The Danger of Discouragement

This is week 11 of our Bible study on 1 Samuel called The Coming King. Today we're going to cover chapters 26 to 28. Before I get started with that, I want to throw out a question or a thought, and that is, when you do the right thing, shouldn't your circumstances improve in life? Isn't that the point of making right choices, is to iron out your problems? Shouldn't you be blessed if you do the right thing? This seems fair to us. This seems like how the world should work. This seems like how God should operate with us. But as we peer into the lives of some of the Bible characters we know, we think about Joseph, who did the right thing when he rejected the advances of Potiphar's wife, and he ended up in prison. And we think about Paul and Silas, who did the right thing when they cast a demon out of a slave girl, and they ended up in prison. And we think about David this week, who will do the right thing by resisting a second opportunity to harm Saul, and his circumstances will not improve because of that. So when this happens in our lives, it can lead to discouragement, because we expect immediate blessings. We make good choices, we should be blessed, and it doesn't always work that way. So there are dangers that are associated with discouragement. Discouragement can come into our lives for a lot of different reasons. It doesn't have to be disappointment that my circumstances haven't improved, but that's why I titled today's message, The Dangers of Discouragement. David's current difficulties, we have to remember, were forming his character to be God's coming king. Our current difficulties are forming our character, forming Christ in us. And so God does bless us, but God blesses us in his time and in his way. And it's not always an immediate result of a good decision that we've made. So with that in mind, I want to get started on chapter 26. It opens with these Ziphites who are ratting out David again to Saul. They did this in chapter 23. And so Saul grabs 3,000 of his men, and he thinks he's going to go out to the wilderness and find David. And while Saul and his men were encamped, we're going to pick it up in verse 5. Then David rose and came to the place where Saul had encamped. And David saw the place where Saul lay with Abner, the son of Ner, the commander of his army. Just a little fun fact on that. You guys have all kinds of words and names for people that were generated by little people in your life that kind of really stick, right? So when our son Aaron was about nine and Alyssa was one, one-year-old, starting to say family names, she couldn't say Aaron, and he was Ner for a long time. Like, and it stuck for decades. It stuck, you know. And so they had so much fun in the Bible, like, I have two Bible names, Aaron and Ner. But anyway, we have a Ner. Verse seven, David and Abishai went to the army by night, and there lay Saul sleeping within the encampment, with his spear stuck in the ground at his head, and Abner and the army lay around him. I've never experienced that. I've lived a sheltered life. I don't know what it looks like to see 3,000 men encamped. I can't imagine wiggling your way into the middle of that. The chances of all of them being asleep would be very low, but we find out later that the Lord had put a deep sleep on them. And last week we mentioned, too, that sometimes our closest friends are very poor advisors, and Abishai is going to have some reckless advice here for David. Verse eight, Abishai said to David, God has given your enemy into your hand this day. He's probably tired of being homeless and following after, you know, a homeless guy that thinks he's going to be king but is being chased by a king. But David said, do not destroy him, for who can put out his hand against the Lord's anointed and be guiltless? And David is thinking, if I do the wrong thing, my circumstances will deteriorate, but if I do the right thing here, my circumstances should improve. That's how things should work, right? Verse 10, as the Lord lives, the Lord will strike him, or his day will come to die, or he will go down into battle and perish. The Lord forbid that I should put out my hand against the Lord's anointed. And he had had some previous experience with Nabal, and that is exactly how it went with Nabal. So that kind of encouraged him. David had a better idea in the middle of verse 11. He says, take now the spear that's at his head and the jar of water and let us go. And so they did, and no one saw them because this deep sleep had fallen on them from the Lord. Verse 13, David went over to the other side and stood far off on the top of the hill with a great space between them. And David called to the army and to Abner, the son of Ner. And first David chastised Abner, accusing him of not being a very good guard over his Lord, over Saul. But then eventually Saul hears this. In verse 17, Saul said, is this your voice, my son David? And David said, it is my voice, my Lord, O King. Why does my Lord pursue after his servant? What have I done? What evil is on my hands? Verse 21, Saul said, I have sinned. I'm the one that has sinned. Return my son David, for I will no more do you harm because my life was precious in your eyes this day. Behold, I have acted foolishly and I have made a great mistake. And this illustrates once again for us what we have determined about this cycle. People whose mental health is off balance, this cycle of entitlement, which turns into demands, which turns into cruelty, and then sometimes goes into this remorse and apology in order that the cycle may continue on. This is what we see. And David answered, here's the spear, O King. Let one of your young men come over and take it. The Lord rewards every man for his righteousness and his faithfulness. You see, David says, I'll be rewarded. For the Lord gave you into my hand today, and I would not put out my hand against the Lord's anointed. Behold, as your life was precious this day in my sight, so may my life be precious in the sight of the Lord. And may he deliver me out of all my tribulation. I will do the right thing. God will change my circumstances. Saul said to David in verse 25, Blessed be you, my son David. You will do many things, and you will succeed in them. And David went on his way, and Saul returned to his place. And I think David left that scene with a hopeful heart and a great sense of purpose. I did the right thing. Any moment now, God is going to change my circumstances. But if I had to choose a title for chapter 27, I would call it When Discouragement Grows Legs. Because discouragement will take us places in life that we never thought we were going to go. And discouragement is going to take David to a place that he never thought he was going to go, and that's right into the Philistine camp. We can feel positive and purposeful one day, and then we can feel discouraged and downcast the next day, can't we? And now put weeks or months or even years between those times, and we can lose perspective really easily. So in this lesson, the same man who just said in this chapter, May he deliver me out of all my tribulation, now he's going to say, I shall perish by the hand of Saul. We flip that quickly. Let's read verse 1 of chapter 27. Then David said in his heart, Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There's 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 boundaries of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand. And we're going to stop there and handle verse 1 for just a little while because I think there's lessons that we can learn. The Holy Spirit inspired the prophet Isaiah to say, Even young men grow weary. We all grow weary. David was weary as he said those words in verse 1. He had lost hope that anything was ever going to change. He had tried to make the right choices. He had tried to do the right things. He'd been hopeful, but God did not change his circumstances. He was still in a difficult place. He was weary and discouraged. Now he was still on the run, still living in caves. His life was going on and on and on in the same difficulties and troubles. We're looking at over 10 years now, from the beginning. And I've called this section of David's Running a pilgrimage of problems, because David encountered so many problems. And you know what? In our life, we can also experience problem after problem after problem. And sometimes discouragement grows legs and takes us to think things and do things and say things because of these problems. And we think, this is just my life now. I tried to do the right thing. I tried to make good choices, but here's where I am. This is where I am. I guess I'm just gonna have to make the best of it. Stop expecting God to intervene, change my circumstances. In fact, I think I'm done talking to God. I think I'm just done. And that's how discouragement gets such a mighty hold in our life. So I wanna look at three things from this verse and call them the dangers of discouragement. Put them on the screen for you. The first thing, David said in his heart. David was in a place where he allowed his heart to inform him. And this is how discouragement takes root in our lives. We spend time in conversation with our heart. And when we become discouraged or any of those other devil words, you know, all the words that begin with D. Let me remind you, dark, dejected, disappointed, despairing, despondent, dismayed, downhearted, downcast, droopy. All the D words are devil words. But we get feeling those things because our heart is deceitful, okay? So here it is, Jeremiah 17, nine warned us about this.

Now, I'm gonna stop before I finish that because one of our problems is that we don't believe this. We don't believe our heart is deceitful. We actually think our heart has quite a bit of wisdom to share with us. And so it's good for us to come back to this and see what the word tells us. Our heart is deceitful. It's lying to us. Now, finish.

Now, in David's clearer thinking days, he knew this. He knew because he wrote Psalm 139, and I'm gonna show you that. Verse 20, the last two verses say,

So, Lord, take this heart of mine and sift it and test it and try it and see what comes through and you lead me in the way everlasting because I know that my heart is unreliable. So in a clearer time, David was able to write that. Interesting, when we get to 2 Samuel, he's going to be called the sweet psalmist of Israel. Right now, in this moment, he wrote no psalms. He stopped talking to God. No psalms from this time that we're studying right here. In fact, there's not even any mention of prayer going on here. And so, that's when a habit of conversations with our heart begins to develop is when we stop having the conversations with the Lord. Okay, point number two that we see David, his words here, he says, I shall perish. David forgot his purpose. When we are weary with life, when we are discouraged that our problems haven't gone away, we become naturally pessimistic. David said, I shall perish. Well, what in the world? Samuel had anointed him. Jonathan kept encouraging him all along the way. You shall be king. Abigail even says to him, I know that you will be king. Even Saul said to him, you shall be king, my son. Everyone was telling him what his purpose was, and yet, at this moment, he goes, I'm gonna die. It's like, no, you have a purpose. You're not going to die because you have a purpose. But discouraged people lose track of their purpose. Discouraged people create scenarios of despair. Now, maybe we've done this even with a medical thing going on. Something's wrong, we go to the doctor, and there's that period of time you have to wait, and during that period of time, we create scenarios of despair, don't we? So we know, we can relate to this, what it feels like. So when you hear yourself despairing like this, what we need to do is lean back on that beautiful psalm I always bring up, Psalm 138. The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me. The third thing that David said in this one verse, he goes, I should escape to the land of the Philistines. David made plans without God, because he wasn't talking to God right now. So he made plans of what he would do with his life without God. And when we're weary, and when we want to escape, we make plans without prayer. David wrongly assessed that living among the enemy, living like the enemy, would be a good choice right now. No one would even be able to know he was an Israelite. He would look and act just like the enemy. And when we get weary and discouraged, sometimes we just wanna just live like the world. They seem kinda happy, actually. I'll just live like the world, I'll look like the world. No one can even detect we are a Christ follower in that moment. So we need to consider these three dangers just from verse one, allowing our heart to inform us, forgetting our purpose, and making plans without prayer. Now look, David wasn't in this moment what we would call in New Testament terms, he wasn't a baby Christian, okay? He'd walked with the Lord a long time. He'd already written a whole bunch of Psalms that showed a deep, deep connected relationship with the Lord. This wasn't someone who didn't know God, which tells me these dangers of discouragement are something for the mature. This is something for people who have been walking with the Lord. These aren't baby conflicts. These are something that we all face, even if we've walked with God for 30, 50 years, we can still fall into these areas of discouragement. So I just wanna bring a couple of remedies to this so that our heart isn't what's informing us, we always need to be working on a habit of the word of God informing us, building that habit so that you get up in the morning and you go to your habit, the word of God is informing me, and the chances will be less, not gone, but it will lessen the chances of our heart informing us when the word of God informs us. Second thing, David had lost a sense of purpose, so that we don't lose a sense of purpose, we remind ourselves that sanctification is our purpose. Becoming Christ-like is our purpose while we're walking on this earth. And so all the things that happen to us feed into that. Now David's purpose was to become the king for Israel, all of these problems were feeding into that, growing his character for that, but every one of our purpose in this room, you have unique purposes, I probably don't know anything about, but shared purpose, every single one of us, sanctification, becoming more Christ-like, anything that comes into our life can be used to meet that purpose. And so we don't just go live like the world like David is about to do, we work on our pattern of making plans with prayer. A pattern of making plans with prayer. This is the part that hit me this week, because I really can just start getting things done. And I had to, last night I went to bed early, got my jammies on, and I just went in bed, and I said, Lord, I have so many plans I'm making, and less than half of them have I prayed about. And so I had to be, so I could teach this, I had to say, okay, Lord, we need to talk about this, and this, and this, I had to catch up a little bit, you know, but that's okay, sometimes we do, we just catch up, it's like, oh yes, that's me, I've made a lot of plans without prayer, let me remedy that. All right, now we can go to verse two. So David arose, and he 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 wife, and when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him, so this really worked. He went to Gath, Saul quit, he quit following after him. And just a note here, this was not super uncommon for someone from one country or tribe to go and hire themselves out as like a mercenary or something like that. Remember, Doeg, the Edomite, he was from Edom, for whatever reason, he came and worked for Saul. So this kind of stuff happened. We read in the text that David lived with the Philistines for 16 months. It's a long time. And eventually he told the king, he goes, it's not right that I live in your royal city. Just give me one of those towns out there. And so he was given Ziklag to be his town. And how did they pass their time? Verse eight, David and his men went up and made raids against the Gershites, the Gerzites, and the Amalekites. Now, I wanna stop for another note here. These were all Canaanite people that God had told his people to clear the land of. Okay, back to the days of Joshua. These are all people that they were to destroy, to not bring in, to not commingle with, to not bring in their religions or anything. And so David spent his time truly fighting the enemies of Israel. These weren't necessarily the enemies of the Philistines. They were sort of neutral. But David's pattern was to raid and to take all the valuables, anything of value, and make sure no one was left to tell. So that in verse 10, when Achish asked him, where have you made a raid today? David would vaguely answer, against the Negev of Judah, or against the Negev of the Dromielites, or against the Negev of the Kenites. And Negev basically means south. So David would say, over there, that's where I raided. And Achish was probably thinking he was raiding Israelite territory, but David just said, over there. And since Achish got his portion of the plunder, and since there were no survivors, and since Achish didn't exactly communicate with Israel, everyone was fine. It was just status quo for a while. Which is actually somewhat brilliant on David's part to be in enemy territory, fighting the enemies of Israel. But verse 12, Achish trusted David, thinking, he's made himself an utter stench to his people Israel. Therefore, he shall always be my servant. And that's how the chapter ends. And now as we begin the next chapter, there's complications for everyone. You know, when there's a world war going on, or a major conflict of some kind, everyone's life becomes complicated in some way, or in a different way. And this is what we're gonna see, the complications. The Philistines are mounting up to have a major battle with Israel, and this creates complications for everyone. Achish is now feeling insecure about David's loyalty. It's like, he probably still felt like David was loyal, but he's getting pushback from some of his close men. And so he's concerned, he's getting pressure and concern. David is realizing he could be headed in for some real trouble soon, and he is. And Saul is realizing he is not prepared at all to face the Philistines, because he spent the last decade of his life searching out one enemy, and that was David. And so now he feels insecure. And so we'll start chapter 28, see how these complications work out. In those days, the Philistines gathered their forces for war to fight against Israel. Achish said to David, understand that you and your men are to go out with me in the army. And David said to Achish, again, somewhat vaguely, very well, you shall know what your servant can do. That is not an answer at all. And Achish said, very well, I will make you my bodyguard for life. In other words, I'm gonna keep you on a short leash. You'll be with me. A bodyguard protects your body, so your leash just got shortened. This is what it's gonna be like. Now we switch back, and for the rest of the chapter, we look at how Saul is gonna deal with his newly complicated life. But first, the writer just wants to remind us of some things that we know. Verse three, Samuel had died. He'd been mourned over. He'd been buried. And we find out that Saul had put the mediums and necromancers out of the land. We won't know why that's relevant for a few verses. But verse four, the Philistines assembled and came and encamped at Shunem, and Saul gathered all Israel, and they encamped at Gilboa, five miles apart. So they're very close. And when Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid. His heart trembled greatly. Basically, he was terrified. And I'm sure he was needing some sort of assurance from the Lord, because there was a day when Samuel had said, you are gonna fight the Philistines, and he wants to go back and reach that again, find that again. Okay, certainly I'll be victorious. I need to hear that. So when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams or by Urim or by prophets. And Saul said to his servants, seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her. And his servants said to him, behold, there's a medium at Endor. This is classic. Saul himself had made this illegal. Put them all out of the land, and yet when he says, I want one, they knew right where she was. So, but we also have to remember what is going on here. This practice, this demonically inspired dark arts, this was Canaanite culture. This was not something that the Israelites were all about, God's covenant people. The Canaanite culture had infiltrated because they hadn't been obedient to the Lord. And so, this is an example, I think this is such a great example, of why God said, don't intermingle. Wipe them out. We have these things going on. So, verse eight, Saul, a pitiful shadow of himself, disguised himself, put on other garments, and he went, he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night, and he said, divine for me by a spirit, and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you. And the lady said, well, Saul has made this illegal, so I hope you're not trying to trap me here. And then in another sadly ironic twist, Saul assures her that this isn't a trap by swearing by the Lord. Verse 10, Saul swore to her by Jehovah, by Yahweh. As Jehovah lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing. And then the woman said, well, whom shall I bring up for you? And he said, bring up Samuel for me. When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice, why have you deceived me? You are Saul. And the king said, do not be afraid, what do you see? And the woman said, I see a God coming up out of the earth. Now, most Bible teachers say that the reason that she cried out and the reason that she recognized right away the whole situation is that she was accustomed to bringing up demons, familiar spirits, but this was Saul, or excuse me, this was Samuel. This was Samuel, for some reason, God determined that he was going to use Samuel in this way, bringing him up from Abraham's bosom to actually be a voice in this moment. And Samuel said to Saul, why have you disturbed me by bringing me up? And Saul answered, listen, I'm in great distress because this is all about me, right? I am in great distress for the Philistines are warring against me and God has turned away from me and answers me no more. And Samuel said, well, then why do you ask me since the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy? The Lord has done to you as he spoke by me. We've gone through this before is what he's saying to Saul. You didn't need to bring me up because we've talked about this before, okay? For the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor David because you did not obey the voice of the Lord. You did not carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek. Therefore, the Lord has done this thing to you this day. Moreover, the Lord will give Israel also with you into the hand of the Philistines and tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me. Verse 20, and Saul fell at once full length on the ground filled with fear because of the words of Samuel. And there was no strength in him for he had not eaten all day and all night. Remember that seems to be a thing with Saul, this fasting business seems to be kind of one of his ways. So the woman looks at the situation, realizes she'd already taken a big enough risk doing the seance. She was not gonna have Saul die on her floor. And so in verse 24, the woman had a fattened calf and she quickly killed it. She took flour, kneaded it, baked unleavened bread of it and she put it before Saul and his servants and they ate, then they rose and went away that night. We have one week left of study and we know that Saul will perish in the battle. We know that Israel will suffer a great defeat. We already feel a deep sense of lost potential as we look at Saul in this moment. I have to always think that even at every turn, at every moment, there's still an opportunity but Saul never takes them. He's given 24 hours. Samuel says, you got 24 hours. But Saul didn't do a thing with that. He just went on. I think in today's lesson, what grieves me the most is everyone is living with the Philistines. David has become content living out his days in a Philistine city. Saul has sunk to seeking direction from the Philistines' dark arts. Samuel's dead, and in this moment, if we hadn't read the rest of the book, we would begin to question, is David really gonna be the coming king? Because none of this looks very good right now. And so we have no choice but just to let the discouragement of these chapters live on until next week. But I can't bear to close a Bible lesson without hope, and so what I wanna do is I wanna reach for another one of the Psalms that David wrote in one of his better days, when he was communicating with God. That's what I love about this time, the dangers of discouragement, a season of discouragement. We love David. We think he's a pretty great guy, but even David went through a season of discouragement where he disconnected. So I wanna go back to a time when he was connected, because see, that's our hope. If any of you feel, yeah, I get that. In fact, right now, I haven't talked to God for quite a while because of all these disappointments, because of my discouragement. What I love is the hope of looking at that, how that looks on somebody else, and say, well, if you had hope, I can have hope, too. If you crawled out of it, I can crawl out of it, too. So we're gonna end with Psalm 34. I'll put it on the screen. In another time, David wrote, the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and that doesn't mean the sinless, the ones that do everything perfectly. The righteous are the ones who have faith in God.

Maybe not the day they want to be delivered. Maybe God delivers them in his time and in his way, and that is a Bible truth that we can lean on, but God will deliver, and the last sentence is,

Those, a verse like that is our hope in a season of discouragement, and these are the verses that we lean on. This is what we let inform our hearts during this time. Let's pray. Father God, I thank you for these words here, and Lord, I thank you that you show us in your word the realities of our frailty. Lord, we see even David succumb to discouragement and made choices that, choices not to talk to you, choices to plan without praying that we can relate to. They disappoint us, and sometimes we disappoint ourselves. We don't want to go through the dark season that we're in, but Lord, you've given us this in your word, and you've given us these psalms that remind us of the truth, so Lord, I pray that you would help us to hold on to the truth. I pray that you would help us, Lord, to just get rid of the things that our heart wants to tell us and to lean into what is true about you and your purpose for our lives. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.