Sound Doctrine

Jeff Johnson: It's time to talk about time. Today on Sound Doctrine.

Another trick of our enemy is to wear us down through the manner of time. Some of you have been going through a trial for a long time. You're going through, "I'm a little weary." He knows it.

Do you know that he'll try to use that longevity of time to get to you through what you are struggling with? As he's here trying to do it with David. To wear us down. David is somehow he's got over tired now, he's faithless and he's in despair. Weary of the battle, he begins to give in to defeat.

Guest (Male): Welcome to another time of study in God's Word here on Sound Doctrine. Whether you're a pastor, Sunday school teacher, volunteer in the nursery, or serving on some committee, we all go through times when we're tired in the work and maybe even of the work.

Along comes Satan with one of his favorite tools in his tool bag: discouragement. That's the place David found himself in in 1 Samuel 27. We'll examine his desire to escape today as Pastor Jeff Johnson continues to highlight 1 Samuel for us. Let's see how to keep going and growing in the Lord.

Jeff Johnson: 1 Samuel chapter 27. Our story really centers around David and Saul. We have been looking at two men who have made two choices, but both have failed. We're going to see it anew and afresh again, David failing. But one is on a rock and one is on sand, and you see the difference.

Again, we're going to be reminded of that. In 1 Corinthians, let me just read this to you, in chapter 10 and verse 11 it says, "Now all of these things," talking about the Old Testament scriptures and stories, "happened unto them for examples and they are written for our admonition," that we would be admonished, "upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore," here's the warning, "let him that thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall."

So not only are these our examples to learn by, but we are warned by their examples so we wouldn't have to go through the same things. Let's take note of that as we look at David again, as we look at Saul. At one moment we saw how David was doing great. Everything was going great. He was a yielded man of God, using God's wisdom.

Remember he restrains himself and oh man, we're going, "Yes, just to be like that in my own life. I need it. To have self-restraint like that." Look at the wisdom that David had. He restrains himself over Saul. He has victory over his own flesh towards anger and hatred and lashing out and getting back. Yet we are reminded that David is just a man.

Mark this and mark it well. It's right after a time of victory in our lives that we are the most vulnerable, we are the most open for discouragement and despair. Mark it. Remember Elijah? Great victory with the 450 prophets of Baal. Slew them all. Yet right after that great victory, he went into a deep depression, an awesome discouragement.

Even Jesus, as He was brought there into the place to be baptized by John. He went under the water and came up and the Holy Spirit came upon Him and the Father spoke out and said, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." A time of great victory, yet we know that Jesus was led by the Spirit of the Lord into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Now in chapter 27, David has a fit of depression or a lapse of faith, if you will. It's a real setback for David in his life. But I'll tell you something, be sure that your sin will find you out. It'll come to the surface. If you've got something that's weak in your life, it's going to come up. It's going to continue to come up until it's dealt with.

God's Word is very interesting in that it gives us a very clear picture. There is no hidden weaknesses here with the Bible's heroes. There is no illusions of greatness, especially with its heroes. The heroes are the ones that get nailed and are revealed to us. David is one such hero. A man that blows it.

This is not to excuse us either. So don't just say, "Well, Jeff says that David was just a man. I'm just a man and that's why I blow it all the time." Don't use that as an excuse. But it is to warn us of the devastation of sin and how we as Christians stay away from it. These are warnings. Sin will always bring sorrow. Sin will always bring heartache.

The Bible says the way of the transgressor is hard. The fruit of righteousness is peace. So we're to learn from their examples. So David with his lapses of faith, he begins to succumb to fear, to worry, to making serious mistakes in his life. We can really learn from this chapter.

Chapter 27 is one of David's low points in his life as he runs from Saul who, remember, Saul hunts him daily. There was one time where he said he's after me daily. He doesn't give up. Do we know an enemy like that or what? That's pursuing us, wants to sift us as wheat and doesn't give up. Sure we do.

So David is getting weary. There's nowhere to hide anymore. Remember the Doegs and the Ziphites are all over the place and they're always snitching. "I know where David is. You need to know where David is? He's hiding out over here." The Doegs and Ziphites are always all over the place. The enemy's going to find you.

There's nowhere you can hide. You know where Jonah tried to go? The other side of the world. He couldn't get away. You can't get away. David's getting weary though. Note this also, that another trick of our enemy is to wear us down through the manner of time.

Some of you have been going through a trial for a long time and you're going, "I'm a little weary." He knows it. Do you know that he'll try to use that longevity of time to get to you through what you are struggling with? As he's here trying to do it with David. To wear us down.

David is somehow he's got over tired now, he's faithless and he's in despair. Weary of the battle, he begins to give in to defeat. He begins to give in to discouragement and he gets down in the dumps. Can you relate a little bit? I think we've all been there. Some of you are there this morning.

Let's look at it. Chapter 27, verse 1. "And David said in his heart, 'I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me to do than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines and Saul shall despair of me to seek me any more in any coast of Israel. So shall I escape out of his hand.'"

As David now, we watch him descend into the depths of depression, the first thing that he does is he talks to his own heart. Notice that. He proclaims in his own heart that he is going to die. Well, this is a great revelation. Aren't we all? But he's thinking, "I'm going to die soon by the hand of Saul."

Now David's mistake here is that he begins to reason with himself. He begins to speak to himself. He begins to try to figure it out and to trust in his feelings. You know what feelings will bring you. They'll always bring you depression. Feelings love depression. If you take a look and you say, "Feelings, how are you doing?" and your faith turns and looks at feelings and starts talking to feelings, you're going to get bummed out.

Feelings deceive us and we get down quick. Despair is a horrible, horrible thing. It brings a man to total defeat. The one thing that David was known for was seeking God and trusting in God. If there was a strong point in David's life, it was looking to the Lord. Yet this is the very area he fell in.

Mark this also, and mark it well, that your strong point could be the very place that you're going to fall in. Look at the scripture, look at the men in the Bible. Look at Noah. While the whole world partied down, Noah was a righteous man. Noah was strong. We know the story. As soon as the flood was over, what happened with Noah? He got drunk. He let go. He blew it.

Then as we look at Abraham, the father of faith, strong man of faith. Yet in Egypt he has a lapse of faith and he begins to lie about his wife, and his wife is taken into Pharaoh's harem and he loses it. He failed. Then there's Peter, of course, the man of courage who loves to swing a sword.

Yet when it comes down to a little girl saying, "You're one of them," all of a sudden he's a coward. He says, "No I'm not. Zip it, little girl. Don't talk about it anymore." He's running. He's scared. The one area that he was so strong. He's such a strong man, and yet this is the area in which he fell in. Take heed.

Where's your strength? Beware. Chances are that's where you're going to fall and fail. So David lacks trust and he gives in to the enemy. Then he begins to say this negative confession, total negative confession on his part. He says, "I'm going to die by the hands of Saul." Well, that's a great thing to say, David. But it's never going to come to pass.

Here is where those advocates of those positive confession guys that believe in positive confession, here is where they lose it because they believe that you create your own reality and whatever you say is what's going to happen. Be careful what you say, word power. But if you say negative, it's going to happen.

Well, that's not right because David never died at the hand of Saul and he had a negative confession. Yes, without faith, it's impossible for us to please God, but these guys carry it way too far. Yes, you make negative confessions. David made a negative confession, but it didn't happen. He didn't with his words create something to happen.

That's ridiculous, and yet these guys are preaching this today. David's lapse of faith here reveals his lack of trust in God's Word because remember, God told David, "You are going to be the king." In fact, over in chapter 25, the last part of verse 29, he was promised it says that your enemies, they that be of thine enemies shall be slung out or slinged out as of a middle of a sling.

God is for you, David. No enemy's going to be able to come against you. God is going to get you to be the king. Yet David lets go of God's promise and he begins to lean to his own understanding. When we lean to our own understanding, begin to talk it over with our own heart and say, "I don't know what's going to happen. What do you think?"

You know how the conscience is. You're just rapping away with yourself and the enemy jumps right in the middle of it and says, "Wait a minute. Might I suggest this?" And we're right there just having a conversation. We don't even realize the enemy's jumped right in there and he's laid it on us and we're believing him. So fear enters into his heart.

You know what? I question what happened to Psalm 27. Remember we read it this morning where David proclaimed and said, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war should come up against me, in this will I be confident. For in the time of trouble God shall hide me in His pavilion. In the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me. He shall set me up on a rock."

And here's David. He's all, "Yeah, the Lord, the Lord." Well, what happened, David? "Saul's going to kill me with his hand. I'm going to die like a rat." He's believing it and it's really getting to him. This is so much unlike him.

And then yet I found the man of faith. I always like to look at Abraham. Let me read this to you. In Romans chapter 4, this is what it says about Abraham who reacted differently than David did here. It says, "Who against hope," and this is Romans 4, verse 18, it says, "Who against hope believed in hope that he might become the father of many nations according to that which was spoken shall thy seed be."

And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body. Didn't look at the circumstance that he was dead and he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb. He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but he was strong in the faith, giving glory to God and being fully persuaded that what He had promised that God was able also to perform.

There's a whole different way of looking at it. Abraham, the man of faith, stood on it. He didn't look at the situation, didn't look at his own body. He just looked at what God had said and he hung on. But David enters depression as we all do at times. I don't think there's not one of us that can throw a stone at David and say, "David, you man of God."

You did it yourself. You've entered into depression yourself. You've let go of the promises of God yourself. So we can't do that. But to let go of God's promise is to devise then your own way, to figure it out, to try to intervene. Really what you're saying is you're saying God is not able now.

He can't protect me, so I've got to intervene. I've got to do something to protect myself. I must devise a plan now. That's exactly what David was doing here. It's a big mistake for any of us to come to that conclusion where we've got to help God out.

Remember Abraham during his lapse of faith and Abraham was a man also who had times of losing it. He gave in to Sarah's cry finally. Sarah's crying on him and crying on him and crying on him. Finally he says, "Okay woman, I'll go into the handmaiden. I'll go into Hagar." And so he did it. Woe be to the Israelites.

Even today, we've got a problem now with their Arab cousins because of that big mistake in the past. To seek to help God out or do your own thing will bring immediate failure. It opens the door to failure. You're going to fail. To say that I can do better than God, I can improve on God's plan, I'll help him out, you're opening the door to an invitation to disaster.

It's coming. Time is wasted also. God's will is delayed, and we see that in David's life here as he makes his decision. So David devises a way to escape Saul. He's weary of Saul's always coming down after him. He says, "You know what? I'm just going to go to my enemy." Look at verse 1.

He says, "There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines. There's nothing better for me." Well, wait a minute. That's a false conclusion. David, it's better for you to trust the Lord. It's better for you to look to God. What are you doing? It's better for you, David, to submit to God's will and to wait upon the Lord.

But David is driven by fear, remember? There comes the feelings and I'll tell you something, it causes faith to fade immediately because fact is on a road that will continue on. Fact is fact, it's not going to change. Faith is right behind fact, looking to fact. Feelings is last.

If you have them three going across here and all of a sudden we see that fact will always steady on, but faith now says, "You know what? I want to look back and see how feelings is doing." As soon as faith looks back to feelings, faith and feelings goes off because they're no longer looking to fact. Listen, we've got to keep in line. Keep your faith in the fact. Don't go by feelings. You're going to be ripped off every single time.

Note this that David says, "I must hurry." He says, "I must rush into this decision." I thought this is interesting. "I must speedily escape." Satan's trap is to always apply pressure to us to get us thinking that we need to make haste, a rash decision without first getting prayer and counsel.

Satan will try to bring in the pressure and say, "You've got to make a decision. You've got to do it and you've got to do it fast." That's a big mistake if we listen to that. David had the priest. He could have gone to the priest. Remember Gad was there with him? He could have got the stones.

Remember the stones behind the ephod where these black stones where they would roll? Actually a black and a white one and the black one would say no and the white... He didn't go that route. He didn't seek the Lord. Before he sought the Lord, why not now? Remember before when he sought the Lord, the Lord warned him that Saul's coming, you'd better escape, you'd better get out of here.

It was a righteous intervention of God. Why? Because he sought the Lord and the Lord answered him and saved him from getting snuffed. People, we've got to see the importance of prayer and counsel and seeking God. If we get hurried and rushed, we're going to make a major mistake.

So David goes out now on his own and he actually says, "I realize that if I move quickly that maybe Saul will forget about me." But I'll tell you something, he is going to regret this move for the rest of his life. I've learned that if you just wait upon the Lord, what you want will either you'll get it or you won't get it, but you need to let time go by.

You know how we feel rushed to buy something big? We need to let a little time go by and we need to pray a lot because I've found out if you wait long enough, what guess what happens? The price goes down. So God teaches to wait. Again, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Yet David runs off to Gath. His reasoning, of course, is that Saul will lose interest in me if I go into the enemy's land. David's plan of survival is set up here. Do you remember the first time that David went into Gath, chapter 21? Do you remember what happened?

All of a sudden here he finds himself in this by himself in this strange city. Someone recognizes him. He gets scared and he begins to panic and he feels that they're going to take his life so he starts acting like a crazy man and foams coming out of his mouth and everything. He's running around on the ground. They finally just kick him out of there.

And here we have David now with 600 men coming back to Gath. My question is why go back there? I think that's a good question. Why do you go back? Haven't you learned? I think our problem is it's like we only we reject those crazy things and bad things that happened in that place, in that situation, and we start to remember just the good things.

So we go ahead and go back. It's like me. I don't like Magic Mountain. I have to be reminded about that. The way the Lord does it is that I forget about what I experienced before and then I go back with friends and they want to see it, so I bring the friends and we get on the Ninja and whatever. And I'm reminded: I don't like this place. Why am I here? God help us.

Let's go on, verse 2. "And David arose and he passed over with the 600 men that were with him into Achish and the son of Maoch, king of Gath." So he goes over into Gath and David went with Achish to Gath and he and his men, every man with his own household, even David with his two wives.

He had all his family going into Gath. Notice how David now is introducing his family to this great experience of Gath. "And it was told," verse 4, "Saul that David was fled to Gath and he sought no more again for him." And you say, "My gosh, David's plan worked. Saul's not after him anymore."

Guest (Male): Well, we'll have to stop here for today, but isn't it encouraging to see this great example of what God can do when we allow Him to by trusting in His will? This is Sound Doctrine. What you heard today is part of a study of 1 Samuel from Pastor Jeff Johnson. The journey continues next week.

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We hope you'll join us for our next study in 1 Samuel. It's going to be a good one. That's right here on Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff. A presentation of Calvary Chapel Downey. Have a blessed day in the Lord.