@ Tamworth Community Presbyterian Church 1/5/16
We have a saying “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” or we keep our friends close and our enemies closer. Like today as we look at the life of David we are reminded that there are times we find ourselves in the company of others as David finds himself in Ziklag, Philstine territory, and here in a foreign land we are brought to see God dominate our view in the hard testing times that grow us in humility and grace. As God’s children we are tested as we grow to see that there is no ordinary crown for God’s one and only Son.
So lets remind ourselves where we are from the outset we saw David anointed by Samuel to be the successor to Saul as King over Israel. At the time David was anointed he was Jesse’s forgotten youngest son left looking after the sheep while the rest of the family went to the feast the Prophet Samuel put on. It is from that moment on we get to see David as the future King in training he would wait a further 15 years before this came about and we know he’s brought into Saul’s service to play music to sooth Saul when he is overcome with murderous rage. It is David’s music that brings relief from Saul’s terror and derangement as God uses the replacement anointed king from keeping the rejected king from falling apart.
It is David who also goes out to fight the battles that Israel’s King should have fought. It is David who takes on Goliath the Philistine champion, with his one stone combat, and the words ringing in the ears of those who were present on the battle field that day as we find in1 Samuel 17:45
45 David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.
It is here we get to see the rise and rise of David and the place of that friendship he has with Jonathan; that is until David can’t avoid the murderous intent Saul has to remove what he sees as his rival for the throne. David then decides to go on the run where in Nob he seeks sanctuary and gains food and Goliath’s sword. It is after this he then flees for the wilderness where David attracts an army of men. This army is made up of men who were distressed, or in debt, or discontented. An army comprised of those who couldn’t make it in regular society, take to David, the rejects, losers, and dropouts – David’s merry men who go into the wilderness wandering with him and hide with him in the caves. The very men who encourage David to kill Saul when in one cave they are hiding out in Saul happens to also come to the same place to relieve himself.
David also learns the lesson of the wilderness testing with Nabal the fool who for all of the protection David & his men gave and treats David as a common desert thief. The temptation here is if David carried out this murder of Nabal is being tempted to become another Saul. That is Saul sought to permanently remove anyone who threatened his status or role. It here we begin to see this is a story of preventative providence through Abigail; of God’s care of David to restrain him from the course of action he sets out with his troops to carry out. Whereas we might have been thinking the problem was with Nabal in God’s eyes the test was really being put to David. So in all it’s forms David has faced the wilderness of Ziph, Maon, of En-gedi, Paran, these are lands of the south of Israel filled with gullies and vultures
Here now we find David still on the run still out in the wilderness with his band of social misfits, driven to the fringes of his nation as a fugitive as we read in 1 Samuel 27:1-2
1 But David thought to himself, “One of these days I will be destroyed by the hand of Saul. The best thing I can do is to escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will give up searching for me anywhere in Israel, and I will slip out of his hand.” 2 So David and the six hundred men with him left and went over to Achish son of Maok king of Gath.
David and his men have been hunted, tracked and attacked by Saul. With his daring escapes and thrilling escapades which all take their toll. So it is time to take the pressure off being pursued and go into exile, signing himself and his 600 men out as a mercenary band in the employ of King Achish of Gath. The same King Achish, David feigned madness in 1 Samuel 21:10-15 to escape being killed by. As Gath the home tribe of Goliath, who David had developed a reputation for as the giant slayer. I think it says something to us that David will spend 16 months as an ally of Philistines with Israel’s most natural enemy. I wonder if as David reflected on this time of being on the run, and his experience of the wilderness shaped him as wrote these words of Psalm 55:6-8
6 I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. 7 I would flee far away and stay in the desert; 8 I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm.”
King Achish could use a mercenary force as he takes them on in1 Samuel 27:3-4
3 David and his men settled in Gath with Achish. Each man had his family with him, and David had his two wives: Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail of Carmel, the widow of Nabal. 4 When Saul was told that David had fled to Gath, he no longer searched for him. 5 Then David said to Achish, “If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be assigned to me in one of the country towns, that I may live there. Why should your servant live in the royal city with you?”
David engages Achish with the pretense of stepping out from being under bearing the costs of David’s army living with Achish in Gath he manages to get their lodgings in the town of Ziklag. It is here David can go about doing whatever he does being out from under constant surveillance. So that David and his men turn from being desert sheriffs, to desert raiders who raided desert raiders, and we’re told in verses 8,9 he would attack bands of Geshurites, Girzites, and Amalekites. He would then carry off their livestock and goods and bring the spoils to Achish, telling King Achisch a bold faced lie that the plunder had instead come from attacks he’d made on Judah or the clans associated with Judah. It led Achish to boast in verse 12.
12 Achish trusted David and said to himself, “He has become so obnoxious to his people, the Israelites, that he will be my servant for life.”
In David’s life we keep on seeing how God keeps on preparing him for his coming time as King. It is here we see how God is working out here something for his own glory through something that is filled with shame and fear. We keep on being reminded that “God is perfectly capable of working out his purposes in our lives even when we can’t lift a finger to help. Better yet, God is faithfully working out our salvation even when every time we lift a finger it seems to contribute to the wrong side.”[1] In applying God;'s care we see not only that he keeps on forming David spiritually, it is so often the case we are unaware of God working on our lives. It is in the ordinary stuff of life doesn’t feel like it is part of our spiritual formation before God, the things we do in carrying out our family life or our work, or what we do in the in between times; and it is right here is where we find God pointing us to courageously live being shaped by Jesus seeking the company of God’s people. This is just like where Paul points to the more realistic look at ourselves as a church 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 (The Message)
26 Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. 27 Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, 28 chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? 29 That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. 30 Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. 31 That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
So what I am seeing is that my growth as a follower of Jesus relies on you, and us on each other. This is not because of anything superior in me, it is far from it. I am more aware of my sinful heart the more I seek to live for Jesus. Our growth is a community experience. Just as we might not choose one another naturally, one thing binds us all together each one redeemed who trust in Jesus are bought at a price by Christ, so that not one of us perfect, not one of us measures up, in fact all of us are inconsistent performers at life. It is through us and all our messiness that God is proclaiming a kingdom to come, a kingdom where we will spend eternity together; just as David along with his rag tag mob of merry men were all being taught lessons of faith in and through the testing times of the wilderness wanderings
So in landing this passage in our lives today how will we get a better grip on grace or see the hand of God to lift up our heads when we are downcast; or how will we see God point our feet his way, even when we have found ourselves wandering off, or caught out by trying to find someone or something other than God to take away the ache
David is our reminder of God’s mercy that he is working out his plans in us. It isn’t fast, it isn’t always with light shattering revelations, and yet God is always at work to make us more and more like his Son whom he loves so that we will one day stand before his throne to hear the words enter into my kingdom and find rest. The question is with the thing that most troubles you today, how will you seek God’s strength who will you encourage to keep on hanging onto Jesus as enough
Let’s pray…
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