1st Samuel chapter 27 and we're
going to read from verse 1. And David said in his heart,
I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing
better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land
of the Philistines, and Saul shall despair of me and to seek
me any more in any coast of Israel. So shall I escape out of his
hand.' And David arose, and he passed over with the six hundred
men that were with him unto Ashish, the son of Malch, king of Gath. And David dwelt with Ashish at
Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, even David
with his two wives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the
Carmelitess, Nabal's wife. And it was told Saul that David
was fled to Gath, and he sought no more again for him. And David
said to Ashish, If I have now found grace in thine eyes, let
them give me a place in some town in the country, that I may
dwell there. For why should thy servant dwell
in the royal city with thee? Then Ashish gave him Ziklag that
day, wherefore Ziklag pertaineth unto the kings of Judah unto
this day. And the time that David dwelt
in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months. And David and his men went up
and invaded the Geshurites and the Gesrites and the Amalekites,
for those nations were of old the inhabitants of the land,
as thou goest to Shur even unto the land of Egypt. And David
smote the land and left neither man nor woman alive, and took
away the sheep, and the oxen, and the asses, and the camels,
and the apparel, and returned and came to Ashish. And Ashish
said, Whither have ye made a road to-day? And David said, Against
the south of Judah, and against the south of the Gerathmalites,
and against the south of the Kenites. And David saved neither
man nor woman alive, to bring tidings to Gath, saying, Lest
they should tell on us, saying, So did David, and so will be
his manner, all the while he dwelleth in the country of the
Philistines. Farashish believed David, saying,
He hath made his people Israel utterly to abhor him. Wherefore,
he shall be my servant for ever. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. In recording the history of David,
The Holy Spirit has given the Church of Jesus Christ accounts,
not only of personal victories that David enjoyed, but the personal
defeats that he endured as well. And this is important to note.
not only because it testifies to the honesty of the history,
so we see David, as the saying goes, warts and all, but also,
and more importantly, It teaches us the truth about the fallen
human nature of man and the weaknesses of our hearts and minds and the
challenges that we face to the faith that we have. Seeing David's
faults allows us to see our own struggles reflected in the lives
of men and women in the past. In truth, there is little in
this passage that recommends David to us and there is nothing
for us to copy. Any mitigating excuse, any justification
we might try to come up with in David's defence for what he
did, how he acted, what he said in this chapter, ends up sounding
as though we're scratching around to make the best of a bad job. And I'm not going to do that.
David should have known better than to go back again to the
land of the Philistines and back again to the city of Gath. You may recall he had been here
once before, secretly by himself. And when he was discovered, when
he was exposed, he pretended to be mad so that the king, he
was also called Ashish, whether it's the same man or whether
Ashish was the general name of the king, like Caesar or Pharaoh
or Abimelech, we don't know, but it may well be that it's
the same man or it may have been his son. But nevertheless, we
find that David had on that occasion pretended to be mad so that the
king had thrown him out rather than kill him. David had no real
friends amongst the Philistines and we might well ask ourselves,
what was he doing there? He'd killed Goliath. who came
from that very city. He had led attacks on the Philistines
that had slain and impoverished many of the people of that region. He said himself to Saul that
he'd been chased previously into a land where false gods were
worshipped and now he was purposefully, decidedly making a choice to
go there by himself. Why then would he willingly return
to such a place, bring his wives with him, put them in danger,
spiritually, physically? and lead his 600 men there as
well. The only answer is that this
was a period of unbelief and perhaps a time of depression
in David's life where David's faith failed him and his confidence
in the Lord was lost. David knew From long experience,
as we've remarked in the past, David knew that Saul would not
stop chasing him to kill him. And that actually is borne out
by Saul letting up the pursuit only when the possibility of
capturing David finally disappeared. While there was any chance of
getting David, Saul pursued him. because in his heart he still
hated David. Maybe Ashish, King of Gath, negotiated
with David and offered him safe haven. Perhaps they struck a
deal together. David wouldn't trouble the Philistines
if they would allow him to dwell amongst them and come and go
as he pleased. Certainly some kind of truce
appears to have been agreed, allowing David to conduct armed
raids outside of the region so long as the Philistines were
left unharmed. And Ashish probably felt that
he was being politically clever. in harbouring Saul's enemy while
keeping David under his watchful eye. David, for his part, acted deviously
with Ashish. He was given a city called Ziklag
in the south of the region from where he let it be known that
he went forth to attack areas in Israel, in Judah. Judah, not
Israel, Judah. Actually, he was active among
the neighbouring nations and they And he did all that was
in his power to conceal reports of his marauding raids by killing
everyone that he encountered. Now it may be said that David
had a right to attack these enemies of Israel and even a mandate
from God to do so. But as I said before, such reasoning
sounds more like scratching around for excuses to make the best
of a bad job. The overriding sense here is
that despite David being told earlier by the prophet Gad to
stay in Judah, and despite the Lord supplying many evidences
of his protecting hand And despite the anointing that David had
previously received from Samuel, David had lost confidence in
the Lord and he decided to make his own arrangements to secure
his own well-being and the well-being of his wives and his followers.
He stopped trusting in the Lord Now we need to make a point here.
We can have faith in the Lord as far as our religion and as
far as our salvation and as far as our eternal destiny is concerned. There is no doubt in my mind,
there is no question that David was a believer in that sense. He worshipped God. He understood
the purpose of the sacrifices and he looked, believingly, upon
Christ, the Messiah, as his saviour. There's no reason to doubt this. David was a man after God's own
heart. God loved David and gave David
great promises of mercy and grace. And David loved the Lord. He
was a believer. In many wonderful psalms of praise
and worship, he reveals this to be so. But there were times
in his life when faith failed. There were times when trust grew
weak and disappeared. Times when he found himself struggling
in his relationship with the Lord. Now why might the Holy Spirit
be telling us this? Why show us David's faults? Certainly not so that we can
gloat or shake our heads or think how awful and how terrible David
was. But so that we can learn from
this situation. Let no one ever think that it
is easy to trust the Lord. Let us not imagine, let us not
think that it is easy to trust the Lord. It is impossible in
our natural state because we are without spiritual power. And it is challenging in our
spiritual state because of indwelling sin and because of residual unbelief. The Lord could say to his own
disciples who had seen many, many marvellous miracles, who
had heard the gospel from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ
himself, he could say to them, O ye of little faith, It is hard,
it is difficult for us to trust the Lord and we should never
imagine otherwise. We have a will to trust the Lord
when he gives us that desire after faith, after our conversion. And we should trust the Lord. We do trust the Lord, and yet
we do so with reservations. We harbour doubt, we have fear,
we have ideas about how things would work better, how things
should go differently, how we would do it better if it was
left up to us. Now, of course, perhaps I'm only
speaking here to myself, Maybe you don't find this in your life. And yet I fear many of us begin
well in our faith, but gradually we revert to trusting in our
own strength and forgetting where our true strength lies. Forgetting that our true strength
must always come from the Lord Jesus. There will be times in
your life when things become dark and difficult and trying. Times when you will be tempted
to give up, to cut and run, to leave what
you've learned and to abandon the blessings that the Lord has
given you and the promises of help that he has made. And some
of you may feel right now, that is what you've already done. And now you find yourselves full
of regrets and wondering if you can find a way back. Well, you
can. There's a lovely verse in Isaiah
which speaks about this very thing. It's in Isaiah chapter
50 and verse 10. It says this, Who is among you
that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that
walketh in darkness and hath no light? Let him trust in the
name of the Lord and stay upon his God. Let me paraphrase that
verse for you, just so that we're sure that we get a grip of what
Isaiah is saying here. You fear the Lord and obey the
voice of his servant. That is, you worship God and
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a true Christian. This is a true believer that
we're speaking about here. And yet, says Isaiah, although
you have true faith, yet you walk in darkness and have no
light. You do not feel the comfort of
God's love or know the closeness of his presence in your life. And what is the prophet's advice
to you and me in such a state as this? He says, trust in the
name of the Lord and stay upon God. Return in hope and trust and
confidence to the Saviour. Let us stay upon him. I don't know how many of you
might have a pet dog But when you have a pet dog and you're
training him to be obedient, or you're training her to be
obedient, you say to that dog, stay, stay. And we are to be like those little
dogs. We are to stay upon the Lord. We are to stand on his promises. We are to consider his past faithfulness,
his protection and his future provision. We are to remind ourselves
of his goodnesses and we are to wait upon his timing and commit
our ways and our days into his hands. Is that easy to do? No. Not for David and not for
many of the Lord's people. But it is the only way. My friend
Robert Hawker makes this helpful point and I'm going to read it
to you because again I couldn't better it. Here's what he says.
If the Lord leaves our faith alone to act of itself, if the
Lord leaves our faith alone to act of itself, that act will
be weak indeed. It is but for the great author
and finisher of faith to withdraw the arm of his power And then
the poor believer falls into fears and doubts, as David did. If you know anything of precious
faith, I would charge it upon you as one of the grand lessons
of the soul. Learn to make Jesus the finisher
as well as the author of your faith and salvation. There are
many souls who know Christ as the author, but very few are
so highly taught as to make him the finisher. Let us not begin with Christ
and imagine that we can finish by ourselves. Let us begin and
end with Christ, and may all our hope for eternal salvation
and confidence for the challenges of life be fixed upon his grace
and his mercy and his love, knowing that even when the times are
toughest and our fears are greatest, that he will never leave us nor
forsake us. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us today. Amen.