Show Notes
1 Samuel 29
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you.
[00:00:04] We thank you that you have given to us your word, that you have revealed yourself to us. You've shown yourself to us in a way that we can understand and know that we can worship you, follow you, know your will that we can uphold your majesty and glorify your name.
[00:00:23] We ask that you would bless us as we read another portion of your word this morning.
[00:00:29] We ask that you would help us to understand it, to know what it means and how it applies to our lives.
[00:00:35] We ask, Lord, that you would help us to hear the voice of our Savior in your word. That we would read the context rather we'd read the passage these various passages of the Bible not only in their near context, but in the context of your whole word, that we might see the Lord Jesus, know him, believe him and follow him, our great king, the greatest king who has ever come, and our eternal King, the greatest king who will ever be our alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.
[00:01:10] Lord, it is to him that we give all glory and honor and power and praise. We ask that your spirit would be at work in us this morning that we might glorify you with. We pray this all in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:28] Well, please remain standing as you're able, and let's turn to First Samuel, Chapter 29, and we're continuing through this portion of God's Word.
[00:01:47] I mismatched the title of this of another sermon to come with this text, so you can ignore that or think of it as a preview or however you want to do that.
[00:02:00] Today we're thinking about what happened as David was called to go out to war with the Philistines. So let's hear God's word this morning. First Samuel 29.
[00:02:12] Now the Philistines had gathered all their forces at Aphek. The Israelites were encamped by the spring, that is, in Jezreel, as the lords of the Philistines were passing on by hundreds and by thousands, and David and his men were passing on in the rear with Achish? The commander of the Philistines said, what are these Hebrews doing here?
[00:02:33] And Achish said to the commanders of the Philistines, is this not David, the servant of Saul, king of Israel, who has been with me now for days and years, and since he deserted to me, I have found no fault in him to this day.
[00:02:48] But the commander of the Philistines were angry with him, and the commanders of the Philistines said to him, send the man back, that he may return to the place which you have assigned him. He shall not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he become an adversary to us. For how could this fellow reconcile himself to his lord? Would it not be with the heads of the men? Here is not this David of whom they sang to one another in dances? Saul has struck down his thousands and David his ten thousands.
[00:03:21] Then Achish called David and said to him, as the Lord lives, you have been honest, and it seems to me right that you should march out and in with me in the campaign.
[00:03:33] For I found nothing wrong in you from the day of your coming to me to this day. Nevertheless, the lords do not approve of you.
[00:03:42] So go back now and go peaceably, that you may not displease the lords of the Philistines.
[00:03:47] And David said to Achish, but what have I done? And what have you found in your servant from the day I entered into your service until now, that I may not go and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?
[00:03:59] And Achish answered David and said, I know that you are as blameless at my sight as an angel of God. And nevertheless the commanders of the Philistines have said, he shall not go up with us to battle.
[00:04:13] Now then, rise early in the morning with the servants of the Lord, or, sorry, with the servants of your Lord who came with you, and start early in the morning and depart as soon as you have light.
[00:04:24] So David set out with his men early in the morning to return to the land of the Philistines. But the Philistines went up to Jezreel.
[00:04:32] May God bless his word to us. Please be seated.
[00:04:53] Well, I think we could see something in this passage that is very relatable.
[00:05:00] And it's this.
[00:05:01] Sometimes we make decisions in our lives, not good decisions, which get us kind of into bad messes, complicated situations, where all of a sudden we find ourselves feeling trapped.
[00:05:14] We don't know where to go, we're not sure what the right move is next. And it feels like pretty much anything we do is a bad move, a wrong move. In one way or another, David has gotten himself into this situation. And it's worth taking a moment to remind ourselves of what that is, what's going on in this chapter, and what we can learn from it, how we can think about our own situations, our own lives, when they're in crisis or when we're feeling trapped and we don't know what to do. There's things here that God reveals not so much about David's great decision making and choices about, but about the Lord. Himself about who he is and how we ought to think about him in our lives.
[00:05:59] So what's happening here?
[00:06:01] Well, first of all, if you were listening carefully, you noticed several peculiar things.
[00:06:06] First of all, David, the king of Israel, is with the Philistines, and he's not fighting them.
[00:06:12] Right? He's not fighting them. Why is he not fighting them? Well, he's fighting them, but he's not fighting them because he's living with them.
[00:06:19] He's gone to Achish, one of these lords. There's five of them who have this kind of federation of kingdoms.
[00:06:28] He goes to this one lord, Achish, who lives and is king of Gath, the country which Goliath was from, the country which resulted in this song and other battles after that. Saul has struck down his thousands, David, his ten thousands.
[00:06:46] That's where David's living.
[00:06:48] He's living very much in enemy territory. And he's not hiding, he's not running, he's not fighting. He's living.
[00:06:56] Now, Achish exaggerates a little bit when the lords of the Philistines are talking to him and he says, he's been with me for years and days. Well, we were told recently it was a little over a year, I think a year and four months is what it said in the last chapter.
[00:07:12] So Achish is really trying to beef up his case with the other lords. But here's David. He's been living there for a while, we can say a little over a year.
[00:07:23] He's living there because he's trying to escape the danger that is named Saul.
[00:07:29] Saul, the current king of Israel, has been hunting him, pursuing him doggedly over and over and over again. And. And David, fearing Saul has done something he ought not to do, he fled Israel into the arms of Israel's enemies.
[00:07:48] And this is something that people are often prone to do. We are prone to do when we feel like our backs are against the wall, when we feel like there's a bad situation and we don't know how to get out of it. We go to places and people that we see as powerful and. And as helpful, even if they're places that God does not want us to be or resources that God does not want us to use.
[00:08:12] This is one reason theft happens a lot of times. Sometimes it happens because we covet. For example, we want something that doesn't belong to us, and then we go and take that thing.
[00:08:24] Other times we do, though, we steal and take things that don't belong to us as a solution to our problem.
[00:08:31] We don't know what to do in a financial situation or how to get out of something or we feel in trouble in some way. And so we say, well, here's a quick way to take care of this.
[00:08:41] Here's a way to solve this problem. David's doing something similar here. You could go through all the ten Commandments in this way and think about how in moments of pressure, in moments of stress and moments of fear, we sometimes will take a route that is sinful, but seems like it might help in the moment. That's what David has done.
[00:09:05] So he's in this situation where he's not where he's supposed to be. He's living with people he shouldn't be living with.
[00:09:13] But it's kind of going well.
[00:09:15] It's kind of going well. He's at peace. And Achish obviously trusts him.
[00:09:22] He trusts him so much that he's not only given him this city, and not just David. Remember all his soldiers and their families and his people, probably thousands of people, when considered children.
[00:09:34] Not only does he trust him enough to give him this city to live in and to dwell in, but now he's taking David, the servant of Saul, as he calls him, this future or this king of Israel in some sense, in Achish's mind. And he's like, come out to battle with me against Israel.
[00:09:57] The Philistines are gathering together. Not just one of these kings, but five of these kings are gathering together. And one of those lords, Achish, says to David, hey, let's go.
[00:10:10] Because he believes David is loyal to him, because David has been loyal to him. He says of David, you have been blameless. You are like an angel of God. I totally, totally trust you. But you gotta go.
[00:10:25] Why? And because the other lords of the Philistines, they're serving the troops before battle. They're going out, they're looking. They look at Achish and all his people. They say, who are they?
[00:10:37] Aren't those the Hebrews? Probably a derogatory term used here. What is going on? And Achish says, ah, no worries, no worries. They're with me.
[00:10:48] And the Philistines get David out of a bad situation.
[00:10:54] David is about to go into war to attack his own people, the people God has told him to protect, to guard, to care for, to be a shepherd over.
[00:11:06] David is about to go into battle with the enemies of God and attack the people of God.
[00:11:13] And who gets them out of it?
[00:11:15] The enemies of God.
[00:11:17] It's a really interesting thing. These Philistine lords. Here's what happens sort of on the earthly level, right? The Philistine lords, they look at David, they say to Achish, you're nuts.
[00:11:27] This is not going to happen.
[00:11:30] Think about it, Achish.
[00:11:32] What better opportunity is David going to have to reconcile himself to Saul and the people of Israel than to take our heads P.S. as he took Goliath's head.
[00:11:45] This is. This is going to be a win for him. You are putting us in a really risky situation. Achish doesn't think so.
[00:11:53] The lords do, and they overpower him in verbally anyway, and they say, send him home. So Achish goes to David and he sends him home. And he's pretty emphatic about it too. He tells him, go in peace, be a problem.
[00:12:08] And he also tells him to leave early. In fact, several times, if you look at verse 24, he says, oh, not. There we go. I'm in the wrong chapter. Here we go. He says, I know you're blameless in my sight in verse nine. And then in verse 10, he says, Rise early in the morning.
[00:12:27] Start early in the morning.
[00:12:29] As soon as you have light, right, get out. And he's really clear. As fast as you can. As soon as there's light, you have got to be gone.
[00:12:39] And then David obeys. David set out with his men early in the morning to return to the land of the Philistines.
[00:12:51] So what happens here? A lot of things are happening, but from a larger. If we zoom out a little bit, David is saved from a really bad situation.
[00:13:03] Think about his options at that moment. And it's hard to say exactly what is going on in his head because as he has been before with Achish, he's a little vague about what his intentions are. Maybe David's sort of holding his cards close to his chest. We don't really necessarily know what he's going to do. Maybe David doesn't even know what he's going to do at this point. But here he is. On the one hand, if this event hadn't happened with the Philistine lords, he would have had to go into battle and brought harm to God's people.
[00:13:40] Or he would have had to be disloyal to the Philistines, not going to battle because Achish had told him, he would have had to say, no, we're not going. And then that would have immediately signaled to Achish that he was a threat.
[00:13:54] And that's a problem because David is with Achish for the very purpose of preserving his life.
[00:14:01] He's there to not have trouble.
[00:14:04] And that would have most certainly started trouble with Achish and with the Philistine Lord. So he gets this amazing sort of get out of jail free card where he doesn't have to say anything, he doesn't have to make any decisions, it's just all taken care of for him and he goes back to Ziklag without having to offend Achish and without having to go into battle.
[00:14:28] He dodges a bullet big time here.
[00:14:32] Now, was this according to David's great wisdom? No. How did this happen?
[00:14:38] This happened because of his God, which is really important to note because for a few chapters now, the Lord has not been present in the minds of the people that we are hearing about.
[00:14:52] Saul going to this medium at Endor, this witch at Endor, David running to the Philistines, David going out to battle. There's no inquiring of the Lord, there's no seeking after the Lord, there's no calling out to the Lord.
[00:15:08] The Psalms say that when the righteous cry out to the Lord, the Lord hears their cry and he answers them in their distress.
[00:15:17] David's not remembering this at this moment.
[00:15:21] And I think we can see ourselves in the same situation. It's easy to put ourselves in his shoes.
[00:15:28] We can make decisions in our lives which one decision leads to another and a bad decision leads to another. And we find ourselves sometimes in a corner with no obvious and good way out.
[00:15:41] When we don't seek the Lord, when we are not following him, when we disobey. A lot of times we can get ourselves into situations and that are unnecessarily complicated, unnecessarily dark and murky, unnecessarily difficult, where it feels like there's no good options when earlier there were lots of good options.
[00:16:04] It's a warning to us against disobedience, a warning to us against departing from him and fearing man. And all these things we've been thinking about when we don't trust God and we're not looking to him in our lives, we can put ourselves in these positions of complicated crisis, crises, murky ethical situations, really tough dilemmas.
[00:16:30] And we can lose heart too.
[00:16:33] Perhaps you found yourself or are in one of these situations now where your past, you can see it, you would agree with everything that I've just said. You say, yes, I understand. I see my past mistakes, I see the errors that I've made. I'm still in this mess and I'm losing heart.
[00:16:51] I've made this bed and now it seems like I'm going to have to sleep in it.
[00:16:57] And in these moments, it can be tempting to doubt God.
[00:17:01] Now, God sometimes does require us to suffer the consequences of our decisions so that we might learn from them.
[00:17:09] But that doesn't mean that he's absent.
[00:17:12] If God is working and using, and if God is working in our lives, even through discipline, he is working in our lives.
[00:17:20] When we are feeling trapped, when we're feeling like we're in complicated situations, and when we are regretting our past mistakes, our troubles and our difficulties. This is not the time to turn away from God even more.
[00:17:36] It's not the time to give up and to say hope is lost.
[00:17:41] That's just doubling down on bad decisions.
[00:17:48] So what do we do?
[00:17:50] Well, we do what we should have done in the turn to the Lord.
[00:17:55] Turn to the Lord.
[00:17:58] Sorry about the light. We'll just ignore it.
[00:18:04] What does it mean to turn to the Lord, particularly in a situation like this? I think one of the things it means is, first of all, calling out to him and being open to him and being ready for help, even from unexpected places.
[00:18:23] Now remember, David doesn't do that here.
[00:18:27] Don't be tempted to think, well, David, David dodged a bullet, so I can too. I don't have to turn to the Lord. David got out, escaped from this danger. Maybe I don't have to turn to the Lord either.
[00:18:40] That's not the message God wants you to hear.
[00:18:43] Right? The point in seeing God's graciousness to David is to recognize God's graciousness to David.
[00:18:51] When the Lord is loving and extra generous, when the Lord pours out his mercies on us, the proper response isn't, oh, well, I guess I could have done whatever I wanted anyway.
[00:19:04] What's the proper response, beloved, thank you.
[00:19:09] Is to drop to your knees and say, lord, why did I not lean on you sooner? Why did I not seek you sooner? Look how good your grace is preserving me even when I'm not coming to you.
[00:19:22] These moments are not meant to push us further from the Lord, but to help us to see how wonderful and awesome and powerful his grace really is.
[00:19:33] What do we learn about God from this situation?
[00:19:37] What do we learn about God from this situation?
[00:19:41] One thing we learn about him is that God can rescue us from impossible circumstances.
[00:19:47] This is an impossible circumstance. And there's many others in the Bible. Many, many, many others in the Bible. I'll give you just one example that comes to mind, and the Philippian jailer and the events surrounding him. Paul is in prison.
[00:20:08] He's held captive. Things are going terrible. It looks like he's going to be severely treated. And all of a sudden the Lord causes an earthquake. The jail basically breaks apart and Paul's ready to go. And the Philippian jailer is going to kill himself because he realizes the trouble he's going to be in.
[00:20:34] Paul stays with him, goes to his house, preaches him the Gospel, and the jailer and his family come to the Lord.
[00:20:43] Impossible, right?
[00:20:45] One minute you're in shackles and chains for the Gospel, and next minute you're preaching the gospel to the guy who was holding you captive, and he's believing it.
[00:20:56] This kind of thing happens all throughout Acts, all throughout the Bible, and frankly in our lives.
[00:21:04] The greatest and most, perhaps the most significant act of the Lord for us personally is our own salvation.
[00:21:13] Turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2.
[00:21:16] As we think about the Lord rescuing us out of impossible situations.
[00:21:22] Ephesians 2:1 10.
[00:21:26] Listen to how Paul describes the salvation of the people of God.
[00:21:33] What is it that happens when we come to put our faith in the Lord Jesus? What's going on behind the scenes, so to speak?
[00:21:44] Ephesians chapter 2. Here's a description of that for us.
[00:21:50] And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
[00:22:18] But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
[00:23:08] So you hear what he's saying. He says it really clearly.
[00:23:11] Before we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we were dead in our trespasses and sins. And the reason we belong to Christ is because God has done the impossible. He took someone, some ones, many someones, who were dead in their trespasses and sins, totally enraptured with the things of this world, following Satan by nature. Children of wrath leading to destruction. And then he does what?
[00:23:44] And then he does what?
[00:23:47] He makes us alive with Christ, with the Son of God.
[00:23:55] In verse 10, he says, we are created in Christ. In John, Jesus describes us as being one, reborn.
[00:24:04] This new things happens out of what? Not out of seed, out of death, out of death we are brought to life. And he continues on to that. Not only are we brought to life, but he says that we are raised up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places.
[00:24:23] And that's the right now part.
[00:24:26] Right now we are seated with Christ in His power, in his glory, connected with him by his spirit, united as the body of Christ.
[00:24:38] So that then something else will happen in the coming ages. We might receive even more of the riches of his grace.
[00:24:47] The immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness. Yeah, kindness towards us in Christ. Why did this happen?
[00:24:55] One God did the impossible. Why? Because of the immeasurable grace that he has for you.
[00:25:04] The immeasurable kindness that he has for you. The immeasurable love that he has for you.
[00:25:13] So this is an amazing thing, beloved.
[00:25:17] Not only does God. Not only is God able to do the impossible, but he does do the impossible because he loves you.
[00:25:28] That's why David got out of this.
[00:25:31] Not because he was super clever or he was being really righteous at the moment. Not even because he called out to God. He didn't.
[00:25:40] He was still kind of playing the game.
[00:25:43] And then the Lord works through the Philistine Lords to save his servant.
[00:25:51] Talk about grace.
[00:25:53] And then that's true for us as well.
[00:25:58] It wasn't because we finally came to our senses and reached out and called out to God that He says, okay, okay, finally you've done something good. Now I'll save you.
[00:26:09] It was while we were still dead, while we were still messing up, while we were still ungodly, while we were still children of wrath, while we were still enslaved to the devil, that God did this amazing work of making us alive with Christ and of giving us the faith that we might turn and respond to him and say, I'm sorry, Lord.
[00:26:35] Save me, Lord. Help me, Lord.
[00:26:40] It is through faith that we are saved. And this faith is a gift of God so that no one may boast.
[00:26:49] So why do we turn to God?
[00:26:52] We turn to God because He is able to do the impossible. And to get us out of impossible situations, including death, we turn to God because He is gracious. And merciful because he loves us in Christ.
[00:27:09] We also turn to God because he doesn't revoke his promises to us. He doesn't take away our life in Christ when we mess up.
[00:27:18] David is messing up, he's sinning and he's getting himself in a worse and worse mess. But even when we walk away from God, God never walks away from us.
[00:27:33] God made a promise to David, a secure certain promise that David would be king of Israel. And, and God is going to keep that promise.
[00:27:47] And he's going to do that in all kinds of ways. He's going to do it by working in the Philistines hearts and minds and in their actions and in their lives. And he's going to do it by working in David's heart and his mind and in his actions.
[00:28:00] God did not revoke his promise because David was going astray. It was because of his promise that God saves his life and is bringing him back.
[00:28:12] And you'll see what happens next, next week.
[00:28:17] The last thing I'll mention in closing is another. A third reason we ought to come to God is because God's because God can and does help in unexpected ways. And this reminds us there's an application in this which is to be humble and to be ready.
[00:28:38] When we seek the Lord and we seek for his help, we need to not double down on our own solutions and our own things that we've decided are the most important. And these kind of things.
[00:28:53] We see the unusual nature of David's earthly salvation here and we see the unusual nature of our own eternal salvation and in our Lord's work on the cross.
[00:29:07] A lot of people were not expecting the Messiah to come and to save us all by dying.
[00:29:14] But God used Pontius Pilate and Herod and the rioting crowds and many and the betrayal of Judas to bring about our salvation.
[00:29:30] Many people reject this. They see this as foolishness. They hate it, they don't want it.
[00:29:37] This ultimately is just more pride.
[00:29:40] It's more pride recognizing that our help comes from the Lord in all kinds of ways and in the ways that he would bring it. We ought to humble ourselves before Him.
[00:29:52] God's help can come from unexpected places.
[00:29:56] And so that's. It's another reminder for us to set aside our pride.
[00:30:02] So in conclusion, let me just say this.
[00:30:07] Like David, we often get ourselves in trouble when we rely on ourselves, when we rely on our own strength and when we decide we're going to do things in our own way, in our own time, this way in which we get ourselves stuck in bad situations is not the way to get unstuck.
[00:30:25] We don't get unstuck by continuing to do the same thing.
[00:30:30] We get unstuck by looking and relying on the gracious God who has promised Himself to us in Christ and in this story reminds us that he can rescue us from impossible situations, that our past sins and mistakes do not revoke his promises, and that he can use even unexpected means to save us from our foolishness.
[00:30:56] So let's turn to him and lean on him for everything that we need.
[00:31:01] Let's pray.
[00:31:03] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the great and marvelous grace that you give to us in Jesus Christ.
[00:31:10] We praise you for the new lives that we have in him and for the hearts that we have in him, even though our flesh is still warring against the Spirit, even though we wander away, even though we get ourselves in bad situations.
[00:31:31] Lord, we confess this morning that we are so grateful and thankful that you do not turn away from us and that nothing can snatch us out of your hand.
[00:31:41] Lord, we ask that as we have turned to you through faith in Jesus Christ, trusting in him and his salvation and his words and his works, we ask that you would do as you have promised to do, as you have sworn to do to never let us go.
[00:32:03] Lord, your calling and your gifts are irrevocable. Your promises are ever sure. Your steadfast love and faithfulness is from generation to generation.
[00:32:15] Lord, as we are tempted to turn aside to our own ways and our own paths, as we are tempted to overly fear the things of this life or overly hope in the things of this life, we ask that you would use these events recorded here to remind us that you are the trustworthy one. You. You are the powerful one. You are gracious and you rescue and you love and you have done all and are doing all that you promised to do.
[00:32:50] Lord, as we look to our salvation through Jesus who died for our sins so that we might live forever, our hearts are filled with gratitude and we ask that out of that you would help us to walk in him and in the works that you have prepared beforehand for us.
[00:33:08] Thank you for making us alive in Jesus Christ. We pray this in his name. Amen.
