The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, The Danger of Doubting,
a sermon delivered on Sunday morning, March 16th,
1862, by the Reverend C.
H.
Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
And David said in his heart, I shall
now perish one day by the hand of
Saul.
First Samuel 27, verse 1.
To doubt the lovingkindness of God is thought
by some to be a very small sin.
In fact, some have even exalted the doubts
and fears of God's people into fruits in
grace and evidences of great advancement in experience.
It is humiliating to observe that certain ministers
have pampered and petted men in unbelief and
distrust of God being in this matter false
to their master and to the souls of
His people.
Far be it from me to smite the
feeble of the flock, but their sins I
must and will smite, since it is my
firm conviction that to doubt the kindness, the
faithfulness and the love of God is a
very heinous offence.
Unbelief is akin to atheism.
Atheism denies God's existence.
Unbelief denies His goodness, and since goodness is
essential to God, these doubts do in reality
stab at His very being.
That can be no light sin which makes
God a liar, and yet unbelief does, in
effect, cast foul and slanderous suspicion upon the
veracity of the Holy One of Israel.
That can be no small offence which charges
the Creator of heaven and earth with perjury,
and yet if I mistrust His oath and
will not believe His promise, sealed with the
blood of His own Son, I count the
oath of God to be unworthy of my
trust, and so I do in very deed
accuse the King of heaven as false to
His covenant and oath.
Besides, as I shall have to show this
morning, unbelief of God is the fountain of
innumerable sins.
As the black cloud is the mother of
many raindrops, so dark unbelief is the parent
of many crimes.
And what if I should say that unbelief
concentrates the vice of ages into a moment
and gathers up the virus of all the
offences of the race in one transgression?
I should not be so far from the
mark, but I shall say no strong words
in the preface, because methinks the incident in
David's history which I shall call your attention
this morning will be in itself enough to
lead you to give your verdict with mine
that unbelief is a damnable sin, that it
should be condemned by every believer, should be
struggled against, should if possible be subdued, and
certainly should be the object of our deep
repentance and abhorrence.
Now let us listen to David, and may
his sin and sorrow be his beacons to
warn us from evil.
David said in his heart, I shall now
perish one day by the hand of Saul.
First, I shall remark that what he said
in his heart was false.
Secondly, we shall ask the question how he
came to think so, and then we shall
notice in the third place what mischief came
of such a hard unbelieving thought.
First, the thought of David's heart was false.
He said, I shall now perish one day
by the hand of Saul.
We might conclude it to be false upon
the very face of it, because there certainly
was no evidence to prove it.
On no one occasion had the Lord deserted
his servant.
He had been placed in perilous positions very
often, but not one single instance had occurred
in which God's strength was not sufficient for
him.
The trials to which he had been exposed
had been varied.
They had not assumed one form only, but
many.
Yet in every case, he who sent the
trial had also graciously ordained a way of
escape.
David could not put his finger upon any
entry in his diary and say of it,
Here is evidence that God will forsake me.
And looking back through his whole life from
the time when he kept his father's sheep
and slew the lion and the bear, onward
to the day when he challenged the Philistine,
and upward to this moment when he had
just escaped from his bloodthirsty pursuer, he could
not find a solitary fact which would be
proof that God had changed his mind and
would leave his anointed to fall into the
hand of his cruel enemy.
Now, Mark, when you and I doubt God's
word, there is this to be said of
it.
We mistrust it without a cause.
I bear my willing testimony that I have
no reason to doubt my Lord, nor even
the shadow of a reason.
And I think that you who were in
Christ many a year before I knew him
can say that since you have trusted in
him, you have never once had any reason
to suspect his faithfulness or to imagine that
he would cast you away.
Brethren, we condemn not a man without evidence.
Shall we condemn our loving Lord without evidence?
I challenge heaven and earth and hell this
morning to bring any proof that God is
untrue.
From the depths of hell I call the
fiends, and from this earth I call the
tried and afflicted believers.
And to heaven I appeal and challenge the
long experience of the blood-washed host.
And there is not to be found in
the three realms a single one who can
bear evidence of a fact which should disprove
the goodness of God or weaken his claim
to be trusted by his servants.
Now let our unbelief be scouted.
Let our sense of justice expel it at
once.
Let us be just to God as well
as to man, and if never yet had
he failed any one of his people or
broken a solitary promise, far be it from
us to doubt or to be unbelieving.
Thus far we prove that promised good which
Jesus ratified with blood.
Still he is gracious, wise, and just, and
still in him let Israel trust.
But again, what David said in his heart
was not only without evidence, but it was
contrary to evidence.
What reason had he to believe that God
would leave him?
Rather, how many evidence had he to conclude
that the Lord neither could nor would leave
him?
Thy servant slew both the lion and the
bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as
one of them.
That was good reasoning.
Why not reason like that now, David?
Why not say, Thy servant slew the Philistine.
Thy servant escaped from the javelin of Saul
when the mad monarch would have pinned him
to the wall.
Thy servant escaped from all the devices of
Doeg.
Thy servant escaped when Saul pursued him in
the tracks of the wild goats and in
the caves of En Gedi.
Thy servant escaped out of the power of
Achish, the Philistine.
And, lo, this Saul who seeks my head
out of his hand shall I escape also.
That would have been a rational conclusion, a
proper way of dealing with evidence.
But to say after such love and kindness
passed, he will let me sink at last,
was to draw a lying conclusion and to
bring in a verdict directly contrary to the
evidence.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, your case is
similar.
At least mine is.
O Lord God, thou hast not left us
at any time.
We have had dark nights, but the star
of love has shone forth amid the blackness.
We have had our cloudy days, but our
sun has never set until we have had
glimpses of sunlight from heaven.
We have gone through many trials, but never
to our detriment, always to our advantage.
And the conclusion from our past experience at
least, I can speak of my own positively,
is that he who hath been with us
in six troubles will not forsake us in
the seventh.
He hath said, I will never, never leave
thee.
I will never, never, never forsake thee.
Do not think I repeat these nevers too
often.
I repeat the text just as I find
it in the Greek.
What we have known of our faithful God
goes to show that he will keep us
to the end, and even to the last
he will be our helper.
Go not then contrary to evidence.
What should we say of a jury who,
after having heard a case in which the
verdict should evidently have been not guilty, should
nevertheless say guilty?
Let the earth ring with the cry of
indignation.
A man has been condemned not only unjustly,
but in the very teeth of evidence which
proved his innocence.
O heaven and earth, ring ye with the
universal indignation of honest men.
We should think God untrue when all the
evidence of our past lives goes to prove
that he is true and faithful to his
word.
Our savior's word abideth sure.
His record is on high.
He who has made our souls secure was
never known to lie.
Munitions of stupendous rock our dwelling place shall
be.
There shall our souls, without a shock, the
wreck of nature see.
Thirdly, this exclamation of David was contrary to
God's promises.
Samuel had poured the anointing oil on David's
head, God's earnest and promise that David should
be king.
Let David die by the hand of Saul.
How can the promise be fulfilled?
Many times had God assured his servant David
that he had chosen the son of Jesse
to be the leader of his people.
Let him die.
And how can that be true?
It was therefore clean, contrary to the promise
of God that David should fall by his
enemy's hand.
Christian, it is contrary to every promise of
this precious book that thou should become the
victim of the lion of hell.
How then could he be true who has
said, can a woman forget her sucking child
that she should not have compassion on the
son of her womb?
Yea, they may forget, yet I will never
forget thee.
What were the value of that promise?
The mountains shall depart and the hills be
removed, but my kindness shall not depart from
thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace
be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy
on thee.
Where were the truth of Christ's words?
I give unto my sheep eternal life, and
they shall never perish, neither shall any man
pluck them out of my hand.
My Father which gave them me is greater
than all, and no man is able to
pluck them out of my Father's hand.
Where were the doctrines of grace?
They would be proved to be a lie
if one child of God perish.
Where were the veracity of God, His honor,
His power, His grace, His covenant, His oath,
if any of those for whom Christ has
died, who would put their trust in Him,
should nevertheless be cast away?
O, by this precious book which thou believest
to be true, unless thou art prepared to
cast it away as a vile thing of
falsehood, distrust not thy Lord, but rather say,
The gospel bears my spirit up, a faithful
and changing God lays the foundation for my
hope in oaths and promises and blood.
But further, this wicked exclamation of David was
contrary to what he himself had often said.
Here I convict myself.
I remember on one occasion, to my shame,
being sad and doubtful of heart, and a
kind friend took out a paper and read
to me a short extract from a discourse
upon faith.
I very soon detected the author of the
extract.
My friend was reading to me from one
of my own sermons.
Without saying a word, he just left it
to my conscience, for he had convicted me
of committing the very fault against which I
had so earnestly declaimed.
Often might you, brethren, be found out in
the same inconsistency.
O, you have said, I could trust him,
though the fig tree did not blossom, and
though there were no flocks in the field,
and no herd in the stall.
Ah, ye have condemned the unbelief of other
people, but when it touched you, you have
trembled, and when you have come to run
with the horsemen, they have wearied you, and
in the swellings of Jordan you have been
troubled.
So was it with David.
What strong words he had often said when
he addressed others.
He said of Saul, His time shall come
to die.
I will not stretch out my hand and
touch the Lord's anointed.
He felt sure that Saul's doom was signed
and sealed, and yet in the hour of
his unbelief he says, I shall yet one
day fall.
What a strange contradiction was that.
What a mercy it is that God changeth
not, for we are changing two or three
times a day.
But our own utterances, our own convictions aforetime,
are clean contrary to the idea that he
can ever leave us or forsake us.
I appeal as did that ancient worthy who
appealed from Philip drunk to Philip sober.
I appeal from Philip unbelieving to Philip in
a proper state of mind.
I bring up before you your own thoughts,
your own emotions, your own joyous shouts of
song, your own songs of victory, and I
ask you to make these consistent with your
present doubts.
Though a host should encamp against me, my
heart shall not fear.
Though war should rise against me, in this
will I be confident.
That is David.
I shall one day perish by the hand
of Saul.
That is David too.
I will love thee, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock and my fortress
and my deliverer, my God, my strength in
whom I will trust, my buckler and the
horn of my salvation in my high tower.
I will call upon the Lord who is
worthy to be praised.
So shall I be saved from mine enemies.
That is David.
I shall one day fall by the hand
of Saul.
That is David again.
Do not fetch up any other evidence.
Let the man convict himself.
His unbelief is absurd from his own showing.
So with you and with me, brethren, we
are great fools when we doubt God, and
that is saying the best of it.
What the worst of it is, God only
knows.
O Lord, from this great sin do thou
deliver us.
Yet once more, this exclamation of David was
contrary to the facts.
I mean, not merely contrary to the facts
that were in evidence, but contrary to the
facts that were transpiring at that very moment.
Where was Saul?
Saul was seeking to a miserable witch of
Endor to raise Samuel from the dead.
The spears of the Philistines were being sharpened
for the battle, and the arrows were being
made ready upon the string that should reach
the heart of the king of Israel.
And yet here is David just within a
short period of attaining to the kingdom and
of seeing Saul slain, saying, I shall one
day fall by the hand of Saul.
Oh, if he could have read the mysteries,
if he could have understood what the right
hand of God was doing and what the
eternal one designed for him, he would never
have whined thus his unbelief.
And so with you and with me.
Ah, but you say, it is not so
with me this morning.
I am brought very low.
Yes, and God is getting ready to bring
you up very high.
Ah, but my trouble is a very dreadful
one.
Yes, and his bare arm is a very
potent one, and he knows how to deliver
his children.
Yes, but I do not see.
No, and you do not need to see.
But still it is being done.
God's purposes are ripening.
Now do not misjudge them.
Do not antedate the time of your deliverance,
but patiently wait and quietly hope.
I know that some of us, when we
have escaped from our trials, have said, well,
if I had known it had been so,
I would not have been so troubled about
it.
Just so.
And now I pray you, though you do
not know it yet, believe it and do
not run contrary to the fact in doubting
God.
You are very poor, are you?
But still you take care of your children.
What would you say to your child if
he were sitting down at the table crying?
What does thou cry for, child?
Because there is no food for me.
Why, silly child, say you?
I was just cutting a slice from the
loaf.
Do not cry till you are sure there
is no food.
The Lord says to us often, what does
thou cry for, silly child?
This is what I was doing behind the
mysteries of my providence, getting ready some sweet
and precious mercy for thee.
The clouds, ye so much dread, are big
with mercies and shall break with blessings on
your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but
trust him for his grace.
Behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling
face.
But I must now, while my strength shall
hold out, proceed to the second part of
the discourse, namely, how was it that David
came to think thus of his God?
First answer I give is, because he was
a man.
The best of men are men at the
best.
And man at the best is such a
creature that well might David himself say, Lord,
what is man?
If we always performed feats of faith, onlookers
might imagine that we were demigods, for in
truth I say that the feats which a
man of faith can do are only surpassed
by the doings of the Almighty One Himself.
Next to omnipotence is faith.
Nay, not next to it, in some respects,
for faith can do all that omnipotence can
when God maketh it strong.
What were the hosts of the Philistines to
Samson?
Heaps upon heaps with the jawbone of an
ass have I slain a thousand men.
And what were the pillars of the temple
to him?
He bowed himself with all his strength and
pulled down the goodly palace of the Philistines
upon the princes and upon the assembled multitudes.
Faith can do everything, but if faith never
gave place to unbelief, we might be tempted
to lift up the believer into a demigod
and think him something more than mortal.
That we might see that a man full
of faith is still a man, that we
might glory in infirmities, since by them the
power of God is the more clearly proved.
Therefore God was pleased to let the feebleness
of man grievously show itself.
Ah, it was not David who achieved these
former victories, but God's grace in David.
And now, when that is removed for a
moment, see what Israel's champion becomes.
But again you must consider that David had
been exposed to a very long trial.
Not for one week, but for month after
month he had been hunted like a partridge
upon the mountains.
Now a man could bear one trial, but
a perpetuity of tribulation is very hard to
bear.
To lay one's head down upon the block
seems to me to be comparatively easy, but
to be strapped as were some of the
martyrs to a stake and be roasted at
a slow fire hour after hour, while the
limbs wither in the heat, must have been
awful.
The martyrdom of an hour is sudden glory,
but the martyrdom of a life, there needs
something more than human to endure this.
To be crucified, to have the hands and
feet fast, but the vital parts intact, to
have all the pangs of death with all
the strength of life.
Now such was David's trial.
Always safe, but always harassed.
Always secure through God, but always hunted about
by his foe.
No place could give him any ease.
If he went in tequila, then the citizens
would deliver him up.
If he went into the wood of Zipf,
then the Zipftees betrayed him.
If he went even to the priest of
God, there was that dog of Doeg to
go to Saul and accuse the priest.
Even in En Gedi or in Ajolem, he
was not secure.
Secure, I grant you, in God, but always
persecuted by his foe.
Now this was enough to make the wise
man mad and to make the faithful man
doubt.
Do not judge too hardly of David.
At least judge just as hardly of yourselves.
I think that if we also were tempted,
we should fall as he did.
Then again, you must remember, David had passed
through some strong excitements of mind.
Just a day or so before, he had
gone forth with Abishai in the moonlight to
the field where Saul and his host lay
sleeping.
They passed the outer circle where the common
soldiers lay, and quietly and stealthily the two
heroes passed without awaking any.
They came at last to the spot where
the captains of the hundred slept, and they
trod over their slumbering bodies without arousing them.
They reached the spot where Saul lay, with
his spear stuck in the earth at his
bolster and his crews of water standing that
he might refresh himself as he awoke in
the night.
And Abishai said, The Lord hath delivered him
into thy hand.
Let me smite him.
I will smite him but this once.
David holds back Abishai's hand.
He will not permit it, but he says,
As the Lord liveth, the Lord shall smite
him, or his day shall come to die,
or he shall descend into battle and perish.
The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth
mine hand against the Lord's anointed.
So he escaped from this temptation, as he
had aforetime, when he only cut off the
skirt of Saul's robe instead of smiting him
as he might have done in caves of
En-Gedi.
Now, brethren, a man may do these great
things helped by God, but do any of
you know that it is a sort of
natural law with us that after a strong
excitement there is a reaction?
I will give you a picture.
There is Elijah yonder.
He has built an altar unto the Lord
his God.
The priests of Baal have built another.
Elijah appeals to God.
He that answereth by fire, let him be
God.
The priests of Baal supplicate their God.
He answers not.
They cut themselves with lancets and with knives.
Their dumb idol could not affirm his own
deity.
Elijah mocks them.
Cry aloud, said he, for he is a
God.
Peradventure he sleepeth and needeth to be awakened.
So in grim sarcasm he stirs up the
wrath of the priests of Baal.
No answer comes.
Now it is Elijah's turn.
He bows the knee and lifts up his
hands to heaven.
The flame distends.
Be astonished, ye unbelievers.
It licks up even the water in the
trenches, and the twelve consecrated stones are themselves
consumed and are carried in smoke to heaven,
even as the flame of the burnt offering.
Take the prophets of Baal.
Let not one escape, cries the stern Elias.
He grasps one of them and drags him
down the hill, and the willing people follow,
dragging by the hair of their heads the
false priests down to the brook.
And then, stripping to his sleeves, he dyes
himself with the gore blood of these, the
haters of God and the betrayers of his
people, till the brook runs red with the
smoking blood of Baal's priests.
Now what will happen after that?
When Elijah gets away from all this heroic
daring, because he is a man, there will
be a reaction.
And lo, he is afraid of Jezebel, who
hunted for his life.
He cries, Let me die.
I am no better than my fathers.
And he hides himself till God says, What
dost thou hear, Elijah?
Now if Elijah, the most iron saint of
ancient times, felt the result of human weakness,
much more might we expect it of David.
So that again I say, we are not
to judge him too severely, unless we feel
prepared with the same measure that we meet
to him to meet out to ourselves also.
But there was another reason.
For we are not to exculpate David.
He sinned.
And that not merely through infirmity, but through
evil of heart.
It seems to us that David had restrained
prayer.
In every other action of David, you find
some hint that he had asked counsel of
the Lord.
He says to Abiathar, Bring hither the ephod.
And he enters upon no enterprise without first
asking of the Urim and Thummim what was
God's mind.
But this time, what did he talk with?
Why, with the most deceitful thing that he
could have found, with his own heart.
For the heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked.
I do not find that he mentioned it
to God's priest.
He did not make it a matter of
prayer.
He could not venture to pray when he
undertook it himself.
No, he acted on his own head.
And a man will soon find that that
head is full of addled brains that can
judge without appealing to God.
Having restrained prayer, he did the foolish act.
He forgot his God.
He looked only at his enemy.
And it was no wonder that when he
saw the force and strength of the cruel
monarch and the pertinacity of his persecution, he
said, I shall one day fall before him.
Brothers and sisters, would you wish to hatch
the egg of unbelief till it turns into
a serpent?
Restrain prayer.
Would you see evils magnified and mercies diminished?
Would you find your tribulations increased sevenfold and
your faith diminished in proportion?
Restrain prayer.
I say unto thee this day, if thou
wilt neglect thy closet, all the troubles thou
hast ever had shall be as nothing compared
with what will yet come upon thee.
The little finger of thy future doubts shall
be thicker than the loins of thy present
mental anguish.
Thou shalt know what man can do when
he leaves his God.
And thou shalt find out in the bitterness
of thy soul what an evil thing it
is to leave the living fountain and hew
out to thyself a broken cistern which can
hold no water.
If thus I think as well as may
be, open up the causes of David's unbelief.
Some of them will hit your case, my
brother.
My sister, you may find some portion here.
Well, if you find out the cause, remember
that the remedy lies somewhere near it.
If a forgotten closet will make thee weep,
a frequented closet will make thee smile.
If the excitement of the light has been
followed by depression, that excitement itself, if thou
seekest it again, will be the best cure
till thy mind, made strong to endure these
blessed excitements, shall be sweetly strengthened for the
bliss of heaven.
And on earth thou shalt be capable of
enjoying the heaven which some of the saints
have known before they crossed the stream of
death.
But I must hasten on, for my failing
voice tells me I must soon conclude.
But not until we have discharged briefly the
third point, which were the ill effects of
David's unbelief.
It strikes me that this was one of
the sins to which David referred when he
asked God to forgive the sins of his
youth and his former transgressions.
We have looked so often at his sin
with Bathsheba that we have been apt to
think he had no other faults.
Whereas one must say it, the life of
David for some few months after this exclamation
was sad.
And one might wish it could have been
blotted out.
It was sad, sad indeed.
But we will talk of these matters in
detail, though briefly.
What did his unbelief make him do first?
It made him do a foolish thing, the
same foolish thing which he had rued once
before.
Now, we say a burnt child always dreads
the fire.
But David had been burnt, and yet in
his unbelief, he puts his hand into the
same fire again.
He went once to Achish, king of Gath,
and the Philistines said, this is that David
of whom they said Saul has slain his
thousands and David his ten thousands.
And David was greatly afraid and feigned himself
mad in their hands and scrabbled on the
doors of the gate and let his spittle
fall down upon his beard, which to the
eastern was the surest sign of his being
mad if he despised his beard.
And they drove him away for Achish said,
wherefore then have you brought him to me?
Have I need of madmen that ye have
brought this fellow to play the madman in
my presence?
Shall this fellow come into my house?
Now he goes to the same Achish again.
Yes, and mark ye, my brethren, although you
and I know the bitterness of sin, yet
if we are left to our own unbelief,
we shall fall into the same sin again.
I know we have said no, never.
I know so much by experience what an
awful thing this is.
Your experience is not worth a rush to
you apart from the continual restraints of grace.
If your faith fail, everything else goes down
with it.
And you, you hoary-headed professor, will be
as big a fool as a very boy
if God lets you alone.
In fact, I must say it, reverencing as
I do the hoary head, that of all
fools in the world, old fools are the
worst.
I have seen more falls among aged Christians
than among any other sort till one has
been apt to pray, Lord, save those who
are in the slippery paths of old age.
I have often said there is no scriptural
example of a young man falling into any
gross great sin.
All the scriptural examples are quite the other
way.
And I think I might say, as the
pastor of this church, that the most sorrowful
cases of excommunication we have ever had have
been about men who had some grey hair
on their heads or were fathers of families
far oftener than about the young.
The reason being, I think, this, that often
the old saint begins to rely on his
past experience, and if he does so, it
is all over with him.
For we are just as much fools after
seventy years spiritual education as we were when
we were first entered into the school if
the Lord leave us to ourselves.
We do grow.
We do learn the Lord being with us.
But if we are left, we are no
stronger after we have been established in the
faith than we were before.
I say again, if we were left at
any moment, no matter who we may be,
sin would soon be our pursuit and iniquity,
our companion.
We must offer the same prayer.
Hold me up and I shall be safe
to the very end of the chapter, and
we must finish our lives just as David
finished the hundred and nineteen song with that
confession.
I have gone astray like a lost sheep.
Seek thy servant, for I do not forget
thy commandments.
But next.
For the beginning of sin is like the
letting out of water, and we go from
bad to worse.
He went over to the Lord's enemies.
Would you have believed it?
He that killed Goliath sought a refuge in
Goliath's land.
He who smote the Philistines trusts in the
Philistines.
Name more.
He who was Israel's champion becomes the chamberlain
to a quiche for a quiche said.
Therefore, will I make the keeper of my
head forever?
And David became thus the captain of the
bodyguard of the king of Philistia and helped
to preserve the life of one who was
the enemy of God's Israel.
If we doubt God, we shall soon be
numbered among God's foes.
Inconsistency will win us over into the ranks
of his enemies, and they will be saying,
What do these Hebrews hear?
And the question will be passed round from
man to man.
Is not this David, of whom they said
Saul has slain his thousands, but David his
ten thousands?
What does David hear?
Brother, if pride goes before destruction and a
haughty spirit before a fall, I may without
resting scripture say unbelief goeth before destruction and
a doubting spirit before a fall, for so
it is.
The joy of the Lord is your strength.
The just shall live by faith, but if
any man turned back, my soul shall have
no pleasure in him.
The two sentences put together as if the
failure of our faith would surely lead to
a turning back to sin.
Have patience with me while I notice once
again that not only thus did David become
numbered with God's enemies, but that he actually
went into open sin.
You will read this chapter in the next
at your leisure, and you will perhaps have
leisure this afternoon.
It will keep you from talking about ministers
and about a great many other things that
are just as well let alone on Sunday
afternoons, for that is the general gossip of
Sunday afternoon.
Did you ever hear Mr. So-and-so
and Mr. So-and-so?
Ministers being thought a subject useful for Sundays,
that is to say the pulling of them
to pieces.
However, if instead of that you will read
those chapters, you will be profited.
David did two very evil things.
He acted the part of a liar and
deceiver.
Hard words you will say to use of
David, but they are not too harsh.
He went out and slew the Gesherites and
sundry other tribes, and this he did often.
And when he came back, Akish asked him
where he had been, and he said he
had been to the south of Judah.
That is to say, he made Akish believe
that his incursions were made against his own
people instead of being made against the allies
of Philistia.
This he kept up for a long time,
and then as one sin never goes without
a companion, for the devil's hounds always hunt
in couples, he was guilty of bloodshed.
For into whatsoever town he went, he put
all the inhabitants to death.
He spared neither man, nor woman, nor child,
lest they should tell the king of Philistia
where he had been.
So that one sin led him on to
another, and this is a very sorrowful part
of David's life.
He that believes God and acts in faith,
acts with dignity, and other men will stoop
before him and pay him reverence.
But he who disbelieves his God and begins
to act in his own carnal wisdom will
soon be this, and that, and the other,
and the enemy will say, Aha!
Aha!
So would we have it.
For the godly will say, How are the
mighty fallen?
How hath the strong man been given up
unto his adversary?
Oh, that God the Holy Spirit may preserve
our faith in God our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ, that so we may be
preserved without spot until the day of his
appearing.
Furthermore, not only was David guilty of all
this, but he was on the verge of
being guilty of still worse sin, of overt
acts of warfare against the Lord's people.
For David having become the friend of Achish,
when Achish went to battle against Israel, he
said to him, Know thou assuredly that thou
shalt go out with me to battle thou
and thy men.
And David professed his willingness to go.
We believe it was only a feigned willingness,
but then, you see, we convict him again
of falsehood.
The day comes when a decisive battle is
to be fought, and the lords of the
Philistines go on before Achish.
Where is David?
Oh, David is with King Achish in the
rearguard, for the king had made him captain
of his lifeguard.
He was thus raised to a very high
position, the companion of Achish at his right
hand, the commander of the men who were
to protect the king in case of danger.
Now there is David, and he is going
up against his own people to fight against
his own king, to do mischief against God's
own chosen land.
It is true that God interposed and prevented
it, but this was no credit to David.
For, you know, brethren, we are guilty of
a sin, even if we do not commit
it, if we are willing to commit it.
And so it was in this case.
Nay, we are sorry to have to say
it, even when the lords of the Philistines
interposed and said, Make this fellow return, that
he may go again to his place which
thou hast appointed him, and let him not
go down with us to battle, lest in
the battle he be an adversary to us.
And David said unto Achish, But what have
I done?
And what hast thou found in thy servants
so long as I have been with thee
unto this day, that I may not go
fight against the enemies of my lord the
king, still professing a kind of unwillingness to
depart, while God knows he was glad enough
to get off so evil an errand?
What a mercy it is we have some
enemies, for God makes our enemies often our
best friends.
I forget who it is, but I think
it is old Bishop Hall in his meditations
who says, When the lord's people have a
deadly cancer, there are many of their friends
who are too dainty to let the lancet
in, but their foes will do it out
of spite, and then they get cured thereby.
For often doth the lord let our enemies
pierce us in some sore which would have
gathered and destroyed us, if it had not
been that their cruel wound becomes life to
us from the dead.
So these lords of the Philistines were David's
best friends.
To conclude, the last effect of David's sin,
and here it blessedly came to close, was
this.
It brought him into great trial.
Let me tell you the story briefly, and
I have done.
While David was away with King Achish, the
Amalekites invaded the south and attacked Ziklag, which
was David's town.
For some reason or other, they did not
put to death any of the inhabitants, but
they took away the whole of the men,
the few who were left, the women and
children, all their household goods and stuff and
treasures.
They took away all.
When David came back to Ziklag, there were
the bare walls and empty houses, and Ahinoam
and Abigail, his two wives, were gone.
And all the mighty men who were with
him had lost their wives and little ones.
And as soon as they saw it, they
lifted up their voice and wept.
It was not that they had lost their
gold and silver, but they had lost everything.
That exiled band had lost their own flesh
and blood, the partners of their lives.
Then they mutinied against their captain and they
said, let us stone David.
Here is David, a penniless beggar, a leader
deserted by his own men, suspected by them
probably of having traitorously given up the town
to the foe.
And then it is written, and oh, how
blessed is that line, and David encouraged himself
in the Lord his God.
Now David is right.
Now he has come back to his proper
anchorage.
Blessed afflictions did drive him back to where
he ought to have been all the time.
Sin and smart go together.
The child of God cannot sin with impunity.
Other men may.
Ye that fear not, God may go and
sin as ye like and often meet with
very little trouble in this world as the
consequence of it.
But a child of God cannot do that.
You only have I known of all the
nations of the earth.
Therefore will I punish you for your iniquities.
And so David had the rod more sharply
than he had ever had it before, because
he had doubted his God.
Ah, and what are we?
Many of us believe in Christ, but what
are we if God should leave us?
Let us heartily join in the prayer, Lord,
increase our faith, hold us up, and we
shall be safe.
As for you who have no faith in
Christ, this last word, if temporary unbelief is
so dreadful, what must habitual unbelief be?
He that believeth not shall be damned.
He that believeth not is condemned already, because
he believeth not.
God helped the unbeliever to trust Jesus.
It is life to thee.
It will be life to thee in this
world and in the world to come.
Trust him with thy soul, and he will
never forsake thee.
But to the end, he will keep thee.
And in the end, he will bless thee.
And without end, he will glorify thee to
be with himself forever.
May the Lord bless the words we have
uttered and make us faithful for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Tis Jesus speaks, the sinner's friend, dejected saint
today.
Lift up thy head, nor downward bend, but
sing thy fears away.
Why dost thou like the turtle grieve?
Cast all thy cares on me.
My grace sufficient is, believe, in every state
for thee.
To guard thee from ten thousand ills, and
make thy standing sure, sufficient are my shalls
and wills that must and shall endure.
At every time, in every place, in safeguard
thou shalt be, and find my everlasting grace
sufficient still for thee.
Jesus, assist us to believe, for slow of
heart are we, grace from thy fullness to
receive, and thus to honor thee.