Layovers in Nob and Gath

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Don Filcek; 1 Samuel 21-22:5 Layovers in Nob and Gath

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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series in 1
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Samuel, Timely Prophet, Tragic King. Let's listen in. Well, good morning,
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Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak, as Dave said. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm glad to welcome you to this wonderful church.
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I really don't know why God has blessed us with such a great community of people who love
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God and love each other. I have to confess that I'm in awe each week, week after week, as God brings people here and get an opportunity to see even during the week, not just on Sunday mornings, but to see during the week people caring for one another.
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We really are a community here where I get an opportunity to see people serving one another, people here at Recast support one another.
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There's accountability here at Recast Church. There's unity here that I have seen as almost kind of unprecedented in my past church experience.
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I don't know why. I see that those who are sick are cared for here. We celebrate together.
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In me, there's not a shred of pride over any of that that I share. I only say this to give glory and praise to God for what
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He has done here at Recast Church. I really am genuinely thankful to Him and offer praise to Him routinely and regularly for the things that I see
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Him doing here in our midst. So I would just encourage you to do so as well, and even as I say that up front here at the start of a service, it's not to toot our horn.
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It's just to praise God and say thank you to Him for it in front of all of you, and also encourage you to thank
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Him for it as well. This morning, we're going to continue on in Seek to Grow in Faith by taking in another passage from 1
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Samuel. The title of my message this morning is Layovers in Knob and Gaff. Now a layover is one of the worst things possible in transportation, in traveling.
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Does anybody agree with me that you really don't like layovers too much? Think of it this way.
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It's an extra stop on the way to where you want to be, or where you're supposed to be, or where you need to be.
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I think, personally, that layovers in Chicago are one of the worst kind because you're almost there.
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When you're on your way back home and you have a layover in Chicago, it's like, can
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I just get there? Do you know what I'm talking about? Some of you know what I'm saying, and the rest of you look a little mildly confused.
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But it's that whole almost home idea, and not right exactly where you want to be at the time.
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I've actually rented a car and driven home from Chicago before, rather than wait for my flight time and all of that stuff, and so some of you maybe know exactly what
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I'm talking about. And therefore, the idea of a layover works great as a metaphor for the text that we're looking at, and really kind of is a good metaphor for the next several chapters in the book of 1
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Samuel, because we're going to see layovers in the life of David. David's destination has already been declared to us, and many of you who were raised in the church, or have been around Sunday school classes, or something like that, or have some fuzzy notion about David's life, you know that he's going to eventually be the king of Israel.
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The destination, the place that David is heading, the place that this journey and this travel is taking him, is to the very throne of his people, to the very throne of Israel.
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That's where he's going. He's been anointed, and he was promised by God's prophet Samuel, who the book is named after, that he will one day be that very king.
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But in our text, he's going to have a couple of layovers here that we're going to see that are really the start of a wild and winding journey to the throne.
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Now, we know, you could have stated this before I stated, it's like duh, obvious, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, some of you know, yeah.
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So the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But God doesn't seem interested in the shortest journey.
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Have you noticed that in your own lives? It's not fundamentally about how quick can you get to the destination, how quick can you get to the lesson, how quick can you get there, but God is never in a hurry growing his people.
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He's more interested in developing us through trials than he is in just quickly moving us to the final destination.
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And often our lives wind around and take layovers just like David, and so it's good for us to look at what some of these layovers are made out of.
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So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to 1 Samuel chapter 21. We're going to start in verse one.
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We're going to read all the way through verse five of the next chapter. That's because that section really goes well with this section, and you'll see that it helps to define some of the things in our section in chapter 21 for us.
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But I'd encourage you to follow along in your Bible. If you don't have a Bible or a means to navigate or a device, then grab the
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Bible that's under the seat in front of you and find 1 Samuel chapter 21 there and follow along as we read
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God's very word to us recast, what he desires for you and I to hear from the very mouth of God.
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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?
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And David said to Ahimelech the priest, the king has charged me with a matter and said to me, let no one know anything of the matter about which
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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.
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Now then what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here. And the priest answered,
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David, I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread. If the young men have kept themselves from women and David answered the priest, truly women have been kept from us as always.
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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?
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So 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
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Lord to be placed by hot bread on the day it is taken away. Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the
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Lord. His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul's herdsmen. And David said to Ahimelech, then have you not here a spear or a sword at hand?
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For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me because the king's business required haste.
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And the priest said, 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.
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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.
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And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish, the king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said to him, is not this
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David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances? Saul was struck down his thousands and David his ten thousands.
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And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish, the king of Gath.
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So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gates and let his spittle run down his beard.
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Then Achish said to his servants, behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence?
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Shall this fellow come into my house? 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.
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And everyone was in distress and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was bitter and soul gathered to him and he became commander over them.
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And there were with him about 400 men. And David went from there to Mizpah of Moab and he said to the king of Moab, please let my father and my mother stay with you till I know what
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God will do for me. And he left them with the king of Moab and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold.
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Then the prophet Gad said to David, do not remain in the stronghold, depart and go into the land of Judah. So David departed and went into the forest of Horeb.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your faithfulness in our lives.
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I can reflect on my life and just think in terms of layovers and places where I have been caught in fear, where I have allowed my planning to get into the way of your planning and my desires to get in the way of your desires.
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And often it has pushed me to a place that's not healthy, that's not fun, that's not the right thing at the time.
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And so Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to the reality that you are faithful. You are faithful to guide us, to direct us, to protect your people, to lavish your love on your people.
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And sometimes that love looks like giving us the consequences and results of our sin and our behavior. Father, you are gracious to continue to call us back to yourself.
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And Father, I pray that this morning would be that for many of us. Father, as we encounter your word, that you would speak truth into us in a way that is with power and with authority that comes only from you.
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And Father, we would reflect deeply on the real reason we're here is because we've been redeemed that you have loved us so much that you have stretched your hand out to us.
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You have reached out in salvation to us through your son, Jesus Christ. And Father, I pray that our singing, our worshiping, the way that we're attentive to your word this morning and the way that we live our lives in this next week, all of those things would be rendered to you as worship because you are the one who is worthy, you are the one who is fixing us, redeeming us, you are the one who has forgiven us and has set our feet on solid ground where all of our plans, all of our methods, all of our ways are like shifting sand.
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They are transient, they are false, they are fake, not worthy of our trust, but you have placed our feet on solid ground on the shoulders of Jesus Christ who gave himself for us.
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And so, Father, I pray in reality that we would love you this morning as we sing these songs with our voices and lift them together as your people, in Jesus' name, amen.
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Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated, but remember if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, take advantage of that back there.
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And then I do ask that you please keep your Bibles open to 1 Samuel chapter 21, we're going to be going through the first five verses of chapter 22 there.
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And that's just so that you can see that the flow of what we're doing is coming from the text and I'll reference it a few times here or there.
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To start with, I'd like to just kind of give us the outline, I don't do this every week, but this one kind of breaks down into three parts.
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And so, the first section that we're going to be looking at this morning is the layover in Nob, that's verses 1 through 9 of chapter 21, and then in 21, 10 through 15, we're going to see the layover in Gath, and then we're going to see further unsettled wanderings, the third part there, 22 verses 1 through 5.
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Now I just want to set just a little bit of the stage here. Remember that David has just had to say goodbye to his final trusted friend,
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Jonathan. They had to part ways because Jonathan's dad happens to want to kill David. And his dad is
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King Saul over Israel, David is going to be replacing him, and we've already been made aware of that, even though many of the people in the text haven't been made aware of that yet.
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And so, where would you go, I mean, put yourself in that situation, you've lost your friends, you know, your wife is the very daughter of the one who wants you dead, and you're fleeing for your life, so where would you turn?
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Where do you go? And I can't necessarily fault David for these layovers, and at the same time, what we're going to talk about is a little bit of his heart attitude during this time and thinking about this, and so therefore these two places,
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Nob and Gath, I'm going to use metaphorically for a mindset or a set of circumstances that kind of happens to us, but in David's life they were literal places, and first we're going to see
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David take a layover in Nob. And in doing so, David really does kind of head in a good direction, he has consulted with the prophet
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Samuel already in the text, he has consulted with a covenant friend, Jonathan, and Jonathan said get out, and Samuel said get out, and now he's going to consult with the priest
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Ahimelech, the priest at Nob. Now this is not as far as we might expect from Saul, if somebody was trying to kill you, how far would you run, right, how many far would you run, you'd probably run pretty far.
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David has a little, he's kind of more of a brave, he's made out of tougher stuff than many of us, and he only flees two miles to the south of where Saul lives, so he's just a couple of miles down the road, very easy for Saul to get down there, and he heads to the town of Nob, about two miles south of Gibeah.
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The priest Ahimelech shows fear right off the bat, like when David comes to him and he goes out to David, probably outside of the tent or outside of the little village or whatever, when he goes out to David it says that he was trembling, well why in the world would he be trembling?
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And it lets us know a little bit that this priest probably already has some understanding that David and Saul were on the outs, word was spreading that Saul wanted
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David dead, and now David is there at his doorstep, and he's like I don't want to get into trouble, there's probably some of that, but the thing that seems most unsettling, it faced value to this priest, is the fact that a man of such high standing in the kingdom would show up alone.
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The aloneness of David is stark to the priest, should be stark to us, how many of you have gone through some dark times, alone, like is that a bad place to be?
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So we know that from this text, that he's alone in this, fleeing, but equally we also know that the priest is aware that that's not the way that things happen, nobody traveled alone during this day and age, and especially someone who was a commander of a thousand of the king's troops, right, he was a commander of a thousand, and so he just didn't travel alone, and David is now alone.
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Now I do not believe that David fleeing to Nob is a sin on his part, but I do believe that the attitude expressed here is going to show an increasing weakening of David's strong and steadfast faith, now how many of you think of David as a man of faith, you think of that, how many of you think that it might be awkward to apply the word afraid to David, like David just didn't seem like the kind of guy,
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I mean he killed the giant, he went out with boldness, he seems like in every avenue of his life he's got bravado and strength and faith and trust, and that he was a really brave individual, but we're gonna see in this circumstance that some things are happening here that you really have to study and kind of get down into to figure out what is his hard attitude here, and it's gonna kind of shine through in some of the statements and things that he says.
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But David is steadily becoming comfortable with lying, that's one thing that's actually started to become a theme, and in this text it kind of comes to a head, he had his wife
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Michael the daughter of King Saul deceive her father to buy him time, he and Jonathan lied to Saul about the reason that David was absent from the new moon festival and feast, and now
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David is gonna lie about the reason he's alone, right away the priest asks what are you doing alone, why in the world, where are your troops, where's everybody,
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I mean how in the world are you here standing at my doorstep by yourself, this doesn't make any sense, well he lies and he says
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I'm on a top secret mission from the king, and my troops have been relocated to a certain location,
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I'm gonna go join them, I can't even tell you, I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you kind of thing, and so it's possible, it's possible, and the text isn't abundantly clear, it doesn't go into detail, but it's possible that Ahimelech doesn't quite know the tension between David and Saul in this, and so he might be lying to protect
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Ahimelech, we just don't know, but the idea that like you could honestly tell the king you didn't know that I was on the outs with you before, and all of that, we don't know, but further he lies and says
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I had to leave so quickly I didn't even have time to gather provisions and weapons, now how many of you, a man, a soldier, you might be, like that might cause some questions in Ahimelech's mind, why in the world is he so quick that he sends you on a top secret mission and you don't even have time to grab your sword, you don't even have time to grab provisions and pack a lunch or something,
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I mean, so the first thing that David asks for from the priest is five loaves of bread, a very specific request, it's not an extravagant request, but Ahimelech had nothing but the ceremonial bread that was placed before the
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Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle as a symbol of God's merciful provision, now this bread was placed there routinely and regularly according to the
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Old Testament law, this was a legal, a law, a spiritual law kind of thing where this bread was placed on this table there every week, and in verse six we're going to see that Ahimelech gives the bread to David, but only after confirming that those who will eat the bread have remained ritually pure, he's very interested in the ritual purity of them that they've remained holy so that they can eat the holy bread without incurring judgment, now it's recorded for us though, this is an interesting story because it's recorded for us in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, three of the four gospels,
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Jesus used this exact event in history as an illustration for the mercy of God in the law, you see only priests were allowed to eat this bread, this was bread reserved for the priesthood, is
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David a priest? David is not a priest, and so he's requesting this show bread, this special sanctified holy bread for himself and to carry to his troops, but the very reason this bread was baked and placed there before the
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Ark every few days was a simple and straightforward reminder to all who came to worship and that would come there to make sacrifices, that it was through God and in his great mercy that we have food, that's what it symbolized, how many of you know that?
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Do you give thanks before you eat? For many of us that becomes a routine, it becomes a habit, and I would just encourage you to get away from the forms and get down to actually praying to God during that time, use it for benefit and actually, when's the last time you reflected on the fact of where your food even came from, that there's a process that comes from the ground and all of that stuff and just to give thanks to God for the food, but the very reason that it was there was a thankfulness to God and a recognition of his merciful provision for us.
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You see, Jesus indicated that the true meaning of the law of the show bread, according to the Old Testament, was actually fulfilled in this scenario, not broken, but fulfilled.
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The show bread was about the merciful provision of God for his people.
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Were the bread to be kept from someone in need, it would have actually denied the law of merciful provision.
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By giving it to David, the priest was actually fulfilling the intention of that law.
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Verse seven, by the way, it kind of just crops up on you and it's like all of a sudden, verse seven is right there kind of in the middle and then moves on.
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It's like the way that the camera, okay, you're panning over the store and he's asking for bread and the priest gives him the bread and then all of a sudden the camera pans over to the corner and like every
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Western movie, the camera pans over to the corner of the bar where it momentarily rests on a shady character.
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Can you picture it? He's hidden in the shadows under a thick brimmed cowboy hat, of course it's black.
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The light of the puff of his cigarette lights up his face enough to show a long scar. Doeg the
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Edomite. He was held up, it says. The word was held up before the Lord there. What in the world, why would a person be held up at the tabernacle?
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Well, they came to make a sacrifice and they were ritually impure and therefore have to await the proper amount of days to become ritually pure and do all of these cleansings and washings and stuff.
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So that's likely the case for Doeg the Edomite and so we know that he's in Saul's hip pocket.
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Now, David is fleeing from who? Saul. Who does this guy serve? Saul. Signs of bad things to come.
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The chief manager of all of Saul's flocks is there when all of this goes down.
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He's a most unsavory individual and we're going to see that. When the camera pans like that and rests for a moment on a dark figure, you can expect them to come back in the story later, like maybe next week.
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But food wasn't all that David was looking for. In verse 8, I find the most telling indication that David's visit to Nab is interlaced with his struggling faith.
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That's part of the reason we're even reading about this, is he asks for a spear or a sword.
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Now, it's interesting that he doesn't just merely use the word weapon, do you have any weapons here? But he asks specifically for a spear and a sword and the way that that's recorded for us is actually reflective of something.
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It might not seem strange at first blush, unless you've read the story in its entirety and you've gone back and you've looked at where else have we ever heard
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David use the word spear and sword before. I mean, let me just clarify though.
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He's running for his life. Isn't he allowed to defend himself? Isn't he allowed to get a spear? Isn't he allowed to get a sword?
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Is that appropriate? But I don't think it's merely by chance that sword and spear were in the mouth of David at the moment of his greatest triumph.
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They're standing before the giant. They're standing before Goliath. I mean, if you look at the screen and pay attention to the words of David to Goliath on the field of battle, those are going to come up there in just a second.
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I'm going to quote a little bit more than what's up there to give you a little bit of the back. This day, quoting
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David, shouting to the giant, this day the Lord will deliver you into my hand and I will strike you down and cut off your head and I will give the dead bodies of the host of the
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Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth that all the earth may know that there is a
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God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear, for the battle is the
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Lord's and he will give you into our hand.
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And here in our text, what is David asking for? A sword or a spear. Can I just have a sword or a spear?
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Can I have something? I just need something to hold. I need something here. How many of you have been in a dark place? And you begin to make the plans yourself.
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You begin to process things for yourself. You begin to take care of yourself.
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And you become your priority. It becomes all about you.
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I believe that this text is showing us that David's confidence in God himself is shaking.
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He's shaken. Ahimelech offers David the very sword of Goliath that apparently has been kept in the tabernacle as a trophy of sorts.
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It's probably likely that David dedicated that back to the Lord and said, here you go, you can have it.
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It was his to carry away and he gave it to, ultimately, as kind of a trophy to God and saying, here, you can have this.
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Well, he's going to take it back. And David eagerly takes it up with trust that he will be able to use such an awesome weapon to protect himself, to protect himself.
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But I believe that if David had paused for even just a moment to contemplate and consider the symbolism of this sword, what did this sword stand for in his life, he would have been moved to reflect on the
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Lord's hand of deliverance over his life, right? If he had stopped to think about what does this sword mean, but he's very concerned over his own life at this point and saving himself, that he's not thinking in terms of the
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Lord's hand of deliverance. As I said earlier, David's flight, his physical flight to Nob wasn't a sin, but in this layover, he reflects a wavering faith and a rising fear.
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How many of you have been in a place where fear began to push out your faith? They displace one another.
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They're like oil and water. They can't exist in the same spot, in the same space. Fear pushes out faith or faith will push out fear, but the two will not stay in the same place.
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I think at any given point in our lives, there's probably some of both in here, and they're not mixing very well.
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That's a lot of our conflict in our souls is that tension between faith and fear.
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Metaphorically, I think we've all been to Nob. I think you've been there. Some of you are there now.
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We know what it looks like. We've been on that lonely layover. For David, Nob was the place of his own planning, his own loneliness, his own pity, his own forgetfulness about the wonderful deliverance that God had already provided for him, even a forgetfulness of the promises of God over his life.
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How many of you think that if God came and promised you that when you turn 83,
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I'm going to do this for you, and you knew definitively that he had planned that out for you or that you're going to end up being the
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CEO of such and such a company or you're going to be raised up to be governor of Michigan or something like that, whatever it was that you knew definitively that he had spoken through his prophet to you, then you might feel somewhat like nothing could touch you, nothing could scratch you for a while.
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If you had that definitive promise from God, and David has that, he has that anointing, you are going to be king, and he ought to be able to.
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If we were just going to be facetiously down on David here for a moment, shouldn't he be able to look and say,
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I'm the anointed king, I guess I'm not king yet, so God's not done with me yet. I could walk right into Saul's palace right now, and he won't be able to kill me because God said
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I'm going to be the next king. Do you see what I'm saying in that? But that's certainly not the way that we live our lives, with the promises, and certainly we can cut
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David some slack in recognizing that fear might be a legitimate human response at times when we are pressed in, around, and without eyes of faith, when fear begins to have its way in our hearts, we begin to lose the ability to see the promises of God and the things that he has for us.
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David was in a lonely place, a place of his own pity, and not for us is a state of mind that we often shift into when challenges face us.
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Each one of us has a tendency to visit Nob when faced with pain, when isolation, with fear.
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And many of us, if we're honest, in the area, the place that we live, in the way that we've been trained, in the way that our hearts move, in the way that it means, what it really means to be an
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American, independent, isolated, alone, and do it yourself, and if you don't do it, nobody else is going to.
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If we're honest, what that does in our hearts is turns us into planning mode when pressed, right?
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We turn into planners, I need food, I need weapons, I need to care for myself, nobody else will look out for me, so I need to take care of this.
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On the heels of this planning is often pity, right? Nobody really gets me, nobody else really cares, nobody else faces what
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I face, and God is standing by going, then I guess I'm nobody, because I get you, and I care, and I'm here with you.
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Lastly, I want to point out, talking about Nob, is that it's a place of lies. Well, David has been drawn closer and closer to really making himself to be a liar and getting comfortable with lying and getting good at lying, and I know that I mentioned in an earlier sermon that there are different types of deception, but David is losing grip on the slippery slope of convenient deception.
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Although the text doesn't seem to moralize on the subject of deception here, doesn't seem to condemn
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David for his lies and the things that he says, by the end of this message you will see that David himself felt like he had gone too far in his lies and deception, and he is even, in his own writing, going to exhort you and me to be honest with our mouths.
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His own writing, during this time, is going to say, hey, you shouldn't be lying, it didn't work out so well for me.
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You will see, in the end, that his deception costs a lot, and we'll actually get to that more next week.
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But Nob is not a pretty place. Metaphorically speaking, let me discourage you from any layovers in Nob.
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Seek help to rise up out of pity, where you see it in your life, to rise up out of fear and doubt and deception.
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I fear that for some, Nob isn't a layover as much as a residence. You take up residence in pity, you take up residence in fear, you take up residence in your own plans and your own way of living.
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But beware, because as we move into this second section, for those who belong to God by faith, by his mercy, he often takes and empties those from Nob into Gath.
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He often gives us the consequences of our self -reliance, of our dependence on ourselves, of our lack of faith and our allowing fear to take over, and many times, he will push us right out of Nob into Gath.
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And that's in verses 10 through 15, David's trip to Nob leads him to a second layover that we see in the text, and that is
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Gath. Now, many of you already knew this, but Gath is the very hometown of Goliath himself.
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So why in the world would, I mean, even scholars are questioning, why in the world would David go there? Doesn't he know that they're going to have it out for him?
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Doesn't he know that he's going to put himself in danger right away? Well, most scholars make sense of this attempt by David to associate with the
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Philistines, and particularly the Philistines of Gath, as a foolish attempt to show himself as a traitor.
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What's the way that he could show himself to be a traitor to his own people, and therefore acceptable to the
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Philistines, by turning himself over to the people of the Philistines and saying, I'll be with you guys,
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I'm on your side now. So if Nob was a place of emotional darkness and a low point for David, then
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Gath is nearly rock bottom, and this is not going to be the end of his foray, by the way, into Philistine territory.
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But here, he's reduced to a pitiful, faithless man who must act literally insane in order to save his own skin.
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It's a pretty low point for the anointed king to be. Would you agree with me on that? I don't know if any of you have read this story from that perspective before, or is it just kind of the way that God leads him and guides him, and he's okay?
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This is a dark point. This is a low point for David. The Philistines have not forgotten
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David, by the way. Surprise, surprise. He killed their hometown hero. They've heard the songs about David killing his 10 ,000s, and apparently the best hits of Israel made it all the way over the radio stations to Philistine radio stations and made their top 40 countdown as well, and so they listened to that song too, and they knew the song about David.
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Isn't this a song about David or something? And look at verse 12. Words you may have never imagined could be true of the giant slayer, the one who all the story, the children's
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Bibles hold up as the giant slayer and the one who killed his giants and you can kill your giants too and all of that.
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It says in the text, he was much afraid.
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He was much afraid. He was very afraid. He was greatly scared. David of the giant faith that we saw back in chapter 17,
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David with the one smooth stone, David who uttered on that day, my God will deliver me this day from your hand, shouting down the giant and then running towards him.
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He has been reduced to a place of much afraid as he comes under the arrest of the
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Philistines. I say he's under arrest because verse 13 uses the common phrase for arrest. In the
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Hebrew language, they would use the word in their hands or in your hands to say you've been apprehended and that's exactly what's happened to him and we'll see that later in one of the
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Psalms that he writes for this time. The title of that Psalm was when he was arrested by the Philistines in Gath.
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Now I believe that Nob leads to Gath and if Nob reflects our own fear -based, godless planning, then
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Gath reflects God's faithfulness to bring us deeper down into fear and the consequences of our self -trust.
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He says if you want to trust yourself, let me show you where that's going to get you. Gath is the place where God shows us the depth of our errors for leaning on our own plans instead of his glorious deliverance.
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Gath is the place where the police show up at the door. Gath is the place where your boss comes in and says you're done.
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Gath is the place where your wife catches you on the internet at 2 o 'clock in the morning. It's the place where your faithlessness catches up with you.
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That's God's grace. Did you know that getting caught is God's grace? It doesn't feel like it, but it is.
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For David, God kept a short leash for him and I pray the same for me and I would encourage you also to pray the same prayer saying,
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God, please never let me stray far. Catch me quickly. Before I wander into Gath, stop me a knob and let the reminders of your past faithfulness move my heart to trust you in the present and to trust you with my future.
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How many of you want God to keep a short account with you? You don't want to shipwreck your life. You don't want to destroy your family.
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You don't want to destroy things around you. Let me see you raise a hand again.
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How many of you want God to keep a short ... Then pray and ask him. Talk to him and ask him to keep you on a short leash.
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I know I need that. The anointed king of Israel pretended to be insane.
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He let spittle run down his beard with wild eyes and jerky movements. He dug into the doors of the gate with his fingernails.
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Can you picture that? The David who killed the giant with one stone has been reduced to that.
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That's David. That's a picture of him right there. We found that. That was in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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When they unrolled it, they found it. It's pretty sweet what they find in ... Archeology is amazing, you guys.
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It's really good stuff. We may be surprised by the mercy of King Akish of Gath.
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How many of you have ever wondered, why in the world didn't he just drive a spear through this enemy of the
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Philistines and be done with it? Have you ever wondered that here? Why in the world does he release him? Why does he let him go?
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How many of you don't picture that to be a really common ... Grace to be a real common thing in the ancient world?
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It's likely that a cultural understanding helps to make sense of why in the world that one of the greatest enemies and slayers of Philistines would come before one of the kings, one of the five kings of the
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Philistines, and he'd be like, he's a madman, let him go. How many of you might go, well, if he's a madman, just put him down and we'll be done with him.
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That might be the ... You might picture that to be the reality in a barbaric age among a barbaric people like the
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Philistines. But a really common thought in many ancient cultures was that harming a man possessed by malicious spirits would release those spirits and they would in turn torment the one who released them.
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That's why it might be said that King Akesh already has enough madmen. I've already got enough of those hanging around.
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I don't need more. Look, my cupboards are full of them. Don't need any more madmen. He released
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David who appeared to pose no threat to anyone except himself. And the third part of our text includes some further unsettled wanderings here.
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So we've gone to Gnab, we've gone to Gath, we're going to apply this here at the end, but this third part, there's some unsettled wanderings that are happening here.
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He spent some time at the cave of Adullam. He ended up fleeing just by the skin of his teeth.
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He's going to be joined by his family at Adullam, and he gathered also about 400 castoffs and malcontents to join him as a posse, and he ends up being their commander.
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About 400 men that join him, all kinds of people disgruntled with the king, disgruntled with Israel, disgruntled with all kinds of things, and he took his father and his mother to Moab for protection from King Saul.
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The implication is that he's fearful that Saul is going to use his parents to get back at him, as you can imagine, and so he says, let's get you guys to a safe place, caring for his parents.
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Interestingly, David's great -grandmother, Ruth, was from Moab, so you may go, why in the world would a foreign nation protect an
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Israelite and his family? Why would that be? Well, they actually have Moabite blood in them.
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David's great -grandmother, Ruth, was from Moab, and it's likely that this accounts for David's family being welcomed, and even
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David is allowed to reside at a stronghold there in Moab for some time for protection.
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And it's interesting that he actually declares, we're going to wait here, and we're going to sit this out until God tells me what he's going to do with me.
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He's now, all of a sudden, he had this layover in Nob, a dark place. He had a layover in Gath, a much darker place, and then all of a sudden he's talking in terms of, and there's some shift that's happened, some shift that in the narrative doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because now he's saying,
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I'll wait on the Lord. So his experience in Nob and his experience in Gath has actually taught him something, and we're going to see what that is here in just a second.
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He's there in the stronghold, and he says, we're going to wait until God speaks, and God does. God faithfully sends a prophet to him, the prophet
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Gad, and says, don't stay any longer, danger is at hand, evacuate the stronghold, and head back into Judah.
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So that's where our text ends for this week. And at the end of the text, David received direction, and so God has been faithful to speak to him.
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But I want to point out the disparity between the darkness of David at rock bottom in Gath, and the way the story picks up in chapter 22, with seemingly common routines of caring for his family, hearing from prophets, which was not that rare for him, and hanging out in the stronghold like nothing ever happened in Nob and Gath, and how do we get there from the darkness?
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Because how many of you know that Nob and Gath leave scars? How many of you know that when you go through dark times, often it leaves abrasions on your heart?
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It leaves difficulties that need to be resolved, and need to be taken care of?
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They're not easily overcome. So how can our third section seem to just move on like business as usual?
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And that's where I want us to end our study this morning, in the Psalms. I want us to think about the
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Psalms. See, there's two specific Psalms that were written by David while he was in Gath.
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It's a beautiful thing, the way that scripture ties these things together. The beauty here is that we don't only have the narrative of the events that happened, but we actually have the poetry of David from this event.
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We have him speaking to us about what was going on in his heart while in Gath.
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Psalm 56 shows his heart journey with God while he was under arrest in Gath during this event.
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And I would encourage you to read that this week while rereading this passage. It would be a great thing to do.
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I'm not going to reference a whole lot out of Psalm 56 this morning, but it's about his journey in his heart as he's there in this terrifying place.
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But I am going to let David, who experienced Nab and Gath, preach to us what he learned, and that's found in Psalm 34.
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It says, while he feigned insanity before the king in Philistia.
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Psalm 34 is his writing about this event. And here's what David learned while in Gath.
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These are our application points for this morning. How in the world do you deal with a layover in Nab?
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How do you deal with a layover in Gath? When fear is pushing out, just to remind you of what the metaphor is, when fear is pushing out your faith, when the circumstances around you are so dark and you feel so alone and you find yourself sitting in a puddle of your own self -pity and tears, how do you process that?
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Where do you go? What's a beautiful thing in verse 4 of chapter 34, Psalm 34, is our first application.
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Seek the Lord when you find yourself in Nab, when you find yourself in Gath, when you find yourself at rock bottom.
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David says in his own words in verse 4, I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.
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I'll read that again. I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.
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You see, David didn't lack fear at the start of this journey, but when he passed through Nab and he crash landed in Gath, he came to his senses, sought the
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Lord, and God answered him and delivered him from all his fears. Not from all of his enemies, not from all of his circumstances, but how many of you know sometimes the thing that you need to be delivered most from is your heart attitude?
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Do you know what I'm talking about? From fear rather than faith, from a lack of trust in God to lifting your eyes again and seeking him, came to his senses.
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Notice that, I love this, David doesn't credit his acting skills for escape.
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He doesn't say, you know, it was because I was a two -time leading role in my high school musical that I was able to feign insanity and boy did
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I pull a fast one on King Akish and my acting skills did it. He credits the
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Lord who came through for him with deliverance in the darkness. So the first is seek the
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Lord. Seek the Lord when you find yourself in darkness. The second thing is trust in God to protect you.
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Turn to him and trust in him because how many of you know that all protections that we surround ourselves with are, they're paltry.
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If the Lord wants my house to be broken into, ADT's not going to stop it. I mean,
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I'm not saying that you don't have some security, I'm not against all of that, but I'm saying, where is your trust?
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Do you hear the difference? What are you really hoping for, for protection?
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In David's own words, he said this in Psalm 34, this poor man, speaking of himself, this poor man cried and the
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Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them.
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Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
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I never caught that before. How many of you could have quoted that the Bible says, taste and see that the Lord is good? That's in the context of his protection of his people.
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That's in the context of you trusting him to deliver you, you trusting him to protect you.
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That's a powerful thing. And I love that last phrase, blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
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David who had been through Nob and through Gath, he came out the other side encouraging all of us to take refuge in God Almighty.
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There is nothing wrong with carrying a sword or a spear, but trusting in those things is a misplaced trust.
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Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Trust in him.
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So our first, seek the Lord, trust God to protect you. The third is to remind yourself that sin is never the answer.
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David wants you to know that because he had walked down this road to Nob sliding into sin, sliding into dishonesty.
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And I find it interesting that in this slippery slope, slide into Gath, God addressed
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David's slide into sinful deception. It's not like he just solves the circumstances, but he says, hey, bro, there's something in your heart here too that I'd like to point out.
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Many of you have seen God faithful, even in our darkness, even when we're down to still point out to us, hey, there's some things here, some things that need to be corrected and fixed.
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He calls into question David's methods for self -preservation. David lied to try to save his own skin and in David's own words, he who told many lies to seek to accomplish his own plans tells us this in Psalm 34, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.
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Is he a hypocrite? Is he being a hypocrite? No, he's learning a lesson and he's sharing it with us.
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He says, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit, turn away from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.
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Where did he write this? In Gath. He wrote that for us in Gath.
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If David could do it all over again, I don't believe he would have lied in Nab. He would have embraced the truth and rejected sin as an attempt to take matters into his own hands.
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Part of his slide was his deception. Lastly, God is close to those who are in Gath.
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God is close to those who are struggling with faith, who are struggling with doubt, who are down and are feeling self -pity and self -loathing.
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He doesn't look at you and go, until you get this mess cleaned up and until you get back into church and until you dress up and make yourself look appropriate,
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I'm not gonna have anything to do with you. You're just having a pity party. God sits down with us in our pity parties.
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Can you imagine that? The Almighty joins in with you. He's close to those who are broken and know it.
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I don't think he's close to those who are broken, because that's all of us, but he's close to those who are broken and know that they're broken, who are contrite.
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That is, that they know in their heads what is true of them, that they really are lowly.
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God is close to those who are in Gath. Despite what our assumptions may be about God and his attitude toward those who are weak and caught in darkness,
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David realized that God is close to the broken, even those who are broken, by the way, by their own foolish decisions.
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Evangelicalism and the church has often gotten this wrong, haven't we? We are so concerned with how you became poor.
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The guy holding the cardboard sign, oh, he probably does drugs. Sure he does, and he also needs something to eat.
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Sure he does. What's that got to do with us? What's that got to do with our generosity and our love?
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Really? Is that what it's about? Us better than them? Do you see what
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I'm saying? Do you feel a little of that? Because I do. I mean, I look and I say, oh, yeah, well, of course they're there with the cardboard sign because of their decisions.
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So what? He says this in Psalm 34, when the righteous cry out for help, the
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Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
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Do you ever consider who Jesus spent his time with? Pretty unsavory people, prostitutes and sinners, tax collectors, turncoats, people who turned in their own countrymen.
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The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. David felt crushed. He's identifying himself with the broken in spirit.
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He was not just a rise -above kind of hero that we paint him to be in the children's books and just this muscle -bound man who had no problems.
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He's saying, here, I identify myself as brokenhearted and I feel crushed.
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And the Lord drew near to me. In my darkness, he was there for me. You see,
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God's love for the down -and -out was never shown more than at the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.
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Why did he die? What's the cross all about? So that we could have cool gold and silver jewelry to hang around our necks?
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He died for people in nob and gaff, people like us, for those who live in fear and doubt.
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He died for those who hit rock bottom and know that they are not worthy. And so as we come to communion, please pause to consider, where are you in this story?
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Where are you at? Are you self -righteous, saying, me and nob, never.
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Me and gaff, of course not. I would never go there. Or are you troubled because you know that you're already there?
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Are you humble enough to identify where you have a tendency to slide and head out to these layovers, flirting with letting fear take final control?
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Maybe you're at the darkest place. Maybe some of you here are like, yeah, I'm right there. I'm right there on the edge.
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And some of us, we're in a place of thanking God that we're not currently on a layover.
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And let me just encourage you to not let the pleas to God rest when He delivers you, but in the good times, seek
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Him as well. Because how many of you know that those of you that are at a good place in life right now, things are clicking, things are going, you know life does this.
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It does this to you. God is faithful to bring us through and bring us to trials that we need to grow.
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Wherever you're at this morning, if you belong to Jesus Christ and He's your Lord and Savior, then come to the table to remember
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His great love and mercy shown to you. He is near to the brokenhearted and He saves those who are crushed in spirit.
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And David found this out the hard way. And for that, I just kind of want to say, thanks
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David. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the model and the example that we have of your servant
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David, who we get a picture of him in chapter 17, this giant of the faith who just goes out and heads running headlong with a sling and a stone toward a giant.
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And then we see him in this dark place, withdrawing, terrified, running for his life, trying to protect and preserve his life by his own means.
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Father, I thank you for the beauty of your word that so clearly points out my own heart.
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And I pray that you would be reflecting on everybody here where their heart is as well. Father, we know that we go through these cycles of just trust in you and faith in you and then faith in ourselves and trust in ourselves or trust in our own abilities.
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And Father, I pray that you would even just pour grace over us in that struggle, in that system of cycles.
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We can become super down on ourselves, but Father, you are never closer to us than when we're contrite and humble before you.
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And I believe you're never further from us than when we're prideful and arrogant and assume that we're receiving all of these good things because we deserve it.
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So Father, I pray that you would help us as we come to communion this morning to reflect accurately and correctly.
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That as we even walk back there and we line up and those who belong to you by faith line up and go back to take the cracker and the juice.
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Father, that we would boldly just look around the room and identify, wow, I'm in good company because everybody here is so needy.
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Everybody here is so needy and is so broken and is so busted up in our lives that we needed the blood of Jesus to cover us.
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We needed his body broken in our place. We needed him to take the penalty that we deserved. And I pray that you would help us to go out from this place trusting you more and letting faith push out fear.