[0:00] is going to the book of 1 Samuel, 1 Samuel, 1 Samuel chapter 30, 1 Samuel chapter 30. I want to encourage you to save that date. I know it's been in the bulletins about our fall retreat.
[0:18] I know October seems a long way away, but it will be here quickly. So I want to encourage you to look forward to that, to be in prayer for that.
[0:30] We'll have more information coming up. I'm excited. It's been on my mind the last couple of days. I believe the Lord has finally given some leading on kind of our theme this year.
[0:40] If you remember last year, we were connected. We're going to build on that this year, continuing just to add to it. So I'm really excited about the theme he's laying on my heart and mind as we kind of flesh that out.
[0:51] But I'm also excited. You won't be hearing from me the whole time. And I'm about as much excited about the theme as I'm excited about the ones last year.
[1:01] I said, hey, I want to have a more active role. So Carrie and I get to go, here you go. And we get to empower people to do that and looking forward to our time together. 1 Samuel chapter 30.
[1:13] I'll be honest with you, as I was reading through this text, I was going to put this text all in one big lump sum. And I really just couldn't do it because I didn't want to leave the first six verses.
[1:24] So our text will be verses 1 through 6 without really just taking some time to get into them. So maybe it will look as if we're kind of leaving the story hanging, but we're not.
[1:35] We're going to come back to it. So we're just going to look at the first six verses in 1 Samuel 30, verses 1 through 6. By the way, we're very quickly coming upon the close of the book of 1 Samuel and another turning point in the history of God's people.
[1:53] So let's read the word of God in the first six verses of the 30th chapter. Then it happened when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day that the Amalekites had made a raid on the Negev and on Ziklag and had overthrown Ziklag and burned it with fire.
[2:09] And they took captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great, without killing anyone, and carried them off and went their way. When David and his men came to the city, behold, it was burned with fire, and their wives and their sons and their daughters had been taken captive.
[2:27] Then David and the people who were with him lifted their voices and wept until there was no strength in them to weep. Now David's two wives had been taken captive, a hen known to Jezreelites and Abigail the widow of Nabal the Carmelites.
[2:42] Moreover, David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him. For all the people were embittered, each one because of his sons and his daughters.
[2:54] But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. 1 Samuel 30 verses 1 through 6. I want you to see this evening a crisis realized.
[3:06] A crisis realized. It's really a point in David's life that he's not familiar with. He will be familiar with it by the end of his life.
[3:18] But up to this point, he hasn't been familiar with it to this level. Let's put it in context. Let's get us back to where we're at. If you go back to the 27th chapter, if you remember, the 27th chapter and the 29th chapter are kind of co-joined chapters that are interrupted in chapter 28.
[3:38] We say, well, that makes sense, Pastor, because 27 and 29 speak of one grand event. And in the 28th chapter, you kind of pull out of that grand event and you look at what's going on over here.
[3:48] But in the 27th chapter, after sparing Saul's life for the second time, you know, when he went down into the camp and he took the spear and the jug of water that was at his head. And he gave him back his spear, but he kept the jug of water and he spared the life of Saul the second time.
[4:05] The Bible tells us in the first verse, the 27th chapter, it's a very scary phrase, but it's something that we do quite often. It says, and David said to himself, David said to himself. That is, he sought his own advice.
[4:17] He sought his own counsel. And we say that's scary because up to this time, every move that David had made, he had sought the counsel of the Lord.
[4:28] He had prayed. He had desired to know where God was leading him. If it was to go to deliver the nation of Israel from people that were holding the city captive, if it was to move because Saul was going to come pursue him, if it was to leave or flee because the people of the city were going to hand them over, he was always consulting the Lord.
[4:45] But after this second time of sparing Saul, and Saul again makes another empty vow, and Saul says, I will no longer come after you. It says, and then David said to himself, there's nothing better for me to do than to flee the land of Israel, to go into the land of the Philistines.
[5:00] Now, we have seen how that's a wrong decision. That's a wrong-headed and a wrong-leading decision because nowhere in the Old Testament do we find that it is profitable for the people of God to leave the land of God.
[5:12] Not that God is confined to a land. He is not. Don't ever go down that rabbit trail. That's, you know, some people of that day and time felt like gods were confined to a land, and only if you're in that land can God bless you and use you.
[5:27] Well, the book of Ruth completely blows that up, right? We understand that. But any time you leave where God has called you, where he has planted you, and you begin to seek your own counsel, and you go your own way, then you're walking outside what we would call the will of God, and you're setting yourself up for trouble.
[5:47] Think of Abram when all of a sudden, and I said Abram because it was before he was called Abraham. Abram, when the famine comes to the land, and he says, oh, there's nowhere better for me to go than to Egypt. It's fertile down in Egypt, so he leaves the land, but God had called him to wander to and fro in what would be called the promised land and to walk about the land, but Abram decided now I need to go down there because it's difficult in this land.
[6:07] It's too hard, and when he goes down there, he lies about his wife. This is the man that God had called to make the nation lie. He said, oh, that's my sister. A second time, Abram does it again because he makes a decision to leave and to go back outside of the promised land, and he lies.
[6:24] Time after time after time after time after time again. You'll notice that every time, we're not talking about captivity here. We're talking about when man makes an intentional decision to leave where God had called him, trouble comes.
[6:38] David did that. He said to himself, he didn't ask the Lord's advice. He didn't seek the Lord's counsel. He had a priest with him. Saul didn't have a priest with him. David did. He had the only surviving remnant of the priest of Nob that was there.
[6:50] He had the Urim and the Thummim. He had the Ethod. He had all those things with him. We'll see that later on in the 30th chapter. And sure enough, when he gets to Gath, he's got his army with him. This is the second time he's went there.
[7:01] And he talks to the king of Kish and says, ah, there's too many of us living here. There's 600 men and David and their wives and their children. So it's a pretty large number of people, right?
[7:12] He said, we don't want to overpopulate your city. So he gives them Ziklag, and they go to Ziklag, and you remember the account. I'm trying to set us up, right? While they're in Ziklag, they're making raids, they're making raids, they're making raids, and David's living a double standard life.
[7:24] He is telling the king of Kish of the Philistines, I'm raiding in the Negev, I'm raiding among the inhabitants of Judah, while the whole time, he's really raiding the cities of the Malekites. Now, he's doing God's work, but he's not doing it in the right way.
[7:40] God wanted his people to raid the Malekites. He wanted them to destroy the Malekites. We'll get to that in just a moment. But you don't ever have to lie about what you're doing when you're doing God's work the right way. And David wasn't truthful because he couldn't be truthful.
[7:53] And then this day comes when the Philistines drop in battle and they want to go fight the nation of Israel, and king of Kish looks at David and says, you will go with us. And he says, oh, okay, I'll go. And remember this whole account, and he goes down, and God spares David.
[8:05] The 29th chapter, all of the rulers of the Philistine army says, what is David doing here? We don't want David in his mighty men. He may turn on us and send them back, send them back.
[8:17] So they go back and we think, ooh, David dodged a bullet. God was so gracious, but make no mistake about it, sin always has its consequences. And while David was not forced to go to battle against his own people and make a decision in the midst of the battle, he did have to reap the rewards of his consequences for being there.
[8:37] And that's where the crisis came because he gets back to Ziklag. Ziklag is in the land of the Philistines. Ziklag is not in, now it becomes part of the land of Israel because it's given to David and it's a possession of the kings, it's passed down, but he's not hanging out where he should be.
[8:58] And while it may look like he's got away with it, very quickly we find out in the 30th chapter he didn't because he comes back and things aren't what they should be.
[9:09] So just a number of things you see real quick. The first thing that we notice in this crisis realized is the presence of the enemy. It says that when David and his men came back to Ziklag on the third day, it took three days to get there, on the third day they're back, and they come, and behold, the Amalekites had went on a raiding party.
[9:31] And they had raided in the Negev, and they had come to Ziklag, and they had burned the city with fire. Now that should all of a sudden call to mind what David was doing because the whole time David was in Ziklag, he and his mighty men were raiding the Amalekites and burning their cities with fire so that no one would survive and come back and tell them, tell King Akish what we're doing because the Amalekites and the Philistines are, you know, they coexist with one another.
[9:55] They're allies. They're okay. They don't have a problem with one another. But now the opportune time comes when the Philistines go to battle, and David is forced to go to battle with the Philistines, even though he never fights.
[10:08] He's at least forced to march with them because he's hanging out of a place he should have never hung out. The Amalekites say, oh, guess who's not home? And since they're not home, the Amalekites go on a raiding party because everybody's focused over here on the Philistines.
[10:24] Everybody's watching over here, and it takes opportune time. I'm not real good at it, but I like the game of chess. I've played it since I was in high school. And the reason I like the game of chess is because the move you're making is not really the right move, right?
[10:37] You're making a move for three moves in advance, and what you're doing over here is not really what you're doing. You're doing this over here to distract somebody so that you could do this over there. That's the way the enemy works. A lot of times what we see going on, what we see happening is just providing the opportunity for the enemy.
[10:54] It's providing the opportunity, the enemy an opportunity to get inside the door. And since David was where he should have never been, he was called to do what he should have never done, and he had brought himself into the land of the enemies.
[11:12] And he should not have been surprised when he got home and found out that the enemy was there. Because if you hang out in enemy territory long enough, eventually the enemy's going to come to your front door. That is to say, you can't sin and get away with it.
[11:27] Paul would say later, we do not use grace and mercy as a crutch or an excuse for sin. Now we can take this a little bit further and we can see the presence of the enemies because who was it that went to Ziklag and burned the city with fire?
[11:42] It's the Amalekites, right? The Amalekites did that. It's not just the sin of David that we see bringing about this problem. It's also the sin of Saul. Because who was it that Saul was called and commissioned to utterly destroy the Amalekites.
[12:02] That was when Agag, the king, was spared. Remember, that's when the enemy, I mean, the kingdom was torn away from him because he failed to destroy the enemy.
[12:13] He let a remnant remain in the very presence of the enemy was because God's people did not deal with it totally and finally in the first place. they let it kind of hang out.
[12:28] Well, an enemy left to sit will eventually grow stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. And when David comes back, he finds out, hey, the enemy is here and it surprises him because the city is burned with fire.
[12:48] What's more disturbing than the presence of the enemy is the second thing and it is the people left endangered. It was the people that were there. We are told a number of times in this passage that when David and his men get back, Ziklag is burned with fire and their wives and their sons and their daughters were gone.
[13:11] Now, it's only by the grace of God and we cannot say it any way other than that that the Amalekites did not kill them only by the grace and mercy of God because David and his men went going into the seas of the Amalekites and we're not here to get into the technical debate of wrongness and rightness because we understand that God was using the nation of Israel as an instrument for judgment and he was using them for those purposes but every city they went to they utterly destroyed everyone present and then they burned the city.
[13:41] Here, God is gracious even though he's bringing chastisement and he's bringing all these things and you say, no, the Amalekites did that. Well, I believe in a sovereign God who's in control of all events and all kingdoms and all nations and all powers and the Bible tells us over and over again that he raises up this power to use as an instrument for discipline over here and he does it over here that God is sovereign.
[14:03] Nothing escapes his control. Nothing escapes his knowledge and understand that. The Amalekites spare them. We don't know why but they spare them and they lead them away. The wording is that they heard them off but what is amazing is we don't need to lose sight of the people because it was David who said to himself, we're going to go over here and when David said to himself, his mighty men who up to this point are very loyal, his mighty men and the rest of the band, right, there's 30 mighty men and he had the 600 soldiers that were with him.
[14:39] So all of his men who were loyal to him, they know he's going to be king, they know he's doing all these things, they go with him but David said to himself, don't ever lose sight of this passage in 1 Samuel 27 verse 1 because this all started when David said to himself.
[14:58] He didn't ask anybody else, he didn't talk to anybody else, he didn't consult anybody else but everybody else followed David's leading and when they all went and they all come back, guess what had happened?
[15:14] It wasn't just a city that was burned, there were people that were taken because the decision of David to go where he should have never been endangered innocent people, their wives and their children.
[15:31] No sin exists in isolation. None. We don't have to study very far in the Old Testament to see that.
[15:43] No sin exists in isolation. There are ripple effects, there are linear effects, it always affects people.
[15:54] The sad reality here is that the people that were taken were the people who were left helpless and hopeless and unprotected because all the men had to go away to fight a battle that was not theirs to fight.
[16:09] And when you took the men out of the picture, they're just sitting here vulnerable. And these people were led away because their husbands and their fathers were not there.
[16:21] One decision when David said to himself, the people were left endangered. Friend, no matter what decision we make, we need to understand this. Decisions that we make personally affect people.
[16:39] Our personal choices affect people. Whether or not we realize it, whether or not we think about it, they do.
[16:51] Why? Because the enemy is always looking for an opportunity. we've all called to make choices in our life and we are all called to make a decision that goes one way or the other.
[17:08] Those decisions affect people. It's not just us personally. We don't exist in isolation. We don't make decisions in isolation and we don't have what we would just say personal freedoms.
[17:20] like, I'm just going to take care of me. Well, sometimes in taking care of me it's affecting all of them. Right? So we have to pay attention to that.
[17:31] We see these are people left endangered. The third thing we understand here is the pain that was experienced. And this is real pain. The Bible tells us that David and his men this is in verse 3 when David and his men came to the city behold it was burned with fire and their wives and their sons and their daughters had been taken captive.
[17:51] Look at this then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voices and wept until there was no strength in them to weep. This is the first recorded defeat of David.
[18:05] They had never suffered loss. They had never every other battle you find David in he wins. Wow there's a common denominator. Every other battle we see David fighting he consults the Lord about first.
[18:21] This one when he said to himself it brought about loss and misery. Now it's the grace of God. Now when they're there all they see is this void this absence. They don't yet know that all of their wives and their children their sons and their daughters are still alive.
[18:35] They don't know that. They're just looking at what is not there and what is not there are their wives and their sons and their daughters. They're all missing. And it's this pain of loss and this pain of defeat that they've never experienced.
[18:51] Because when we walk according to our own wisdom and we walk according to our own counsel we end up in battles that we inevitably will not win. and this is a real pain.
[19:03] This is a pain that causes deep sorrow. This is a pain that causes sorrow like they had never experienced. We don't find David weeping to the point where he can't weep anymore when Saul is pursuing him.
[19:15] We don't find David weeping to the point that he can't weep anymore when he's having to hide in the caves or he's running around the wilderness. We don't find him doing this kind of mourning and this grieving when he's having a fake insanity.
[19:27] We don't see it when his wife has to let him out of the window. We see it here when he realizes I've done something that has cost us dearly. Now that's important because the Bible tells us that sorrow precedes rejoicing.
[19:45] What we see is pain. It's a broken heart in this. Now this pain was not only just a personal emotional thing it also affected their relationships with one another because it says David got a little concerned David was worried because his men spoke of stoning him.
[20:03] Think about that for just a moment. These men that were so committed to him that they would go behind enemy lines break through enemy lines and get a cup of water out of the well.
[20:15] These men who would grasp the spear and they would grow weary but they would not let go. The guy who would jump in a pit on a snowy day and kill a lion. Remember him? The one who would take a spear the Egyptians owned spear and kill him with it these men who fought battles with David now they're going to stone him.
[20:33] Great lesson on leadership by the way. Great lesson on leadership. Why? Because David was the one who said to himself all the victories in the past don't amount to anything of the loss of the present.
[20:51] The victories in the past only go so far when the suffering of the present doesn't carry any further and now the relationships are torn and the relationships really look unrepairable.
[21:01] What kind of king can David be if this few amount of men even if it's 600 if these few cannot stay loyal to him? It sounds a lot like Saul. Even Saul's men never thought of stoning him but now David is to the position where his choice is and all these things have come to the point where the men around him said let's stone David it's his fault and you know what he didn't argue with them on that.
[21:26] He never said it wasn't my fault. This is pretty good this is where we begin to see the heart of a man after God's own heart. He never did that.
[21:38] He never shifted blame to anyone else. You know why? Because it was David's fault. It was. And when we have this pain that he's experiencing so now what we have and we look at this passage kind of isolated from the rest of the text from what we see at the very end here but what we have is we have David in the midst of a crisis with no one around him.
[22:09] We have David in the midst of a crisis probably the biggest crisis of his life up to this point. There's no Samuel there's no mighty men and there's no 600 soldiers.
[22:27] There's no Abigail to stop him because she's not there. He's in the greatest crisis he's ever faced and he is alone because everybody around him wants to stone him because the decision he made brought him to this outcome.
[22:45] So this is the whole I say all those other three things to get to this last one when the crisis is realized. Number four you see personal encouragement. How do you deal with it?
[23:01] And this is why we had to look at this text by itself because it's one small phrase but it is so instrumental to what happens after this.
[23:12] because David is the anointed and appointed king. He's not yet sitting on the throne. Right?
[23:22] He's not ruling. He's anointed. Samuel has anointed him. God has called him. He's appointed him. So he's the anointed and appointed king. David is the man after God's own heart.
[23:34] David is the one who brought them into this place. David is the one who made the decision. David is suffering loss and misery here in crisis. Everything, like it or not, everything that is about to transpire hangs on David.
[23:49] He's the hinge on which everything swings. We see it in the text. So how he handles this crisis is going to determine what takes place after this.
[24:05] There will be a moment in every one of our lives where we are the hinge. Some of us have experienced it. Some of us are in the midst of it right now. Some of us have experienced a number of times in the past and we will experience it in the future. We will be the hinge on which everything swings and how we handle that crisis at that moment will dictate what takes place after that.
[24:25] You won't have anybody to turn to as much as we should. You'll feel isolated even though that's a lie of the enemy. The Bible says in Proverbs 18, one that a fool isolates himself, separates himself. I had to learn that one the hard way, right?
[24:36] I had another preacher tell me that and rebuke and that was okay a number of years ago and I'm so thankful that you told me that but we will find out that we think we're isolated. The reality is we're not but our mind tells us we are.
[24:48] You know, David here, he doesn't know what to do so how we handle what we do when the crisis is realized dictates and determines everything that happens. Their wives, their sons, and their daughters, they're all still alive but nobody knows it yet.
[25:02] Right? So what do you do? That phrase right there, the men spoke of stoning him. The very last phrase, but David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
[25:19] That's it. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. Personal encouragement.
[25:31] You know what I see here? David didn't need anyone else to strengthen him. I'm not saying that we can do it all. I'm not trying to separate this from the New Testament text that we ought to bear one another's burdens and we ought to love one another, we ought to care for one another, we ought to pray for one another.
[25:48] I'm not trying to isolate this. I'm not trying to say, you know, I'm not trying to say those things are diminished and pushed away. But what I'm saying is that when David realized he didn't have anybody to turn to, there was still one he could turn to.
[26:01] When it looked like everybody around him was his enemy and it looked like everybody around him, because he's learned his stories and he's learned his lessons in the past, right?
[26:13] When it looked as if he was completely alone, he knew that there was still one he could go to. There was a friend who sticks closer than a brother. And he strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
[26:33] I love this because it's only after he strengthens himself then in verse 7 he asks for the priest to come. Don't lose that.
[26:46] There's a priest present. Well, I'm not so sure the priest wasn't thinking about sowing him too. I don't know. But he didn't ask for the priest until he had already strengthened himself. He didn't need a priest to intercede for him because he knew he had access to the Lord his God.
[27:03] That's beautiful. That's an Old Testament picture of a New Testament reality, right? That we can run boldly into the throne room of God because of the great high priest which we have.
[27:15] I mean, this is so absent from every other Old Testament principle. Up to this point you've got to have a priest, right? You've got to have this. Somebody's got to offer sacrifice. David knew he had a relationship with a God that he could go to that would give him the strength he needed in the moment of crisis.
[27:31] And we know it's relational because it says he strengthened himself in the Lord. That's capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. Yahweh, relational God, right? That is a covenant God. That's his relational names.
[27:42] Don't ever separate the names of God from the application of it because God's names are given intentional for an application at that purpose and that moment and that time. He didn't just strengthen himself in, you know, the God who is victorious, right?
[27:55] He didn't just strengthen himself in the God who is mighty. He didn't go to Jehovah Nisi. He didn't go to Jehovah Jireh. I mean, if there was a time where he needed the Lord God as my provider, that's Jehovah Jireh. It was a time when he looked around and his house had been burned down and everything he had was taken away.
[28:09] He needed a provider but a provider is no good if you're weak, right? He didn't need that. He needed a relational covenant God and that covenant God mattered at that moment. So Yahweh, his Elohim.
[28:22] So we see this relationship. Not only was he a covenant God but he was a covenant God not just with the people but he was his covenant God. So he knew he had a relationship with a God that could strengthen him for the crisis that he was facing.
[28:39] Everybody else was stoning. Everybody else was mad. Everybody else was fuming and they had a right to do it, right? There was a time when David said to himself, David got tired of talking to himself and decided he needed to talk to the Lord his God.
[28:52] And he encouraged himself and the Lord his God. Everything else changed. I mean, think about it from that moment. From that moment, he walks into a city and he's defeated.
[29:07] He walks into a city that he left behind. And he walks into a city and there's his wives that are there. All of his men's wives are there and their children and their sons and their daughters are there. All their livestock is there. Everything is there.
[29:17] They walk out. They're kind of in a fix. God rescues him from that fix and he comes back. He had to kind of be on this little highlight. Woo, thank you Lord for getting me out of that jam. I didn't know how I was going to do it. And three days later, he walks into the city that's decimated.
[29:29] It's burned to the ground. He doesn't know what he's going to do. But when we look after this one phrase, then it says to the priest, bring the ephod here. We got to talk to God about this. I think we got a plan. Then we see David leading his men.
[29:42] Then we see them being so tired. The same ones who couldn't even cry anymore because they were so tired. After he strengthened himself, he encouraged everybody else. There came a time, we'll read it, where he had to leave 200 behind by the river.
[29:54] That's okay. The other 400, we're going to keep going. Then they find an Egyptian slave. Then they get direction. Then they go into the camp of the Malachites and they slay them that day and the rest of the day and the next day and they take everything away.
[30:06] Why? Because David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. We handle the crisis when we have a God that we're already in relationship with in such a covenantal relationship that even when everybody else abandons us, we know we have a right to go into his presence and we find personal encouragement there, not in our external circumstances.
[30:34] because the reality is that sometimes the external circumstances just stink. But the very present eternal reality is all that we need to strengthen us for the crisis of the moment.
[30:55] Everybody else is mad and fuming and I probably would have been too just being honest with you, right? But David said, I'm not going to talk to you guys for just a moment.
[31:06] For a minute, I need to pull away. Hey, every now and then in the midst of a crisis, I think the best thing for us to do is just pull away. Strengthen ourselves first in the Lord our God and then let's go back and reassess and see what we can do from there.
[31:22] Praise God that David did that because when he said to himself, he got into a mess. After he goes to the Lord, his God, finds the strength he needs, then they come out of the ashes of Ziklag and they rise up victorious and by the time we get to the end of the chapter, we'll look at it, they're distributing the spoil to everybody.
[31:43] Right? He's sharing the rewards with everyone. But it all hinges on that one little sentence. But David strengthened himself in the Lord, his God.
[31:58] The question, the application is, what do we do when the crisis is realized? And in the moment when we seem like nobody else is there, if David could do it in the Old Testament covenant, how much more so us who are in the covenant of the blood of Jesus Christ, who have a great high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, who has went as the forerunner and the Bible tells us in the book of Hebrews so that we can go boldly before the throne.
[32:33] How much more? Because the crisis, they come. But it's whatever peg the hinge is connected to that causes it to swing determines how things go when the crisis comes.
[32:48] 1 Samuel, chapter 30, verses 1 through 6. Crisis realized and David's response to it. Thank you, brothers.
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[33:46] Thank you.
[34:16] Thank you.