1 Samuel chapter 22 continues in this look
we've been having at the life of David
throughout the Scriptures.
We make our way through this book, we
see that David was a man that God
chose and anointed at a very young age.
God had done a marvelous work in the
life of David when he was a young
man tending the sheep in the obscure hillsides
of Judea, the Bethlehem area.
But we notice also that it was very
important for the Lord not just to call
David and to anoint him, but to do
a training work in his life.
To make David into a man of God,
into the kind of king that could rule
over the nation in a godly and in
a wonderful way.
Well, as is often in our lives, God
trains us and molds us and fashions us
through trials.
The present time in the life of David,
he's going through quite a trial.
The trial centers around the jealousy of King
Saul.
Saul sees David and Saul, in his own
wickedness and rebellion against God, has been rejected
from the kingly authority over Israel.
I mean, he still officially sits on the
throne, but God doesn't honor or glorify or
support his leadership.
And God is basically saying, Saul, you're just
there until I get you out.
And so when Saul saw David being raised
up of the Lord and blessed and working
with power and strength, it frightened Saul and
it aroused a powerful sense of jealousy within
him.
And because of this, Saul set himself against
David and tried to kill him.
And with all the authority Saul could muster,
with the army and his informants and his
family and the prestige and the power of
the palace, Saul is trying to kill David.
So now, at this point in David's life,
he's on the run.
Some of the time on the run, he's
been trusting God and giving himself to the
Lord.
Other times, he's slipped into a trust in
himself or a trust in the ungodly.
But even in that, God corrects him and
brings him back to the right place.
We saw David sort of come from this
backslidden state, this place of decline with the
Lord, until the Lord broke him of it
and he ended up, well, chapter 22, verse
1, David therefore departed from there and escaped
to the cave of Adullam.
And the life of David is somewhat unique
in the Bible, because not only do we
have a historical narrative, a historical account of
what his life was like, but we also
have psalms that speak of where his heart
was at, where he was at emotionally in
the midst of all these things.
And we know from some of the psalms
that we took a look at last week,
David was in a discouraged, desperate place when
he came to the cave of Adullam.
But he didn't stay there.
The Lord encouraged him.
The Lord strengthened him.
The Lord gave him a sense of the
Lord's power and hope, even in the midst
of the cave of Adullam.
And at that cave, God gave David a
beautiful sense of his strength and power, but
that's not all that the Lord wanted to
give David.
Look at the rest of verse 1.
David therefore departed from there and escaped to
the cave of Adullam.
And when his brothers and all his father's
house heard it, they went down there to
him.
The first thing that the Lord gave to
David in the cave was the Lord gave
David himself.
And the Lord met David in the cave.
And again, we saw that many of the
psalms.
But the second thing that the Lord gave
David in the cave was his family.
Now, I think this is wonderful because we
know from our previous looks in this book
of 1 Samuel, that David's relationship with his
family wasn't always smooth.
His father didn't think much of him.
Remember when Samuel the prophet came and he
told David's father, whose name was Jesse.
Hey, I want you to come and have
a feast and bring your whole family.
Jesse brought the whole family, except David.
David was the forgotten one, the neglected one,
the one who was always overlooked.
But David didn't have the greatest relationship with
his father.
Then there was David's relationship with his brothers.
Remember how they despised him?
When David came to the camp of Israel
and Goliath was terrorized and Israelized, David came
to the camp there on an errand from
his father and his brother Eliab just started
laying into him.
Why have you come here?
I know the wickedness in your heart, so
forth and so on.
David had to endure that kind of thing
from his family.
But no matter where his family was at
before, now in David's real point of need,
when he's at a Doolam cave, his family
comes to him.
Isn't that beautiful?
It's a precious gift from God, because all
David previously knew was trouble and persecution from
his father and his brothers.
Now they join him at a Doolam cave.
Before they mostly seemed to be against him,
but now they're for him.
What a blessing that was to David.
His family, his brothers, he sees them walking
up the trail to a Doolam cave.
And he says, oh, great.
Now they're just going to lay into me
again.
Son, you've messed up your whole life.
You've got to come home.
He's figuring that's what he's going to hear
from them.
That's not what they say at all.
They say, we're here for you.
You're an outcast.
You're a rebel.
Well, we're here with you.
You're despised.
The king's against you.
You're swimming against the tide.
We're here with you.
Isn't that a beautiful thing?
What a glorious gift the Lord gave David
from his family.
But that's not all.
Look at verse 2.
That's quite a crew to have around you,
isn't it?
That sounds like a lot of congregations I
know.
That's who the Lord calls, isn't it?
That's who the Lord brings together.
God called an unlikely and a unique group
to David in a Doolam cave.
If they were all to submit their resumes
to David, there would be.
What's your resume?
What's your qualifications?
Well, first of all, David, I'm in distress.
I'm in distress.
My life isn't easy.
My life isn't together, David.
I don't know what's going on.
But here I am.
I'm here to help you.
And David says, come, come on in.
You're in distress.
Come.
You can join with me.
Next guy comes up to David and says,
David, here's my problem.
I'm in debt.
I've made a mess of my life, David.
Other people are successful around me, but I
haven't had success.
I'm smarting from my past failures.
I've got a lot of problems of my
own, David.
David says, don't worry about it.
Come join me.
The third guy comes up to David.
He says, I'm discontent, David.
That Hebrew word for discontent is beautiful.
It actually means bitter of soul.
David, I'm bitter of soul.
I look around at the way things are
in Israel right now, and I think they
stink.
I don't like King Saul.
I think he's a wicked man.
I don't want to follow King Saul.
I don't want to be one of Saul's
men.
I want to be one of your men,
David.
David says, come, come on in.
You see, it was only those who were
sick of the reign of Saul who came
to David.
Those who prospered under that wicked king.
Those were the ones who were comfortable with
him.
But these men had to make a conscious
choice.
They had to say, who's going to lead
me?
Who's going to be my king?
Am I going to be a man identified
with King Saul?
Or am I going to be a man
identified with David?
Now, there was a price to being identified
with David.
You were going against the prevailing winds.
You were going against what seemed to be
in power, what seemed to be in authority.
You were making yourself something hated by the
world.
But these 400 men didn't care.
They said, I'm going to cast my lot
with David because God's hand is upon him.
And I'm going to go with him.
And I'm going to be with him in
the Doolam Cave.
You see the picture there, don't you?
Jesus Christ is the son of David.
You know, Jesus descended from David.
Jesus had the blood of David in his
veins.
And as Jesus is the son of David,
Jesus, so to speak, stands at the opening
of a Doolam Cave.
And he says, come unto me, all you
who are weary and heavy laden.
I'll give you rest.
Are you in distress?
Come to me.
You're in debt?
Come to me.
You're discontented?
Come to me.
As a matter of fact, those are the
only kind of people who really do come
to Jesus, aren't they?
Now, maybe they're not in distress or in
debt or discontented in any way people could
see on the outside.
Maybe they've got a successful life on the
outside in the bank of counsel.
But in their soul, they're distressed.
In their soul, they know they have a
debt before God.
In their soul, they're discontent.
In other words, if you think everything in
your life is just fine without God, then
you're never going to come to him.
These men knew that something was wrong.
They knew they needed a leader.
They knew that things weren't working out in
their life otherwise.
And so they came to David.
And look what happened there in verse two.
He says, so he became captain over them.
Isn't that beautiful?
They had a leader.
This wasn't a mob.
This wasn't one of those groups you see
in the pirate movies.
You know, all this great big mob.
You know, go out and plunder and cutthroat
and be a rebel army.
No, this was a team that needed a
leader.
And David became captain over them.
Matter of fact, that was a requirement for
being in this group, wasn't it?
You didn't want David for your captain?
Then go be with Saul.
But he says, no, no, I'm going to
be your leader.
I'm going to be your captain.
God doesn't work through mobs, my friends.
He works through called men and women.
And that's a very important principle for us
to understand.
Matter of fact, I'd say there's two principles
illustrated here.
First of all, it's that God works through
called men and women.
David was a captain over them.
He was the leader.
There's no doubt about it.
But we also see the principle that David
couldn't do it alone, could he?
He needed these 400 men.
The principle that God leads through a called
and anointed man is very important.
When an ark had to be built, God
didn't call 400 men.
He called one man, Noah.
Friends, when the children of Israel had to
be led out of Egypt, God didn't call
a committee or 400 men.
He called one man, Moses, and he raised
him up for the job.
When God needed someone to plant churches and
to be the vanguard of spreading the church
into Europe, God didn't call 400 men.
He called one man, the apostle Paul.
God always centers his work by a called
and anointed man.
But at the same time, friends, it's just
as important to say that God rarely calls
that man to work alone.
Moses had his job to do.
He couldn't do it alone.
Noah had his job to do.
He couldn't do it alone.
Paul had his job to do.
He couldn't do it alone.
And David needed these 400 men.
Maybe he never thought he did before.
You know, I think in a way David
was almost sorry to see these people come
to him.
God had been strengthening his heart and cherishing
his soul.
And it's just beautiful.
Oh, David said, seek me with the Lord.
And when you're all by yourself, you don't
have a lot to worry about, do you?
All David had to worry about was himself.
But now these people come to him.
He has to take care of them.
He has to be a captain over them.
I'm sure something in him said, you know
what, Lord?
Sometimes I'd just rather be all by myself.
But he said, no, David, I'm calling you
to be a leader.
I'm calling you to take care of these
people and shepherd them.
And this is where you're going to learn
how to be a king for my people.
You're going to be a king over these
400 first.
Those 400 people, David needed them.
Friends, we need to understand that each one
of those 400 men were just as called
and just as anointed to their position as
David was to his.
They were just as important in God's outworking
of his plan.
Friends, the Lord took these men, brought them
under David.
He made David captain over them.
They came to David when they were in
distress and debt and discontented, but they didn't
stay that way.
David, through the Lord's work and through the
Lord's power, he made something beautiful in them,
didn't he?
Isn't that glorious?
Isn't it just glorious to see what the
Lord did through those 400 men?
Matter of fact, First Chronicles chapter 12 describes
the kind of men that they became.
First Chronicles 12, 8 says that these men
became mighty men of valor, men trained for
battle who could handle the shield and spear,
whose faces were like the faces of lions
and were as swift as gazelles on the
mountains.
Friends, they weren't like that when they came
to David in the cave.
But they let David be their captain.
And he made something great of it.
You see the illustration, don't you?
See the illustration very powerfully.
You need a captain in your life, don't
you?
I know that I do.
I need Jesus Christ to be my captain.
It doesn't matter if we come to Him
in distress or debt or discontented.
He'll take us, He'll fashion us, and He'll
make us mighty men and women of valor.
He'll do a glorious thing in our lives.
We can come to Jesus.
You see Him at the opening of a
Doolam cave and He's saying, Come to me.
Come, let me be your captain.
Let me be your leader.
I'll do glorious things in your life.
Do you want to be one of my
400 men?
And we say, yes.
And we notice something else, too.
That David resisted a great temptation with these
400 men.
Let's face it, these guys were sort of
men would seem to have unsavory histories.
Maybe they all had police records and that
kind of business.
You know, this wasn't exactly the cream of
the crop coming to David.
But David resisted the temptation to make them
into a rebel army.
He could have done that.
400 desperate men.
I could do something with these guys.
I could go out and make a rebel
army against Saul.
We could attack him.
We could defeat him.
Yes, yes.
This is a good beginning to that.
David would have none of it.
David said, no, no, I'm not going to
allow this to become a gang of rebels
or cutthroats.
He's going to be men who serve the
Lord.
Now, David has more to do there at
Adullam.
We see here in verse three.
And David went from there to Mizpah of
Moab.
And he said to the king of Moab,
please let my father and my mother come
here with you till I know what God
will do for me.
So he brought them before the king of
Moab and they dwelt with him all the
time that David was in the stronghold.
David's hiding out and he's anticipating the dangers
that may come his way in the battles
that may be ahead.
And he says, you know what?
My mom and dad have come to me,
but they're not cut out for this kind
of life.
I'm going to find a place of refuge
for them.
Isn't that beautiful to see the love in
David's heart?
You know, many people in the same place
that David was at would be so consumed
with their own problems that they wouldn't even
think of taking care of other people.
David wasn't like that.
He said, I got to think about my
mom and dad.
You know, I've got to honor my father
and my mother.
I've got to obey the Lord.
What should I do?
I know I'll take them to the Moabites.
Now, why the Moabites?
Well, it's because David's great grandmother was a
Moabite.
Remember what her name was?
Ruth, the Moabites.
And so David, having his part of his
lineage from the land of Moab, he goes
to the king of Moab and he leaves
his father and mother there for safekeeping.
But I especially love what David says at
the end of verse three.
He says, please let my father and mother
come here with you till I know what
God will do for me.
David didn't know, did he?
He says, listen, I know God anointed me
to be king, but I don't know when,
I don't know how.
That's God's business.
So till I know what God will do
for me, here they are.
I'll keep them in safekeeping.
Doesn't that comfort you to know that David
didn't know what was going on and he
still loved the Lord and followed him?
Do you think you serve the Lord better,
that you love him more, that you follow
him more obediently when you know what's going
on?
Well, friends, you've got to come to the
place where even when you don't know what's
going on, you love him and you serve
and you obey him.
I think every one of us in some
way of our life could say, hey, till
I know what the Lord will do for
me, because I don't know right now, but
I'm going to love him.
I'm going to serve him.
I'm going to honor God till I know
what he will do for me.
David had no idea, but he did know
that he had to trust and obey the
Lord even when he didn't know what God
would do for him.
Trust and obey.
Remember that old song?
Trust and obey, for there's no other way.
It's really true, isn't it?
That's our lot in life as Christians, to
trust the Lord and obey him even when
we don't know what God will do for
us.
But the Lord does guide us.
He does give us his direction.
Look at how the Lord does it for
David in verse five.
Then the prophet Gad said to David, do
not stay in the stronghold, depart and go
to the land of Judah.
So David departed and went to the forest
of Horeb.
I can just imagine David in the stronghold
of the cave of Adullam with the 400
men and his family.
I imagine they're having a great time.
There they are, the laughing, the fellowship, the
fun.
They're around the campfire every night.
It's just great.
They're having a wonderful time and they're saying,
hey, look, this is super.
Let's all do his thing.
We'll just hang out here until Saul dies
or something.
And then the Lord will raise me up
as king.
We'll just wait him out.
Thank you, Lord, for giving me such a
great place here.
Oh, isn't it great?
And then the prophet Gad comes along and
says, David, move out of here.
What?
I like it here.
The Lord met me here.
The Lord has ministered to me here.
I don't want to leave here.
No, you need to go to the land
of Judah.
And Judah, that's Saul's backyard.
What am I going to do there?
The Lord will show him what he has
for him to do there.
But you see, friend, isn't this a mighty,
mighty example of how the Lord works in
our lives?
David had to learn to trust God in
the midst of the danger, not on the
other side of the danger.
Get out of your stronghold, David, and go
out in the midst of the battle.
I've got work for you to do there.
No, Lord, I like it in the stronghold.
Don't let me go out of the stronghold,
Lord.
I want to stay there.
No, the Lord says, David, get out of
there.
Get out of there.
I need to push you a little further
along the road of faith.
Now, as we leave verse five and come
to verse six, the scene shifts.
If you're thinking about this as a movie
in your mind here, you pan out from
David at a Doolam cave, and he and
his 400 men are leaving a Doolam cave
in obedience to the Lord and heading towards
the countryside of Judea.
And as they're leaving the Doolam cave, heading
for the countryside of Judea, the camera pans
away and then the camera comes in on
King Saul.
And he has his war council around him.
And Saul isn't in a very good mood.
Look at it here at verse six.
When Saul heard that David and the men
who were with him had been discovered, now
Saul was staying in Gibeah under a tamarisk
tree in Ramah with his spear in his
hand and all his servants standing about him.
Believe me, Saul's servants were pretty light on
their feet when he had that spear in
his hand.
He had a habit of letting it go
there.
Verse seven, Then Saul said to his servants
who stood about him, Here and now, you
Benjaminites, will the son of Jesse give every
one of you fields and vineyards and make
all of you captains of thousands and captains
of hundreds?
All of you have conspired against me.
There's no one who reveals to me that
my son has made a covenant with the
son of Jesse.
And there's not one of you who's sorry
for me or reveals to me that my
son has stirred up my servant against me
to lie in wait as it is this
day.
Oh, poor Saul.
On this road to decline away from the
Lord.
And as he keeps going, he keeps picking
up momentum.
And we see Saul there with his staff,
with his war council around him.
And what's he doing with them?
He's saying, guys, we need to wait on
the Lord and find out what the Lord
wants for us.
And let's see who's the next enemy the
Lord wants.
Maybe it's the Philistines.
Maybe it's the Edomites.
Lord, what do you want?
No, none of that.
He sits around and he says, you guys
are all against me and none of you
feel sorry for me at all.
That's leadership, isn't it?
That's a king for you, right?
This is Saul.
This is what he's sunk to, my friends.
He accuses David of trying to kill him.
He accuses his son, Jonathan, of provoking David
to kill him as if Saul's the victim.
David's lying in wait for me.
Wake up, Saul.
You're lying in wait for him.
David doesn't want to kill you.
You want to kill him.
But Saul paints David as the aggressor so
he can paint himself as a victim.
He's in his fleshly, self-focused world where
everything revolves around Saul.
And he's paranoid and he whines and he
leads through guilt and accusation.
Saul, you're slipping off into the deep end.
And he accuses all of his servants around
him of a conspiracy.
Now, how would you feel if you were
one of Saul's servants?
How would you feel if you're under the
accusing eye of Saul now?
And he's holding that spear in his hand.
You think, man, somebody here is going to
catch that spear in the chest.
Because I saw what Saul did to David.
I saw what Saul did to Jonathan.
When Saul feels attacked, when he feels conspired
against, he starts lashing out in anger, lashing
out in rage.
There was one man present there at that
meeting of Saul's war council.
Who was clever enough and wicked enough to
save his own skin.
Look at it here.
Verses 9 and 10.
Then answered Doeg the Edomite, who was set
over the servants of Saul, and said, I
saw the son of Jesse going to Nob
to Ahimelech, the son of Ahithah.
And he inquired of the Lord for him,
gave him provisions and gave him the sword
of Goliath, the Philistine.
Doeg was much more than an ambitious man
looking for any opportunity to promote himself.
He also knew expertly how to divert Saul's
anger and suspicion from Saul's servants to the
priests of the Lord.
You see what Doeg's doing, right?
Saul, Saul, we're not the problem.
It's those priests.
That's who you got to get.
It's the priest.
It's Ahimelech.
Matter of fact, I saw David and Ahimelech
together at the tabernacle of the Lord.
Now we saw this when we were in
1 Samuel chapter 21.
David went to the tabernacle of the Lord
at a city called Nob.
And when he met with Ahimelech, the priest,
Ahimelech looked at him and said, David, what's
up with this?
I don't know what's going on.
You look funny.
You're all by yourself.
Your appearance is disheveled.
What's going on, David?
And you know what David did?
David lied.
David covered himself.
David said, well, I'm on a secret mission
from King Saul.
Yeah, right.
That's a lie.
And then he says, I'm doing the king's
special business.
And I'm really traveling with a great group
of men.
They're just over the hill.
And I'm not all alone.
Lie upon lie upon lie.
And what David wanted to do was keep
Ahimelech in the dark.
We can understand maybe David had an innocent
motive for all of that.
But it ended up causing a lot of
trouble, as we're going to see in just
a few moments.
But while David was there at the tabernacle,
he saw this fellow, Doeg.
Doeg, the servant of Saul, was there at
the tabernacle.
And 1 Samuel chapter 21, verse 7 says
that Doeg was detained before the Lord at
the tabernacle.
Don't think that he was really serving God
there.
It probably says they're on official business, punching
his ticket, so to speak, probably to work
on Saul's staff.
You know, he probably had to have approval
from the priest or something like that.
And so Doeg is there just doing his
business.
And David sees him there and Doeg sees
him there.
Now, Doeg is reporting it all to Saul.
And look at the spin he puts on
it here in verse 10.
And he inquired of the Lord for him.
Ah, you see, he's giving him counsel against
you, Saul.
And he gave him provisions.
Ah, you see, he's aiding and abetting a
known felon, Saul.
This is Ahimelech.
He's a bad character.
And finally he says, he gave him the
sword of Goliath, the Philistine.
And Saul's saying, oh, wow, David killed Goliath
with that sword.
Now he's going to kill me.
We've got to get Ahimelech because he's been
helping David.
Doeg expertly puts Saul's suspicious and accusing eye
on Ahimelech instead of Saul's own servants.
So what's going to happen?
Look at verse 11.
Then the king sent to call Ahimelech the
priest, the son of Ahithob, and all his
father's house.
And the priests were a knob and they
all came to the king.
And Saul said, here now, son of Ahithob.
And he answered, here I am, my lord.
Then Saul said to him, why have you
conspired against me, you and the son of
Jesse, and that you've given him bread and
a sword and have inquired of the God
for him, that he should rise against me
to lie in wait as it is this
day?
You can see the scene here, can't you?
Very highly charged.
Saul's enraged.
And he calls for Ahimelech and all Ahimelech's
family and the other priests to come before
him.
And as they're coming here, it's intimidating enough
to be confronted by a king.
But as he stands before this king, he
starts laying into Ahimelech.
And then Saul says, listen, you're conspiring against
me.
You're at the heart of a conspiracy.
And David's trying to kill me and you're
helping him.
What's going on with this?
Look at Ahimelech's answer here in verse 14.
It's so innocent.
And Ahimelech answered the king and said, And
who among all your servants is so faithful
as David, who's the king's son-in-law,
who goes at your bidding and is honorable
in your house?
Did I then begin to inquire of God
for him?
Far be it from me.
Let not the king impute anything to his
servant or to any in the house of
my father, for your servant knew nothing of
all this little or much.
Saul, I don't know what's going on.
Now, if he would have only said that,
that would have been enough.
But did you see what he said in
verse 14?
Saul was furious and he says to Ahimelech,
You're at the heart of a conspiracy against
me.
You were helping David.
And what does Ahimelech say to Saul?
David, isn't he a great guy, Saul?
Boy, he's serving you faithfully.
You must be so proud to have him
as your son-in-law.
And can you see the blood rushing to
Saul's face?
His eyeballs are just burning right now.
How dare you praise this man in my
midst?
I can't say...
And Ahimelech is totally dumb, isn't he?
He doesn't know anything.
He's completely ignorant of what's going on because
David lied to him.
And it just makes Saul all the more
angry.
And look at how it turns out here
in verse 16.
And the king said, You shall surely die,
Ahimelech, you and all your father's house.
I bet when Ahimelech heard that, he couldn't
believe his ears.
He's like, Did I hear what he said?
I'm a priest of the Lord.
I didn't do anything wrong.
One of the priest's servants came to me
and said he was on an errand from
you, Saul.
And I helped him.
I'm not involved in this in any way.
And you want to kill me and my
father's house?
You want to kill me and my children?
For what?
Ahimelech in the midst of this, he doesn't
know what's going on.
He's confused.
And then look at verse 17.
Then the king said to the guards who
stood about him, Turn and kill the priests
of the Lord, because their hand also is
with David, and because they knew when he
fled and did not tell it to me.
Oh, how David regretted those lies right now,
didn't he?
You know what?
We can't say that David was really guilty
of the death of Ahimelech.
Saul did it.
But David put Ahimelech in a very vulnerable
position, didn't he?
I mean, if David would have come and
told the truth, if he would have said
to Ahimelech, Ahimelech, Saul's out to kill me.
I need some provisions.
I need some prayer.
I'm on the run.
Then at least Ahimelech would have had a
choice.
He would have had the choice of saying,
David, you know what?
I don't want to get in the midst
of this.
I can't help you.
Please move on.
That would have been Ahimelech's choice, right?
Or Ahimelech would have had a more glorious
choice.
And I think he would have taken it.
He would have said, David, I'm behind you
all the way.
I'm going to help you.
But then at least Ahimelech would have known
what was going on.
And when he stood before Saul, he could
have died the brave death of a knowing
martyr instead of just a victim sort of
caught in a trap.
Saul commands him to be executed.
This command shows that Saul is going faster
and faster down the decline away from the
Lord.
He tried to kill David many times before.
He even tried to kill his own son.
But do you understand what's happening now?
Now he commands the death of complete bystanders
to the problem.
He commands the death of priests to the
Lord.
And he commands the death of their families.
This is just cold-blooded murder.
And there's no other word for it.
One commentator, Adam Clark, says, this is one
of the worst acts in the life of
Saul.
His malice was implacable and his wrath was
cruel.
And there's no motive of justice or policy
by which such a barbarous act can be
justified.
Another commentator, John Trapp, said, a bloody sentence,
harshly pronounced, and as rashly executed without any
pause or deliberation, without any remorse or regret,
this was the worst act that Saul ever
did.
You see, Saul really hated the Lord, didn't
he?
But it's hard to fight against the Lord,
right?
Your arms are too short to box with
God, aren't they?
You can't get one over on the Lord.
So many times when people are angry at
the Lord, many times when they want to
fight against the Lord, they fight against his
people.
They fight against his priests.
And that's exactly what Saul was doing.
Kill them.
Kill them all.
Kill their families.
Look what happens here.
Verse 17.
But the servants of the king would not
lift their hands to strike the priests of
the Lord.
Praise God.
Isn't that great?
That the servants of Saul were men of
conscience, at least.
And they were unsure about their own leader.
And they said, we can't do this.
This is cold-blooded murder.
We're your servants, Saul, but we're servants of
the Lord God before that.
And this is murder and we'll have no
part of it.
But unfortunately, there was one man wicked and
unprincipled enough to do it.
Look at here, verse 18.
And the king said to Doeg, you turn
and kill the priests.
So Doeg the Edomite turned and struck the
priests and killed on that day.
Eighty-five men who wore linen ephod.
Also Nob, the city of the priests.
He struck with the edge of the sword,
both men and women, children and nursing infants,
oxen and donkeys and sheep with the edge
of the sword.
A massacre.
There at Gibeah.
Eighty-five priests dead on the ground.
Not to mention how many women and children.
And who knows how much property was destroyed.
Bloody dead bodies laying everywhere.
And Doeg standing in triumph over them.
You know, it's funny.
We know very well about the kind of
massacre and tragedy that happens in our country.
Just a little over a month ago in
Littleton, Colorado, there was a horrible incident.
Where two young men went in.
They were the heart and the spirit of
Doeg, right?
That bloodthirsty violence without a conscience.
They struck down men.
They killed many.
And many of the ones they killed, the
common link between them, that they were Christians.
Believers in Jesus Christ.
That's funny.
This is even worse, isn't it?
Eighty-five priests massacred that day.
I think one of the remarkable things about
the Bible.
One of the truly great things about it,
and especially the life of David, is not
only do we have a historical account of
David's life, but we also have the Psalms,
which speak of David's heart, of his emotions
through these historical events.
And so I want you to keep a
finger there in 1 Samuel chapter 22.
But I want you to turn to Psalm
52 with me.
And to see how David felt about this.
And a reason why I think this is
so important is because, friends, people like Doeg
are still with us to this day, aren't
they?
And for some of us, we don't know
what to do when we see the Doegs
at work in our world today.
Some people get completely panicked and completely freaked
by it.
They get so distressed.
They get so angry.
Well, might I tell you, David was angry
too.
Look at verse...
Well, first look at the title here of
the Psalm.
Psalm 52.
To the chief musician, a contemplation of David,
when Doeg the Edomite went and told Saul
and said to him, David has gone to
the house of the Himalaya.
Okay, that's the setting.
So this was David's reaction after the massacre.
Verse 1, Why do you boast in evil,
O mighty man?
The goodness of God endures continually.
Your tongue devises destruction, like a sharp razor
working deceitfully.
You love evil more than good and lying
rather than speaking righteousness.
You love all devouring words, you deceitful tongue.
We look at the Doegs of the world
today and we're fed up with them.
We don't want to have anything to do
with them.
And that's exactly the heart of David too
in this.
He looks at us and says, you're a
deceiver, you're a deceitful tongue.
May the Lord do away with you.
But then look at this as well, my
friends here.
David knew how to give it to the
Lord.
Look at verse 5.
He says, God shall likewise destroy you forever.
He shall take you away and pluck you
from your dwelling place and uproot you from
the land of the living.
David knew.
David knew that God knew how to deal
with the Doegs of this world.
And friends, can I say, He still does.
I think of those two young men who
murdered all those people at the high school.
And the last thing they did while their
hearts beat on this earth was they directed
those guns at their own heads and they
killed themselves.
And you know why they did that, don't
you?
They thought they could escape the punishment for
what they've done.
They can't punish me.
I'm not going to court.
I'm not going to sit in jail.
I'm not going to be in a trial.
I'll kill myself.
I can escape punishment for what I've done.
But friends, as soon as their lives passed
from this world to the next and they
stood face to face with the holy righteous
God, they realized more than they ever realized
on this earth that they would never escape
punishment for what they've done.
And God knows how to deal with those
things.
And friends, doesn't that help put things in
perspective?
Doesn't that help us say we're not going
to become freaked out over the dough eggs
of this world?
We don't like it.
We grieve.
We get a little angry.
But friends, we don't have to live our
lives enslaved to fear and doubt and panic.
As a matter of fact, look at David's
words here in verses 8 and 9 as
he concludes the psalm.
He says, But I am like a green
olive tree in the house of God.
I trust in the mercy of God forever
and ever.
I will praise you forever because you've done
it.
And in the presence of your saints, I
will wait on your name for it is
good.
When David ends the psalm, he's not thinking
about dough egg.
He's thinking about the Lord.
And so when you see the evil people,
when you see the wicked people, it's okay
to be angry at them.
It's okay to say, Lord, you take care
of them, but then get your heart and
mind off of them.
Put your focus back on the Lord.
That's what David did.
The Lord met him in the midst of
it.
Back to first Samuel 22 as we finish
up the chapter.
Verse 20.
Now, one of the sons of Ahimelech, the
son of Ahithah, named Abiathar, escaped and fled
after David.
And Abiathar told David that Saul had killed
the Lord's priest.
So David said to Abiathar, I knew that
day when dough egg the Edomite was there,
that he would surely tell Saul, I have
caused the death of all the persons of
your father's house.
Stay with me.
Do not fear.
For he who seeks my life seeks your
life.
But with me, you shall be safe.
David was grieved and repentant when he saw
the bitter result that his lying had caused.
He didn't try to shade it.
He didn't try to cover it up.
He said, I've done this.
And I'm sorry.
I'm sorry before the Lord.
I'm sorry before you.
And the Lord was able to help restore
things.
You know, friends, there's something I think about
that just really fixes on my mind here
as we leave this.
I think back to 1 Samuel chapter 21,
verse 7, where David and dough egg were
both at the house of the Lord together.
There they were.
Could I put it in today's kind of
vocabulary?
David and dough egg went to church together.
They sat in church together.
They were both before the Lord at the
house of the Lord.
There.
And look at the direction that dough egg
went and look at the direction that David
went.
Now, my friends, do you get the distinction
here between the two?
It's a very important distinction.
Dough egg went to the house of the
Lord, but it never went into his heart.
And in that frightening prospect, I think about
that sometimes that somebody can come to the
house of the Lord and maybe you come
occasionally, maybe you come every week and you
hear the word.
But friends, if it's not touching your life,
if you're not letting it change your life,
you could end up just like a dough
egg.
I'm glad you're here.
It's great that you're here at the house
of the Lord.
But friends, don't let it just pass over
your head.
Is the Lord calling you to turn and
to repent of something this morning?
Then do it.
Is the Lord calling you to something deeper
with him?
Then follow him.
Is the Lord calling you to step out
in a bold way?
Then don't shut your ears to the Lord.
You can end up like a dough egg
instead of like a David, who was also
at the house of the Lord.
But when he stumbled, he got back up
and kept following the Lord.
And he listened to the Lord's voice and
he followed after the Lord.
My friends, what a tragedy it is.
People you know, you love, you see them
go the way of dough egg.
You think, well, how could that be?
They were at the house of the Lord.
Friends, dough egg could shut his ears.
Dough egg could put it all away.
I just pray that no one here is
following in that path.
And if you see yourself on that path,
right now, you can change.
Right now, you can come before the Lord
and say, I don't want to be a
dough egg.
I want to be a David.
So friends, here is our captain, Jesus Christ,
standing at a dullum cave saying, come to
me, come to me.
Leave everything else behind.
Come to me.
Today, it's just incumbent upon us to say,
here we are, Lord.
We want to follow you that way.
Let's pray about it right now.