1 Samuel 21-22, What Are You Going Through?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

First Samuel chapter 21 and verses 22, both chapters, hear the word of the Lord. 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 when their vessels, 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 replaced 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. Then David said to Ahimelech, then have you not here a spear or 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 and dances?

Saul is struck down as thousands and David is 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 gate and let his spittle run down his beard.

Then Achish said to his servants, behold you see the man is mad, why 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 and when his brothers and his father's house heard it, they went down there to him.

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

And there were with him about 400 men. And David went from there to Mizpah, to 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 that 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 Herath. Now Saul heard that David was discovered and the men who were with him.

Saul was sitting in Gibeah under the tamarisk tree on the height with his spear in his hand and all his servants were standing about him.

And Saul said to his servants who stood about him, hear now, people of Benjamin, will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards?

Will he make you all commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds that all of you have conspired against me?

No one discloses to me that my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. None of you was sorry for me or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servants against me to lie in wait as at this day.

Then answered Doeg the Edomite who stood by the servants of Saul, I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech, the son of Ahitob, and he inquired of the

Lord for him and gave him provisions and gave him the word of Goliath the Philistine. Then the king sent to summon

Ahimelech, the priest, the son of Ahitob and all his father's house and the priests who were at Nob and all of them came to the king and Saul said, hear now, son of Ahitob.

And he answered, here I am, my lord. And Saul said to him, why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, and that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him so that he has risen against me to lie in wait as at this day?

Then Ahimelech answered, the king? And who among your servants is more faithful as David, who is the king's son -in -law and captain over your bodyguard and honored in your house?

Is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him? No. Let not the king impute anything to a servant nor to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of all this, much or little.

And the king said, you shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father's house. And the king said to the guard who stood about him, turn and kill the priest of the

Lord because their hand also is with David. And they knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me.

But the servants of the king would not put out their hand to strike the priest of the Lord. Then the king said to Doeg, you turn and strike the priest.

And Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priest, and he killed on that day eighty -five persons who wore the linen ephod.

And Nob, the city of the priest, he put to the sword, both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey, and sheep, he put to the sword.

But one of the sons of Ahimelech, the son of Ahitob, named Abiathar, escaped and fled after David.

And Abiathar told David that Saul had killed the priest of the Lord. And David said to Abiathar, I knew on that day when

Doeg the Edomite was there that he would surely tell Saul, I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father's house.

Stay with me, do not be afraid, for he who seeks my life seeks your life. With me, you shall be in safekeeping.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. What are you going through?

You're going through an education phase, maybe, or maybe a singlehood phase, a kid raising phase, a paying off debts phase, the saving and investing phase, or the retirement phase, or maybe you're going through the payoff phase.

After years of struggle, working hard day after day for years with very little time off, very few rewards, now finally you've arrived and you see that everything you went through before was all to get where you are.

Tom Brady recently gave a speech in which he said that boys should play football because it's hard, because they have to go through getting up early and running and training in the summer when it's hot, while their friends are sleeping late and playing video games.

Going through that is good for you. It teaches you, he said, that life is hard.

When I was in college, I wanted to be an athlete, so I went through training. My usual day, something like this, would be getting up early, going on a four -mile run, that was just to get the blood moving, and then in the afternoon you join the team.

The warm -up would be a three -mile run with some push -ups, put your feet on the bench, then sit -ups, then stretch, maybe 10 sprints on the football field, 100 yards each, then the real workout starts.

All that is just to prepare you for the real workout. Sometimes they would be very complicated, but one simple one was 16 400 meters, that's a quarter mile, it's one lap around the track, at a progressively faster pace, so by the end you're going pretty fast, with a 200 meter jog in between, so 16 of those is four miles of sprinting, then a three -mile run as a warm -down.

That's 14 miles, not including the sprints on the field or the jogging in between reps or the calisthenics, and that's what you have to go through to be a college track athlete.

But what are you going through? A lie of our culture is that you don't have to go through much of anything unpleasant, that you can have success, you can have happiness just handed to you without having to go through anything hard.

Kids don't have to go through any discipline, and some parents think that their job is to keep their kids from ever having to go through anything that's difficult, ever having to suffer anything that's unpleasant.

One local mom commented how she would protect her kids from everything. I can't stop the rain, she said, but I can hold the umbrella so brave.

And I thought, yeah, that's why your kids are so dysfunctional. It's why they're unable to discipline themselves, because they were never made to go through anything hard.

Sometimes kids need to go through hard times, losing games, practicing maybe athletics or maybe a musical instrument, and you got to practice when it's not fun anymore, when it's not new anymore, when you don't seem to be making any progress.

You go through disappointments, you're getting criticized, maybe even yelled at. Some of that, that's good for the kids.

So what are you going through? Many modern Christians think, well, even if they understand, okay, that's the way it's out there, that's life in that cold, cruel world like Tom Brady said, life is hard out there.

Sure, hardships and discipline, but the church, the Christian life, walking with Jesus, they think, that's not like that.

It's all grace, which they think means free and easy. Prosperity preachers will say that if you're going through some difficulty, you must believe or say something wrong.

It's your fault. You get that straightened out, you won't have to go through any difficulties. But the apostles said in Acts chapter 14, verse 22, through many tribulations, afflictions, or troubles, or hardships, we must enter the kingdom of God.

After all, the king himself brought the kingdom of God through many hardships.

We see that here in three major parts where the king goes through, first, being provided for, second, pursued, and finally, persecuted.

Well, David, the anointed one, remember, small m Messiah, a Christ. He next comes to Nob.

The story is just continuing immediately after from last week. He goes to Nob, it's where the tabernacle is, so it's where the priest are, that's where they live, and the people go there to worship.

And the first three places David goes to when he's fleeing for his life are first to Samuel, the prophet, for the word of God, then to Jonathan for the covenant, and now to the priest to be provided for by God.

Now, he's desperate. He's by himself. He's with nothing. He has no weapons. He has no food.

And the chief priest is Ahimelech, who meets David, says he's trembling, and we're not exactly sure why.

Apparently, he's afraid of David, can speculate, because he asked twice, you know, why are you alone, in two different ways, would suggest that he fears that the only reason that David is alone, whom he assumes is sent by Saul, sent by Saul maybe to kill me, he's thinking.

Why else would Saul's finest soldier be by himself? And so he asked, why are you alone?

And David answers in verse two, 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. Now, is he lying? It's debatable.

Ahimelech thinks when he hears the king, he thinks, well, that's Saul. But in this chapter, we see that David is already the king, even if it's not official yet.

And so, yeah, and then one way of looking at it, David, the king, charged himself with a matter, namely to run for his life.

That's the matter. And he charged himself not to tell the priest, because he doesn't want the priest to be forced to take sides in this, to provide for David, knowing that David is wanted by Saul in his bed, because that would be interpreted as supporting

David, as the priest supporting David, whom the government, Saul, regards as a rebel. Now, David has given them by this cover story, he's given the priest deniability.

So if they're asked, why did you provide for David? They can say, oh, I didn't know he was on the run, that you were looking for him, that he's a fugitive, that you thought he was an insurrectionist trying to overthrow us.

They would say, I thought he was still working for you, Saul. Now, surely no one would be so unreasonable and so deranged as to punish them for helping

David, kind of innocently assuming that David is working for Saul. David had told

Samuel everything he was going through, but he doesn't tell the priest so that they can have an excuse.

David says, I have made an appointment with the young men, whom he doesn't have yet, they don't exist yet.

I'm meeting them elsewhere, in other words, such and such a place. Elsewhere happens to be in the future, hoping they materialize, which they do, but he doesn't know that yet.

Then David asks if he has food, if the priest has food, and especially five loaves, he asks specifically for five loaves, but then he says, whatever.

Iamedic says that they don't have common bread. The only bread they have is holy bread, and that's what the

Hebrew literally says, holy bread. That is bread set apart for a sacred, holy purpose.

There's a statement called the bread of the presence, the presence of the face, that is referring to the face of God, is the bread that's left out before the presence of God.

It was baked especially for the tabernacle, laid out on the table for the Lord in the holy place.

When they bake a fresh batch, they put that on the table in the tabernacle, and then the priests get to eat the old bread.

See how it works? Before it gets moldy, I guess. It was especially made for the priest, although I looked up the law,

I believe it was Exodus, it doesn't explicitly forbid other people from eating it.

It just says it belongs to the priest. So Ahimelech, maybe he figures, sure, it's my bread, but I guess

I could do with it whatever I want. So if David can have it, if he needs it, and if he's clean, he specifies that.

And the Lord Jesus said that he was right to do this, that the laws, now he violated their tradition, but Jesus said that's okay, that he was right, he was fulfilling the purpose of the law, that the laws were made not just to keep rules for the sake of rule keeping, but for man, for mercy.

Now some people think that what you have to go through to get to God is a list of rules.

You make it through the list, you made it to God. You make it through a gauntlet of rules, you have satisfied

God, they think. Never mind why the rules exist, just keep them, just obey them.

Generally, of course, the law was given, the whole law was given to show us that we can't keep the rules, we can't keep the law, that we need grace, that we need

Christ to keep the law for us. And then each specific law has a purpose for man.

What's the purpose of the Sabbath law? Because the people need rest, you need rest, you were created with the need for rest.

So even if we're now freed from keeping the Sabbath day Sabbath, you have to work on that day, you're not condemned for it, but you still need rest.

What's the purpose of giving? It's not to legally be required to pay a tithe.

So you checked off that box, you pay it like you pay your bills. No, it's to become generous, to be a cheerful giver like God, and to provide for His church, for when it has needs, when people in the church have needs, to be merciful.

Here, like Ahimelech provides for David. So Ahimelech offers

David the bread and he offers it, he says, for the young men who apparently don't exist yet, but he doesn't know that.

If you're really on a mission, if you're really on this, you're doing this not just for fun, but you're doing some expedition that's for the

Lord. Now you can tell if they're on a mission from God if they aren't having sex. If it's, Ahimelech is basically saying, if it's just a party you guys are having, you know, bringing your wives, no, you can't have it.

But if you're on a mission for the Lord, you're dedicated to that, you're focused, well then, yes,

I'll help you provide for that. David responds verse five, truly women have been kept from us, namely me, as always when

I go on an expedition. Otherwise, we are, that I am, dedicated to this expedition, which is about saving my life.

The vessels, that's referring to the bodies, comparing bodies to containers like, like bottles or pitchers that carry things.

In this case, they carry, the body carries the person. The body, the vessels of the young men, that is me, he's the only young man here so far, are holy.

Even though this is an ordinary journey, even when it is an ordinary journey, he says, how much more will there, that is my, vessels be holy today?

So in verse six, the priest gives him some of the, the holy bread, the bread of the presence.

Now a foreigner, one of Saul's men, Dobeg the Edomite, was there and saw the whole thing.

Of course, he should report that David has told the priest that he's on a mission from the king, that the priest knows nothing or suspects nothing about David being a rebel, supposedly, or a fugitive.

Dobeg should bear witness that the priest, for, that for all the priests know, David is doing

Saul's business. He should. One more thing,

David says, before going with his armful of bread, weapons. Have you got any, here, a spear or sword at hand?

David says he didn't bring any weapons with him because the king's business required haste, which is also true since David is the king and his business was getting away from Saul with his life and that required haste.

But this should make Ahimedic a little suspicious. He should be, what, this is a little weird that the priest thought about it.

It's very strange that David is, okay, gone on an expedition with a band of soldiers, none of whom are in sight.

Where are they? Over the horizon. But he forgot to bring any food or weapons. He probably thinks, well, that's weird, but what do

I know about the army? And the priest says in verse nine, the sword of Goliath and Philistine, whom you struck down in the valley of Elah, behold, it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod.

Ephod is the priestly garment, so it's in there in their closet. That's the only sword they've got.

David says, there is none like it. It's a really good sword. And he knows that because he used it against his previous owner.

Give it to me. David is provided his bread and weapon from the

Lord. But first David had to go through fleeing, being alone, unarmed, and empty.

That's not what you expect a king to go through. Maybe an insurrectionist on his way to trying to overthrow the government would go through something like that.

But David is already anointed king, but David went through it and comes to the tabernacle with nothing and leaves provided for him.

Jesus, on his way to being exalted, said, foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the son of man,

I have nowhere to lay my head. He said that to a man asking to follow him, to be his disciple.

Really? Do you really want to follow Jesus? Are you willing to go through what

Jesus did? What are you going through? Well, hopefully you've never been through being pursued.

Second, the Christ is pursued. Starting in verse 10,

David is pursued. He knew that Doeg the Edomite was with Saul so that he has to hurry to get out of Nob. He fled first west, that's the

Philistine territory. Now, not just to any Philistine city, but to Gath. And that city sounds familiar because that's the home of Goliath.

Now, some commentators think that David went there incognito, hoping not to be recognized. I think that's just impossible.

They're going to know what he looks like. So, I think the opposite is the case. That he went there because the people of Gath would remember that he was the man who defeated their supersized champion.

And he hoped, well, then they'll accept me in Goliath's place. So, he'll have a band of soldiers,

Philistines under him, and he'll be able to protect himself from Saul. I think that's what he's doing this for. But the men around the king,

Akish, said, is not this David the king of the land? Notice that. They recognize him as the king.

He's not a fugitive looking for safety. He's the king. And they're right.

David is the king, even if he hasn't begun to reign yet. Then they heard about that little song these white women sang.

Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his tens of thousands. And those tens of thousands were mostly Philistines, their fellow countrymen.

So, they're thinking, he's our enemy. So, David realized that he's going to be pursued in Gath. He says he's afraid.

So, he acted. I mean, literally, he acted. He put on an act. In verse 13, he pretended to be insane.

He randomly scrawled on the gates. He drooled so that he looked like he couldn't control himself.

He had to go through humiliating himself. So, Akish the king said in verse 14, behold, you see, the man is mad.

David's acting worked. Why have you brought him to me? Then, sarcastically, do I lack mad men that you have brought this fellow to behave as a mad man in my presence?

It's like, you know, we're all stocked up on crazy here in Gath. Go somewhere else. That's the story of Gath starring

Jack Nicholson. So, David, having tricked his way out of Gath, composes Psalm 56 about that.

This is where Psalm 56, which we sang, Be gracious to me, O God, for man tramples on me.

And then he goes to hide in a cave at Adulam, about halfway between Gath, where he had been, and his hometown in Bethlehem.

There he composes Psalm 57 in that cave when he fled from Saul in the cave.

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge.

Then in chapter 22, verse 1, his brothers and other men at his father's house heard about it, and they come to him.

Remember his eldest brother? Remember the story of Goliath? At least his eldest brother, maybe the other brothers too, were scoffing at him when he was challenging them to stand up to Goliath.

He said, you insulted him and acted like he was nothing. They're not scoffing anymore. Now they're following him.

David is the leader, he's the youngest brother, but he's now the leader of them. And they join him in the cave. And their word gets out, momentum starts to build, and then other men start joining him.

But they're a particular kind, particular kind of man, men who were also being pursued, maybe by debt collectors, by enslavers, abusive family members, just pursued by a hard life.

Verse 2 says, everyone who was in distress, they've got problems, got relationship problems, family problems, financial problems.

Everyone who was in debt, they could be enslaved. That day you could be enslaved, pay off a debt.

And anyone who is bitter in soul because they had gone through hard times and were made bitter by them, they were malcontents.

The malcontents gathered to him. David attracted the desperate, the losers, the riffraff, the pursued.

Christ attracted the sinners, the outcasts, and those who knew they had nowhere else to go.

The apostolic church attracted the uneducated, the powerless, the commoners, the slaves.

God attracts the pursued. And I don't mean pursued in a good way, pursued for their talents or for their money.

No, I mean like wanted by the police kind of pursued. Someone said that in America, black men feel that no one wants them except the police.

I said, we want them. This past week we had our new holiday, Juneteenth, about celebrating the end of slavery.

I think it's good to have a day to mark the end of slavery. Henry Highland Garnett was born as a slave in Maryland in 1815.

When he was nine, his whole family of 11 escaped with the help of Quakers through the Underground Railroad in New York City.

There he got work as a cabin boy when he's only like 11 years old on ships. Otherwise he would go in these ships, do whatever chores in the ships, as they went out and came back.

And when he returned to New York after a voyage, he found that his family had fled because they were being pursued by slave catchers.

Even in so -called free states, the slave catchers could follow you in the United States. That's why many of them went to Canada. His father had jumped off the roof of a two -story building to get away from them and they fled down Broadway.

But Garnett managed to evade the pursuers and became a Christian, then a Presbyterian minister and the pastor of Shiloh Presbyterian Church, which still exists to this day in New York City.

And besides preaching the gospel, he supported the abolition of slavery. When the Civil War broke out, while himself he was too old to fight, he recruited black men to join the

U .S. Army. On February 12, 1865, marking the passing of the 13th

Amendment abolishing slavery, he was the first black man to ever give a speech in the

House of Representatives chamber. He was later appointed the U .S. Ambassador to Liberia.

He went through a lot. David was pursued and now attracts the pursued.

He became their captain, it says, the leader of a band of ragtag misfits.

He has 400 of them camped at that cave. Caves were often places then of burial.

They were often used as tombs. So a Christ is pursued into a tomb and then comes out alive and not just by himself.

He comes out of the tomb with his people, his church.

Well, then he goes to Moab. It's on the other side of Israel, across the eastern border. Saul might take revenge on his family, he figures.

So his whole family now is being pursued. His brothers are with him and now he needs to take care of his mother and father.

So he takes his parents to Moab to stay there. After all, their family has a connection to Moab. David's great grandmother, who would be

Jesse's grandmother, is Ruth from Moab.

So they'll be out of Saul's reach there. He asked the king of Moab in verse three, please let my father and mother stay with you till I know what

God will do for me. Interesting, think of that. He takes action and he believes that God is in total control of everything he's going through.

While being pursued, he keeps the fifth commandment. He's honoring his father and his mother while Christ was pursued to his death.

While on the cross itself, in agony with maybe only a couple hours, maybe just a few minutes left to live, he saw his mother and he tells his disciple, in effect, please let my mother stay with you.

Some people, when they're going through hard times, they can only think of themselves. This problem that is pursuing them, that they feel is crushing them.

When David was going through a time of being a fugitive, his life was on the line. He thought of his parents.

When Jesus was on the cross, suffering the most excruciating death, he thought of his mother.

When you go through some affliction, make a special effort then, right in the middle of it, to think of others.

Don't let your afflictions turn you into a narcissist. Well, then

David takes his men to a fort called the Stronghold, likely some mountaintop encampment with walls and fortifications built on it.

There, God's prophet is with him. David, like all good Israelite kings, has a prophet to advise him.

The prophet is Gad. The prophet, apparently inspired by God, tells him in verse 5, do not remain in the

Stronghold. While he might provide temporary shelter, but if he's found there, he could be surrounded, he could be bottled up, eventually starved out.

So flee again. He says, go into the land of Judah. One of the people are more friendly to him because he's from Judah.

So he goes, he hides in a forest. So he's fled to five places, from Gath to the cave, to Moab to the fort, to the forest.

And in this phase of being pursued, what are you going through?

David is about to see how severe the persecution he faces is. Up to now, it may have been all kind of hypothetical.

Saul has talked about killing him, thrown spears at him, but he's dodged it and that kind of thing. But so far, he hasn't done anything.

How severe is this persecution really? Well, he's about to see. And even if we don't face that kind of physically severe persecution here today, understand that still today here, the world is trying to destroy our faith just as seriously.

So third, persecution, starting in verse six. The scene shifts back now to Saul. He's at his home in Gibeah, sitting under a tree since it's on a height,

I guess on a hill, with his favorite spear in his hand. He likes that spear, tell you what. He's daydreaming about how he'd like to skewer

David with it. He's brooding, he's ranting, he's obsessing.

Now his entourage around him like his court surrounds him and he's complaining to them about how they have failed him.

In verse seven, here now, people of Benjamin. Notice they're all people of Benjamin. They're all from his own tribe.

Will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards like he has done for them?

Will he make you commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds like he's done for them?

In other words, he's put all his tribal kin in places of power and he's rewarded them with the best land and the best jobs, playing on both his kinship loyalty, their kinship loyalty hopefully he thinks for him, and patronage.

He's been acting every bit the paranoid dictator, making sure that all the power in the government is in the hands of men who are related and who depend on him.

So hopefully there'll be no conspiracy against him. That's the only thing that's driving him. This happens in dictatorships all the time.

Put the power, only put people in positions of power whom you can totally trust, usually because they're related in some way or just totally dependent on you.

And never mind whether they actually deserve those positions, they can do a good job. Now he's complaining in verse 8 that despite giving them so much power and patronage, he says, all of you have conspired against me.

I know they have it. No one discloses to me that my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse.

Why would they have thought that's a problem? He's really angry at the covenant. Notice how he mentions that, that covenant that Jonathan believes in Christ.

None of you is sorry for me. Think about that. He's the king. None of you is sorry for me.

Now unlike David, Saul is all about Saul. Be sorry for me, for the king, for all the suffering

I'm going through, which is all delusional. He demands that they cater to his self -centeredness.

My son stirred up the servants, my servants against me to lie in wait as at this day.

Totally false, totally figment of his imagination, a conspiracy theory. Now if any of the men around him said, you know, what are you talking about,

Saul? You're out of your mind. Jonathan hasn't conspired against you at all. No one is lying in wait against you.

No one, if anyone dared confront him with reality, hopefully more polite than I just put it,

Saul would throw his spirit in. Instead, they're all toadies, yes -men, panders.

Dysfunctional families, churches, societies are often ruled by some selfish member's paranoia.

They are, there are some truths that you cannot say, you know, like you're sinning by not submitting to your husband or you're not keeping your word or you seeking a divorce.

That's wrong. You need to reconcile. There's an immoral relationship you're not supposed to confront.

You're not supposed to tell the truth about it or there's just a love of money that's driving them or you're drinking or gambling too much or you're looking at porn at all.

You can't mention it or they'll throw something at you. Some families, churches, societies have unwritten rules of some things that you cannot challenge.

A person's willfulness, maybe their alcoholism, their greed is putting money -making ahead of the worship of God or just not giving generously.

Sexual immorality, it happens in families when the entire family is structured around not confronting that one person who's the real head of the family, whoever it is.

You cannot confront him or her about whatever they can't be confronted about. In churches, when they become sin clubs and the first rule of sin club is that no one talks about sin club.

It happens in societies. In the South, it was the true cause of the Civil War and their commitment to racism.

Don't bring that up. In China, Tiananmen Square, euphemistically called the June 4th incident.

Some today in this country are trying to make any criticism of homosexuality or transgenderism, something that simply cannot be uttered.

You even mildly criticize it. You're a bigot. You get cast out of society. You'll have a spear thrown at you, figuratively.

Here, Saul is brooding, he's ranting, he's obsessing about his self -centered conspiracy theories, and he's surrounded by men who at best will silently enable it, will tolerate it, will go along with it, not challenge it, and at worst will pander to it.

The worst is Doeg de Edomite. He tells Saul in verse 9 that David came to the priest at Nob and Ahimelech, inquired of the

Lord for him, and gave him provisions. Notice the way that's put. Sounds like Ahimelech takes the initiative.

It sounds like the way Doeg puts it as if Ahimelech went out of his way to provide for David because he says provisions, not just a few loaves of bread, but provisions like Ahimelech had stocked

David up on everything he needed and the sword of Goliath. He makes sure to mention that. He plays into Saul's paranoid delusions by insinuating that Ahimelech took the initiative as if he was fully aware that David was supposedly a rebel.

Doeg panders to Saul because he's thinking, this is the way for me to get ahead.

He wants to hear this, so I'll spin it like that so he'll like me. Get a promotion.

Tell Saul what he wants to hear. Never mind what it does to others. Some churches are run on that strategy.

Tell people what they want to hear so they'll keep coming and give. Never mind if they go to hell.

So Saul summons Ahimelech and all the priests. No, they're innocent. They're totally innocent. And Saul asks why he provided for David to rise against me.

That's news to the priest. What are you talking about? Verse 13, Ahimelech says naively in verse 14, who among all your servants is as faithful as David?

He's your son -in -law, he says. In other words, you trusted him so much you gave your daughter to him.

You let him marry your daughter. He's captain of your bodyguard. He's like the head of the Secret Service.

And he means, why would I have ever suspected David would betray you when you yourself, you

Saul, have honored him so much? You've given him all these important positions. And he pleads for Saul not to impute any wrong motives to him.

Now impute means to read into something that's really not there. And he insists that he doesn't know anything about David supposedly conspiring against him.

He says, we don't know. But Saul is so deranged, he sentences not only

Ahimelech to death, but all the priests of the Lord. And he orders his guards to execute them all in verse 17.

But his Israelite servants won't do it. They silently did nothing.

They'd put up with Saul's paranoid rantings, but they fear God too much to kill the priests of the

Lord, just for innocently helping David. So they freeze. They just dare not do that.

They know that's against the Lord. And then Saul turns to Doeg, the foreigner, and tells him to do it.

And he does. He kills 85 priests there before Saul, 85 persons who wore the linen ephod, the priestly garments.

And then he sent to Nab, their town, and he wipes it out, wipes the rest of them out, man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey, and sheep.

He put them to the sword. Total annihilation. He committed what in Hebrew is called, the

Hebrew word kharam. It's often translated holy war. Except in this case, it's certainly not holy.

It wasn't ordered by God. You can only do a war like that if it's ordered by God himself. Here, it's actually against God.

And the irony, remember, why Saul had the kingdom stripped from him? Saul had the kingdom stripped from him when he wouldn't commit kharam, holy war, when

God told him to. But now he does it against the priest, nearly wiping out the priesthood, the mediators between God and people in the

Old Testament. But one priest, Abiathar, escapes and flees to the only safe place now for a priest, to David.

David is the king. He has a prophet and now a priest.

And here, David composes Psalm 52. When Doeg the Edomite came and told

Saul, David has come to the house of Ahimelech. Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man?

The steadfast love of God endures all the day.

David takes responsibility for bringing danger to the priest, but he's not really responsible for their murders.

Saul is. Saul is the persecutor of the church. He's an enemy of the anointed of Christ.

He's an antichrist. Meanwhile, David offers safety for the worship of the

Lord. Do not be afraid to the priest of the Lord in that last verse. He's not a persecutor.

He's one of the persecuted. Jesus said in John chapter 15, verse 18, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

We now live again in a negative world where the culture, like Saul here, is deranged in its hatred of Christ.

If it can't get to Christ himself to kill him, like Saul could not get to David, it will persecute whoever it can get near him.

It will persecute his people, his royal priesthood, the church. We have to be prepared that if we will follow

Christ, we will go through the world's hatred. What are you going through?

To enter the kingdom of God, you must go through many tribulations.

Christ did. He went through having no place to lay his head, betrayal and beating and the cross and death and the tomb.

He went through all that to gather a people. Has he gathered you yet?

If you believe in him, it's granted to you. It's a gift that now you'll get to share a little taste of what he went through.

What he went through for us. And by going through that, you'll get to know him better.

And sure, it might be hard, but he's worth it.