21st chapter of 1 Samuel, 1 Samuel
chapter 21. We'll begin reading at verse
10, 1 Samuel 21, verse 10. That day David fled from Saul
and went to Achish king of Gath. But the servants of Achish said
to him, that is to Achish or Achish, I don't know exactly
how it's pronounced, Isn't this David, the king of
the land? Isn't he the one they sing about
in their dances? Saul has slain his thousands
and David his tens of thousands. David took these words to heart
and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath. So he pretended
to be insane in their presence. And while he was in their hands,
he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate
and letting saliva run down his beard. Akish said to his servants,
look at that man. He is insane. Why bring him to
me? Am I so short of madmen that
you have to bring this fellow here? to carry on like this in
front of me? Must this man come into my house?"
David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and his father's
household heard about it, they went down to him there. All those
who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around
him, and he became their leader. About 400 men were with him. Now, I've entitled this message,
He's Not What You Think. He's Not What You Think. Anyone who has had much to do
with Christ has learned that he rarely does things the way
we think he would. And as we watch him working,
he's rarely doing what we think he's doing. We perceive things in the flesh
and we can't help it because we're in the flesh. Our natural
way of understanding, the way we were born with, we still have
it. And that natural way of understanding
is perfectly suitable for confronting certain things and understanding
certain things. But almost never do the natural
thoughts of man direct us to an understanding of Christ and
his actions. Now, David is one of the more
notable illustrations of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is called
the man after God's own heart. And one thing about David that
stands out, if you read his life as recorded in the scriptures,
he was the most unlikely to be king of Israel. He was most unlikely
to be the giant slayer. If you had known him, you wouldn't
have expected that he would ever amount to much at all. He was
not the firstborn in his household. He was the last. When Saul had proven himself
unfit to be king of Israel, And God sent Samuel to anoint one
of the sons of Jesse. Jesse lined up all of his sons,
at least all the ones that he thought might be king. And Samuel, following natural
way of thinking, started with Jesse's firstborn, ready to anoint
him. And the Lord said, no, it's not
him. So he moved down one. The Lord said, that's not him.
That's not him. That's not him. And on down the
list he went, and he got to the end, and there's the last one
in the line. And God says, it's not him. So Samuel figures that there's
another son yet that hadn't showed up. And he said to Jesse, do
you have any other sons? He said, well, yeah, but he's
just out with the sheep. He's still just a boy in the
home. Samuel said, go get him. And so here comes David. And
we don't know how old he was, but we'll say this, we know this,
he was not a man fit for war. He wasn't old enough to send
off to war. But when David shows up, God
says to Samuel, that's him. That's him. And God made this commentary. Man looks on the outward appearance.
God looks on the heart. David was a man after God's own
heart. So is our Lord. Most people didn't know it. Of
course, he is the Lord, but you understand he lived his life
as a man, because he was a man. And as
a man, his heart was fully occupied with his God. And every aspect of his character
was the perfect human representation of the character of God. David went on, of course, the
thing he's most famous for. Well, there's two things he's
famous for. There's Goliath and then there's
the whole Bathsheba thing. Those are probably the two most
prominent stories. But the one that, well, certainly
the one they teach the kids in Sunday school is the one about
Goliath. And I remember when I had the first Bible my mother
ever gave me, you know, it had pictures in it. And I always
liked finding that picture of David and Goliath, you know,
and David standing there in his shepherd's outfit, you know,
with that sling in his hand and Goliath going backwards, you
know, with that rock right in the middle of the head. But you
know, that Goliath had held the entire army of Israel at bay. All the big, full-grown men carrying
the sword were afraid to meet that man. But David, and we don't
know exactly how old he was, but once again, they did not
expect him to see him in the battle. And his brothers rebuked
him for being there, thinking he just came because he was curious,
wanted to see what's going on. And I appreciate David's attitude.
He heard Goliath speak. And Goliath was blaspheming God. And that was the end of it for
David. Goliath did not threaten Jesse's
household. He was a threat, but that's not
what got David upset. David said, this man's blaspheming
the living God. Is there not a cause here? Is there no one to stand and
defend the name of our God? Well, I will. Well, you can't
do that. Saul said, here, put on my armor.
And it was well known that Saul, you know, he was head and shoulders
above everybody else. He was a tall man. David wasn't
even a full grown man yet. And they put that armor on him.
What's he gonna do with that? That doesn't fit him. Wasn't
made for him. Anyway, he wasn't gonna fight
like that anyway, you know, at all. He went out there with nothing
but what he would have when he was taking care of sheep. And it is written that he picked
up five stones out of the little brook on the way. Five stones. Someone said that's not because
he thought he was going to miss. It's because Goliath had four
brothers whom he figured would be coming for vengeance. And
he was going to be ready. And Goliath made fun of him.
He said, am I such a nobody in your mind that
you send this dog out here? Be careful, Goliath, you don't
know who this is. You don't know why he's there, and you don't
know what he's going to do. And David was not afraid. Full of the zeal of the Lord,
he approached the giant, and he said, you come to me with
sword and spear. I come to you in the name of
Jehovah. And he twirled that stone around
and let it go. And that was the end of Goliath. And he fell down. And I don't
know if it was a rock that killed him, but it says that David went
up and he took Goliath's own sword and chopped his head off. You see, he was gonna make sure
Goliath didn't come back. Do you see anything there in
illustration of the first promise of Messiah? When God said to
the serpent, you shall strike at his heel, he'll crush your
head. Now David didn't crush Goliath's head, but he, same result. And for a long time, David, though
he had saved the household of Saul and all of Israel by that,
he was pursued by Saul. Saul was jealous. Saul knew that
God had chosen David, and that meant that his household, Saul's
household, was not going to succeed. And he pursued and tried to kill
David, so that one of his sons would continue to be on the throne
of Israel. And it got so bad that Saul's
son, Jonathan, who by faith understood David's the king. And you know,
he not only knew it, he was glad to have it that way and would
not raise his hand against David. and actually entered into covenant
with David, and David with him. But Jonathan, he really didn't
believe that his dad was going to kill David, or was trying
to kill David. So he says, well, I'll check it out. And he tells
David at such and such time tomorrow, I'll be out at the archery range. You hide back in the wilderness
there, back in the trees or whatever, and if I shoot, And I tell the
young man who's with me to do this or that. One way, you'll
know my father's after you. The other way, you'll know it's
safe." Well, Jonathan found out that his father Saul was out
to kill David. And so he warned David, and David
ran to the city of Gath. Now, here's something interesting.
Gath is where Goliath comes from. That's his hometown. And there is a king, they call
them kings, you know, they weren't kings like we think the king
of England or anything, they just, over one city. But they had a military. And
they took, you know, they managed the city and the territories
surrounding it and protected them, that was their job. And
David went there. And the men of Achish, that is
the servants of Achish, recognized David and said to Achish, isn't
this David the king of the land? Now wait a minute, isn't Saul
king? He's the one that's wearing the
crown. He's the one that's sitting on the throne. He's the one that
leads the, has control of the army. It need the king. Not in the eyes of these people. And why? They knew what he had
done. You know, you preach about God as the all-powerful
sovereign, people get offended. Sometimes. Not as much around
here as where I came from, but they do. But you know something? People don't worship someone
who's not in charge. And no matter what titles a person
wears, people know who the king is. So he said, isn't this the
king of the land? Isn't he the one they sing about
in their dances? Saul has slain his thousands
and David his tens of thousands. And so they're saying to Achish,
we gotta eliminate this guy. This is the king. And when they
recited that, Saul is slain as thousands, David is tens of thousands,
that's what the people sang when they came back from the battle
when David killed Goliath, citizen of Gath. And they're saying,
here's our time for vengeance. Let's get rid of this upstart
before he makes any more trouble for us. And David heard this,
and he took the words to heart, and he was very much afraid,
or actually, the way it's written there, it says, he greatly feared
Achish of Gath. Now, a lot of people think that
David was cowardly here. What we're going to see is not
cowardly at all. There's a difference between fear and cowardice. There
are times when it's proper to be afraid. As I prepared for
this message tonight, I was thinking of the time, or the times, and
at least one time, I know he was afraid. Because it says in
the Garden of Gethsemane, they began to pray, and he was greatly
astonished and very heavy. Again, some translations say
became very sorrowful. But I looked them up, as I commonly
do. And these words, the one translated
astonished, usually when we think of astonished,
we're thinking of surprise. But this could be As near as
I can tell from the use of the word, it can mean something absolutely
wonderful or something absolutely horrifying. I'm going with the
horrifying on this. He began to be horrified. And
the other one can be translated to be greatly afraid. Say, well, the Lord was never
afraid of anything. If he wasn't afraid of what he knew was coming
up on him in the next few hours, he wasn't thinking right. You and I, we get afraid of very
little things. Our Lord wasn't afraid of a heaving
sea. He said, oh, you little of faith. Why did you fear? It's just an
ocean. It's just water. Our Lord didn't fear anything
on earth, but He sure feared Him who sat in heaven. And as He was in Gethsemane,
His soul was looking into the very abyss, into whatever hell
means. He knew that was coming. He feared. but his fear did not
make him shrink back. Fear is a proper response to
danger. Cowardice is giving into the
fear. What did David do? Well, he said
he greatly feared Achish of Gath, so he pretended to be insane
in their presence, and while he was in their hands, he acted
like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting
saliva run down his beard. Now, what would have been the
cowardly thing for him to do? The cowardly thing for him to
do would be to say, oh, Achish, no, I fully renounce any claim
to the throne of Israel. I have based myself before you.
I submit to your rule. Don't listen to what your men
are saying. I've changed my mind. That's why I came here to Gath.
You know how good I am at fighting. I'll fight for you." That would have been the cowardly
way out. He did the brave thing. He escaped. Now you say brave, but wouldn't
it brave been to grab somebody's sword and stab the king? That
might be for another time, but it wasn't for that day. Courage should always be mixed
with wisdom. And so what did he do? He pretended
to be insane. Now here we have a picture of
our Lord Jesus Christ as he is seen by the world. Now
our Lord's not pretending to be insane. But he looked insane
to the world. He said to the religious leaders
of his day, he said, you're trying to kill me. They said, you must
have a demon, you've lost your mind. Nobody's trying to kill
you. Well, for people not trying to
kill him, they sure enough got it done, didn't they? He knew
their hearts. He spoke things which to them
were weakness. Blessed are the meek. Well, those people were anything
but meek. They were judgmental. They were vicious. And they thought
that's how the kingdom of God was going to be. He said things
like, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you'll have
no part in me. Can you imagine you hear a preacher say that?
Because remember, that's all he looked like. He didn't descend
from heaven, shining with glory and come down to the temple and scare everybody. He came
The first that people saw him, he was just a little baby that
couldn't take care of himself. So much where they had offended
at this aspect of our Lord, they said, isn't this the carpenter's
son? I mean, come on, the Messiah? Do you really think the Messiah
is going to be a builder, a maker of things? He wouldn't get his
hands dirty. He's not what you think. He doesn't do what you expect. And he stood before Pilate as
David was before Achish. And do you know what they charged
him with in the presence of Pilate? They said things, you know, like
blasphemy and all that. But, you know, Pilate didn't
care if somebody blasphemed God. He had no respect for God. But
then they said, yeah, but he says he's the king of the Jews.
Okay. Now we're starting to step on Pilate's territory. Herod
had the title of king, but Pilate's the one who had the power. And he looked at our Lord and
he said, are you the king? Are you the king of the Jews?
The Lord said, you said it. But you know, Pilate looked at
him and said, this guy can call himself king all he wants. He's
no threat to me. A man already beaten within an
inch of his life. Standing there, a captive man
in front of him. This is no king. I am not worried
about him. Pilate, you should have been. He was not what you saw. Or what
you saw, you didn't understand. And so David, presented himself
in foolishness and weakness, makes his escape. But he doesn't
run in cowardice. You say, how do you know? The key to understanding the
significance of this story is in the first two verses of
the next chapter. David left Gath. and escaped
to the cave of Ajelem. When his brothers and his father's
household heard about it, they went down to him there. All those who were in distress
or in debt or discontented gathered around him. And he became their leader. About
400 men were with him. Now let me ask you a question. When people are in trouble and
in need of help, do they run to a loser? Do they seek refuge in one who
is a coward? Do they seek out the counsel
of the foolish? David's household, the people
of his household, his dad, mom, his brothers, sisters, all that,
they knew who he was because they had been there when Samuel
anointed him. Not only this, there were a lot
of people fighting men in Israel. who had fought with King Saul
and realized what a useless endeavor that was. They were still in debt. They
were still in distress. They were discontented. And they could see Saul is not
the king. Saul is not the victor. David
is. He may be in a cave, an adulum, but that's the real palace in
Israel, because that's where the real king is, and that's
where I'm going. You see, we have this little
crowd here this morning. I don't realize if everybody
in our congregation were here, we'd have about twice as much,
maybe two and a half times, I don't know. But we stretch ourselves
to full length. We still aren't very tall, are
we? It's not a big church. Do you know why people, many
people, I can't judge everyone's hearts, but I've been around
religion long enough. I understand a few things about
people. Do you know why they do not believe the Christ we
preach? He doesn't look like a savior
and a king. That's why. His actions do not
fulfill their expectations of what a Savior will do. They don't
understand what they need, therefore they were not looking for the
kind of Savior that Jesus Christ is. They're looking for a helper.
They think they just about got it done, they need someone to
just get them over the last little step. Or, you know, they walk
with a limp, sure, but if somebody had just kind of hold them up
on one side, they'd do okay. They didn't understand that's
not the kind of savior Jesus is. They're looking for someone
who will relieve them of the troubles of this life. That's
not what Jesus Christ came to do. Believers have all the same
troubles everybody else does. Of course, we will be delivered
from all of those troubles, but it will be through our death
or the return of the Lord. They look to Him because they
think the Savior will make them rich, and that Jesus we preach,
well, He might make you rich, that's up to Him, but that's
not what He came for. You will call His name Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sins. And that takes
a different kind of warfare than saving us from the issues of
this life. Our Lord came with a message
and Paul described it this way. He said to the Gentiles, to those,
I believe he actually used the word Greeks there, but that was
kind of another substitute meaning Gentiles, because actually he
was among the Romans. but they just considered anybody
not a Jew, call them a Greek, kind of like the Amish in Pennsylvania. If you're not Amish, you're English.
It doesn't matter where you came from, you're English. Well, the
Greek, to the Greeks, but he calls them Greeks because the
Greeks were known for their philosophy and their vaunted wisdom. And he said, that the Greeks seek after wisdom,
the Jews after power, but to them Christ is weakness and foolishness. That's why they laugh. Can you
imagine Peter, now imagine Peter on the day of Pentecost preaching
without the Holy Spirit giving power to his words. Let it be
known to the house of Israel that this Jesus, whom you crucified,
God has made to be Lord in Christ. What? We crucified that guy. He's dead. He's nothing. He's
nobody. Without the Holy Spirit, that's
the response he would have got. Because they had not seen anything
about the Lord Jesus Christ that would make them think, this is
the Lord's Christ. But the Holy Spirit did come
down that day and gave power to the words of the apostles,
and they were able to see. Even without Him being present,
they were able to see what they could not see when He was standing
right in front of them. If there's anything that shows
you that this thing called faith, it's a spiritual understanding,
not a fleshly one. Because when He was right there,
they didn't see it. When He was gone, they did. But the most remarkable example
of the kind of faith that these people had in David, when they
left whatever protection they might have had by being associated
with Saul, when they defected from Saul's military and owned up to being the family
of David, they saw something nobody else
did. And that thief on the cross,
he saw something that nobody else did. That's why I read that
text of scripture. Now, can you imagine looking
at someone whom Isaiah describes, his appearance was marred more
than any man. Now on the internet, I've seen
some people that are pretty messed up. been run over, shot at, or
half blown up. They're dead. He says, our Lord, as you can
tell, you could hardly tell he was a human. They had beaten
him up so badly. It was a wonder he was alive. And both thieves, if you read
this, the same story we did in Luke, if you read it in the other
one, it says that when the crucifixion process began, the
people, the onlookers, they were down there mocking the Lord,
saying abusive things to Him, and it says, the thieves, plural,
which were crucified with Him, cast the same in His teeth. Now, if you read Luke's account,
you'd think that that one thief never did curse the Lord. He
started out cursing the Lord. Don't be surprised, all of us
did. You say, well, I've never used the name of the Lord in
vain. We've never used it any other way. We have never given
proper reverence to the name of God, not in our natural selves. I stand up here and preach, and
I say God, and I don't tremble when I say it. So I'm obviously
not giving it the full weight that it deserves. But they did this, and I read
this in the commentary. The scriptures don't say it,
but this seems plausible. There were times when someone
would be crucified, but he was able to gain the sympathy of
the crowd and his executioners to the point they uncrucified
him and let him go. And these two thieves, why do
you think they were cursing Christ? I mean, you know, it's not like
that's gonna benefit them unless they had some hope that by showing
a common hatred for Christ that is in common with the people
who were involved in his execution, they could gain their sympathy. and they would take them off
the cross. In other words, their hope lie
in rejecting Christ. Now what could happen that a
crucified man would remove his hope from people
who showed They weren't cut up, they weren't beat up. Those who had the authority to
uncrucify him, why would he quit looking to
them and look to the one he's just been cursing? He saw something he didn't see
before. He looked at that bloody mess
of a man and by the grace of God saw a king coming into his
kingdom. And Jesse and his boys and all
their household and all these distressed and indebted and discontented
men looked at David, the persecuted,
the hounded, The foolish. And they said, there's
the king. There's the one who's going to
deliver us. David's actions, his deception, making himself look insane. It
did exactly what it was supposed to do. It drove away those who
were not His, and drove to Himself those that were. Why do I keep
preaching this gospel? Why do you keep listening to
it? Why is this what you tell anybody if somebody asks you
what you believe? Something you know that is not going to set
well with their natural selves. Why would you tell them that?
Because you know, just as the rest of us know, The offense
of the cross, what looks like weakness and foolishness to human
nature, the offense of the cross is the wisdom and power of God. Achish said, why'd you bring
me this man? Do I not have enough crazy people around that you
bring me another? rid of him, he's nothing. Saul's household, he'd been on
a run from Saul. Why? I think Saul's a good representation
of the unbelieving Jews of that day. For Saul, he was a man of
the Old Covenant, he was the king at that time, but he did
not have an eternal everlasting kingship. Of David, it says,
that there will always be one of his descendants sitting on
the throne. And you know what? Today, a descendant
of David sits on the throne of the kingdom of God and will forever. David's dynasty was an everlasting
dynasty. But Saul saw a threat to his
dynasty and David. And the Pharisees and the Sadducees
and most of the population saw in the Lord Jesus Christ a threat,
not a Savior, a threat. And so they chased him off, Achish
chased him off. Now here's the interesting thing
to note, where does David end up? And where do his people resort
to him? In a cave. Where was our Lord buried? In
a cave. You see here in this illustration,
Christ rejected by the religious leaders. Christ rejected by the
political leaders. And in all this rejection, which
he willingly accepts, he never raised his hand against Saul,
never raised his hand against Achish. He submitted to it instead. And that looks like weakness. One weakness. It was the only means of accomplishing
what must be done. And our Lord submitted himself
to the unjust accusations of the religious leaders and to
the power of the political leaders. And David's run from Gath only
to show up alive in a cave pictures our Lord. crucified, buried,
and on the third day, he rose again. And that's where we find him. Now, when the scriptures use
things like his crucifixion and whatnot, any of those symbols
serve, because really, Paul said, I delivered unto you that, you
know, what I've already told you, that Christ died for our
sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried and rose again
on the third day according to the Scriptures. And that's all
treated as though it were a single event, not two events. But it's just talking about His
successful sacrifice, and that's where God's people find Him. Now, some will put up a big churches
got these big crosses up on their wall, and I was at one, and the
preacher turned around and prayed towards it, and I thought, don't
they see what they're doing? Paul says, God forbid that I
should glory save in the cross of Christ. He wasn't speaking
literally of that chunk of wood. What it meant, the truth, symbolized
by it, and the tomb is just as much a symbol of it, because
he never would have been in the tomb if he didn't die, and he
never would have come out if he hadn't been successful. These people went down to Cae
Vagelum because there, there was their successful reigning
king. It'd be another 40 days before
he was actually coronated. He ascended on high, but he was
already the king. Now, you and I have seen that. World hasn't. We're going to
keep telling them. Whether they like it or not,
we'll tell them and hope that God will make them like it, because
He's the only one that can. But what about us? If God's way of salvation is
so contrary to the way we would naturally think salvation would
happen, don't be surprised that everything about bringing you
to the fullness of that salvation is going to happen differently
than you would think. John Newton had a famous, one
of the hymns he wrote, I asked the Lord that I might grow and,
you know, the whole thing about is, you know, Lord, cause me
to grow in grace and all this, you know, sounds like a real
good prayer. And he said, well, he answered me, but not in the way I thought
he would. I said, make me strong. And he
weakened me. He said his means of answering
my prayer almost brought me to despair. He is not what you think he is.
And when I say you, I mean natural you. He's not what you think
he is. He didn't come to do what you
think he came to do. And he's not going to do what
he came to do the way you think he's going to do it. Everything
about our Lord is a surprise. And that's good, isn't it? Because every bit of wisdom I've
had, at least in trying to conduct the affairs of my own life, it's
really not been successful. Yeah, I've eaten, I've got a
house to live in, but that's not going to last, is it? All the methodology of man fails
because it depends on man who's dead and dying. It depends on the exertion of
our power. Christ's work on the cross was
an act of submission. And all that he does in us will
be to bring about our submission. For therein is the victory. So don't be surprised if the Lord in dealing with you brings you through some kind
of death, metaphorical or whatever, One way or another, between now
and glory, He's gonna kill everything that has to do with you. And the more that happens, the
more you find that you are like Him whom you first met in the
cave of a tomb. The living, thought to be dead,
but living Christ. The reigning, thought to be weak,
but absolute sovereign reigning Lord. Is this not the king of
the land? That guy who killed Goliath?
Is he not the one they sing the praises about? My friend is not
our Lord. the one who killed Goliath, our
Goliath, didn't just wound him and said, finish him up, killed
him, cut his head off, our enemy. Is he not the one that with wisdom
and divine power overcame all our enemies, chief of which was
ourselves, and has the whole world captive
in his hands, though we find him in a cave.
Heavenly Father, bless us to see what the natural man cannot
see. May we see in the death, burial,
and resurrection of Christ, not foolishness and weakness, but
wisdom and power. And may we, like David's family
and the other men who knew that Saul could not do what a king
is to do. May we abandon all hope in what
we have in this world and line ourselves with that one whom
the world calls foolish and weak. And may we find our wisdom and
strength in him. In Christ's name we pray, amen.