Alright, let's be turning to
1 Samuel 23. 1 Samuel 23. Now there are two figures which
are outlined for us here in this chapter that I want to look at
with you tonight. And the first is what we see
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He's being pictured here
or we're seeing a foreshadow for us of Him. And what we see is our Lord in
the various movements and the difficulties which David faces
in his wilderness journeyings. And the second is what we see
of the believer in support, in the support and the aid that
David is given to him in the wilderness. Alright, so the first
one we see our Lord in his movements and travels in the wilderness
and then the aid and support given to David is a picture of
what our Lord does for the believer. And I've titled this message,
The Rock of Divisions. The Rock of Divisions. And so
we'll look at Christ, and then we'll look at the believer, and
then we'll see this division at the end. Now in Hebrews 4,
verse 15, we're told that we have not an high priest, which
cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in
all points tempted, like as we are, yet without sin. And brethren, whatever you and
I are called to endure in this life, we know that our Savior
has borne it before us. He's borne it in Himself. He bare it first for you and
for the everlasting salvation and joy of His people. He endured rejection. He was
betrayed. He was hunted and He was pursued. And yet He endured all these
things and bare long with them that He might be the fit and
perfect High Priest that you and I need to make total satisfaction
unto God His Father for His people. He was touched with the feeling
of our infirmities. And so to begin, let us read
verses 1 and 2. 1 Samuel 23 1-2 Then they told
David, saying, Behold, the Philistines fight against Keilah, and they
rob the threshing floors. Therefore David inquired of the
LORD, saying, Shall I go and smite these Philistines? And
the LORD said unto David, Go, and smite the Philistines, and
save Keilah. It was said a prophet came to
David. The prophet Gad came to David
when he was in Moab at the end of chapter 21. He was in Moab
hiding out there and Gad said, get you into the land of Judah. Don't stay here in Moab. Go to
the Lord's people in Judah. And there's a picture there of
what our Savior did when he came in the flesh. He went to the
Lord's people there in Israel. A picture of the Lord coming
to his people. It began at Jerusalem. Salvation
began at Jerusalem. It went out further and further
from there. And so in this place, in Judah,
he was instructed, he saw firsthand the troubles of the people. He
saw the trouble that the people were under, the burden that these
people of Keilah had. And he witnessed the trouble
of the Philistines who were robbing the threshing floors. What's
on a threshing floor? That's your food. That's your
bread. That's what sustains us, is what's
there on the threshing floor. And the Philistines were coming
and robbing them. of the threshing floor, that
produce, that fruit, that joy, that comfort, that sustaining
bread that was there on the threshing floor. And so you think of the
burden that these people were bearing. You think of how they
were being threatened, how they were made afraid because the
Philistines came against them. And if they wanted it, they just
came in there and they took it. They took it for themselves and
they had no one there to help them. No one was coming to their
aid. They were there on their own.
But David, he hears and he seeks the Lord's will. And the Lord
directs him to go to Keilah and to deliver the people from the
Philistines who were robbing their threshing floors. And so
we read in verse 5, So David and his men went to Keilah and
fought with the Philistines, and brought away their cattle,
and smote them with a great slaughter. So David saved the inhabitants
of Keilah. Now there are two comforting
features right here of our Lord and Savior that we see in this
word. First, we know that our Lord
When He came, He came doing the will of the Father, and He didn't
do anything of His own. He did nothing of His own, but
He sought His Father in Heaven In prayer, always, we see our
Lord always praying from the very beginning of His ministry
all the way to the very end of His ministry. Our Lord leaned
upon and depended upon His Father in order to do the very will
of God the Father for us. for the salvation of His people. For example, in Mark chapter
1, that's right there in the beginning. This is early in when
He called His disciples and they learned very quickly when they
began to follow the Lord that He was always in prayer. Mark
1 verse 35 says, In the morning, rising up a great while before
day, He went out and departed into a solitary place and there
prayed. How did they know that he was
there praying? Well, we're told that Peter got up and Peter was
looking for him and he found him praying and said, Lord, all
men seek after thee. Come on, they're ready for you.
Let's go. But our Lord was praying to the
Lord. And then with his dying breath,
He prayed unto His Father. Luke 23 verse 46, And when Jesus
had cried with a loud voice, He's hanging on the cross, and
He cries with a loud voice, and said, Father, into thy hands
I commend my spirit. And having said thus, He gave
up the ghost. He's always praying unto the
Father. And that's how we know that when
He came, the words He spoke, He tells us, I'm not speaking
my own words. I'm telling you what I've heard
my Father say. And the words that He did, He
didn't come doing His own works. The works He did, He didn't come
doing His own works. He said, the works that I do
are the works which my Father has given me to do. And so he
did all that the father sent him to do. And then secondly,
the inhabitants of Keilah, they're a picture of the people of spiritual
Israel. They are a picture of spiritual
Israel, who, like the Philistines robbing the threshing floors,
were a people who are burdened by their sin, burdened by their
sicknesses, burdened by their diseases and their infirmities,
by the wasting and destruction that's going on within their
borders. I've said it many times, these
Philistines are a picture of my sin. They're a picture of
our sin, our sicknesses, our infirmities, our struggles, our
difficulties. They picture that enemy which
comes into the land and pollutes it and defiles it and takes from
it. That's what these Philistines picture here. These picture, the Philistines
here, pictures our sin that comes in and robs us of our joy, robs
us of our comfort, robs us of our fruit, it robs us of all
things. They were robbed of their joy
and rest under the law. These people were under the law.
and they were being burdened by their sin. They were being
troubled by their sin. Everything about them that was
going on is a reminder of the corruption of this flesh, the
sin and corruption of our own flesh under the law. And yet
everywhere that Christ went, everywhere that our Lord went,
He healed all that came to Him. Anyone that sought him for mercy
found mercy. All who asked received. All who
knocked, the door was opened. Everyone who needed from Christ,
they found it. They were given it to them. And so he came, he gave them
the word of God, and they found relief from all their infirmities.
I'm going to quote from Luke 440, there's many that I could
go to regarding what our Lord did for the people, but Luke
4.40 it says, Now when the sun was setting, all they that had
any sick with diverse diseases brought them unto him, and he
laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And that's
really, when you read there in Luke 4, that's a beautiful picture. Our Lord had actually healed
Peter's mother-in-law that day. That day was the Sabbath day.
And He healed his mother-in-law and these people waited until
the sun went down, meaning the Sabbath was over. It was from
the sun setting the day before to that day. It was the Sabbath
and that Sabbath was setting. It was over and it's a beautiful
picture meaning where we see the legal Sabbath coming to a
close and all the people coming to Christ. for their healing
and He healed them. Because the legal Sabbath, it's
a picture pointing to the rest, the everlasting rest for the
people of God from all their labors, which we were laboring
in and struggling and spending to make a righteousness for ourselves. We don't do that. We can't do
that. We come to Christ with all our sicknesses, all our diseases,
all our wounds and putrefying sores and He heals us and He
gives us rest. And that's all captured right
there in Luke 440. The sun's going down and the
people brought their sick to Him. And that's what we do. The
law has been fulfilled by Christ for us. And we come to Him for
all our healing, unto Him. And He lays His hands on every
one of His people and heals them. And so this is pictured for us
in David helping the people of Keilah to deliver them from the
Philistines, their sin. Now, when David helped the inhabitants
of Keilah, what happened? News got back to Saul. We found
him. We see his activities here. He's
among the Keilites. And so, verse 7, it was told
Saul that David was come to Keilah. And Saul said, God hath delivered
him into mine hand. for you shut him by entering
into a town that hath gates and bars. And so David inquires of
the Lord whether Saul will come down. And the Lord says, yes,
he's going to come down. Are the people going to turn
me over? Yes, the people are going to turn you over. And so
he fled into the wilderness. He leaves Keilah and goes into
the wilderness. Verse 13, then David and his
men, which were about 600, arose and departed out of Keilah and
went whithersoever they could go. And it was told Saul that
David escaped from Keilah, and so he didn't come. Verse 14,
And David abode in the wilderness in strongholds, and remained
in a mountain in the wilderness of Zith. And Saul looked for
him, but God never delivered him into his hand. Now, what
does this say of our Lord? Does He have any trouble like
this? Did Christ have any trouble like this when He went about
doing much good among the people and healing them? and feeding
the 5,000, and feeding the 4,000, and healing many of their sicknesses
and diseases, and those that they loved and cared about were
healed? Absolutely, we see this. In John 11, verse 47 through
48, then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees of counsel
and said, what do we? For this man doeth many miracles. If we let him alone, if we let
him do this, all people are going to believe on him. And so they
wanted to put an end to this. Think of Saul. If David's down
there saving everybody, that can't go on. They're all going
to go for him. He's their king. I got to put an end to this.
And so we're told in John 11, 54, Jesus, therefore, walked
no more openly among the Jews, but went thence unto a country
near to the wilderness. Just like David. Went out into
the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued
with his disciples. Then one more I want to show
you here. The Ziphites betrayed David's
whereabouts to Saul. Look down in verse 19. Then came up the Ziphites to
Saul to Gibeah, saying, Doth not David hide himself with us
in strongholds? in the wood, in the hill of Hakala,
which is on the south of Jeshimon? Now therefore, O king, come down
according to all the desire of thy soul to come down, and our
part shall be to deliver him into the king's hand. And look
at what Saul said just at verse 23, See therefore and take knowledge
of all the lurking places where he hideth himself. And come ye
again to me with the certainty, and I will go with you. And it
shall come to pass, if he be in the land, that I will search
him out throughout all the thousands of Judah. Now do we not see something
of Judas in this, who betrayed our Lord? Didn't he do something
just like this when he betrayed Christ? These Ziphs here, they
were trying to betray the innocent blood of David and turn him over
to Saul so that Saul could destroy him. And this is David's own
tribe. of Judah doing this, and they're
willing to give David up to Saul. Well, in like manner, Judas knew
everywhere the Lord went. He was one of the twelve. He
was always with the Lord. He knew exactly where the Lord
would be when he was in Jerusalem. He knew he's going to take his
disciples over the Brook Kidron, and he's going to be with them
there in the Garden of Gethsemane. And that's exactly what we see.
In fact, in John 18, John 18, it says there that he
goes over the brook Kidron and he's in the garden in verse two.
And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place. For Jesus
oft times resorted thither with his disciples. Judas then, having
received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees,
cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons." And
that's what we see here. They came after David in that
same way. And I looked up that word, zephytes. And that word, zephytes, means
it says that they were smelters by trade, smelters. And what
is a smelter? They take rock ore and through
the process of heat and maybe chemicals or some other process,
they extract the precious metal that they're after out of that
ore. And isn't that something of what
Judas did when he betrayed the Lord in order to extract, to
get 30 pieces of silver for himself to betray the Lord. And it's
just many pictures there of what our Lord endured for his people
in his ministry here and the work that he came to do according
to all that the Father gave him. Now, I want to look back at David's
experience here in the wilderness because it reveals the salvation
of our Lord for His people through the grace which He has given
to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. So first we see ourselves pictured
in the inhabitants of Keilah whose threshing floors were robbed
by the Philistines. And these Philistines again are
there a picture whenever you read in Scripture the Philistines
coming into the land and troubling the people. It's a picture of
our sin. And as believers, we know what
it is to be troubled by our sin. They rob the threshing floor.
They rob us of our comfort. They rob us of our peace. They
rob us of joy. They take that which is the Lord's.
And they take it right off the threshing floor as it were. And so, especially when We thought that by the law we
could come to the Lord. The burden was tremendous because
we kept looking to ourselves under the law to try and find
a righteousness, to try and find comfort, to try and find peace
by establishing a pattern of perfection. And we could never
do it. All we could see is failure,
failure, failure. This time, this is it. I mean
it. I'm never going to do that again.
And then, bam. You're right back there doing
it again before you know it. And it was just constant failure.
And Paul tells us, the motions of sins which were by the law
did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. unto death. Thank God that you
were troubled. He didn't give you any peace
in working out a righteousness for your own because we know
people and everything goes well for them. They're not troubled.
Their children are all good. They don't have problems. Everything
seems to work out for them under the law. But thank God that for
His people, for you, you weren't. You didn't find peace under the
law. You were troubled by it. That you should fly to Christ
and find all your peace and joy and hope in Him. And that's what
He does. That's why He doesn't leave you
to As Paul said, we are the circumcision, which have no confidence in the
flesh. How did you get to that? How
did you get to that blessed point where you have no confidence
in the flesh? By the Lord smashing you and showing you that, nope,
by the law, you're not gonna do it. Nope, you're not going
to accomplish what you think you should do. I'm gonna humble
you, my grace is sufficient, and I'm gonna show you that all
your strength is in me. you're gonna find all your strength,
all your peace, all your joy, all your comfort, all your hope
in me. And that's why he won't allow
us to accomplish what we think we should accomplish by the law,
because we're gonna be broken in ourselves. We should be lifted
up and think highly of ourselves, more highly than we ought, and
find in our weakness that Christ is all our strength. We're gonna
trust him and learn of him. And so the Lord sent our spiritual
David, and he destroys, and he overcomes the Philistines of
our heart, and he restores that which he took not away. It says
of David, he brought their cattle back. He took their cattle, and
every time I see cattle in scripture, I always think of, that's me,
a Gentile. Cattle are pretty ignorant. creatures,
aren't they? They're pretty blind creatures.
They just do what they do by nature. That's what the Gentiles
are. We didn't know God. We didn't have the law. We didn't
have the word. We didn't have the oracles. We didn't have the
prophets. We had nothing. And yet God in mercy, for Christ's
sake, hath brought us in, cattle, other sheep, into his one fold
with his other sheep, the Jews. Praise be to God. And so He brought
in the cattle of the Philistines and so our Lord accomplished
this through His death on the cross as our substitute, bearing
our sins to put them away and to obtain for us eternal redemption
and to give us life and joy and peace in Him. where no Philistine
can touch that threshing floor because it's fixed in His hand.
Second, as our High Priest, He is our light and our perfections. We're told in verse 6, And it
came to pass when Abiathar the son of Ahimelech fled to David
to Keilah that he came down with an ephod in his hand. And David
knew that Saul secretly practiced mischief against him. He was
working against him. He knew Saul is really, really,
really trying to get me. He's got people paid off. He's
got people watching me. He's really trying to get me
here. And he said to Abiathar the priest,
bring hither the ephod. Now what the ephod had was every
ephod had urim and thumim. Urim and Thumim and what that
meant was lights and perfections. Lights and perfections. Jesus
Christ is the light and life of man. He is our light. And what that means is we don't
know the Father. We don't know how to worship
God. but by Jesus Christ. He's the
one that reveals the Father unto us, showing us the perfections
of the Father, showing us that God is not satisfied with the
blood of bulls and goats. But with the precious blood of
his own son, Christ is the one who shows us the Father. And
Christ shows us our need of the Father, lest we should be deceived
in ourselves and deceive ourselves and think that we know the true
and living God, only to find out that we don't. Christ has
shown that light. He's the very light in the beginning
of the world. And God said, let there be light. And there was light that shone
upon the world showing God's gracious purpose for people that
he would prepare on this world. And so he did that. He's the
light of God and he's our perfections brethren. By him we come unto
the Father. We don't come in our own works.
We don't come in our own righteousness. We don't come under the works
of the law. We come in the perfections of
the Lord Jesus Christ. He's my righteousness. He's my
hope to stand before Holy God and be found in Him spotless. Spotless. I don't have that confidence
in what I do. I have that confidence in what
He has done. And that's where our confidence
is to be. In Christ our perfections. He's
our light and He's our perfections. Paul said it this way in 1 Corinthians
1, 30 and 31. But of God are ye in Christ Jesus,
who has made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption, that according as it is written, he that glorieth,
let him glory in the Lord. Otherwise we'd be glorying in,
well I did this, well I said that. I went down the aisle and
I gave my heart to Jesus. No. If we do anything, if we
trust and cry out to Christ, it's because He worked that grace
in us. It's because He saved us. It's
because He had mercy and grace on our souls. And so Saul pursued
David, devising evil plots, secretly trying very hard to destroy David,
but he was not able. And that's what Christ has done.
God would not allow Saul to destroy David. And our God and Savior
does not allow the serpent to destroy his body. He came and
crushed the serpent's head, delivering us from the headship of the serpent. He came and destroyed the dominion
of sin in us, over us, so that sin has no more authority over
us. Yes, we see it in our members,
but it's not determining whether you have life or death. Christ
determines whether you have life or death. And he says, all my
people, I give unto them eternal life. And nothing's going to
take that away. Nothing's going to take it away.
That grip of death and the grave cannot hold you. Who can come
out of the grave? None. But Christ, he has all
authority and power and the grave has no authority and power over
you. So that when he comes and he calls your name, you're coming
up out of the grave. You'll come up. Death has no
more power over you. He set us free by himself. He is the very resurrection,
the life and the resurrection of his people. And so shall the
Lord, who saved you by the precious blood of His Son, turn you over
to the wishes and whims of the enemy, of your enemies? Absolutely
not. Nothing can happen except God
purpose and will it. And if He purposes and wills
it, He'll give you the grace for that very hour. You have
nothing to fear or worry. Whatever the enemy wants will
be frustrated, and God will be glorified. And in that day, when
God wills, you'll have all the grace that you need for that
very hour, just as we read in Hebrews 11. And so God has given
you all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. He, as your ephod
in the wilderness, is your light and your righteousness, your
perfections, whereby you stand accepted of God. Now third, I'll
show you an example of his blessings. Here's one of the examples. David
was abiding now in the wilderness of Ziph in the wood. He's abiding
now in the wilderness and we're told in verse 16, and Jonathan's
son arose and went to David into the wood, and strengthened his
hand in God. And he said unto him, Fear not,
for the hand of Saul my father shall not find thee. And thou shalt be king over Israel,
and I shall be next unto thee. And that also Saul my father
knoweth, and they too made a covenant before the Lord. And David abode
in the wood, and Jonathan went to his house." Now, you can imagine
that these words, just the fact that Jonathan came to him was
such a comfort to David there in the wilderness. And the words
that Jonathan spoke were so encouraging to David. They had to have strengthened
him as he assured him of that word which the Father gave him
that he was. He was the king there. He was definitely going to be
established by God. And he reminded him of all the
promises that God had made unto him. He was the king and that
he would be established and that God would not deliver him into
the hand of Saul. And this is all brought again
to his mind by the word of Jonathan. It's all brought again to his
mind and Jonathan and David established a covenant together. He established
the covenant before God. Now you who are the body of God's
own Son, the Church of God, which He purchased with His own blood,
take notice of this example and what God, your Savior, does for
you this day in this wilderness. Does not He send His Spirit out
into the wilderness to find you? To seek out the lost sheep of
the house of Israel? To seek out the lost sheep of
Christ for whom He died? To bring this word to you? I
find it very interesting that Saul could never find David,
but Jonathan did. He knew right where he was, and
he found him just like that. And so it is with the Holy Spirit.
He knows where God's people are, and he seeks you out. And he
brings this word of comfort for you to hear, making it effectual
unto you, reminding you of God's promises made unto you in Christ. that He's promised you shall
not die in your sins. You shall not be destroyed for
your sins. And so He brings this word to
us and He establishes us in the covenant of His grace. He declares
unto us all that Christ our Savior has accomplished for us and has
given unto us. And He assures us that we shall
be in the presence of Christ our King in that day. In that
glorious day of judgment, the day of the Lord, we shall stand
in the presence of Christ our King. And so He's made this. this covenant with us, brethren.
I was reminded when I was looking at this of what Paul said on
the ship there, when he said, there stood by me this night
an angel of the Lord, whose I am and whom I serve, saying, fear
not, Paul, thou must be brought before Caesar, and lo, God hath
given thee all them that sail with thee. And that is it, that's
the word that our God gives to us in Christ. All that are sailing
with Christ, all that are in the fellowship with the Lord
Jesus Christ are given to Him and none is lost. And the Holy
Spirit stands with us, is given to us as a gift to make these
words effectual in our ears that they sink down into our heart
that we hear them and are comforted and strengthened and nourished
and rejoicing in what Christ has accomplished for us. And
so He keeps giving us this word to us in the wilderness to strengthen
us in Christ, not in ourselves, but in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now, this brings us to the final thing
that I want to show you here. After the Ziphites came to Saul
and they negotiated David's betrayal, We see that things got dangerously
close for David. It looked like David's end was
very near. He was starting to be surrounded,
compassed about by Saul and his men. They were coming around.
Saul's on one side of the mountain, David's on the other, and Saul's
sending his people around to surround David. But we're told,
that in verse 27 there came a messenger unto Saul saying haste thee and
come for the Philistines have invaded the land. And so here
the Lord interposed between Saul and David, he interposed, that's
a term I usually know from chess where you bring a piece in between,
if let's say someone has the queen and here's your king, you
can interpose with another piece, sliding it in between so that
the king's protected, the king can't be taken, it's interposed.
Well, the Lord interposed. with the Philistines between
Saul and David and the Philistines were troubling the land of another
so that Saul's wrath had to be turned away from David. And he
had to go and deal with the Philistines coming into the land. And what
happened? David went free. David went free. Verse 28 Wherefore Saul returned
from pursuing after David and went against the Philistines
Therefore they called that place Sila Hema Likoth. And David went up from thence,
and dwelt in strongholds at Engeti." Now this place called Sila Hema
Likoth means Rock of Divisions. Rock of Divisions. Why? Because the Lord put a division
here between David and Saul. And there he delivered David
from Saul, his enemy, the one who came to take his life. Now, we've been seeing how David
in the wilderness has a likeness of our spiritual David. He has
a likeness of our spiritual David, the Lord Jesus Christ, as he
traveled through the wilderness. And we see the likeness of what
our Lord bore for us in his own flesh to provide for us. And
we've seen how David here is also a picture of believers and
how the Lord gives us aid, how the Lord has provided for us
in the wilderness the way he provided for David. But it's at this division where
things take a very different turn, if you will. There's a
division here where What we see is how the Lord laid down His
life for us that we might go free, that we should go free. You see when Judas and the enemies
of God, when they came and they encompassed our Lord, Our Lord
didn't deliver himself from their hands. He went willingly. He actually negotiated the deliverance
of his people. He said, I'll go with you. Let
these, my sheep, go. Let these go. And I'll go with
you willingly. And they let them go. And so
by wicked hands, they took our Lord, and he was slain. How? Bearing the sins of his
people. And what are the sins of the
Philistines? They are a picture of our sin.
The Philistines were placed on another and that turned the wrath
which was coming against David away from David so that he was
delivered and he went free. And so it is that Christ our
Savior bore the sins of his people He bore the wrath of God. He
endured the justice of God's hand, of His righteous wrath
coming against us to put away our sin. That's what our Savior
did. He delivers us in that manner as our sin bearer on the tree
to propitiate the wrath of God. And that's pictured there in
Saul turning away, being turned away from destroying David and
David going free. And that's what our Lord has
done for us. We read in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 19, God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto himself, that is both Jew and Gentile,
one Savior. not imputing their trespasses
unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for
Christ. As though God to beseech you
by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. for he hath made him to be sin
for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him and so everything that God required of me Christ
My Savior has provided it in full so that I now live by the
free grace of God in Christ Jesus. And that's how it is for every
one of his children. Christ paid the debt, paid the
price of our sins so that the wrath of God was turned against
him. God was propitiated toward us
because the wrath was poured out on his darling son because
he is the rock of divisions for his people. And we see in Him
all our salvation, all our joy, all our peace, all our fruit
is born in us by Christ, by Him. So I pray the Lord comfort you
with that word in the wilderness and remind you again of the covenant
that you are in, established by the blood of Christ, the covenant
of grace, brethren, grace. Praise God, rejoice in Him, Amen.