1. "The better I liked the music I was playing, the less it paid. And the less I liked the music I was playing, the more it paid."

2. "David may be a pinball, but he's a pinball in the hands of a loving God."

3. "David reads all of his circumstances through the lens of God's sovereign love. Even in the disorder and chaos of his life, David reads the handwriting of God's gifts."

4. "If you want to thank God and trust God and praise God in all circumstances, you have to believe that every single one of them is from him. That is how you can be confident when your life collapses."

5. "God is infinitely more holy than you can imagine and your sin is worse than you think."

6. "The cross of Christ is the ultimate example of God using human evil to fulfill his good purposes."

7. "Jonathan used his words to help David get strength from God. Jonathan's words were means God used to give David some of his own strength. That's what biblical encouragement is. It's speaking words that help someone else get strength from God."

8. "Jonathan's encouragement was imperfect, but here's the thing: better imperfect encouragement than no encouragement. Imperfect encouragement still encourages."

9. "Saul invokes the name of the Lord as a kind of religious sticker to slap on an agenda he has devised entirely apart from the Lord. He knows the right phrases to use. He knows the right words to mouth."

10. "David ran from Saul's hatred into God's love. David ran from Saul's persecution into God's protection. David ran from Saul's violence into God's care. He ran from Saul's hand into God's arms."

Observation Questions

1. In 1 Samuel 21:1-6, what kind of bread did Ahimelech give to David, and what was the normal restriction on who could eat this bread?

2. According to 1 Samuel 21:10-15, what strategy did David use when he realized that King Achish's servants recognized him as a military hero, and what was Achish's response?

3. In 1 Samuel 22:1-2, who gathered to David at the cave of Adullam, and how many men eventually joined him?

4. What does 1 Samuel 22:17-19 describe Doeg the Edomite doing when Saul's own servants refused to obey the king's command?

5. In 1 Samuel 23:1-5, what did David do before attacking the Philistines at Keilah, and what two things did God provide in His answer?

6. According to 1 Samuel 23:26-28, what unexpected event caused Saul to stop pursuing David just as he was about to capture him?

Interpretation Questions

1. In 1 Samuel 22:3, David tells the king of Moab he is waiting to see "what God will do for me." How does this statement reveal David's understanding of his circumstances, and why is this theologically significant for understanding the entire passage?

2. How does God's provision of the holy "bread of the presence" to David (21:6) connect to the broader biblical theme that all provision ultimately comes from God's hand, and what does Jesus's reference to this event in Mark 2:25-26 teach us about mercy and the law?

3. What is the significance of Abiathar escaping to David with the ephod (22:20-23; 23:6), and how does this demonstrate whose side God is on in the conflict between Saul and David?

4. The sermon describes Saul as becoming "an antichrist" through his actions in chapter 22. What evidence in the text supports this characterization, and how does Saul's massacre of the priests contrast with his earlier failure to carry out God's command against the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15?

5. How does Jonathan's action of "strengthening David's hand in God" (23:16-17) illustrate the nature of true biblical encouragement, and why was this encouragement effective even though Jonathan's prediction about his own future proved incorrect?

Application Questions

1. David experienced multiple betrayals in this passage—from the people of Keilah and the Ziphites. When you have been let down or betrayed by people you helped or trusted, how can David's example of inquiring of the Lord and continuing to trust God's providence shape your response?

2. The sermon emphasized that "imperfect encouragement is better than no encouragement." Who in your life right now is going through a wilderness season and needs someone to "strengthen their hand in God"? What specific words or actions could you offer them this week?

3. David confessed his doctrine of divine providence even to a pagan king (22:3). In what practical ways do you tend to attribute your circumstances to "chance" or "life" rather than acknowledging God's fatherly hand? How might speaking differently about your trials affect your own faith and your witness to others?

4. The sermon asked children directly: "Does your behavior unite your family or divide it?" Regardless of your age, how does your current behavior—your words, attitudes, and responses to stress—affect the unity and peace of your household or close relationships?

5. David repeatedly had to flee from places of temporary safety and keep running. If God has stripped away sources of security you once relied on (financial stability, health, relationships, reputation), what would it look like for you to "run to God rather than from Him" in your current situation?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Exodus 25:23-30 — This passage describes the institution of the bread of the presence that Ahimelech gave to David, showing its original purpose as a symbol of God's provision and presence with His people.

2. Mark 2:23-28 — Jesus references David eating the holy bread to teach that mercy is the heart of the law, directly connecting to the sermon's interpretation of 1 Samuel 21.

3. Isaiah 10:5-19 — This passage explains how God uses wicked nations as instruments of judgment while still holding them accountable, illuminating how God could use Saul's evil to fulfill His word against Eli's house.

4. Psalm 34:1-22 — David wrote this psalm during his escape from King Achish, providing a window into how he trusted and praised God in the very circumstances described in 1 Samuel 21.

5. Ruth 4:13-22 — This genealogy shows Ruth the Moabitess as David's great-grandmother, explaining why David sought refuge for his parents in Moab and demonstrating how God's past faithfulness prepared for David's present need.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Question of Security and Insecurity

II. Bread from Heaven (1 Samuel 21:1-9)

III. Surprising Safety (1 Samuel 21:10-22:5)

IV. The Fulfillment of His Word (1 Samuel 22:6-23)

V. Divine Direction (1 Samuel 23:1-14)

VI. Timely Encouragement (1 Samuel 23:15-18)

VII. A Way of Escape (1 Samuel 23:19-29)

VIII. Running From Saul Into God's Arms

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Artists have a reputation for being insecure. Painters, musicians, writers, they spend months or years pouring their lives into these works that they invest so much in. And they send them out into the world and they're met with indifference, criticism, even mockery. It's no wonder they can seem a little touchy. But artists are often insecure in another way, too.

They don't tend to be well paid. Their careers are highly unstable and not usually lucrative. Back before I headed into ministry, I spent several years preparing for and just starting a career as a jazz saxophonist. True story. What I discovered was, the better I liked the music I was playing, the less it paid.

And the less I liked the music I was playing, the more it paid.

Sherwood Anderson was an early 20th century novelist with a tumultuous personal life and a kind of unstable career. Early on in his writing career, his publishers recognized his potential, and so they decided to start sending him regular checks in the mail. Could relieve him of the burden of financial provision. It might free him up to produce more consistently and to kind of write his heart out. Well, after a few weeks, Anderson returned his latest check to their office.

It's no use, he said. I find it impossible to work with security staring me in the face.

Where do you look for security?

And what makes you feel insecure?

This morning we return to the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel. We'll cover chapters 21 to 23. The passage begins, though by no means ends, on page 244 of the Pew Bibles. At this point in the story, David has been anointed king, but the current king, Saul, is resolved to kill him. Over and over, Saul has systematically tried to murder David.

So David is fleeing for his life. He has no home, no resources, no power, no defenses, and few friends or allies. In human terms, David has no security. Both literally and metaphorically, David is in the wilderness. He's in the desert.

He's hunting for hiding places and he never knows where his next meal is going to come from.

But even though David is alone, he's not alone. Even though David is the main character in the story, he's not really the main character. The main point of our passage is simple: In the wilderness, God provides. In the wilderness, God provides. When the people of Israel were in the wilderness for 40 years, God provided for them.

And he provided for his anointed king, David, as we'll see this morning. He provided for David's greater son, Jesus, through a temptation of 40 days in the wilderness. And when you personally are in the wilderness, when there's no strength on your side, no resources you can fall back on, God can and God will provide for you. What does God provide? In the wilderness, God provides first bread from heaven.

Point one of six, bread from heaven. We see this in verses 1 to 9 of chapter 21. Look first at verses 1 to 2.

Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, 'Why are you alone and no one with you?' and David said to Ahimelech the priest, 'The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, 'Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I have charged you. I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place.

So, on his run away from Saul, David comes to the city where the priests live. The tabernacle is there, though not the ark. And when David meets the priest in charge, Ahimelech, Ahimelech is scared. Why is David alone? You would not expect a high-ranking royal official and military commander to come to you alone.

Something seems wrong. So Ahimelech asks David what the deal is, and David tells him a bald-faced lie. He makes up a story about having an important secret mission from the king. Now, part of David's motivation may have been to shield the HImelc and give him plausible deniability, so he didn't really know what was going on. But even so, lying was not a righteous option.

David is indeed sinning, but God still provides for him. Look at verses three to six.

Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here. And the priest answered, David, I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread, if the young men have kept themselves from women. And David answered the priest, Truly women have been kept from us, as always, when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey.

How much more today will their vessels be holy? So the priest gave him the holy bread.

For there was no bread there but the bread of the presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.

The only food that was there was bread that was restricted for the priests only to eat. It was bread that God set out in the tabernacle and then when it was regularly removed, the priests could eat it and it got replaced by fresh bread but nobody else could eat it. Achimelech asks here about women because sexual intercourse was one activity that rendered someone ceremonially unclean. That's not implying any moral problem, it's just a ritual restriction. So if Achimelech is going to bend the rules, he wants to make sure that the men are at least in a priest-like state of purity.

But why does he get to bend the rules? Because human need takes priority over ceremonial law. That's what Tina read to us earlier, what Jesus says in Mark chapter 2. And we'll hear more about that tonight. Mercy is the heart of the law.

So, how is David getting fed? On one level, it's by the mercy and kindness of one of God's people. I think there's a lesson for us here, brothers and sisters, members of CHBC. If you don't let us know your needs, we can't meet them.

The only way others can bear your burdens is if you let them. There's nothing shameful about being in need.

Now, on another level, the one feeding David was God himself. It was God's own bread that Ahimelech fed to David. The bread was dedicated to God, set out in God's dwelling and it's even called the bread of the presence. You could translate that more literally, the bread of the face. Whose face?

God's face. The bread is set in the tabernacle across from the lampstand. We learned about this in Exodus chapter 28. There's 12 loaves symbolizing the 12 tribes of Israel and they're set across from the lampstand to symbolize God's face shining upon God's people. It's bread that comes direct from God's own presence.

Even the tabernacle itself is a model of heaven. It's a microcosm of God's heavenly dwelling place. So he put that all together. God's priest takes God's bread out of God's dwelling and gives it to God's anointed servant. David, like Israel in the wilderness and like everyone who trusts in Christ, is eating bread from heaven.

But here's the thing, all the bread you eat is bread from heaven. It's all bread from heaven. Trace your bread back from the grocery store to the delivery driver to the bakery to the farmer who grew the wheat. Who sustains that whole process? Who enables it?

Who keeps it going? Who gave you the money to buy the bread? Or the skill to bake it. Who causes the topsoil to teem with thousands of microscopic creatures that enable each seed to sprout and grow? It's all from God.

That's why Jesus teaches us to pray for daily bread, not to take for granted that we simply earn it and achieve it ourselves. But to recognize it's always a gift from God. This is why we give thanks before we eat, to remind ourselves that we are a great big bundle of needs and God supplies all of them. That all the bread that sustains our bodies comes to us ultimately from heaven. Now, you might say, But David's lying.

He's sinning. Is God rewarding his bad behavior? No, not at all. You're right that David's wrong, but I didn't say that we deserve bread from heaven. I said God gives bread from heaven.

Welcome to grace. We don't deserve it, but God gives it anyways. Do you think you deserve the food that you eat each day? Do you think you deserve for God to sustain your life every moment of every day? I sure don't, and you don't either.

All the bread you eat is bread from heaven and a gift of God's grace.

But provision isn't all that's going on here. The next verse, verse 7, sounds an ominous note: Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord; his name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul's herdsmen. We don't yet learn what this foreigner is doing there or what role he'll play, we'll find out soon enough, but for now, Look at verses 8 and 9. Then David said to Ahimelech, 'Then have you not here a spear or a sword at hand? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king's business required haste.' and the priest said, 'The sword of Goliath the Philistine whom you struck down in the Valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod.

If you will take that, take it. For there is none but that here. And David said, There is none like that. Give it to me.

This sword that David won from Goliath when he killed him in single combat is a real big sword. There's no sword like it. And Ahimelech's act of giving it to David, handing it over to him, and equipping him to fight is yet one more act of recognizing David's true Here God's priest recognizes God's real king. Point two, surprising safety. In the wilderness, God provides surprising safety.

We see this in three episodes from chapter 21, verse 10 through chapter 22, verse 5. First, in verses 10 to 15 of chapter 21, David continues his flight and he seeks refuge with Achish, the king of Gath, which is in the territory of the Philistines. If Saul is set on killing David, maybe he can find asylum with this neighboring foreign king. Maybe. Verses 10 to 12.

And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish, the king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said to him, 'Is not this David the king of the land?

Did they not sing to one another of him in dances? Saul has struck down his thousands and David his ten thousands. And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. If you're a political refugee, you want to keep a low profile. You don't want all the king's senior advisors reminding him of your great military exploits.

So it's kind of like David's cover's blown. He is afraid that Achish will like David better off dead. So what does David do? Verses 13 to 15. So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.

Then Achish said to his servants, 'Behold, you see the man is mad.

Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?

To escape danger, David pretends to be crazy. He tries to trigger Achish's disgust rather than fear. And it works. David's tactic was not unlike that of Vincent the oddfather Gigante. Throughout the late 20th century, Gigante was the boss of the Genovese crime family in New York City.

For 30 years, he feigned insanity to throw law enforcement off his trail. And for a long time, it worked. He would wander the streets of Greenwich Village in a bathrobe and slippers and would mumble incoherently to himself. The first time he was indicted and stood trial, he was declared mentally unfit. And so no charges could be pressed against him.

Eventually, in a later trial, he pleaded guilty and admitted that his insanity was a ruse all along. Now, in our passage, the Bible, as it so often does, is reporting what David did, not endorsing it. This story would get real boring real quick if every time anybody sinned, the biblical author had to say, Now, guys, you know you shouldn't really go home and do that, right? You know that if you're in trouble, you should probably just pray and ask God for help and not pretend to be crazy. The biblical author is assuming we're reading through the lens of God's law.

We have to do that discerning work ourselves. We can be thankful in one sense that the story just keeps humming along and then we have to go, wait a minute, what was David doing? In any case, the point is not that the ends justified the means, but that God graciously used even David's crooked means to bring about his good and gracious end. And while David's faith was far from perfect, it was still real faith. How do we know?

Because in these very circumstances, David wrote two Psalms, Psalms 34 and 56. And as we read earlier in the service, in a later part of the story, it's when he read Psalm 52. So what did David sing in the midst of this trial?

Psalm 52. 34-17 and 18. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Or Psalm 56:3-4, When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust, I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me.

Now, David fled from Ekesh. He had to keep running, finding a new place to hide. His next refuge is a cave. Look at verses 1 to 2 of chapter 22, our second episode of surprising safety.

David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was bitter in soul gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about 400 men.

So David's on the run and his own extended family starts to flee too because, of course, they are legitimately afraid Saul will come after them. So David's family gather around him and not only that but also this kind of ragtag bunch of misfits and malcontents. People with needs and problems flock to David. That seems to suggest that they saw in David this man of sorrows, someone who would have compassion on them, someone who would bear their burdens, someone who would lead them and unify them and not turn them away.

And then David, as verse 2 tells us, forges them together into an army. That's what verse 2 means by saying he became commander over them. So, so far, God has not only provided bread and a sword, but now another hiding place that can serve as headquarters for this royal army that David is forming. Even in his exile, David is starting to look more and more like a king. In the ancient Near East and even today in the same regions, caves were places of burial.

Caves were tombs. David has now entered the place of death, but he will rise from it. And when he does, he's going to bring his people with him. But for now, David remains on the run. So in verses 3 to 5, David flees to yet another foreign king, this time in Moab.

Chapter 22:3-5, and David went from there to Mizpah of Moab. And he said to the king of Moab, 'Please let my father and my mother stay with you till I know what God will do for me.' and he left them with the king of Moab; and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold. Then the prophet Gad said to David, 'Do not remain in the stronghold; depart, and go into the land of Judah. So David departed and went into the forest of Hereth.

Here David secures care for his parents. He's running for his life, but he's not too preoccupied with his own problems to honor his father and mother. Kids in the congregation, Do you remember from the last couple of sermons on 1 Samuel how Saul's sin tore apart his own family? How Saul's opposition to David forced his own children to take sides? It estranged him from his own kids and pushed them away.

By contrast, David here is showing himself to be a loving and faithful and trustworthy son even in the midst of his own hardship. So kids, Here's my question for you: what impact does your behavior have on your own family?

Does your behavior unite your family or divide it? Does it build up or tear down? Do you look for ways to support and help your own family or does your self-centeredness create problems that other members of your family then have to deal with.

It's significant that David sought refuge for his family in Moab. To figure out why we need to recall the biblical book of Ruth, which comes just before 1 Samuel. Ruth is from Moab. She's a Moabitess and she winds up finding shelter in Israel and finding a husband in Boaz.

Now, the very end of the book of Ruth, chapter 4, verses 20 to 22, gives us the genealogy of Ruth's descendants. Through his wife, Ruth, Boaz fathered Obed, Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David. This David, our David. So Ruth from Moab is David's great-grandmother. Our passage doesn't tell us explicitly But I think we're meant to understand that David's part Moabite ancestry helped him secure care for his family in Moab.

You know, David's father would have been a quarter Moabite. They would have remembered his family and their roots.

So here we have a beautiful example of God's past faithfulness cascading all the way down into David's life.

And providing help in his present crisis and showing kindness to Ruth way back then. God was already preparing to show kindness to David now.

Brother, sister, whatever you're struggling with, whatever suffering God has ordained for you, you can be confident that God has been planning the kindness he will show to you in this very moment.

For longer than you've been alive.

God is sovereign over history. He's not bound by time the way we are. His good purposes go farther back, have deeper roots for you than you can imagine. He's got resources at your disposal, at His disposal that you can't dream of. So look for Him to exercise that kind of kindness to you.

Right in the midst of your worst suffering and trials.

Now, we're not even halfway through our passage and David has already racked up quite the itinerary from Nob to Gath to Adullam to Moab and then on to the forest of Hereth. If you find it hard to follow, that's kind of the point. David is being bounced all over Israel and its neighboring territories like a pinball. David has no buffers, no defenses, no security he can fall back on. All that has been stripped away.

If you're not a believer in Jesus, have you ever gone through a season of life that's anything like what David is suffering here where the things you took security in got stripped away? Could have been one of them, could have been all of them. If you've ever had a trusted source of security disappear on you? Did that teach you anything about that source of security you were trusting in?

Look again at verse 3.

Verse 3, what David says to the king of Moab, Please let my father and my mother stay with you till I know what God will do for me. David may be a pinball, but he's a pinball in the hands of a loving God.

Here's a key to the whole passage and a key to what you and I should do with it. In some ways, the whole passage turns on chapter 22, verse 3. Right next to it, you could put 23:14. The whole thing turns right here. If David were a modern secular person, He would have simply said to the king of Moab, Let my parents stay here till I see how things turn out.

Or he would have said, Till I see what cards life deals me. Life. It's a word we use in a sentence when we don't want to say providence. Or we can't say providence because we don't believe in a God who's in charge. So what's life?

Going to do for me. But that's not what David says. He says, till I know what God will do for me. David knows that God is orchestrating all these events. David knows that God is in charge.

David knows that despite all outward appearances to the contrary, God is demonstrating his love and kindness and care to him in all these events. Trials. In other words, David is confessing to the king of Moab his doctrine of divine providence. David reads all of his circumstances through the lens of God's sovereign love. Even in the disorder and chaos of his life, David reads the handwriting of God's gifts.

David does not chalk up his trials to dumb fate. Instead, he says, what God will do for me. David can trust God and thank God and praise God in all circumstances because he trusts that every single one of them is from God's hand. If you want to thank God and trust God and praise God in all circumstances, you have to believe that every single one of them is from him. That is how you can be confident when your life collapses.

That's how you can be joyful amid suffering. That's how you can persevere when life just keeps getting worse and worse and worse instead of the better and better and better that you were hoping for and expecting.

David believes precisely what the Heidelberg Catechism beautifully confesses about God's providence. Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which God upholds as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, All things, in fact, come to us not by chance, but by his fatherly hand. Not by chance, but by his fatherly hand. Nothing from chance, everything from his fatherly hand.

Charles Spurgeon put the point in a predictably poetic way. Too good not to share.

Winter in the soul is by no means a comfortable season. And if it be upon thee just now, it will be very painful to thee. But there is this comfort, namely, that the Lord makes it. He sends the sharp blasts of adversity to nip the buds of expectation, He scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes over the once verdant meadows of our joy. He casteth forth his ice like morsels, freezing the streams of our delight.

He does it all. He is the great winter king and rules in the realms of frost.

And therefore thou canst not murmur. Losses, crosses, heaviness, sickness, poverty, and a thousand other ills are of the Lord's sending, and come to us with wise design.

What should you do when what God sends you from his fatherly hand is trials, sickness, loss, opposition, persecution?

Trust him, thank him, praise him, wait for him. And confess that it's all from him. When God sends you storms, make him your refuge in the storm he sent. That's the God we serve. That's the God we trust.

That's how you can not only survive but spiritually thrive in the trial God sends you.

Even though David made God his refuge, he still couldn't stay long in any earthly refuge. He just had to keep running. In verse 5, the prophet Gad tells David to move on, and so should we. Point three: The fulfillment of his word. In the wilderness, God provides the fulfillment of his word.

We see this in chapter 22, verses 6 to 23. Now, I have to warn you, if you haven't been studying the passage throughout the week, this portion of Scripture records Saul committing an atrocious crime. It's utterly despicable. And yet, God uses even that hideous crime to fulfill purposes he had declared long before. So we'll start by looking at verses 6 to 10.

Now, Saul heard that David was discovered and the men who were with him. Saul was sitting at Gibeah under the tamarisk tree on the height with his spear in his hand. And all his servants were standing about him. And Saul said to his servants who stood about him, Hear now, people of Benjamin, will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards? Will he make you all commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, that all of you have conspired against me?

No one discloses to me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. None of you is sorry for me, or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me. To lie in wait, as at this day? Then answered Doeg the Edomite, who stood by the servants of Saul, I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub. And he inquired of the Lord for him, and gave him provisions, and gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine.

The more Saul grasps for power, the more his authority slips away from him. His servants won't do what he wants. He's sinking into self-pity and his thinking is becoming riddled with conspiracy theories. Literally, he accuses them of conspiring against him. But this is without any basis in fact.

He charges that David is the one who's out to kill him. Hey, Saul, take a look in the mirror. And then Doeg the Edomite reports what he saw back in chapter 21. So Saul summons Ahimelech the priest, the priest that David met, and the outcome is ghastly. First, look at verses 11 to 15.

Then the king sent to summon Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub, and all the men of his father-house, the priests who were at and all his father's house, the priests who were at Nob, and all of them came to the king. And Saul said, 'Here now, son of Ahitub.' and he answered, 'Here I am, my lord.' and Saul said to him, 'Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him, so that he has risen against me to lie in wait, as at this day? '

Then Ahimelech answered the king, and who among all your servants is so faithful as David, who is the king's son-in-law, and captain over your bodyguard, and honored in your house? Is today the first time that I've inquired of God for him? No. Let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of all this, much or little.

Basically, Ahimelech tries to appeal to Saul by reminding him that he's not done anything wrong, that David's done nothing but good to Saul, and so Saul shouldn't be mad at anybody for trying to help David. But that doesn't really get him anywhere with Saul. Saul condemns Ahimelech and his whole family to death if only he can find someone to carry out the sentence. That brings us to verses 16 to 19.

And the king said, 'You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father's house.' and the king said to the guard who stood about him, 'Turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because their hand also is with David, and they knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me.' But the servants of the king would not put out their hand to strike the priests of the Lord. Then the king said to Doeg, you, turn and strike the priests. And Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests, and he killed on that day eighty-five persons who wore the linen ephod. And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey, and sheep he put to the sword.

When Saul issues his murderous order, none of the Israelites are willing to murder their own priests, but Doeg the Edomite proves willing. The crime is as horrific as it is ironic. The reason Saul lost his kingship back in chapter 15 is that he would not carry out the ban against the Amalekites, meaning the Lord had instructed him to destroy the army of Amalek, to kill their king, and to not even preserve any spoil. It was to be total devotion to destruction. But Saul didn't.

But here he asks a Gentile, to do that against God's own priests. Saul is carrying out a holy war against Yahweh. In his opposition to the Lord's anointed, Saul has become an antichrist. He has fully and finally set himself against the God he claims to serve. It's horrific.

It's haunting. It's harrowing. As John says in 1 John 2:18, Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. This is a horrid crime.

There's no justifying it, no excusing it. It's Saul's most horrific act to date. It's his lowest point in a series of low points.

And also, In addition, this horrific act is a means God used to fulfill His promise of judgment against the house of Eli. Way back in 1 Samuel 2, the prophet Eli forfeited his priesthood for abusing it and for failing to restrain his abusive sons. In 1 Samuel 2:31, the Lord warned, Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father's house, so that there will not be an old man in your house. That promise of judgment is fulfilled right here against Eli's descendants. The priesthood is hereditary.

They all descend from Eli. And so the Lord is fulfilling his word of judgment.

It's like when God used the wicked Babylonians to judge his people Judah. Here, the Lord is using the evil act of one to carry out judgment on another. This passage is not making a general point about all such violence far from it. It's making a narrow, specific point about this one instance, what the Lord was doing right here. If you want to think more about how God can work like that and work through evil deeds and yet still be just, I'd encourage you to read Isaiah Isaiah chapter 10 and the whole book of Habakkuk.

Isaiah chapter 10 and the whole book of Habakkuk. It's only three short chapters. Those are two of the Bible's fullest discussions of this very thing: how God can use wicked people to carry out his judgment. And yet that does not in any sense make God wicked. Another promise this passage fulfills is in verse 33 of 1 Samuel 2 which promises that in this judgment there will be one survivor.

We meet that survivor in verses 20 to 23. But one of the sons of Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub, named Abiathar, escaped and fled after David. And Abiathar told David that Saul had killed the priests of the Lord. And David said to Abiathar, I knew on that day when Doeg the Edomite was there that he would surely tell Saul, 'I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father's house. Stay with me.

Do not be afraid. For he who seeks my life seeks your life; with me you shall be in safekeeping. David knows that he bears some share of the guilt for what had happened by coming to Ahimelech, David endangered him. And now here he pledges to be safety, surety, the guarantor for Ahimelech's son Abiathar. When you look at the judgment carried out in this portion of Scripture, if I'd strike you as extreme, hard to stomach, gruesome, it can be very hard for us to in any way sympathize with God's judgment of sin and sinners.

But whenever you're offended by God's judgment in Scripture, it is virtually a guarantee that you are overlooking and undervaluing two absolutely crucial realities: God's holiness and your sin. God is infinitely more holy than you can imagine and your sin is worse than you think. So when you have a kind of instinctive revulsion against an expression of God's judgment in Scripture, ask yourself, How highly am I regarding God's holiness? And how righteous do I think I am? God is your creator and Lord and you owe him wholehearted obedience but none of us have given God what he deserved.

None of us have treated God's holiness with the reverence, the awe, the devotion, the worship that we owe to him. What we deserve from God is to be judged forever in hell. And that's what God promises to do to all who persist in unbelief and disobedience. But because God is also merciful and gracious, he sent his own eternal son into the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, his anointed Messiah, to bear his own wrath for us. Like David, Jesus was a man of sorrows.

Like David, Jesus was oppressed and persecuted. Like David, Jesus was hounded by would-be captors.

Like David, Jesus gathered to himself those no one else would welcome. Like David, Jesus suffered on the road to his kingship. Like David, Jesus offered safety and protection to those who came to him. Unlike David, Jesus never sinned. Unlike David, Jesus's kingdom has no limit and no end.

Unlike David, Jesus, having no sin of his own to pay for, paid for all of ours in his death on the cross. Unlike David, Jesus defeated sin and death forever by his death and resurrection. So if you're shocked or appalled or disgusted by God's judgment against sin, I would beg you, I would plead with you, try to see what in yourself is deserving of that very judgment. Try to see what in yourself is out of accord with the will of the God of the universe.

And trust in Jesus to save you. He doesn't start some process of moral reformation by which if you carry it out to the full and pass all of God's tests, you maybe someday can possibly be right with him. No, if you come to him, your sin's gone. If you trust in him, you're welcomed into God's presence and his family and guaranteed eternal life with him forever. So trust in him today.

The cross of Christ is the ultimate example of God using human evil to fulfill his good purposes.

In the wilderness and on the cross, God fulfills his word. Point number four, divine direction. In the wilderness, God provides divine direction.

We see this in chapter 23, verses 1 to 14. Look first at verses 1 to 5.

Now they told David, 'Behold, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah and are robbing the threshing floors.' Therefore David inquired of the Lord, 'Shall I go and attack these Philistines?' and the Lord said to David, 'Go and attack the Philistines and save Keilah.' But David's men said to him, 'Behold, we are afraid here in Judah. How much more than if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines? Then David inquired of the Lord again, and the Lord answered him, 'Arise, go down to Keilah, for I will give the Philistines into your hand.' and David and his men went to Keilah and fought with the Philistines and brought away their livestock and struck them with a great blow. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.

Here, David, the rejected king, is acting like the king he really is. This city of Judah is under threat. Saul's army is nowhere to be found, so David volunteers to save his own people. And because it's so dangerous, because his men are afraid, David twice inquires of the Lord. He asks God if this is his will.

What does David receive? An answer? First, in verse 2, a command: Go. Then, in verse 4, a promise: I will give the Philistines into your hand. And God made good on his word.

But then the tables turn against David yet again. He just cannot get a break. Verses 6 to 14: When Abiathar the son of Ahimelech had fled to David, to Keilah, he had come down with an ephod in his hand. Now it was told Saul that David had come to Keilah. And Saul said, 'God has given him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars.' and Saul summoned all the people to war, to go down to Keilah, to besiege David and his men.

David knew that Saul was plotting harm against him. And he said to Abiathar the priest, 'Bring the ephod here.' Then David said, 'O Lord, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah, to destroy the city on my account. Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hands? Will Saul come down as your servant has heard?' 'O Lord, the God of Israel, please tell your servant. ' And the Lord said, 'He will come down.' Then David said, 'Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?' and the Lord said, 'They will surrender you.' Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go.

When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition. And David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him into his hand. There's our other key verse, our other theme verse. What will God do for me?

22:3 God did not give him into his hand. That's the kind of, you know, pulling the lid off, pulling back the curtain. This is not merely a secular history of chance and fate, but God is at work. So rapidly, just to walk through the story again, Saul learns where David is hiding. Saul pursues David.

David asks the Lord whether the people he's sheltering among will give him up, will hand him over. The Lord says they will, so David has to flee. The key to this section is verse 6.

Which also explains what we saw in verses 1 to 5. Verse 6, When Abiathar the son of Ahimelech had fled to David to Keilah, he had come down with an ephod in his hand. The ephod was a garment that the Israelite priests wore on their upper body. And it had a front chest pocket containing two objects called the Urim and Thummim. These were a divinely appointed means of obtaining guidance from the Lord, basically through asking yes or no questions.

Now, when Abiathar fled, He didn't just have an ephod, he had the only ephod. All the other priests had been slaughtered, but they're all dead. So the only remaining authorized representative of the Lord of the universe is now with David. The Lord is showing whose side he's on. The Lord is providing David with a direct line to heaven to help him in his distress.

Saul has to scheme. He has to send out spies to gather intelligence.

And even when it comes back, he doesn't really trust it so he has to have them do it again. But when David wants to learn God's will, all he has to do is ask. Now, in our situation today, we don't have precisely the means David had of accessing God. We have a better one. Jesus, our high priest, guaranteeing a warm welcome in heaven, guaranteeing access to the throne of grace.

And what God has given us in his word is sufficient to guide us in our distress. What was the fundamental answer David got? He got a command and he got a promise. And this thing is full of those. If you want to know God's will for your life, go search out all the commands and obey them.

Go search out all the promises and trust them. That is how God means to direct you in whatever wilderness you're wandering through.

Point five, timely encouragement. In the wilderness God provides, timely encouragement.

In chapter 23, verses 15 to 18 is where we see this.

David saw that Saul had come out to seek his life. David was in the wilderness of Ziph at Horesh. And Jonathan, Saul's son, rose and went to David at Horesh and strengthened his hand in God. And he said to him, 'Do not fear, for the hand of Saul, my father, shall not find you. You shall be king over Israel and I shall be next to you.

Saul, my father, also knows this. And the two of them made a covenant before the Lord. David remained at Horesh and Jonathan went home.

This is Jonathan and David's last meeting. And Jonathan spends it, as verse 16 says, strengthening David's hand in God.

What a lovely phrase. Jonathan used his words to help David get strength from God. Jonathan's words were means God used to give David some of his own strength. That's what biblical encouragement is. It's speaking words that help someone else get strength from God.

That's why the word courage is in the middle. It's about strengthening others in God. Encouragement is not based on naive optimism, it's not based on circumstances and actually, and part of Jonathan's encouragement was based on his confidence in circumstances. He's confident God's going to appoint David king, and then he says, I'll be next to you, like second in command. Well, sadly, that's not exactly how things turned out.

So Jonathan's encouragement was imperfect, but here's the thing: better imperfect encouragement than no encouragement. Imperfect encouragement still encourages. So I hope that will encourage you to offer each other encouragement even if it's imperfect. The fundamental ground of Jonathan's encouragement, despite his little wobble, was not circumstance but God's promise and character. That's what he's fundamentally basing it on.

And so should ours be too. Brothers and sisters, members of CHBC, pray that God would give you the gift of encouragement and fan that gift into flame. Lord willing, this week Joseph will be teaching Bible study but then next Wednesday, 10 days from now, we'll be back into Romans 12 and the passage is about, in part, the gift gift of encouragement. So keep coming to Bible study to learn more about this. There are so many ways you can encourage another brother or sister in the faith.

You can be humbly transparent about your own struggles and trials. That will show someone it's safe to share and safe to share with you. I can't count how many times this has been true of my own wife, Kristen. How many people have been encouraged to be more transparent because of her sharing her struggles with them? You can celebrate God's work that you see in someone's life.

You can encourage someone about how you see them using the gifts God has given them. You can share what God has been teaching you from his word. You can have a mini sermon ready from each morning's quiet time. Just a little brief encouragement you can offer to somebody who needs it. A friend who can offer timely encouragement is one of the sweetest of God's gifts.

There are so many faithful encouragers in this congregation, so many dozens and hundreds of you who are just richly and wonderfully encouraging. It feels wrong to even single anybody out, but here goes. Our brother Alberto Jaquez is renowned for his wonderful, humble service. Alberto Brother, isn't he back there? Where'd he go?

There he is. Brother, you did such a wonderful gift of encouragement. Thank you for using it on me this week. Alberto does all of these things I just talked about and much more. If you want to get some encouragement, talk to Alberto.

If you want to learn how to develop this gift of encouragement, learn it from Alberto.

Pray to receive that gift. And pray to be that gift. A few weeks ago, the Lord sent me a couple of disappointing providences back to back. Some cherished hopes and dreams met the divine ax.

I talked through it all on the phone with my friend Alex Dapremo, who's pastor of Emmanuel Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A couple of days later, Alex sent me a text. It had a quote from one of my favorite Christians and Alex followed up with this: Whatever God does and however he leads, you must be sanctified through this or else it will be worthless to you. You must be sanctified. And if you indeed are sanctified through this, then why would you want it to go any other way?

I wish I sent more texts like that. It was timely encouragement, one of God's gifts in the wilderness. Point six, finally and briefly, a way of escape. In the wilderness, God provides a way of escape. We see this in the last portion of the passage.

Verses 19 to 29.

In verse 19, David suffers yet another betrayal. The people of Ziph, where he's hiding out, go, volunteer to Saul, tell him where he is. So now Saul is set on David's path again, but God has another trick up his sleeve. So from verse 19 to the end of the chapter, Then the Ziphites went up to Saul at Gibeah, saying, 'Is not David hiding among us in the strongholds at Horesh on the hill of Hakilah, which is south of Jeshimon?' Now come down, O king, according to all your heart's desire to come down. And our part shall be to surrender him into the king's hands.' and Saul said, 'May you be blessed by the Lord, for you have had compassion on me.

Go make yet more sure. No, and see the place where his foot is, and who has seen him there. For it is told me that he is very cunning. See therefore, and take note of all the lurking places where he hides, and come back to me with sure information. Then I will go with you.

And if he is in the land, I will search him out among all the thousands of Judah. And they arose and went to Ziph ahead of Saul. Now David and his men were in the wilderness of Maon, in the Arabah, to the south of Jeshimon. And Saul and his men went to seek him. And David was told, so he went down to the rock and lived in the wilderness of Maon.

And when Saul heard that, he pursued after David in the wilderness of Maon. Saul went on one side of the mountain, and David and his men on the other side of the mountain. And David was hurrying to get away from Saul. As Saul and his men were closing in on David and his men to capture them, a messenger came to Saul saying, Hurry and come, for the Philistines have made a raid against the land. So Saul returned from pursuing after David and went against the Philistines.

Therefore that place was called the Rock of Escape. And David went up from there and lived in the strongholds of Engedi. Look back at verse 21. It's just chilling what Saul says. May you be blessed by the Lord, for you have had compassion on me.

This is a prime instance of taking the Lord's name in vain. And the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Saul invokes the name of the Lord as a kind of religious sticker to slap on an agenda he has devised entirely apart from the Lord. He knows the right phrases to use. He knows the right words to mouth.

But Saul is invoking God's blessing on his plan to murder God's anointed. That's not how it works. God is not mocked. Beware that you never attach the Lord's name to an agenda that is not from the Lord.

The main point of this narrative, though, is how God delivers David from Saul. What does he do? He sends the Philistines to attack Israel. Earlier, we saw David again save Israel from the Philistines. Now the Philistines save David from Saul.

As Dale Ralph Davis put it, Not for the last time, David accepts the Philistines as his personal savior.

In the wilderness, God provides a way of escape and he can provide a way of escape for every temptation you face.

In closing, zoom out, pause, step back, take in the passage as a whole. Ask two questions through all these three crazy chapters. What is David running from and what's he running to?

David ran from Saul's hatred into God's love. David ran from Saul's persecution into God's protection. David ran from Saul's violence into God's care. He ran from Saul's hand. Into God's arms.

Brother, sister, whatever wilderness you're going through, as Caleb exhorted us at the very beginning of the service, don't run from God, run to him. Run from sin into the sanctifying work of the Spirit. Run from anxiety straight to the throne of grace.

Run from unbelief into the unbreakable fortress of God's promise, run from despair into a deeper dependence on God, run from fear into God your refuge. That is where you will find security.

What e'er my God ordains is right, here shall my stand be taken. Though sorrow, need, or death be mine, yet I'm not forsaken. My Father's care is round me there. He holds me that I shall not fall, and so to Him I leave it all. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise youe because youe are sovereign over all things, and in all things yous manifest yout kind, wise, and loving purposes toward us. Father, we pray that in whatever trials we go through, we would not run from youm. But to you. In Jesus' name, Amen.