Would you pray with me please? Our Father and our God, we give thanks to you for the word which you have given to us as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Tonight as we open pages of this book, may the Spirit of God be our teacher. And we pray that you will encourage and enlighten our hearts in those things that we need to hear to apply to our lives so that we might walk with you this week. In Jesus' name, Amen. Would you open your Bible please to 1 Samuel and the 21st chapter.
1 Samuel chapter 21. We are coming into the midst of a passage, a lengthy passage here dealing with David and Saul's search for him. You may recall that David had been anointed to be the next king of Israel. And Saul was extremely jealous, angry with David, sought to take his life. And was protected by those who were the closest to Saul. In chapter 21 we find David coming to the place called Nob, to a Himalek, the priest.
Nob, by the way, according to the footnote of my Bible, is a place just north of the city of Jerusalem, a place called Mount Scopus, where some of us will be in a few days. Anybody excited about that? I see some smiling faces back there.
We are looking forward to this journey and I hope that many of you will pray for us that the Lord would give us good health and would keep us safe, that he would cause the Palestinians to be at ease, relaxed and cool, and that the Israeli army the same during the two weeks that we'll be over there. By the way, there's a group from Grace Church Edina over there right now too, so I don't know if we'll bump into them or not, but they'll go and prepare the way for us maybe.
So it gives you an idea of the geography here, when he talks about Nob. And David lies to the priest. He lies to the priest. God has taken care of David. Jonathan, David through Saul's daughter, Michael, in a variety of ways. Now he comes to the priest of God. He lies. He lies. What have you got on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever can be found. And the priest answered David, verse 4, There is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is consecrated bread.
If only the young men have kept themselves from women. God answered the priest and said to him, Surely women have been kept from us as previously when I set out. And the vessels of the young men were holy, though it was an ordinary journey. How much more than today will the vessels be holy? So the priest gave him consecrated bread. That is the bread that was a part of the worship, the showbread.
There was no bread but the bread of the presence, which was removed from before the Lord in order to put hot bread in its place when it was taken away. Now one of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord, and his name was Doeg. You take the E out, you've got an idea of his character. Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul's shepherds.
That plays into the story because he later goes to Saul with the report that the priest has supported David and results in the death of the priest and those with him. Well David said to Himalek now, Is there a spear or a sword on hand? For I have brought neither sword nor my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king's matter was urgent, the matter he had lied about earlier in the chapter that we didn't read.
The priest said, The sword of Goliath, the Philistine, whom you killed in the valley of Elah. It is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you would take it for yourself, take it, for there is no other except it, it is here. And David said, There is none like it, give it to me. Then David arose and fled that day from Saul and went to Ekish, the king of Gath. Does anybody recognize Gath? It is a town in Philistia and the hometown of Goliath. That is exactly right. Interesting.
He has the sword of Goliath, a sword that was well known, a sword that the Philistines would have recognized immediately. And where does he go? But the servants of Ekish said to him, Is this not David the king of the land? See they had already had word of this transfer of power. Did they not sing of this one as they danced, saying, Saul has slain his thousands and David is ten thousands? And David took these words to heart and greatly feared Ekish, the king of Gath.
So he disguised his sanity before him and acted insanely in their hands and scribbled on the doors of the gate and let his saliva run down into his beard. A little undignified, isn't it? A little unsightly, a little odd for a man of David's reputation, of his expertise with the sword, a man of his calling. And he becomes afraid of the king, the leader of this city. And he begins to act like a crazy person.
And he scribbles things on the gate and he lets his saliva run down into his beard and he just acts crazy. And Ekish said to his servants, Behold, you see the man behaving as a madman. Why do you bring him to me? Do I lack madmen? I love that. That you have brought this one to act the madman in my presence? Shall this one come into my house? So David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adolim. And so David got away from the king of Gath, whose name was Ekish.
An odd story, isn't it, about David. It seems to be an interlude that's really out of character for this man of God. Would you like to know what he thought during those days as he reflected on it? Well, let's turn to Psalm 34 and we'll find out. Notice the inscription to Psalm 34. A Psalm of David when he feigned madness before Abimelech who drove him away and he departed. Now the inscription is rather interesting because it talks about Abimelech. We just learned that the king of Gath was whom?
Ekish. Akish. And here he's called Abimelech. And here is one place where skeptics, critics of the Bible, attack its veracity. They say, well, you see here is an example of an error in the Bible. And it does on the surface appear that in one place the king is called Ekish and here he's called Abimelech and so here's a mistake in the word of God. But they fail to note that this word Abimelech is like the title Pharaoh. It refers to a dynasty. It's a title rather than a name.
So Abimelech is like Pharaoh. Ekish is the personal name of this Abimelech who ruled in the city of Gath. So that's the explanation for that. Now we're going to get into David's thoughts and it's interesting here that David says two things. He is going to be a worshiper of God and he is going to be a teacher of God's people as a result of what he experienced. The first thing he basically says in verses 1 through 10 is I will bless the Lord. He's a worshiper.
He offers praise to the Lord and we'll see how he does that. And then beginning in verse 11 he says I will teach you the fear of the Lord. And so he says first I will bless the Lord. Secondly he says I will teach you. So David is first putting himself in the role of a worshiper. Then he is putting himself in the role of a teacher. Let's look at David as a worshiper as he reflects upon what happened to him just days or weeks before this down in the city of Gath.
I will bless the Lord at all times. That is in every season, in every circumstance, in every event of my life I will bless the Lord. What he is saying here in verses 1 through 3 is that I will bless the Lord with determination. In other words I will determine in my heart to bless the Lord no matter what. That is the intent, that is the decision, that is the choice that I make. Did you know that praising God is a choice? It's not just an act. It's not just a response. It is a choice that we make.
And David says with determination, with choice I will bless the Lord in every season. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Sometimes we call our morning service in particular a celebration. Here's where that idea comes from. It comes from the word praise. The Hebrew word praise comes from a verb that means to celebrate or to shine or to give radiance to. So when one is praising the Lord what he is doing is causing the Lord to shine.
In a darkened world, a world filled with moral darkness, we need to make the Lord shine, to be radiant to people, to be real to people. That's what David is saying. I will praise him so as to make him radiant. I will celebrate him so as to cause him to shine forth in a dark world. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord, not in my sword, not in my cleverness. He was pretty clever, you've got to admit.
I remember when I was a student in Chicago, a young lady with whom I was a friend was walking by herself on Chicago Avenue to go to a store as I recall. And she was a nurse. Somehow I ended up dating a lot of nurses along the way and finally married one. It's not a bad idea, guys. And as she was walking down the street on Chicago Avenue, two men came out of the darkness prepared to mug her. She immediately began to pretend to have a seizure.
As a nurse, she had seen them many times and so she immediately went into a seizure act. And the two guys got so scared they left. They didn't know what to do. They just ran when they saw her go into the seizure. How clever, I thought. But David here is not boasting in his cleverness and acting like a crazy person. He is saying, I boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear it and rejoice. It is the humble who hear it. The proud are too busy, too noisy. Their life is too full.
Their ears are plugged. But those who are humble, he says, shall hear it and rejoice. And he says, oh, magnify the Lord with me. So not only is he making the determination himself to praise God, but he is inviting all of us to praise the Lord with him, to magnify the Lord with him. Let us exalt his name together. He's inviting us to come together now as a congregation, as a communal praise service. He says, let us magnify the Lord, exalt his name. When you magnify something, what are you doing?
You're taking something that is very small to your eyes, and you're making it big, right? That's what these things do for me. In part, they magnify things so that I can see well. That's what you and I need to do in our praise of God. The Lord is small to a lot of people. They can't see him. Now, it's not that he is small, but to them, their perception of God is small. But by our praise of the Lord, the way we talk of him, we magnify him to others. We make him big.
They're able to get a better perception of God. Their perspective begins to improve because the Lord is magnified. And David says, let's all do that together. So he blesses the Lord with determination. Now, in verses 4 through 10, he says, I will bless the Lord for deliverance. For deliverance. He doesn't talk about acting crazy. Notice this. He looks beyond the clever idea he came up with to see behind that God working on his behalf. And so he talks about what God did, not what he did.
He says, I sought the Lord, and he answered me. God was afraid. He greatly feared the king of Akish. Greatly feared him. So David tells us that during that time, even though it's not mentioned back in Samuel, that he sought the Lord. And he says, he answered me. And he delivered me from all my fears. Might it be that God gave David the idea? I'm not going to argue for that necessarily. I just throw it out as a possibility. Because David clearly says, I sought the Lord, and he delivered me.
To deliver means to snatch away. He freed me. He released me from all my fears. The word fear is interesting in the Hebrew. It's a Jepitcher-esque word. It refers to where one is not at home. It means to be on a road and to turn aside and to make the wrong turn and to result in anxiety. It's what you feel when you're in a place you don't belong. Have you ever done that? Have you men ever been driving down the road, you don't know where you're going?
And your wife says, let's pull over and ask over here at the station how to get there. Oh no, we're just about there. I've been there before. I know how to do this. You recognize the routine, don't you? And you pull the wrong way. I remember that happening one time to me. I was in Chicago. No, when I made the wrong turn, that is. This happened many times to us, what I was describing. Where we made the wrong turn. We were in a part of Chicago where you didn't want to get off the main drag.
And I thought I knew where I was going to get back to the expressway, but I made the wrong turn. And before I knew it, I was in a neighborhood where I didn't fit, where I didn't belong. The first thing I did was to hit the locks, and I began to look all around my car. I stopped at the stoplight with one foot on the brake and one foot on the accelerator. Had anything gotten in front of me, it was dead. It was dead. I was ready to move at an instant if anything came toward that car.
And it took us a little while to find our way back to where we needed to be to be safe again. That's what fear is, as described here by David. David said, I made a wrong turn. I went down the gap. I was not at home. I went where I didn't belong. Maybe some of us are in that kind of a place tonight in another sense. David says, they looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. He says, this poor man cried, and the Lord heard him.
When David uses the word cried here, he doesn't mean just yelling out without any particular word in mind. He's not talking about a random cry, but he means I cried out with a specific message to a specific recipient with a specific response in mind. Now all of that is entailed in the Hebrew word here. It's a very specific kind of cry. I said something specific to someone specific with a specific request in mind. And of course he was crying to the Lord.
He knew exactly who he was crying out to, and what he wanted was help. And he says, I cried to the Lord, and the Lord heard me and saved him. He says, out of all of his troubles. Here's the word saved in the Old Testament. It is a verb that is yasha in the Hebrew. Yasha literally means to bring to a wide open space. The opposite of it is to be confined, to be trapped. And you can see how David was trapped in the sphere of Gath. He was inside the city. There was a wall around the city.
The enemy was all around him. Here he is hanging on to a sword that they recognize. He's trapped. But he says, the Lord saved me. The Lord brought me out to a wide open space. By the way, this word yasha can be found in the Hebrew name for Jesus, which is Yahshua or Joshua. Yahshua. The Savior. Jehovah saves. It is also found in the word hosanna, which means Lord saved. The same verb, same thought. The Lord saved him out of all of his troubles.
The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and rescues them. The word rescue means to draw out, to extricate from the problem, from the threat, the danger and you see exactly what he means. The angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord is an Old Testament term that refers to God Himself appearing to man. Now David may have that in mind here.
Not necessarily that God appeared to him, but that it was God Himself, this angel of the Lord, the pre-incarnate Christ who intervened on his behalf, who encamped around him. When I see this in my mind, I think of Israel camped around the tabernacle. Or I think of how they used to camp out in the wilderness. We see this on one occasion when Saul was out with his soldiers where he was in the middle and then there were these rings of soldiers around him out to the perimeter.
David says, I am in the center and the angel of the Lord is around me. This is not just a poetic expression folks. This is a reality. That the angel of the Lord protects us. Talks about that in Psalm 91. We are not going to look at the text there, but it says He will give His angels charge concerning you to keep you, to keep you, to guard you in all your ways. Where do you hear that in the New Testament? Who quotes that in the New Testament? Does anybody know?
Who was reading his Bible and quoted that verse in the New Testament? The devil. He actually twisted and misquoted it to Jesus to try to tempt Jesus. But he quoted from Psalm 91. Very interesting he chose that Psalm. It is a Psalm of warfare, spiritual warfare. And he chose a verse from that Psalm to try to get Jesus to do something. Remember what it was? Yeah, jump off the temple.
He says the angels will catch you because didn't God say He will give His angels charge to keep you in all your ways? Lest you dash your foot against the stone. God will send His angels. They will catch you. Go ahead and jump. See? Well truly the Lord does give His angels charge to keep us who belong to Him. The angels of the Lord encamps around them. I think here of Daniel. Remember when there was a transfer of power?
Babylon fell and the Medes and the Persians came on the world scene and Darius was the head honcho at the time. And Darius decided he was going to divide his government in this newly conquered realm in a certain way. He appointed 120 governors so to speak over various regions and then he put three men over those 120 and then he was on top. So it was kind of a pyramid authority structure, delegation of power.
And one of the three was Daniel who had distinguished himself in the prior kingdom of Babylon. So well respected was he that he was not killed. He was held over. He had been a part of the former administration. Now he's a part of the succeeding administration and it says that Darius so liked Daniel that Daniel continued to so distinguish himself that he intended to give him another spot, the leading spot under himself over all of these people.
Well that didn't go over too well with Daniel's peers. They began to figure out some way that they could dig up some dirt on him. Now we might think that this is all new what the press does these days with our political leaders but they were trying to do it back in Daniel's day. They wanted to get dirt on Daniel and they couldn't find anything. They couldn't find anything except with regard to his God and the way that he worshiped God. So they tricked Darius.
They got him to declare that for 30 days, just 30 days, that if anybody prayed to any other God than Darius he was to be executed by being thrown into the lion's den. And so Darius thought that was a pretty good idea. He enjoyed being God and so he signed the decree. There was a little provision in the law of the Medes and the Persians that if the king ever signed anything it could never be changed. He couldn't change it himself. That's just the way it was.
So he signed it and it says that Daniel heard about it and he went home and got himself in his prayer closet and shut the door. Is that what it says? No. It says he went home, opened the windows up in his house and he began to pray like he always did, three times a day to the God of Heaven. And of course these guys are opening the roof next door with their binoculars looking and they see Daniel doing this and immediately they go to Darius and say, here's what's happening.
Darius is terribly upset. He likes this man but he can't change his own law. So he does the only thing he can do. He throws him into the lion's den. But he frets about it. He worries about it. He doesn't want Daniel to die and so the next morning he comes back and says, Daniel, are you alive? Can you imagine how long those next seconds were? And finally Darius says, yes, I'm here. The Lord has sent his angel, closed the lion's mouth, and I'm still alive. And Darius is jumping up and down.
He's absolutely thrilled that God has delivered him, has delivered Daniel. And so he lets the rope down. Daniel comes up and the guys who plotted against Daniel are thrown down with their wives. And the angel was withdrawn. And this time the lions did their work. Well there's an example of how the Lord sends his angel. And exactly how Daniel knew the angel, did Daniel see the angel? I don't know. But Daniel knew that the lion should have eaten him and they weren't.
There may be times when you know I can't see the angel. Would you like to see an angel sometime? I think I'll always be curious to see an angel. I'm not sure how close I want to be to the angel. Might be kind of scary. I talked to a man one time who was probably 75 years old. I'll never forget it. He came into my office when I was pastoring in Covington. And had a white hair, very distinguished, strong man for 75 years of age.
He began to talk to me and he was sharing some of his experiences with God. And as a young pastor I was just amazed. I believe him to be a credible person. He wasn't a nut. We had our share of those too. But he was not one of them. And he told me about one time when he was standing in the front of the auditorium of Moody Bible Institute called Torrey Gray Auditorium. Some of you have been there. It's about, I don't know, 3,000 seats. So it's not huge but it's not small.
And he said while I was standing there, it was empty. The place was empty. No one was in there. He says while I was standing there I was looking up toward the back. There were three balconies. Two or three balconies. He said all the way to the top of the balcony. All of a sudden he said I saw an angel. I said what do you look like? He said well he didn't have wings. He said he was standing there big, had this robe on and some kind of a, looked like a chain or a metal around his neck.
Very dignified, very powerful looking angelic being. He said that never happened again his whole life. Up to that point he'd never seen another one. But he said that one time I saw an angel. I've never seen an angel that I know of, that I know of. But I do know this, that God gives his angels charge to keep us, to guard us, to protect us. And that's exactly what David saw.
Even though he was the one who was sort of playing the fool, who was putting on the game, the front down there in Gath, he said truly it is the angel of the Lord who encamped around me. And he rescued me. And then he says to all of us listening to him talk about oh taste and see that the Lord is good. Experience it for yourself he says. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. The word blessed is plural. It is always plural in the Hebrew whenever this word is used.
Twenty-five out of forty-four times it is used in the Old Testament. It is found in Psalms. It is the one in Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly. Same word blessed. It refers to the multitudes of good things, the happinesses of the one who takes refuge in the Lord. He says oh fear the Lord you his saints. And so he instructs us to fear the Lord. He's going to come back to that theme in just a moment. He says for to those who fear him there is no want.
It kind of reminds me of Psalm 23.1. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger. David had seen that out there in the wilderness. But they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing. Come my children listen to me. So now David has blessed the Lord. He has blessed the Lord with determination for deliverance that God has given to him in the city of Gath. But now he wants to instruct us. He says come to me I will teach you wisdom.
Before his worship now it's wisdom that he wants to teach us. He wants to teach us about the fear of the Lord first. He's already introduced that subject. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. When we talk about the fear of the Lord let's keep in mind that we're not talking about a fright. Now there is a fright whenever we confront anything that's beyond what we are accustomed to.
And should the Lord himself appear here this evening we would find that a frightening experience because it's different and the Lord is holy which means he's utterly different than we are. He's just in a totally different category than we are. So we would be fearful but David is not talking about that kind of fear. There's another way in which fear is used. It means a feeling of reverence and of awe. You know that. So he says I'm going to teach you about this reverence and awe of God.
Who is the man who desires life and loves length of days that he may see good? Well he says keep your tongue from evil, your lips from speaking deceit, depart from evil, do good, seek peace, pursue it. So what he's saying here is look I want to teach you what it means to have the awe of the Lord, to fear the Lord. He says here's what it means. It means to have your life right. It's not just a feeling of gooey warmth that comes over you when you're in church. He says it is a way you live.
And what it means to fear the Lord is to keep your tongue, guard your tongue from evil. The word evil here is the opposite of good back in verse 8 where he says the Lord is good. The word evil comes from a root verb that means to spoil something by breaking it into pieces. You would see a potter who is working on his vessel and suddenly something happens. I don't know. He sticks his thumb into it. I don't know what happens. But the vessel is ruined on his wheel.
And so he takes that piece of clay and he dashes it to pieces. It's evil. That's the word. It means to break into pieces because it's not fit. And so he says keep your tongue from evil, the kinds of things that are unfit, your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil. Forsake it. Do good. Seek peace. Pursue it. And so he teaches us here of the fear of the Lord and what it means to fear the Lord. Now in verses 15 through 21 he's going to teach us of the faithfulness of the Lord.
By the way, he talks about deceit in verse 13. I wonder what he had in mind when he's talking about deceit. Wonder if he's reflecting upon his own experience and maybe realizes that there was some failure on his part in that area when he was in Gath. In verse 15 as he talks about the faithfulness of the Lord he says the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous. His ears are open to their cry. The face of the Lord is against evildoers to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
Notice the eyes, the ears, the face of the Lord. Wonder what color God's eyes are. Have you thought about that? What does God's face look like? His blue, yes, blue. God must be Scandinavian, right? His ears, as you know, these are terms that put God into language we can understand. They're anthropomorphic. They are terms that are describing God in manlike ways. Surely God doesn't have eyes or ears or a face because he's spirit. But what he's saying here is that God sees, God knows, God hears.
God is present. The face of the Lord is against evildoers to cut off the memory of them from the earth. This is very strong language that I'm not going to explain in the crowd we've got here tonight. But I'll tell you something, he's very picturesque when he talks about cutting off the memory of the evildoers. To cut off means to cut off a body part. And so he is very strong in his language of the way that God in his faithfulness is going to deal with the evildoers.
Then again he talks about the righteous. The righteous cry, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the broken hearted, those whose hearts have been shattered. And he saves those who are crushed, who are bruised, who are broken down in spirit. Is that you tonight? Is your heart bursting? Do you feel crushed, bruised by the load that you're bearing? Does Jesus care? As we sang earlier, yes he cares. He's near to those.
And he says in verse 19, many are the afflictions of the righteous. I don't know, we kind of think that somehow afflictions are the things that interrupt life as it's supposed to be. The life is supposed to be happy all the day with Jesus as our Savior. And indeed there's a joy there and there is a happiness there. But David says it right. I mean he's down where the rubber meets the road when he says many are the afflictions of the righteous. Life is not easy.
And somehow we sometimes formulate little ideas. We put together formulas that we do this, this, this and this and that is going to be the result of it. And it doesn't work that way all the time. It doesn't work that way all the time. There are things in life we don't understand. There are afflictions that we suffer that we just are not able to explain. Many are these afflictions. And the word afflictions there in verse 19 is the same word as evil back in 13.
He's talking about the hurts and the injuries of life. But he says the Lord delivers him out of them all. Not always in the way that we think. But the Lord is always there and brings his deliverance. He says he keeps all his bones. The word keeps here means to put a hedge around, the circle. And it reminds you of this word back in verse 7 where it says the angel encamps around those that fear him. Here he says that he puts a circle, a hedge around all his bones. Not one of them is broken.
Does anybody recognize that verse? Yeah, it's quoted in John at Jesus crucifixion where it points out that not a bone was broken in Jesus. Out of joint, yes, but not broken. David means it in a metaphorical sense though. He says in verse 21, evil shall slay the wicked. The word slay means to execute. The wicked will be executed by his own evil. Those that live by the sword, what? Die by the sword. Evil shall slay the wicked.
I want to tell you, those who are wicked will reap the consequences of their evil. And he says those who hate the righteous will be condemned. David had a lot of people hating him as he's thinking about this experience in Gath. He's a refugee out there in the wilderness. Maybe he was in the cave of Adulam. I don't know where he was when he wrote these words. But he's feeling lonely. He's being afflicted. But he says the Lord is with him. And in verse 22 he summarizes.
He says the Lord redeems the soul of his servants. He liberates the soul of his servants. And none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. None of those who take shelter in him. Do you ever feel like you need a shelter? You need a refuge? That things are coming so fast and so furious you just don't know where to turn? Well, take a refuge in the Lord. He's always present. We used to sing a hymn. I don't think it's in these hymns, is it? Check and see. The Lord's my rock, our rock.
In him we hide a shelter in the time of storm is the name of it. Have you remembered that? Is that in there by any chance? A shelter in the time of storm? Okay. Well, we won't sing it then because I'll guarantee you I don't remember all the words. The Lord's our rock and in him we hide a shelter in the time of storm. That's what David is saying. Those who take refuge in him will not be condemned. Let's pray together.
Father, we who love you, who are learning to fear you, to live that kind of a life, and who have experienced something of your faithfulness in our afflictions, want to join David and magnify you tonight and to praise you. We want to be worshippers and we choose to praise and to bless you.
We may not feel like it because of the afflictions, and like David there may be fears that are taunting us, but we believe you, we trust you, and in the midst of our circumstances we bless you and we thank you that you give your angels charge to keep us. We come tonight to take shelter in you, to thank you for that protection, and we rest in you. Now may we this week like David be teachers. May we teach others of the fear of the Lord.
We pray that you will help us to magnify you, to praise you in such a way that you will be radiant through us in this dark world. In Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you, good night.