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Collierville First Baptist Church
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Good evening.
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How are you?
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You ready to get into the Word of God?
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Don't you love to get into the Word of God?
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I mean, there's just nothing better than opening our Bible and studying the Bible and seeing how the Word of God is so relevant
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to life in our day.
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I praise God for that.
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Tonight, we're looking at 1 Samuel, the whole chapter. So pray for me.
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And I've got my phone right here so I won't go 15 minutes over, okay?
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Hopefully I'll remember to look down at it, okay?
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So strength for the journey. We're all on a journey, right?
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All of us on a journey. I love what Ray Pritchard said.
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He said, "Life is a journey for all of us.
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And that journey is not always easy. Can I get an amen?"
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There are hard days and difficult nights. And sometimes there are weeks and months and years where the road seems to lead from one hardship to another.
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No one gets a free ride,
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and no one is exempt from the troubles of the world.
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Sometimes when we are discouraged,
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we can lose heart and feel like giving up.
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Now, I had a pastor to call me earlier this week, and man, he's going through a tough time, and he hasn't done anything wrong. There's nothing wrong.
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He's leading the church to advance the kingdom of God.
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And there are some folks in the church that's really bucking at him. And they're sticking their heels in the ground like Fred Flitz on did in his little vehicle.
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I texted him,
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and I sent him this passage of scripture this morning.
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I said, "I prayed for you again this morning." And here's the scripture I sent him.
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It's 2 Corinthians chapter four, verses 14 to 16.
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And it says, "That is why we never give up.
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"Though our bodies are dying, "our spirits are being renewed every day. "For our present troubles are small "and won't last very long. "Yet they produce for us a glory "that vastly outweighs them and will last forever."
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So we don't look at the troubles we can see now. Rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things which we see now will soon be gone. But the things which we cannot see will last forever.
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2 Corinthians chapter four, verse 16 to 18. You ought to mark that in your Bible. When you're going through a hard time, read that.
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And it should encourage you to keep on keeping on when life is hard, okay?
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So David had to learn to persevere under pressure. He was on constant pressure. Remember, Saul had became insanely obsessed
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with the idea of killing David. That was his number one goal.
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And we'll see tonight that Saul didn't do some of his kingly duties.
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And as a result, David had to step in before he actually became king and do kingly duties.
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Now, as a background to our study, I just want to call your attention to what went on before chapter 23 of 1 Samuel. Remember, David left Gibeah where Saul was, and he went to Nob.
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Nob was the city of where the priests lived.
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And he went there and he asked for some bread and the high priest gave him five of the consecrated loaves of bread. He also gave him Goliath, he also gave him Goliath's sword.
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And then David and his few men went to Gath,
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which is a city, one of the capital cities of the Philistine Empire.
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And remember, he tried to pass himself off. He thought he could get by with going incognito, but it didn't work. And some of the Philistines recognized him, told King Akish, and David had to act like he was insane to worm himself out of a very dangerous situation.
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Remember, the Bible talks about his saliva coming down in his beard, just acting crazed as a Betsybug.
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And he was able to get out of Gath, and he left Gath and he went to the cave of a dulam.
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And he was there for a little while and he received some terrible news.
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He found out that King Saul had ordered
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that the high priest, a Himelech, and all the priests and their families should be slaughtered.
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Remember, there was somebody there at Nob
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when David and his men went there and got the consecrated bread. It was Doag the Edomite who was a shepherd for Saul.
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And he ratted out David
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and told Saul that David had been there and that the Himelech had given him five loaves of the consecrated bread.
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And Saul demanded that all of the Himelech come and appear before Saul.
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And Saul ordered that a Himelech be slaughtered right there before him. And Doag, none of Saul's warriors would do it. They wouldn't obey his command.
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But Doag the Edomite took his sword and whacked up the high priest. And then Doag went to the city of Nob and killed every single living person in that priestly city.
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Some scholars estimate it to be upwards of 200 people that he killed and murdered. And David felt horrible. He felt like he was responsible
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for the death of the priest and their families.
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And there was one member of a Himelech's family that escaped and came to David later on and his name was Abiathar. Okay.
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And when he came, he came with the Ephod. We'll talk about the Ephod a little later.
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So now David is a fugitive. I just listed the places from the time he was in Gibeah until the end of chapter 23. Let me just read to you the places
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where David had to run to.
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He was a fugitive with a capital F.
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He was in Gibeah, he was in Nob, he was in Gath, he was a cave of Adolom. He was at Mispah of Moab, he was a forest of Areth. He was at Kailah, Zeph, Maon. And at the end of the chapter, he goes to Engedi.
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Now, if you've been to Israel, you remember Engedi. We've been there, okay.
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It was a place where there was beautiful springs of water. It was a place where there were many hideouts in the caves and David and his men could be at that high perch position and they could see for miles if Saul and his men were coming or not.
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So David's a fugitive. David is weary and worn out. He needs to recharge physically, spiritually, and emotionally.
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In our passage today, we're gonna look at David at three locations,
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Kailah, Zeph, and Maon. And David faced a different obstacle at each of those places and we learned a different lesson that we can apply to our lives as we seek strength from God ourselves.
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So let's look number one on page two, David at Kailah.
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Now look at verses one to six and these verses teach us that we've got to learn to trust God's promises.
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Do you realize that your Bible is full of promises from God
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and it is a crying shame. How many promises from God we leave on the table and we never by faith trust God to do what he promises to do in those promises. Let's just read 1 Samuel 23 verses one to six.
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Then they told David saying,
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behold, the Philistines are fighting against Kailah, which is a city in Judah. It's a Jewish city and are plundering the threshing floors. Now Kailah was in the what's called the Shephelah.
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It was the agricultural area of Judah.
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They grew great crops there. It was perfect for growing crops. Verse two, so David inquired of the Lord saying, shall I go and attack these Philistines?
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Now let me ask you a question.
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Would Saul have inquired of the Lord? No, no, it's the difference between Saul and David.
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Saul would not have inquired of the Lord. So David says to God, shall I go and attack these Philistines?
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And the Lord said to David, go and attack the Philistines and deliver Kailah. Verse three, but David's men said to him, behold, we are afraid here in Judah. How much more then if we go to Kailah against the ranks of the Philistines?
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So remember David had about 400 men with him right now.
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And their credit reports were awful. Remember they were all in debt.
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They were not seasoned veteran soldiers at that time, that they had sort of a shady history.
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And so they were worried about going against Philistines.
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I think they were probably thinking in their head, we've already got one big enemy, his name is Saul. We don't need another enemy after us also.
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But anyway, look at verse four, then David inquired of the Lord once more.
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So he prayed to God, God showed him, yes, go attack the Philistines at Kailah. I will deliver them into your hands. His men sort of, they don't buck him, but they're concerned about it. And David was smart enough to know that he needed to bring his men with it. You see part of leadership is that if you're gonna be a leader, you won't know how to tell if somebody's leader or not. Look around and see if anybody's following them.
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If nobody's following them, they're not a leader.
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I'm telling you, David was a leader par excellence.
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And so we go on to read in verse five. So David and his men went to Kailah, remember God had told him twice now that he was to go to Kailah and deliver them for the Philistines.
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So David and his men went to Kailah and fought with the Philistines and he led away their livestock and struck them with a great slaughter. Man, what a victory David had and he had the booty of war to bring back with him. Thus David delivered the inhabitants of Kailah. Now it came about when a biothor, the son of a hemelech fled to David at Kailah, that he came down with an ephod in his hand. Now that's not a throw away little statement.
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It's an important statement.
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A biothor would become a very important cog
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in David's, the men that followed David. I mean, he was a man of God. The city of Kailah was located about three miles south of a dulham. It was a wall city on the outskirts of Judah and it was only about 12 miles from Gath. Yeah, sometimes I think we get the idea that there's huge distances here. But you gotta realize that the nation of Israel is about the size of New Jersey.
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So there's not large distances here that you have to deal with. And so David hears that the Philistines are fighting against Kailah and God gives him confirmation. And look at this.
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I got a little statement down here in a box. God likes to confirm his word.
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Can you think of other people that God confirmed his word in a supernatural way? Think about Gideon.
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Did God not confirm his word in a supernatural way? Absolutely.
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Think about Moses. Did God not confirm his word in a supernatural way?
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I mean, there's a bush that's on fire and it's not being consumed. And God spoke to him out of the bush.
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And remember, Moses gave excuses why he couldn't be the one to deliver the nation of Israel from Egyptian bondage. And God confirmed that it was God's will that Moses and Aaron go and deliver the children of Israel. So God likes to confirm his word, especially when he directs us to do something hard or unusual.
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This time the Lord not only confirmed his previous command but also gave a promise with a confirmation.
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I will deliver the Philistines into your hands. So now David has a word from God and he has a promise from God.
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By all outward appearance, it was a crazy thing to do. Think about it. It was a crazy thing for David and his 400 men to go and attack a well-seasoned Philistine army that was trying to destroy the city of Kailah.
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Now, they were not a crack army unit at this time.
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David is gonna have more than one enemy to deal with. He got Saul, now he's got the Philistines to deal with.
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So they obeyed God. David delivered this Jewish city. Now, can I tell you that Saul, King Saul should have been the one to lead this attack on the Philistines at Kailah because this was a Jewish city and Saul was the Jewish king, but he didn't do his job.
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And so God took his anointed king who wants to be the next king and gave him responsibility to do what Saul should have done in the first place. But why did Saul not do it?
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I tell you why he was obsessed with one thing. I told you a minute ago, he was obsessed with one thing, it's not to protect Jewish cities and Jewish citizens, it was to kill David. You gotta remember that.
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Now, there's a principle we need to learn here. Now, I tell you, it works in our day and time. In 2026, it works. God strengthens us as we seek him through the word of God and prayer.
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Look, you may be here tonight and you are at an all time low.
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You are worn out physically, spiritually and emotionally. You've been going through a lot of hard times.
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And you need God to strengthen you.
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Let me tell you, don't look for your strength outside of God because you're gonna be disappointed, I promise you. You look for your strength from God.
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And when you want strength from God, you gotta do it his way. You can't make up your own plan here, you gotta do it his way. And the way to get strength from God is to get into the word of God and prayer. I'll tell you, you get into the word of God and prayer and you seek the kingdom of God first and you seek God with all your heart. I promise you, he's gonna strengthen you. He'll strengthen you.
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Now, that's an important lesson for us to learn.
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But not only do we...
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Let me get back.
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Not only do we trust God's promises, but we also avoid unnecessary danger.
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I want you to look at verses seven to 13. When it was told Saul that David had come to Kila,
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Saul said, "God has delivered him into my hand for he shut himself in by entering a city with double gates and bars."
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Do you see how twisted Saul's mind was?
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He said, "I got him.
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I got him.
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He's in the city with gates, a wall. I've got him hemmed in."
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What Saul didn't realize is that God had taken his hand to favor all Saul and placed his hand to favor on David.
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Now, look at this, verse eight. So Saul summoned all the people for war to go down to Kila, not to take care of the Philistine problem,
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but to take care of the David problem, right?
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Now, verse nine, David knew that Saul was plotting evil against him, so he said to Obiathar, the priest, "Bring the ephod here."
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Then David said, "O Lord God of Israel,
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your servant has heard for certain that Saul is seeking to come to Kila to destroy the city on my account."
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Will the men of Kila surrender me into his hand?
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Will Saul come down as your servant has heard? O Lord God of Israel, I pray, tell your servant." And the Lord said, "He will come down."
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He will come down.
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Verse 12, then David said, "Will the men of Kila surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?"
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And the Lord said, "They will surrender you."
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Then David and his men, about 600. Now, David's troops have grown from 400 to 600.
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That's a sign of leadership.
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David's a great leader.
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Great leaders attract people who wanna be a part of something bigger than themselves, right? So now he's got 600 men,
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and God says to David, "They will surrender you. The men of Kila will surrender you to Saul." Then David and his men, about 600, arose and departed from Kila, and they went wherever they could go.
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When it was told Saul that David had escaped from Kila, he gave up the pursuit. You know, when I first read that,
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God said, "The men of Kila will give you up, David. They'll rat you out in the cost of your life."
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I first read that, I thought,
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David and his men just delivered them from Philistines.
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Now they're going to rat their deliverer out to a guy who wants to kill him.
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It makes no sense to me, but it does.
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Because I think that the men of Kila had probably heard about what Saul had done to the priest in Nob, right? How it slaughtered men, women, boys and girls, animals, everything there in Nob.
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And they didn't wanna be a part of that execution that Saul would launch upon them as a city. And so God warned David, and David to his credit,
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did not state a fight because he did not wanna put the people of Kila in danger from Saul.
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Again, that shows you the integrity of David.
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Now, what is an ephod? Let's think about that for just a moment.
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I've got a little on page four, the ephod was a special garment worn by the high priest, which contained two mysterious objects called the Urim and the Thummim.
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We don't know much about these objects. Perhaps they were two jewels or two stones,
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but we do know that God allowed the priest to use these objects to ask questions
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to discern God's will.
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Obviously the questions had to be yes or no type questions.
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I read one commentary where the author said that these were stones and that when the priest would come into the presence of God,
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that if the answer from God was yes,
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then the stones would light up. If the answer was no, they would not light up. That's what one scholar said. I don't know, I'm not sure we can know for sure, but we do know this. It was a legitimate way for leaders in the Old Testament to determine the will of God.
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Aren't you glad that we don't have to depend upon the Urim and Thummim to determine the will of God? Aren't you glad that we've got a Bible that we can open our Bible and we can read and we can discern the will of God from the Bible and from the ministry of the Holy Spirit within us? Man.
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So once again, is Saul coming down to Kyla? Yes. Will the people of Kyla deliver David to Saul? Yes.
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And so what's the lesson we need to learn? We need to learn the value of trusting the promises of the Lord and the value of avoiding pointless danger.
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Matthew 10, 16.
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Jesus said, "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves." Now, the thing that amazes me about this story, this narrative is that David never barks the head and just did what he thought was best.
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He always went to the Lord
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and asked the Lord what his will was. And he waited on the Lord until the Lord revealed his will. Hey, we should do the same thing. The key is we gotta ask God. Asking you shall receive, seeking you shall find, knocking it shall be opened to you. Promise from the Lord.
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So I've got a little bold statement here. We find strength in God by seeking his will through the word of God and prayer.
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That's how we strengthen ourselves in God.
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Now let's look number two, David at Ziph.
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We also find strength in God by having faith in God and fellowship with believers. That's what we learn in these verses. So we gotta have faith in God. Look at verse 14 of 1 Samuel 23.
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The Bible said, "David stayed in the wilderness in the strongholds and remained in the hill country in the wilderness of Ziph.
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And Saul sought him every day."
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Don't just read through that.
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Saul sought him every day.
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David couldn't relax.
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David could not let his guard down. He was in constant danger.
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Now I got a little statement down here and I think it's so important. David became a man after God's heart in the shepherd's field,
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but he became a king in the wilderness.
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God was fashioning him to be the greatest king of Israel.
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Now here's an important part of the narrative. Even though David was a man after God's heart, he was already anointed to be the next king of Israel,
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God allowed him to go through some really hard times.
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I think sometimes there's a real danger for us in the church as born again believers, there's a real danger for us to feel like, well, I've given my heart to Jesus. I'm committed to Christ. Things should go easy for me.
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Where do we read that?
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Not in the Bible.
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It is not in the Bible.
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Does God bless us? Yes, he blesses us. But he never promises us borrowing an old song. He never promises us a rose garden. He doesn't do that.
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Now, I want you to know that it was a very important and important thing. I want you to know that it was God who kept David safe.
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It wasn't David's ability. It wasn't David's shrewdness, discernment. It was God who kept him safe.
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There's a lesson for us to learn. We need to have faith in God when we go through tough times
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because we're all gonna go through tough times.
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And we need to have faith in God. The Bible says in Hebrews 11 six, without faith, it is impossible to please God.
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It's impossible.
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In James chapter one, verses two to four,
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James wrote, "Consider it all joy, my brethren,
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when you encounter various trials,
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knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance
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and let endurance have its perfect results so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." I found this quote by German theologian Otto Diblius, or I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that correct. He was a leader of the anti-Nazi resistance movement in World War II, and he made this statement.
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He said, "God does not lead his children around hardship,
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but leads them straight through hardship, but he leads."
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That's an important statement. "And amidst the hardship, he is nearer to them than ever before." I want you to remember that. That's a great quote.
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And if you're going through a hard time tonight, you need to take that quote and embrace it. If your hard time is not right now, but next week or next month or next year, you need to look up these notes and you need to get this quote, or maybe you need to write this quote in the front part of your Bible or something, so you have it.
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So God was testing David into the wilderness. God was fashioning him into being the king of Israel.
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Now, not only do we have a good faith and we have to trust God, but we have to have fellowship with other believers.
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We need each other. You need not only to have faith in God, in 1 Samuel chapter three, verses 15 to 18. This is a wonderful little part of the story.
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I mean, amazing.
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Now David became aware that Saul had come out to seek his life while David was in the wilderness of Zith at Horsesh. So Saul had tried to kill him there in Kila.
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Now David had been moving around. He's in the wilderness of Zith at Horsesh. And now Saul is coming after him in the wilderness of Zith.
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And Jonathan, look at verse 16, I love this. And Jonathan, Saul's son,
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arose and went to David at Horsesh and encouraged him in God.
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Man, can I tell you that when Jonathan did that, he took his own life in his own hand.
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Remember Saul had tried to kill his own son, Jonathan.
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I promise you if Saul had gotten wind
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that Jonathan was going to go and be an encouragement to David,
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whom Saul considered to be his mortal enemy,
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Saul would have killed Jonathan.
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Now David and Jonathan were best friends. Remember that now, they were best friends. And they made a covenant with each other. Remember the covenant they made? And David kept that end of the covenant by the way. His part of the covenant was Jonathan said, if something happens to me, you take care of my family.
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And David promised to do that.
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And later on, Jonathan had a son who was crippled. Name was Mephibosheth.
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Understand Jonathan giving him that name, but Mephibosheth. I'm sure there's some Jewish significance to that name.
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And you know what David did?
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David kept his covenant with Jonathan. He brought Mephibosheth and his family, Mephibosheth had a little family, and Mephibosheth ate at the king's table
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when David became king.
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He kept his promise to Jonathan.
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Hey, we ought to be promise keepers too, right? Look at this, verse 16. Jonathan Saul's son arose and went to David at Horsch and encouraged him in God.
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Thus he said to him, here's what Jonathan said to David.
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Do not be afraid because of the hand of Saul my father,
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because the hand of Saul my father will not find you. And you will be king over Israel and I will be next to you and Saul my father knows that also. So Jonathan wanted to be David's right hand man in his kingdom.
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Unfortunately, Saul and Jonathan were killed in battle with the Philistines.
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So Jonathan never made it to be a part of David's inner circle.
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Verse 17, "Thus he said to him, do not be afraid."
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Verse 18, "So the two of them made a covenant "before the Lord and David stayed at Horsch
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"while Jonathan went to his house." Hey, this was the last time that David saw Jonathan alive right here.
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Would the God that we would have somebody in our lives
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who would take the time and spare no effort and come into our side when we were down and discouraged,
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depressed, just to encourage us in the Lord and to strengthen us in God's hand?
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Oh, I hope and pray you've got somebody like that.
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Look, you don't have to, you can just send somebody a verse script, like I texted this pastor, this verse of script, these two verses of scripture, three verses of scripture. And I thought they were so appropriate for what he was going through.
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And so just make sure you've got people in your life who will encourage you in the Lord.
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So one guy said this, it's like Jonathan put David's hands as it were into God's hand. I look, isolation in the Christian life,
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it will absolutely lead you to a place you don't wanna go. Isolation leads to desolation.
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And I wanna encourage you, don't do that. Don't let that happen to you.
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So what did Jonathan do? He reminded him, he reminded him of the promises that God had made to him, have made to David.
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And sometimes we just need somebody to remind us of the promises that God's made to us when we're at an all time low.
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In Hebrews chapter 10, verse 23 to 25 on page seven,
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the Bible says, "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful." Sometimes we just need somebody to remind us that God is faithful.
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And let us consider how to stimulate one another to loving good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as a habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near, the second coming of Christ.
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Now, listen to me very carefully.
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We've got a ready made plan to make sure that we don't live in isolation,
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to make sure that we've got people around us who will encourage us and put our hand in the hands of God when we need strength.
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You know what that plan is? The church, the church. I hear people say sometimes, I don't need the church.
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I'm a Christian.
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I can worship just as well at the river fishing for trout.
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I can worship just as well in a deer stand as I can at church.
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That's a lie. I'm gonna tell you right now, that's a lie. That's not true.
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You need the church.
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We need people in our lives who are godly, spirit-filled people who know the word of God, who know the promises of God, who can encourage us with the scripture.
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Listen, there ain't no deer out there gonna preach a sermon out of the book of Psalms, I promise.
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It's not gonna happen. (Congregation Laughing) So, look, I'm a big guy on the church.
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I believe that Jesus built the church. He created the church,
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and he created the church for us to be the people of God that we need to be.
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Now, let's look thirdly, David at Maon, verse 19 to 29.
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So, at Kylo, we learned, David at Kylo, we learned that we find strength in God by seeking God's will through the word of God in prayer.
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At Zith, we learned that we find strength in God by having faith in God, by having fellowship with other believers.
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And at Maon, here's what we're gonna discover.
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We find strength in God by trusting God's providential care.
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All right, be alert, the enemy seeks to destroy you. Hey, that was true, not only for David,
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that's true for everybody in this room.
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When I was talking to that pastor, who's going through a very hard time,
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I called his name, I said, "Don't overlook the fact
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that there's probably some spiritual warfare involved in this.
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I believe there's spiritual warfare in what's going on in Iran. I believe with all my heart." I mean, you read the book of Daniel,
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you read about the Prince of Persia, the demon that was over, you know, Persia is Iran, right?
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And I think he's raised his ugly head again,
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and he's doing his thing.
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So I think sometime we overlook the fact that spiritual warfare is real.
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Go to Ephesians 6 just a minute.
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Ephesians 6.
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Look at verse 10.
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"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
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Put on the full armor of God so that you'll be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
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For our struggle is not against flesh and blood,
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but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places."
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And he goes on and talks about the armor that we have available to us.
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And I want you to realize that our enemy's real.
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He is real.
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In 1 Samuel 23 verses 19 to 23,
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then the Ziphites came up to Saul at Gibeah
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and saying, "Is David not hiding with us in the strongholds at Horesh,
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on the hill of Hakkala,
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which is on the south of Jeshamon?
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Now then, O king, come down according to all the desire of your soul to do so, and our part shall be to surrender him into the king's hand."
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Man, David's got all these people selling him out.
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I'm wondering when he became king if he didn't remember what some of these people had done to him.
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What do they call that? He kept the receipts. Isn't that what they say today?
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Verse 21, Saul said, "May you be blessed of the Lord, for you have had compassion on me." Saul, King Saul said, "May you be blessed of the Lord," like he can even talk in that kind of language.
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Verse 22, "Go now, make more sure. Give me more intelligence,
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and investigate and see his place where his haunt is, and who has seen him there. For I'm told that he is very cunning.
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So look and learn about all the hiding places where he hides himself, and return to me with certainty.
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And I will go with you.
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If he is in the land, I will search him out among the thousands of Judah."
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He sounds like the Iranians, don't they? They talk a big game.
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The Ziphites, Saul, David out, Saul asked them to provide more intelligence.
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Now listen, we have a fiendish enemy. Look at 1 Peter 5, A to nine.
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"Be of sober spirit."
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By the way, that doesn't mean that you're not drunk with alcohol. That's not what sober means there.
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It means that you're serious. You're taking it very serious. "Be of sober spirit, be on the alert.
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Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour."
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Notice what Peter writes. "Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world."
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One thing that we can't do when we're going through difficult times
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is we can't say that we're the only ones going through this kind of stuff.
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You can always find some Christian in the world who's got it tougher than you. I promise you. I mean, we could be in Iran right now.
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And Islamic radicals are murdering and torturing Christians by the boatloads.
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I don't know anybody here that's being tortured.
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I don't know anybody here that's being hung on the city square in Tehran.
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But it's real for us too.
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You don't have to live in Iran
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to be the point of the spear when it comes to the attack of the enemy.
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He's coming after you too.
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And so we're to resist him, firm in the faith,
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knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.
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In other words, what you're going through is not unique to you.
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We have a common enemy.
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And many of our brothers and sisters in Christ are also under attack. And can I tell you this?
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It's getting more prevalent by the day.
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It's building, building, and it's pointing to the return of Christ.
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Here's the next thing, be at peace. God is in control. Look at verses 24 to 29.
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"Then they arose and went to Zith before Saul.
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"Now David and his men were in the wilderness of Maon "in the Arabah to the south of Jeshamon. "When Saul and his men went to seek him,
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"they told David and he came down to the rock "and stayed in the wilderness of Maon.
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"And when Saul heard it, "he pursued David in the wilderness of Maon."
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Uh-oh, ain't looking good, is it?
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Look at verse 26. "Saul went on one side of the mountain." Look at this.
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"David and his men on the other side of the mountain."
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So do you see how close David is
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to meeting his end right here?
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Saul and his men on one side of the mountain
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and David and his men on the other side of the same mountain.
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Now, look at this.
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"David was hurrying to get away from Saul "for Saul and his men were surrounding David "and his men to seize them." Look at this, verse 27.
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"You tell me if you think this is a coincidence." Okay, verse 27. "But a messenger came to Saul saying, "'Hurry and come for the Philistines "'have made a raid on the land.'
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"So Saul returned from pursuing David "and went to meet the Philistines. "Therefore they call that place the rock of escape.
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"David went up from there "and stayed in the strongholds of Engedi."
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So do you think that was a coincidence
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that Saul got word that the Philistines were attacking somewhere in Judah?
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If you think that's a coincidence, I've got some land right off the coast of Florida for sale.
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So Saul and his men left and they went to take care of the Philistine problem and David and his men escaped and went to the wilderness of Engedi.
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Now, I put a little statement down here.
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This is the hand of God's providence.
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God orchestrated this.
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But do you understand God had made a promise to David.
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Remember where the promise was?
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He was gonna be the next king of Israel, right?
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Saul couldn't kill David on that mountain. He couldn't, but God had made a promise to it.
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And I put a little statement in bold here. When you're in God's hands, almost sounded like an insurance commercial. When you're in God's hands, you're in good hands.
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You're in good hands.
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Now David wrote about this incident. Take your Bible, look at Psalm 54. How am I doing on time? I got 10 minutes. I'm doing good. Psalm 54.
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Look at this. The little headline says, "A Mascul of David, when the Ziphites came and said to Saul, "Is not David hiding himself among us?" So David wrote this in that kind of situation. Let's look at it together.
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The first three verses have an interesting flavor to them. And then the last few verses is total change. Look at verse one. "Save me, O God, by your name and vindicate me by your power.
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Hear my prayer, O God, give ear to the words of my mouth. For strangers have risen." Strangers would be the Ziphites, okay?
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"For strangers have risen against me and violent men that Saul and his men have sought my life.
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And they have not set God before them.
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Behold," and then Silah, the word Silah means pause.
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Think about this, meditate on this.
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And then you pick it up in verse four, "Behold, God is my helper."
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I hope you can say tonight that God is my helper.
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He's my helper.
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The Lord is a sustainer of my soul.
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He will recompense the evil to my foes, destroy them in your faithfulness.
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Willingly, I will sacrifice to you. I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good. Here's David in the midst of all this trouble saying God is good.
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He's good.
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For he has delivered me from all trouble.
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Hey, look at chapter 55, verse 22, just a little thought here.
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This verse means the world to me. I have shared this verse with so many people going through difficult times.
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"Cast your burden upon the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never allow the righteous to be shaken."
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My goodness.
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Now David didn't write that. He wrote that, but he didn't write it at the time when the Ziphites had sold them out to Saul.
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Now, when you are stressed or facing difficult times,
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you need to find your strength in God.
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Okay?
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You're not gonna find it anywhere else. God is omnipotent. You know what that means? God is all powerful.
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There's nothing that's impossible to God.
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When you find your strength in God, you will find plenty of strength to face the challenges and the task of each day.
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When you find strength outside of God,
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you're only setting yourself up for failure.
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So tonight, we've looked at how we can find strength in God. Strength for the journey.
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You know, most of us in this room, our journeys are getting shorter and shorter and shorter, right?
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I mean, I was talking to Coach and we were talking about how we're in the fourth quarter. I said, "Coach, you may be in a two-minute warning."
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I don't know that. You may have outlived me. But you know, we're all, listen, the journey, we're getting closer to our destination, right?
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That does not scare me at all.
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I look forward to the day when my journey is complete. The only thing I ask the Lord, and I ask you this all the time,
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Lord, help me to finish well.
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Don't let me limp across the finish line. Don't let me run through the tape.
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Going wide open for you.
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And I open pray.
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That's your glory. But I can tell you, somewhere along this journey,
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you're gonna need to find strength in God.
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Well, starting this chapter, you got three principles right here in this chapter that shows you how to find strength in God.
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Hey, let's pray.
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Heavenly Father, I thank you so much
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that David is an example for all of us.
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I thank you, Father, that when the pressure was bearing down on him, Lord, he persevered. He didn't quit. He didn't give up.
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I praise you, Lord.
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That he found his strength in you.
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And I thank you, Lord, that you kept your promises to David.
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And I pray, Heavenly Father, that you would help each one of us
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to find our strength in you.
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Lord, don't let us look for strength anywhere else.
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Let us find it in you.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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Thank you, God bless you.