I just got grumpy. Sue will tell you, I mean, I came out of– I study in our bedroom and spread out everything in there– and I came out of the room, and I was just mad at the way Saul was. I was– it made me– I was so mad, I came out and got a bowl of ice cream, and that takes a lot for me to get a bowl of ice cream. I either do it when I'm really happy or really mad. And this time I was mad, and I just came out snarling a little bit, and Sue was wondering what was all going on. In fact, she followed me back in. Is there a problem, dear? And yeah, Saul bugs me. Just made me mad. You'll see. You're all going to get mad tonight. But in Proverbs, chapter 3, if you look with me there, I'm willing to bet, you probably have this verse highlighted, underlined, starred, something. Verses 5 and 6. Don't even have to even look at your Bible, do you?

(in other words, your own wisdom, but)

Or your Bible may say, direct your paths. This is that life verse that we spend our entire existence attaining to, isn't it? We all know this verse, at least most of us who have been in the Lord for a while. This is one of the first verses you learn when you're a new believer. “Trust in the LORD.”

When I was a fairly new Christian, this came out in a song. We sang a version in church, and then there was one that came out on the radio, so I didn't have any trouble remembering the words of this verse. But living by it is something that we spend our entire lives learning to do. You know when it's the hardest? It's when we're scared. I mean, trusting the Lord, piece of cake, right? When things are going good. Yeah, we're good. Trust the Lord. Hey, trust the Lord. And we'll even tell other people that are going through hard times, hey, trust the Lord, man. Trust the Lord. Just trust the Lord. It's your problem anyway. Just trust God in all your ways. Yes. Acknowledge Him. He'll direct your paths. Don't worry about that. And then we go through our own issues, fear rises up, panic. All of a sudden it's out the window. And what are we doing? We're trusting in ourselves then, aren't we? We begin to trust in our own clever ways of fixing problems. We rely on our own wits, our own purpose, our own plan, and so forth. Go ahead and turn over to 1 Samuel, chapter 21. We're going to see that tonight. We've been using Saul as a –I don't know– model of what not to do for the last several weeks, but tonight it is going to be David. One of the things I like about the Bible is that it doesn't whitewash our heroes. David is very much a hero for me in many respects– I'm sure he is for you. A man after God's own heart, a man of faith. A man of zeal, passion for the things of the Lord, love God, the singer of songs, but also a man who had some pretty serious failures in the course of his life. And aren't you glad that they didn't write about you in the Bible so they could write down all your failures? You and I at least get to fail with some level of anonymity. David gets to fail for all of us to see, and he's going to fail. And he's going to do it pretty graphically here tonight, because you'll remember that David is now on the run. Saul has tried to kill him on two separate occasions by throwing a spear at him. David was quick, agile. He got out of the way. And now he knows that Saul is absolutely out to kill him and so he's on the run. If you are in 1 Samuel chapter 21, that's where we are going to begin here. And it says, “Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, ‘Why are you alone, and no one with you?’” (ESV) Let me just say, first of all, I can understand why David probably went to hang out where the priests lived in the city. Nob was just a small city that the priests lived in. I can understand David wanting to go there. He's a man who trusts in the Lord. At least he's trying to. And so he figures, hey, I'm going to go hang out with the priests. He wants to be close to the Lord. He wants to be close to the Lord's people so he goes there. But you'll notice Ahimelech responds by saying, hey, why are you here? And it says he trembled at David's coming because, remember, David was a man who by this time was commanding thousands. He was, in many cases, in charge of the military forces that went out to conduct their campaigns against Israel's enemies. For him to show up somewhere alone was just odd. It was just strange. Ahimelech didn't know what to make of it. And so he says to him, What is going on? Why are you here? Is there something that I need to be concerned about and so forth? “2 And David (in verse 2) said to Ahimelech the priest, “(well) The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place.’” My guys are just waiting out there, so I just thought I'd come over here and see what you had to eat. And that's what he says. In verse 3 he says, “Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” Ahimelech probably should have realized something was up right there when he only asked for five loaves of bread. That is not going to go very far with the contingency of men that David usually commanded. But the point is, David is lying. He has entered into an act of deceit here. And he begins to tell Ahimelech, the priest, –and by the way, lying to the priest. Yeah– he says, well, I'm on a secret mission from the king…. He's not. He is running from the king.

I understand a little bit of why David is doing what he's doing. I understand. I've been in fearful situations myself in the past, and I also understand that David didn't want to malign the king. It wasn't his intention. Do you ever notice, there are some people– when somebody treats them wrong, they want to begin to broadcast the fact that they have been wronged, and they will tell it to whomever will listen. If you wrong me, I'm going to tell everybody. I'm going to get up on a mountaintop and tell everybody that you've wronged me. You know the kind? I mean, maybe you're the kind. I don't know. But David was not the kind. David was not the guy who would slander people. Even in this case, technically wouldn't have even been slander. It was true, but he didn't want to speak badly of the king. But he's in a fearful situation. He doesn't want to look bad. It's true. He doesn't want Saul to look bad. He doesn't want anybody to get all upset over this thing. But he is running for his life! And so he begins to lie. When you feel like you're in a situation where you can't tell the truth, you're in a tough situation. And I know there is not one single person in this room who has not told a lie. We have all lied. Every one of us. And sometimes we like to try to smooth it over by calling it a white lie, or better yet, a fib. Doesn't a fib sound fun? Oh, it's just a fib. And there's really no difference between a fib and a lie. It's an untruth. It's a purposeful attempt to deceive and that is what David is doing right now. Now, you and I have told some lies. We have told some whoppers. I remember when I was a little boy, I told the kids in my neighborhood– I was about four years old– I told them I had a horse in my basement. I loved horses, even as a little kid, and we just got to talking with a bunch of the neighborhood kids, and you're always playing the one-upmanship sort of thing with kids, you know how they are. And I told them, I said, Yeah, I've got a horse in my basement. Of course they tried calling my bluff. It's like, we want to come over and see. Then there was one other time I told the kids I made a talking robot, told them I built it with my own hands. That was a hard one to live up to too, but it's just, kids say the darndest things, right? Sometimes they tell the biggest whoppers. And we can laugh, and you could probably tell some funny little stories yourself. But this lie is going to cost 85 lives. This is no little, small fib. This is no funny little story. Eighty-five men are going to lose their lives because David told a lie. And it's not going to bode well at all. And David is going to accept at least his part of the responsibility by the end of the next chapter. So he says, hey I'm hungry. I can imagine David is probably tired. He's hungry. He's not been sleeping. Who knows? “And the priest (verse 4) answered David, ‘I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread– if the young men have kept themselves from women.’” What he's talking about when he talks about holy bread, he's talking about the consecrated bread, meaning the bread of the presence. If you guys remember the way the tabernacle was set up and the implements of the tabernacle and the furniture, there was a table in the holy place of the tabernacle, and later the temple, that was called the table of showbread or the bread of the presence was placed there. They would bake fresh bread every week and put it there on the Sabbath day. And then the following week they would replace it with fresh bread again. And the bread that was removed from the table of showbread or the bread of the presence was then to be eaten only by the priests, and particularly the priests on duty. They were the only ones. In fact, they were supposed to eat it in a holy place. It was holy to the Lord according to the Law of Moses. And so Ahimelech is saying to David, well, I don't have any just food around here. I have nothing that is common, meaning something that just anybody, I do have some of the bread of the presence that we just removed from the table. And he says, I suppose you could have that as long as you and all the men that are with you have kept yourself from women. That is basically a way of saying that they hadn't been involved in sexual relations, and they were then ceremonially clean to be able to participate in the eating of this holy bread. I want you to notice how in verse 5, “David answered the priest, (he said, yeah, oh yeah) ‘Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?’” He doesn't even have any men with him. It's another lie. He's on his own. But he's –again, and that's what happens too when you tell a lie– you have to keep telling more lies. to support the first lie that you told, and it never goes well. By the way, just so you know, the bread of the presence is something that if you want to read more about it, you can in the Book of Leviticus if you're taking notes, particularly the 24th chapter, but the bread of the presence had a very specific purpose for being there. It stood as a symbol of a couple of very important things. Number one, it stood as a symbol of fellowship. Now, when we say fellowship, we are talking about intimacy. We're talking about intimacy. And the bread of the presence had a similar meaning as a fellowship offering under the Old Covenant. A fellowship offering, when someone would offer a fellowship offering, they would actually sit and eat their meal, whatever they brought— the part of the animal, the bread or whatever– Some of it would be consumed on the altar and they would consume the other part of it themselves right in the presence of the Lord. It was like sitting down and having a meal with God. You and I don't think of meals quite like they did in the Middle East and still do to this day. To them, to come together and to break bread together was a sharing of intimacy. It's a little bit less than that for you and me. Somewhat less. Although we still can; to have someone over to your home can be an act of intimacy from the standpoint of sharing together a meal and the talk that we have and so forth that goes on. But it was God's way of reminding the nation of Israel, I want a fellowship with you. Let's sit down and have a meal together. This bread of the presence was a picture of that. That's the first thing. The other picture that the bread of the presence gives us is God's provision. I will take care of you. I will feed you. It was a look back at manna, which fell from the heavens onto the ground during their wilderness wanderings, which they would pick up then and eat. It is a look forward to the bread of heaven, the person of Jesus Christ, right? who is a fulfillment of manna. So you have this bread of the presence that is always before the Lord. We partake of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the greatest act of intimacy that we can have with God. There is no greater act of intimacy than partaking of the bread of Christ, the bread of His life, so that we are one with Him and one with the Father. So you can see this bread was a holy thing because it pointed to a holy picture of the coming of Jesus, what He would do for us, what He would bring for us, how He would feed us spiritually, nourish us, and so forth. And that is why the bread was only to be eaten by the priestly family, but he gave it to David.

Ahimelech gave it to David. David was not a priest. I think he wanted to be, but remember, David was of the tribe of Judah. It was from the tribe of Levi that the people were priests, the Levitical priests. David was not a priest. Was Ahimelech breaking the law by giving David the bread of the presence? Yeah, technically he was. But there was a point being made here too that Jesus actually made reference to later on in the New Testament during his earthly ministry (Matthew 12:1-8). Do you remember when He and His disciples on the Sabbath were walking through some grain fields? And the disciples were picking off some of the heads of grain, some of the wheat, and they were rolling it in their hands to separate the kernel of wheat from the chaff. Then they were blowing like that to blow away the chaff, and they would pop the kernel in their mouth and just eat that raw grain. You can still do it today if you want to. But the religious leaders came along and said, hey, Your men are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath. They're harvesting. When they pick it off, they're harvesting. When they rub it in their hands, they're threshing. And that's wrong. And Jesus pointed back to this very story. He said, don't you remember what David did when he was hungry? He came to the priest and the priest gave him the consecrated bread, even though it was unlawful to do so. What point was Jesus making? That the Law of God was never meant to supersede human need. Okay? The law is wonderful, the law is great, but it was never meant to supersede human need. That's why Jesus would say to the people– he would get up to speak in the synagogue, and they would plant a guy in the front row with some physical infirmity just to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. So Jesus would start off and say, let me ask you guys a question. If one of your animals falls in a hole on the Sabbath, will you just leave it there, or will you get it out? (Matthew 12:11- 12) He obviously knew the answer to the question. They would obviously get their animal out of that hole. And then he would say to them, How much more should this man be set free from his infirmity? The point being, yeah, we are to rest on the Sabbath, but human need supersedes the law. And David came to Ahimelech, and Ahimelech was spiritual enough to understand that, yes, this is the consecrated bread.

Yes, this is the bread that should only be eaten by the priests. But David is hungry! He is a man of God. Eat the bread. You think God wants you to starve just because we have a rule in place? See the point? Human need. And, “So (verse 6 says) the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away. Now (verse 7, all while this is going on) a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, (he'd been) detained before the LORD. His name was Doeg the Edomite, (and he was) the chief of Saul's herdsmen.” Or he was the chief shepherd, your Bible may say. Now, when it says, he was an Edomite, it means that he was of the people of Edom. Do you remember who the Edomites are? Right? The Edomites, are sons of Abraham, sons of Isaac, but it was the twin brother of Jacob. Jacob was renamed Israel, so you have his family line. And then you've got Edom, who was the father of the Edomites, okay? You can understand that this man is not technically a Jew from that standpoint. Okay, he is not under the covenant of the Jews, and so forth. So his name is Doeg, and he is a shepherd, and that's what he does. He's in charge of all of Saul's herds, and he sees all this going on. And it says, “8 Then David said to Ahimelech, ‘Then have you not here a spear or a sword at hand? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king's business required haste.’ (lie number three) 9 And the priest said, (well) ‘The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you struck down 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 none but that here.’ And David said, ‘There is none like that; give it to me.’” So that should have been probably the next red alert for Ahimelech that something was weird. David is the commander of the armies of the king, and he showed up without a weapon. That's weird. “10 And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath.” Now stop there for just a moment. I want to remind you of a couple of quick things. Gath. That is where Goliath grew up. Goliath of Gath. That is where he was raised. So David is now, after telling these fibs– lies– he's now on the run. He has the sword of Goliath in his possession, and he decides, I need to go somewhere where Saul is not going to come looking for me. What better place to hide than in the land of Saul's enemies? Saul is obviously not going to look there. He's not going to send his men, and obviously nobody in the land of the Philistines is going to rat me out. They don't care about Saul. The one place that I'm going to be safe is probably among the enemies of Israel. Here's the problem. He has Goliath's sword. The guy he killed, cut off his head not that terribly long ago, and he's now going to hide in Gath, in the land of the Philistines. He is hoping against hope that he is going to go there and not be recognized. But remember, David is a humble man, doesn't realize people know him as much as they do. But look what happens in verse 11: “And the servants of Achish said to him, ‘Is not this David the king of the land?’” Now notice they call him the king of the land. That's exactly what Saul was afraid of. And they're probably not saying that in a literal way. They're just saying a ruler of the land. He's, obviously, he's high up. In fact, they go on to say, Isn't he the topic of that hit song they sing and dance about? What was the lyric there again? What was the lyric? Oh yeah, “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” That's the guy. David realizes he has been discovered. He can't go to the land of the Philistines and be anonymous. It says: “12 And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. 13 So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. 14 Then Achish said to his servants, ‘Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? 15 Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?’” Were you guys thinking I was going to take him home? Find him a room? The guy's out of his brain! Get him out of here! You think I don't have enough madmen here in my own country?

Now, it could be that the king didn't even believe that this was truly David. They bring him in front of the king, but he is acting like a madman there. No, this can't be David. This guy's mad. He is out of his mind. And if you look at verse 1 of the next chapter, it says, “David departed from there and escaped.” What does that tell you? It tells you that it worked, didn't it? It tells you that David's plan worked. Hey, David's plan worked, but you know what? It was David's plan. It was not God's plan. Remember what we read at the very beginning of the passage, the very beginning of our study, trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not in your own understanding, but rather in all of your ways, acknowledge Him. God, I'm in a tough spot. That's how you acknowledge the Lord. You acknowledge in all your ways, my ways right now, as far as David is concerned. If you were talking to the Lord, he'd say, my ways are dangerous. So Lord, I'm going to acknowledge You in the danger of my current situation. I acknowledge You as Lord of my life, and I'm going to give this thing into Your hands to know what I should do, where I should go and how I should act. David isn't doing that. And that's pretty obvious for you and me to see. He is not trusting in the Lord with all of his heart. He is trusting in himself with all of his heart. He's doing his own thing. He's working out his own problem. He's figuring out his own solution. He is delivering himself from his problems. Do you understand –that's the danger of this situation, and what it produces are lies. And that lie –we're going to hear in just a little bit here as we get into the next chapter– is going to have extremely grave consequences for many people. I said eighty-five people are going to die. It's actually going to be way more than that. But the point is, when we do not trust in the Lord, and we choose to trust in ourselves, for whatever reason. And usually guys, usually it's fear. It can be pride. Sure. That can be the reason people trust in themselves, but more often than not, it is fear more often. That's at least what I found. It's usually fear. Something comes up that causes us to be very afraid. And we're so afraid, we just think, I have to do something now! And so we do it, whatever it is, and it's as dumb as going to live among the Philistines. And then we get into that situation, and we find out, Well, this isn't any good. They know who I am.

Now I have to act like an idiot in front of them. And like, I'm insane, and yeah, it was insane to go here, but now I have to act like I really am so that these guys will want to get rid of me. Get this guy out of here. He's gross. Get him, pull him, just get– I got business to do. He's the king of the whole Philistine area. He is like, get this guy. It works, but David gets out of there, and then he runs for his life. How do you suppose it feels for David? I mean, this is the man who took a sling and felled Goliath.(1 Samuel 17) This is the man– boy– who had so much faith that when Saul said, You can't go up against Goliath. He said, oh, but the Lord will enable me. Same guy. This is the boy who when Saul tried to dress him in his armor said, I can't wear these. I'm not going to go out. The Lord is going to be my armor. And this is the boy who went out and did the impossible because the Lord was with him and enabled him to deal with a situation like Goliath. Well, you think you've been through a situation like Goliath, and you probably think to yourself, oh man, if I had a victory like that in my life, I would think to myself, well, what can't I do? Wouldn't that build up your faith a little bit if you did a David, and you brought down a Goliath, and you knew that it was because you there was the Lord was with you. You trusted him with all of your heart, you didn't lean on your own understanding. You didn't lean on other people's understanding either when they tried to tell you couldn't do it. You just went out and did it, and it worked. And it was successful, and God got the glory and it was wonderful. And then you think to yourself, Yeah. I'm invincible? Because the Lord is with me? Not. We can have marvelous victories and then run with our tail between our legs the next minute. You guys remember Elijah? Elijah, Oh, what a bold man. He gathers all the prophets of Baal, 400 of them (1 Kings 18:20-40) You guys, tell you what. Let's have a little bonfire. You guys build an altar over there. I'll build an altar here. You sacrifice your animal and put it on the altar. I'll sacrifice an animal, put it over here. And then I tell you what. Here's what we'll do: You call on your God, and I'll call on my God, and whoever's God rains down fire from heaven and consumes the sacrifice, He's God. Deal. They went well. Oh, okay, deal. I mean, what were they going to say challenged them anything less than deal would have been our God isn't real okay you guys know the story and then he lets them go first, and they're hooping and hollering and trying to give it their attention of their god. And of course nothing happens and Elijah taunts them. He's just full of confidence. He taunts him. Where's your god? Maybe go to the bathroom? Is he busy? That's literally, if you read the Living Bible, it actually says that. It says maybe he's in the bathroom. Living Bible can be a hoot sometimes. But, it's just, he was having a great day, and then finally said, alright, enough of you guys. He builds up the thing, and then he says, all right now start pouring water on the altar. He drenched the wood. He said I want to dig a trench around the thing. fill it full of water. He calls on the Lord. Oh God, show your glory. Fire falls from heaven. Boom! Consumes the altar. The wood licks up all the water that's in the trench. And, everybody's, Whoa! And Elijah says– points to the prophets of Baal– and he says, get them. They're all slain that day. They're all put to death that day. Wow, what a victory. Very next day, he gets a poison pen letter from Jezebel.(1 Kings 19) She says, by this time tomorrow, you will be like them. He runs for his life. Runs for his life! Holes up in a cave somewhere and prays to die. This great man with a great victory, with powerful success, who trusted in the Lord with all of his heart, he could stand against four hundred prophets of Baal. But one woman sends him this poison pen letter, and he is absolutely in an emotional tailspin and running for his life. Can you relate? Suddenly now, he can't trust the Lord for dealing with this one woman. All he could handle 400, and it's the same thing here in this situation. David fells Goliath, this giant whom Saul was afraid to go up against. And now when Saul is hunting his life, David is afraid, and he resorts to Goliath. Instead of trusting in the Lord, he resorts to self– lying, deceiving, running by his wits. So he “departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam (it says in verse 1) And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him. 2 And everyone (oh, I love this, here's the people who came and gathered with David. 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 (it says) there were… about four hundred men.”

Doesn't that sound like a great crowd? They are basically a bunch of malcontents. They're just sitting there with one hand on their sword all the time, ready to pull it out and just cut you, because they're mad. They're discontent and they're in debt. Some of them, those are be fun guys to hang out with, right? So those are David's, those are David's men. Isn't that fun? There's 400 of them. Basically, what happens is people start hearing David is on the run and they are like, I'm with him. Which probably wasn't a bad idea. Keep your finger here and turn to Psalm 57. Just keep your finger so you don't lose your place there in 1 Samuel 22, and go to Psalm chapter 57. And we are going to read the Psalm that David wrote when he went to the cave of Adullam. What is really interesting about being able to read the Psalms is to connect them with the life of David and to see that these were not just random situations in his life where the Lord was not present. Yes, there were some– really, these were strugglesome times– and David wasn't walking as he should in many ways, but he would still continue to cry out to the Lord. Look at Psalm 57: By the way, it says at the beginning “To the choirmaster, according to Do Not Destroy. (that's a tune) A Miktam (and we're not sure what that even means) of David, when he fled from Saul, in the cave.” And it refers to the cave of Adullam. He cries out and says,

Do you get the impression by just reading that first verse that David has been convicted all over the place about what he just did? You know, he lied to the high priest and took the sword of Goliath by lying to the high priest, and then he talked about all these men that he wanted to feed. That was a lie. Then he went to live among the Philistines, and then he had to act like a madman just to get away, and he probably got to the cave of Adullam and just collapsed before the Lord said, God, I am such an idiot. Be merciful to me. Oh, be merciful to me. He says, I cry out. Verse 2:

“5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth! 6 They set a net for my steps; (that) my soul was bowed down. They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves. 7 My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast!” Sounds like David has had a change of heart here in the cave, doesn't it? “I will sing and make melody!” You think he feels like singing and making melody? I love that about David. David did this at the times in his life when I think he probably was at his lowest. He would say things like, I will sing to the Lord. I will sing to the Lord. He didn't say, I feel like singing, or I feel like dancing. He would say, I will sing to the Lord, because, you know what? It was a sacrificial offering that he gave to God. Not because he felt like it. Have you ever come to church on a Sunday morning, Wednesday night, and you're here, you're tired, maybe you just had an argument on the way with your family or something like that, and you get here, and you're like, I dare you to try to make me smile. And then we get into worship, and we're like, Bless the Lord, O my soul. O my soul. We just don't want to be here, and we don't want to sing, because we don't feel like it, right? I don't think David felt like it. He's in a cave. He has been running for his life. He doesn't know when or if Saul might catch him, and he says here, I will sing. Look what he goes on to say in verse 8; he says, “Awake, my glory! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! 9 I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. 10 For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!” That is a declaration of faith. When David says those things, I don't want you to think that this was a man who always felt them. And, no, he's not being hypocritical. He's speaking words of faith apart from feeling. You and I are so tied to our feelings that when we feel like, or when we know that it's time to praise the Lord, we will just say, Well, I don't feel like it, and we don't do it. You know why? Because we obey our feelings. But we've obeyed our feelings so much culturally that we are now slaves to our feelings, and we now don't feel like it. I'm not going to go to church today because I don't feel like it. I'm not going to read my Bible because I don't feel like it. I'm not going to praise and sing because I don't feel like it. We're just being taken down the road of feeling, and we obey our feelings. And David, I am sure David did not feel like singing at this time or praising the Lord, but he did it out of obedience. He did it because God was worthy to receive the glory and the honor and the praise. He did it because he knew it would make a difference in his life. Let's go back to 1 Samuel chapter 22. It says in verse 3,

Now, he was afraid for his parents, and so he realized that Saul could very easily try to attack his family and get rid of them. And so he goes to the King of Moab. Do you remember who the Moabites come from? Do you remember when Lot was driven out of Sodom and Gomorrah? (Genesis 19:30-38) His two daughters were fearful that they would not have children or there would be no one by whom they could have children. So they got their dad liquored up on two different nights and slept with him. Each had children by their father. And one of them had a child and named him Moab. And obviously he became the father of the Moabites, so it was an incestuous relationship. Not a good thing to base an entire civilization of people on, I have to tell you. But that's where the Moabites come from. But David is going to the king of Moab, and he is asking for a place of sanctuary for his parents and some of his family members. It says in verse 4:

discloses to me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. None of you is sorry for me or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day.’” Well, I tell you, is this guy a looney tune or what? I mean, jealousy has absolutely pushed him off the edge by this time. And now he's paranoid against everybody. He accuses them all of being in cahoots with David. He found out his son was. He thinks everybody is. Well, probably had reason to, since everybody loved David. But he actually believes that Jonathan has conspired with David so that David might lay in wait and then kill Saul at the appropriate time. He actually believes it. He believes it. But what these statements only reveal to you and me about Saul is just how distorted his thinking had become. What was really going on was David was running from him because of his relentless pursuit of him. And then verse 9, uh-oh, here comes Doeg. Just a little tip, don't ever name any of your kids Doeg. “Then answered Doeg the Edomite, who stood by the servants of Saul, ‘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 provisions and gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine.’(I saw those things happening there.) “11 Then the king sent to summon Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub, and all of his father's house, the priests who were at Nob, and all of them came to the king. 12 And Saul said, ‘Hear now, son of Ahitub.’ And he answered, ‘Here I am, my lord.’ 13 And Saul said to him, ‘Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him, so that he has risen against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?’ “14 Then Ahimelech answered the king, ‘And who among all your servants is so faithful as David, who is the king's son-in-law, and captain over your bodyguard, and honored in your house? 15 Is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him? No! Let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of all this, much or little.’ 16 And the king said, ‘You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father's house.’” This is the point in my study when I start getting mad. This reckless hatred with no regard for the things of the Lord. This insanity of heart and mind that just wants to be angry, just wants to vent. It's just the craziest thing in the world. Let me just stop for just a moment. Some of you– I don't know how many of you– get Calvary Mail. You might have seen a note that I sent along today. I'm going to make a point here about this in a moment. About seven years ago, a young mother living down in Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas, was arrested. Her name was Hannah, and she was arrested because a foster child in her care had died, and she was convicted. First she was accused of his murder. They actually never convicted her of murder. What they convicted her of was not calling 911 in time. So they sent her to life in prison. Life in prison. She's a Christian woman. I happen to know the pastor of that church down there, and they were horrified. Seven years this thing has gone on. Today she was released from prison, and it is really exciting. They had another hearing, a brand new judge. I think that the Lord is probably going to expose a good amount of corruption, but that's not the big news. The big thing is that Hannah is back with her family. The case was a sham from the very beginning. Several major media outlets did specials on it. 20/20 did a special on it. In fact, if you get on to YouTube and just search for Hannah Overton, O-V-E-R-T-O-N, and then put in 20/20 or ABC or Katie Couric, did a special on her. Several other news services did specials and brought out how horrible the job that was done during the trial and what a travesty of justice it was that this woman was languishing in prison. And, well, eventually, it came to light, they had a hearing again, and she was released. She was released. Praise the Lord! I started looking around online at some of the news services, and there's a story about Hannah here, there. And you know how at the end of news stories, people have places for comment. Don't read them. Ever. The viciousness of people who don't know anything about it, who just want to be evil, is enough to put you in the worst mood of the day. The pastor was telling us all on the pastors’ email group how people will drive onto the church parking lot and put up signs about how they hope this woman stays in prison for the rest of her life and just the most wicked things that people could say when it has come out through the court system.

The highest court in Texas released her today. The Supreme Court of Texas, essentially the highest court, said, Go. And yet, people are absolutely determined to slander and speak evil. And it is one of those things that you and I don't get to witness very often. Thank God that we don't. This raw, uncensored evil that's in the world. Doeg the Edomite is one of these guys. He's one of these guys, just raw, uncensored evil. And you're going to see that as it goes here. “And the king said, “You shall surely die,… And it says (look at verse 17): “And the king said to the guard who stood about him, ‘Turn and kill the priests of the LORD, because their hand also is with David, and they knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me.’ But the servants of the king would not put out their hand to strike the priests of the LORD.” At least they had a conscience. “18 Then the king said to Doeg, (he's a foreigner, he doesn't care about the priesthood.) ‘You turn and strike the priests.’ And Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests, and he killed on that day eighty-five persons who wore the linen ephod.” That means, of the priestly family. But you know what? He wasn't done there. Look what it goes on to say. “19 And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword; both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey, and sheep,…” He slaughtered them all. I don't know, just because I guess he had a free pass by an insane king. “20 But one of the sons of Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, named Abiathar, escaped and fled after David. 21 And Abiathar told David that Saul had killed the priests of the Lord. (and I want you to hear what David says:) 22 And David said to Abiathar, ‘I knew on that day when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father's house, (but then he goes on to say,) 23 Stay with me; do not be afraid, for he who seeks my life seeks your life. With me you shall be in safekeeping.’” I'm so impressed by David. Yeah, he is a man just like us. He can make some pretty serious mistakes. He can lie and try to lie his way out of a difficult situation. But you know what? There is one thing about David that I appreciate so much. When he is faced with something that he has done wrong, he confesses it. He confesses it. And he says to this man whose entire family has been wiped out, I have occasioned this thing. It was because of my oversight, my lies, my lack of diligence. I knew Doeg was there. I knew that it was going to happen. I knew it.

Would you take a moment as we close to turn over to Psalm 52? And we will close with this. Psalm 52: It says, at least in the ESV,

That's a very nice way of saying God will kill you.

Does it sound to you like David learned an important lesson? Because it does to me. It sounds like in this prayer, David has learned one of the most painful and yet important lessons. Because at the end of this Psalm, he says, “I will wait for your name.” I don't know about you, waiting is not easy for me. I hate waiting. I hate it. And when I'm afraid, I usually just refuse. When you're afraid, waiting is the worst. But David has been able to, he has been shown that by jumping ahead and not waiting for God, not trusting in God's steadfast love, but instead taking matters into his own hands, trying to work out the details all on his own, he has learned that it can have deadly consequences. So he prays now and says, you know what, God, You are steadfast, and You are faithful, and I am going to wait on You. I'm going to wait. And if I live like I've– if I keep living the way I've just lived, I'm going to be just like Doeg, a man of deceit. That's the really humbling thing. When you see what, in somebody who is ungodly, when you see yourself, that's hard to look at. And what you have to know that while David is crying out about Doeg, and referring to him as a man of deceit whose tongue only cares about lying, that he has to be remembering some of the things that he did by lying to the high priest about where he had come and so forth. Lying even to the Philistines, not even able to trust the Lord there. And now, that's all changing. But you know what? Changing is what this time of running for David is bringing about, because God is using this ten years, roughly, or so, that David is on the run from Saul to prepare a man for the throne of Israel. And He will prepare him in ways that nothing else would.