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

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series in First Samuel, Timely Prophet, Tragic King. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning, 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. I really don't know why God has blessed us with such a great community of people who love God and love each other, but 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. We really are a community here where I get an opportunity to see people serving one another, people here at Recast support one another.

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. I don't know why. I see that those who are sick are cared for here.

We celebrate together. There's, 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 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 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. 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 him for it as well.

Layovers in Nob and Gath

This morning, we're gonna continue on and seek to grow in faith by taking in another passage from 1 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.

Does anybody agree with me that you don't really like, you really don't like layovers too much? Think of it this way, it's an extra stop on the way to where you want to be, right? Or where you're supposed to be or where you need to be.

I think personally that layovers in Chicago are one of the worst kind because you're almost there, right? When you're on your way back home and you have a layover in Chicago, it's like, can I just get there, right?

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, but it's that whole almost home idea and not right exactly where you want to be at the time.

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 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 Samuel because we're gonna 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. 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.

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. But in our text, he's going to have a couple of layovers here that we're gonna see that are really the start of a wild and winding journey to the throne.

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. So the shortest distance between two points.

Is a straight line.

But God doesn't seem interested in the shortest journey. 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.

He's more interested in developing us through trials than he is in just quickly moving us to the final destination. 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.

So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to 1 Samuel chapter 21. We're gonna start in verse one. We're gonna 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.

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 Bible that's under the seat in front of you and find 1 Samuel chapter 21 there and follow along as we read God's very word to us recast, what he desires for you and I to hear from the very mouth of God.

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? 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 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. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here. And the priest answered 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 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? 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 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 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?

For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king's business required haste. 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.

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. 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 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? And David took these words to heart, and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath.

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. 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? 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. And everyone was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul gathered to him, and he became commander over them.

And there were with him about 400 men. 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 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. 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. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your faithfulness in our lives. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

They are transient, they are false, they are fake and 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. 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.

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. And then I do ask that you please keep your Bibles open to 1 Samuel chapter 21. We're gonna be going through the first five verses.

Of chapter 22 there.

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. 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. And so the first section that we're gonna be looking at this morning is the layover in Nob. That's verses one through nine of chapter 21. And then in 21, 10 through 15, we're gonna see the layover in Gath.

And then we're gonna see further unsettled wanderings, the third part there, 22 verses one through five. Now, I just wanna set just a little bit of the stage here. Remember that David has just had to say goodbye to his final trusted friend, Jonathan.

They had to part ways because Jonathan's dad happens to want to kill David. And his dad is 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.

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?

Where do you go? And I can't necessarily fault David for these layovers. And at the same time, what we're gonna talk about is a little bit of his hard attitude during this time in thinking about this.

And so therefore, these two places, Nob and Gath, I'm gonna use metaphorically for a mindset or a set of circumstances that kinda happens to us. But in David's life, they were literal places. And first, we're gonna see David take a layover in Nob.

And in doing so, David really does kinda head in a good direction. He has consulted with the prophet 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 gonna consult with the priest 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. David is a little, he's kinda 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. The priest Ahimelech shows fear right off the bat.

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?

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 David dead. And now David is there at his doorstep.

And he's like, I don't wanna 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.

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? 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 1 ,000 of the king's troops, right?

You know, he's a commander of 1 ,000. And so he just didn't travel alone. And David is now alone. 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? Like, 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, 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.

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, 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 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? 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, I'm on a top secret mission from the king and my troops have been relocated to a certain location.

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 Ahimelech.

We just don't know but the idea that 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, 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, that might cause some questions in Ahimelech's mind. Why in the world, it's 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? 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 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 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 gonna 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. 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 David a priest? David is not a priest, and so he's requesting this showbread, 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 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? I mean, 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, right? I mean, that there's a process that comes from the ground and all of that stuff, and I mean, 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. You see, Jesus indicated that the true meaning of the law of the showbread, according to the Old Testament, was actually fulfilled in this scenario, not broken, but fulfilled.

The showbread was about the merciful provision of God for his people. Were the bread to be kept from someone in need, it would have actually denied the law of merciful provision. By giving it to David, the priest was actually fulfilling the intention of that law.

Verse seven is, 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, and it's like the way that the camera,.

Okay, you're panning over the story,.

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 Western, every Western movie, the camera pans over to the corner of the bar, where it momentarily rests on a shady character.

Can you picture it? He's hidden in the shadows under a thick-brimmed cowboy hat. Of course, it's black. The light of the puff of his cigarette lights up his face enough to show a long scar. Doeg the 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? 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 these cleansings and washings and stuff, so that's likely the case for Doeg the Edomite, and so we know that he's in Saul's hip pocket.

Now, David is fleeing from who?

Saul.

Who does this guy serve?

Saul.

Signs of bad things to come. The chief manager of all of Saul's flocks is there when all of this goes down. He's a most unsavory individual, and we're gonna 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.

But food wasn't all that David was looking for. In verse eight, I find the most telling indication that David's visit to Nob is interlaced with his struggling faith. That's part of the reason we're even reading about this, is he asks for a spear or a sword.

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. 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 David use the word spear and sword before?

I mean, let me just clarify, though. 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?

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. 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 gonna come up there in just a second.

I'm gonna quote a little bit more than what's up there to give you a little bit of the back. This day, quoting 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 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 God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hand.

And here in our text, what is David asking for? A sword or a spear. Can I just have a sword or a spear? 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?

You begin to process things for yourself. You begin to take care of yourself and you become your priority. It becomes all about you. I believe that this text is showing us that David's confidence in God himself is shaking.

He's shaken. Ahimelech offers David the very sword of Goliath that apparently has been kept in the tabernacle as a trophy of sorts. It's probably likely that David dedicated that back to the Lord and said, here you go, you can have it.

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. Well, he's gonna 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.

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 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 Lord's 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.

How many of you been in a place where fear began to push out your faith? They displace one another. 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.

So I think at any given point in our lives, there's probably some of both in here and they're not mixing very well. That's a lot of our conflict in our souls is that tension between faith and fear. Metaphorically, I think we've all been to Nob.

I think you've been there. Some of you are there now. 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.

How many of you think that if God came and promised you that when you turn 83, I'm gonna do this for you, and you knew definitively that he had planned that out for you or that you're gonna end up being the CEO of such and such a company or you're gonna 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.

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. If we were just gonna be facetiously kind of down on David here for a moment, shouldn't he be able to look and say, 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 I'm gonna 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 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.

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. Each one of us has a tendency to visit Nob when faced with pain, when isolation, with fear.

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 American, independent, isolated, alone, and do it yourself, and if you don't do it, nobody else is going to.

If we're honest, what that does in our hearts is turns us into planning mode when pressed.

Right?

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. On the heels of this planning is often pity, right? Nobody really gets me, nobody else really cares, nobody else faces what 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. Lastly, I want to point out, talking about knob, is that it's a place of lies. Well, David has been drawing 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've mentioned in an earlier sermon that there are different types of deception, but David is losing grip on the slippery slope of convenient deception.

Although the text doesn't seem to moralize on the subject of deception here, doesn't seem to condemn 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.

His own writing during this time is gonna say, hey, you shouldn't be lying, it didn't work out so well for me. You will see, in the end, that his deception costs a lot, and we'll actually get to that more next week.

But Nob is not a pretty place. Metaphorically speaking, let me discourage you from any layovers in Nob. 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.

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, in your own way of living. But beware, because as we move into the second section, for those who belong to God by faith, by his mercy, he often takes and empties those from Nob into Gath.

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.

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 Gath. Now, many of you already knew this, but Gath is the very hometown of Goliath himself.

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 gonna have it out for him? Doesn't he know that he's gonna put himself in danger right away?

Well, most scholars make sense of this attempt by David to associate with the Philistines, and particularly the Philistines of Gath, as a foolish attempt to show himself as a traitor. What's the way that he could show himself to be a traitor to his own people, and therefore acceptable to the Philistines by turning himself over to the people of the Philistines and saying, I'll be with you guys.

I'm on your side now. So if Nob was a place of emotional darkness and a low point for David, then Gath is nearly rock bottom, and this is not gonna be the end of his foray, by the way, into Philistine territory.

But here he's reduced to a pitiful, faithless man who must act literally insane in order to save his own skin. It's a pretty low point for the anointed king to be. Would you agree with me on that? I don't know how many 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?

This is a dark point. This is a low point for David. The Philistines have not forgotten 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.

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 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.

It says in the text, he was much afraid. He was much afraid.

He was very afraid. He was greatly scared.

David of the giant faith that we saw back in chapter 17. 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.

He has been reduced to a place of much afraid as he comes under the arrest of the Philistines. I say he's under arrest because verse 13 uses the common phrase for arrest. In the 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 psalms that he writes for this time.