1 Samuel chapter 21, reading from
verse 1. Then came David to Nob, to Ahimelech
the priest, he's actually the high priest I think, to Ahimelech
the priest and Ahimelech was afraid at the meeting of David
and said unto him, why art thou alone and no man with thee? And David said unto Ahimelech
the priest, The king hath commanded me a business, and hath said
unto me, Let no man know anything of the business whereabout I
send thee, and what I have commanded thee, and I have appointed my
servants to such and such a place. Now therefore, what is under
thine hand? Give me five loaves of bread
in mine hand, or what there is present. And the priest answered
David and said, There is no common bread under mine hand, but there
is hallowed bread, if the young men have kept themselves at least
from women. And David answered the priest
and said unto him, Of a truth, women have been kept from us
about these three days. since I came out, and the vessels
of the young men are holy, and the bread is in a manner common,
yea, though it were sanctified this day in the vessel. So the
priest gave him hallowed bread, for there was no bread there
but the show bread that was taken from before the Lord, to put
hot bread in the day when it was taken away. Now a certain
man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before
the Lord, and his name was Doeg, an Edomite, the chiefest of the
herdmen that belonged to Saul. And David said unto Ahimelech,
And is there not here under thine hand spear or sword? For I have neither brought 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 thou slewest in the valley of
Ella, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the effort.
If thou wilt take that, take it, for there is no other save
that here. And David said, there is none
like that, give it me. And David arose and fled that
day for fear of Saul, and went to Ashish the king of Gath. And the servants of Ashish said
unto him, Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not
sing one to another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain
his thousands, and David his ten thousands? David laid up
these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Ashish the
king of Gath. And he changed his behaviour
before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrambled
on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon
his beard. Then said Ashish unto his servants,
Lo, ye see the man is mad, wherefore then have ye brought him to me?
Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to
play the madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my
house? Amen. May the Lord bless to us this
reading from his word. David we have been reading about
and thinking about for a number of weeks now. David was on the
run. He was being pursued by Saul
who wanted to kill him, though he was Saul's son-in-law. He had been delivered out of
the hand of Saul by Michael, Saul's daughter and David's own
wife. And he had been warned by his
beloved friend Jonathan, who was Saul's son. So the family
of Saul, to some extent at least, cared for David. But Saul himself,
the king, wanted David dead. and David was an outcast in his
own country. He was a fugitive in and from
his own land. However, in all of this time
of fear, of anxiety, of uncertainty, of loneliness, of exclusion,
David trusted the Lord. And this will be the main lesson
from today's study. It may seem fairly simple to
say that, but I think we will learn some things from this chapter,
and it will be good for us to remind ourself that David trusted
the Lord. We're going to see, for example,
how hard it can be to trust the Lord. Because David's faith did
not mean that he did everything properly, that he did everything
right. The fact that David trusted the
Lord didn't mean that he acted at all times as he should have
done. The fact that David trusted the
Lord doesn't mean that he was always at peace in his own soul,
or that he was never afraid. David, we will discover, in this
chapter, acted sinfully. We will discover that he feared
greatly. We will find that he often found
himself thoroughly distressed, and at his wit's end, having
to flee from Saul and flee to the Lord his Saviour for help
and for guidance and for strength. and yet what a blessing it is
to be able to do so. I do sometimes think about all
these people who don't have any faith, all these people who do
not know anything of the Lord. Where do they find their comfort?
Where do they find their help? I know how blessed I feel so
often to be able to take my troubles to the Lord and to remind myself
that the Lord cares for me, that the Lord is ready and present
to help. And David knew this. It didn't
take away all his troubles or his anxieties. It didn't make
him perfect before the Lord. But David knew the Lord and he
trusted him. I hope you do too. I hope you know the Lord and
I hope you know what it is to trust him in times of need. You will not always have peace. You will not always be brave.
You'll often do what you should not do. But if you can trust
the Lord and commit your life into his hands, you will be blessed
in this life and you will be blessed for all eternity, despite
your own unbelief and your own failures. David could say in
Psalm 56 in verse 3 and 4, what time I am afraid, I will trust
in thee. Let me put it like this, whenever
I'm afraid, I will trust in thee. He goes on, in God I will praise
his word. In God I have put my trust, I
will not fear what flesh can do unto me. And that's particularly
relevant, that little verse, because that little verse was
written and spoken by David, it was prayed by David. at exactly
this time in his life when he was before Ahimelech and also
Ashish or Ashish has another name as well in scripture he
is sometimes called Abimelech. So here we have David in this
chapter chapter 21 of 1st Samuel, meeting with Ahimelech and Abimelech
in just a few verses. We've got two incidents here,
two incidents in this short chapter. David going to see Ahimelech,
who was the priest, or as I've mentioned, I think the high priest
at Nob, where the tabernacle was, and also David going to
Gath of all places. Now, where have we heard of Gath
before? Gath was the city of his enemies,
the Philistines. It was one of the five main city-states
of the Philistines. And in fact, it was the very
city where Goliath had come from. Goliath, whom David had killed
not so very long before. And we might wonder, what on
earth David was doing going to the city of Gath. But more of
that later. The first thing I want to mention
is that David went to the tabernacle. He went to speak to Himalaya. He went to speak with the Lord. And that is the first place that
David went. He was on the run. He was fleeing
from Saul. He was recently speaking with
Jonathan. Jonathan had told him that he
needed to escape, he needed to get out of the area, and this
is what David immediately did. He went to where the tabernacle
was in order to speak to the Lord. I like this. David was
fleeing from Saul, but before he ran away, who knew where and
who knew for how long he would be away? He went to speak with
the Lord at the tabernacle in Nob. And the Lord Jesus tells
us in Matthew chapter six in verse 33. He says, seek ye first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness. Before everything else, above
everything else. And I know that you've got busy
lives. I know that there's lots of things
that You have to do, you're required to do, especially when we're
younger. We've got people telling us that we've got so much to
do. And I know that you've got busy lives, but you know what
the Lord says? Seek first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness. And all these things, all these
other things, everything else that we need, everything else
that has to be done, all the other places that have to be
gone to, all the people that we have to see, they shall be
added unto you appropriately. Seek first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto
you. And David's priorities were right. What am I to do? The first thing is I will go
and ask the Lord for help and guidance and that's exactly what
he did. But here we find a problem. Because
when David went to the tabernacle, Ahimelech was afraid to meet
him. Ahimelech realised that there
was something wrong in this situation. He knew that David was on the
run, very probably. Doeg the Edomite was present
there. in this city of Nob. And Doig was one of Saul's senior
servants. He may even have been dispatched
there in order to be on the lookout for David. And in the midst of
all the nervousness, David anxious about what's happening, this
man doig in the city, Ahimelech not knowing what was going on,
in the midst of all this nervousness, instead of being honest, David
made up a story and told Ahimelech a lie about why he was there. And it was a lie that he would
later regret very much because this was going to be a very costly
encounter that he had with the priests there at Nob. And let me say that I'm kind
of jumping forward a little bit, but we learn about this in the
next chapter. That man, Doig the Edomite, he went back to
Saul and he told Saul that he had seen David at Nob. and Ahimelech
and 85 priests and hundreds of the people in that city, men,
women and children, were shortly put to death by Saul for helping
David on this occasion. That is how serious the situation
was. And David had told this lie to
Ahimelech. Some people would say, David's
lie proved that he didn't trust the Lord. Despite being at the
tabernacle to seek the Lord's help, he nevertheless told a
lie because he was afraid and because he was anxious and concerned.
But I think that there's another way to think about this. I think
that what this shows us is just how complex faith really is and
just how weak our own hearts are. Do you know what an enigma
is? An enigma is a puzzle and sometimes
we are an enigma, a puzzle to ourselves. We do trust the Lord,
if indeed we have found Him to be our Lord and Saviour. If we trust Him for our salvation,
we trust Him for forgiveness of sin, we trust Him for eternal
life. We trust Him for all the big
things in life. But when it comes to trusting
Him for the little things, we just cannot seem to do it. We insist on trying to fix our
troubles by ourselves. And we do things that we shouldn't
do. Look what David did. He made up a story to try and
explain what it was he was doing. And we think we're being very
clever. But what we're really doing is we're really showing
that we don't trust the Lord as we like to think we do. And
this is our enigma. Every true believer finds that
while we do trust the Lord, we nevertheless spend our whole
lives learning to trust Him. Because all too often, we don't
trust Him at all. How do I explain that? That's
the puzzle. We love the Lord. we don't love
him as we should. We serve the Lord but we don't
serve him as we should. We trust the Lord but we don't
trust him as we should and we spend our whole lives having
to learn to love him and to serve him and to trust him and that
is the experience of every child of God. David asked for food
from a Himalaya, but there was only a few showbread available. Now maybe you remember, it's
a long time ago, so maybe you don't, but we've spoken about
the showbread before. The showbread was from the time
of Moses, from the time of the establishment of the tabernacle
in the wilderness, and these 12 loaves were put before the
Lord on a golden table in the presence of the Lord, before
the Lord in the first part of the tabernacle, and they were
put there beside the candlesticks and the laver and the altar,
they were put there in order to represent the Lord Jesus Christ. And these were sanctified, these
were hallowed, these had been dedicated to the Lord, and they
were for no one to eat, except the priests. The priests could
eat them after they had sat before the Lord for a period of time
and before they were replaced and it was this replacement that
was taking place today when David arrived with Ahimelech. And David
took those loaves. It would appear that he asked
for a certain number, five loaves. David took those and he ate them
because he and his friends were starving. So that the bread saved
David's life. It nourished and sustained him
as he fled from before Saul. Actually, as we've just said,
the showbread in the tabernacle is a picture of the Lord Jesus,
and it represented Christ, the bread of life, being placed before
God to picture Christ's death for his people. By eating this
bread, David was pointing to Christ. His saviour was still
to come. But David, nevertheless, by taking
this showbread, pointed us once again to Christ. David knew what
this bread was about, and yet he took it and he ate it. And
just as we share communion today as the Lord's people, well, not
today, but as we do occasionally, as we share communion as the
Lord's people, we remember what the Lord Jesus Christ suffered
to make us right with God. That was what David was doing
and that's what we do. And David also asked for a weapon
and we discovered that Ahimelech gave him Goliath's sword, the
very sword that he had used to cut off the giant's head. And
then we're told that David makes his next journey and that is
to Gath, the home city of Goliath. David's sworn enemies. What a strange thing to do. Now we're not told the precise
circumstances or David's reasoning for making his way to the land
of the Philistines or to the city of Gath. Perhaps it was
that he felt as safe in the land of the Philistines as he did
in Israel where he was being hunted by Saul. Perhaps he thought,
well, if I can live with a degree of secrecy in the land of the
Philistines, then Saul isn't going to be able to come and
get me. Perhaps seeing Doeg the Edomite there at Nob, he knew
that Saul would pursue him right to the border of the land of
the Philistines. Maybe he got close to the border
and he was detained and taken to Gath as some kind of prize.
Whatever the reason was that David found himself in the presence
of Ashish, or Abimelech as he's sometimes called, just in the
same way as the Egyptian kings were called Pharaoh and the Roman
kings were called Caesar. So the Philistine kings were
all called Abimelech and this man is called Ashish of Gath
or somewhere else he's called Abimelech. But David realised
that he was in danger of being killed there by this Ashish and
so he pretended to be mad hoping that in some way this might deflect
the possibility of at least Ashish's or Abimelech's servants trying
to have him put to death. Ashish may have thought there
was no point in killing David because all he would be doing
would be killing Saul's enemy, even if it was David. By killing
David, Ashish perhaps thought he'd simply help Saul who was
spending all his time chasing all over the country looking
for David. If it got out that David was now dead, then Saul
could use that as a pretext to attack the Philistines again.
Maybe it was in Ashish's interest that David was kept alive. And
David feigned this madness perhaps to let this Ashish think that
David was no longer a threat to him. Perhaps Ashish even realised
that David's being alive as the king of Israel, if he understood
that that had happened, which appears now to be common knowledge,
that David being alive as Israel's king was better for him than
trying to kill the Lord's anointed. Whatever the reason, the king
did not slay David, who escaped and returned to Israel and hid
in a cave near Adullam. Here's the final point that I
want to make today. David was completely surrounded
by enemies. He had Saul on one side, he had
Ashish and the Philistines on the other. He had no one to help
him but the Lord. And so David trusted the Lord. And here's the enigma again.
Despite the lies, despite the pretended madness, despite the
fact that he slithered down his beard, David trusted the Lord. And in fact, we've got several
Psalms that were written by David precisely at this time, showing
that despite all the trouble, David was settled and composed
in his own heart as to the faithfulness of God. David wrote Psalm 34
and Psalm 56 at this time, and both show this young man's true
spiritual faith in the Lord his God. I quoted from Psalm 56 a
little earlier. Let me quote a few verses from
Psalm 34 and then we're done today. This is what David said
in Psalm 34 verse 6. He said, and saved him out of all his
troubles, the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that
fear him, and delivereth them. O taste and see that the Lord
is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth
in him. That is, blessed is the man that
trusteth in the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lord teach us and enable
us to trust in Christ, both for our personal salvation and our
hope of eternal life, but may he also teach us day by day to
place our trust in Christ for every need and every care and
every provision. Amen.