So, all right, if you'll take your Bibles, please, we'll turn to 1 Samuel, once again, verse 19. While you're turning there, for those of you that are tuning in online, welcome. We're happy to have you with us today and pray the Lord's blessing upon you wherever you happen to be listening from. 1 Samuel chapter 19, once again, this time we're going to begin reading At verse eight, we went up through verse seven last week. And so we're going to move to the next section, which is verses eight through 17. And I would invite you, if you're able, to stand with me for the reading of God's holy word. And it begins, there was war again. And David went out, and fought with the Philistines, and struck them with a great blow, so that they fled before him. Then a harmful spirit from Yahweh came upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his spear in his hand, and David was playing the liar. And Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he eluded Saul, so that he struck the spear into the wall, and David fled and escaped that night. Saul sent messengers to David's house to watch him, that he might kill him in the morning. But Michal, David's wife, told him, if you do not escape with your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed. So Michal let David down through the window and he fled away and escaped. Michal took an image and laid it on the bed and put a pillow of goat's hair at its head and covered it with the clothes. And when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, He is sick. Then Saul sent the messengers to see David, saying, Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him. And when the messengers came in, behold, the image was in the bed, with the pillow of goat's hair at its head. Saul said to Michal, Why have you deceived me thus, and let my enemy go, so that he is escaped? And Michal answered Saul, He said to me, Let me go. Why should I kill you? God adds His blessing to the reading and hearing of His Holy Word. Please be seated. Now a lot can happen from one verse to the next in the Scriptures. If you look back just at the verse right before this section, verse 7, it sounds like everything is Jonathan brings David back into Saul's presence. Everything's great. David is in Saul's presence as before. It seems like peace is reigning. Everything is excellent. All is restored for David at Saul's court. And Saul has even vowed, if you go back to verse 6, has vowed not to pursue David's life again. So David's free, once again, to serve in the court, to enjoy life with his new wife, Michal. Now, there's no indication here in this text about how much time passes between verses 7 and 8. But what we do see in verse 8, that war is upon them once more. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. We're not told about David's mindset in all of this as these events unfold. I think it's very possible, though not that he would be naive about it. I mean, after all, Saul has tried to kill him a couple times now, three times now. So he might be wary, but at the same time, he's now got a wife, he's got a home that he's set up, He's doing good work. Seems like things are going to be okay. Perhaps he's content to maintain the status quo, not being sure of what God's plans are. He knows he's got a commission from the Lord, right, to be the next king. When that's going to happen, he doesn't know. In the meantime, he's got his routine now. He's got his routine back. He's able to function in an appropriate and good way in that routine. But Yahweh had other plans for David. Now was the time for David to get on with the next steps in his divine commission. Perhaps he needed to be pushed out the door of the court. in order to start preparing even further for the calling that the Lord had issued to him. We all have our comfort zones, don't we? We don't like change. Is there anybody here that likes change? Maybe every once in a while to keep things a little interesting, but when it comes to big stuff, not so much. We like our routines. We don't like to have stuff that we like messed with. We just kind of want to keep going. When it's time to move us out of our comfort zones, though, because of that, we can be pretty stubborn. But Yahweh knows how to move you out of your comfort zone. And He certainly shows that here in this passage with David. This is an odd passage. It seems like there's stuff in here that you kind of wonder, And in one respect, well, why did the Lord put this here? Why should we care about this? It just seems like some odd stuff with Michal especially. We'll talk more about that in a minute. But I really think that this is an important transitional passage. And I'll tell you even more about that as we get on towards the end of the message. This is not just an afterthought or the Lord just giving us some, you know, color details to kind of flesh things out a little bit. There's some important things going on here and some lessons that we can learn and particularly in the way that Yahweh moves upon his people and their situations to get us where he needs us to be, where he wants us to be. So we're going to talk about this comfort zone. matter here. And verses 8 and 9, we've already kind of spoken about this a little bit. There's a certain comfort, isn't there, in regular service. And the things that the Lord has called us to do. It's very easy for us to just find a lot of happiness and contentment in those things and figure this is it, that's all I need to do, forgetting that the Lord may have something else for us. Now, let's think about David's situation. In the ancient Near East, war was a rather seasonal activity, which makes a lot of sense. You don't want to go in the monsoons. You can't march an army very well through that kind of stuff. And you want to make sure that you've got enough food. So after harvest, where you've got food so you can feed the army, because an army marches on its stomach. So you've got that aspect of it, and you don't just call all these soldiers up and get it all ready to go in a moment. It takes a lot of planning. So you may remember from later on, little... little foreshadowing of, of David's problem when he didn't go out when the, and it says there that the time of war was come upon them again. The season of war was there again and David stayed home. Well, I have an interesting thing here that Saul stayed home. But nonetheless, it's, it's a seasonal thing. The question does bear asking, why was Saul not leading the army? We know he was a capable commander. He'd shown that before. And he would continue going forward. He would end up leading troops all over the countryside, chasing David. So whether it was just that he was being lazy or figured that, well, I might as well just have David go do it, I don't know, doesn't say. The pattern had been, though, and we saw this last time, that David was the one who was sent out. He was the one that was going out to do these things. Now, we don't usually think of war as a comfortable thing, but for a warrior who knows what he's doing, who's comfortable in his role, finds fulfillment in it, and does it well, Um, that's something that David would expect that routine. That would be, this is serving the Lord. He's serving his nation. He's fighting the Philistines or other enemies. And there's a, a comfort level of that routine. Plus he's all, he's also been married with Michal. And so, uh, we'll talk a little bit more about that, but he's quite comfortable there. Um, in that aspect while he continues his duties as a court musician, which of course would be a great, was a great joy to him. And he would continue to go back to do that even after all these attempts on his life, right? These are all good things to be doing. But Yahweh sends his judgment upon Saul after David's victories, this judgment of an afflicting spirit of, of, of jealousy that led him, that led Saul to madness. The Lord is not going to let this, this peace continue. And in fact, from this point on, once David escapes here, there would be no return to Saul's court after this. You know, we'll make a little bit more in the way of application as we go forward, but I just want to say this at this point. We have our times of service and things that we do well, things that we find satisfaction in, and it can be frustrating to us when the Lord shuts those things down for whatever reason, sometimes because of our own issues or whatever, but sometimes through no fault of our own, circumstances or whatever, things change. And it's kind of a ministry principle that I've lived with a long time, and I know many others have as well. It's kind of like, you know, churches have lots of programs of different kinds, different areas of activity and things they like to do. And, you know, that's great. And then there are other times when those great things, for whatever reason, loss of personnel, loss of resources, health, whatever it might be, that the Lord just seems to shut them down. And you know what? We can be disappointed by that. It feels like, I wanted to see that go until Christ came again. But then the Lord knows best on how long He wants those things to run. And so we trust Him in that. But that regular service is a comfort to us. It's a known quantity. We know what we're about to do. We know where to get the resources to take care of it. We kind of know how well we do and what we can expect and all of that. And so we find great comfort in that. Well, the Lord knows how to move you out of that, which doesn't seem like it's very kind, but the Lord has his purposes for his own glory and our good. Now, another area of comfort is not just in the service that we do, but in the comfort of familiar surroundings. I'm taking this from the emphasis here upon Michal and what's going on at the house. Plus, I also call to mind from Deuteronomy 24.5, when a man is newly married, God's command was, he shall not go out with the army, nor be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken. So while there's no clear indication between seven and eight how much time has gone on, it is a season of war, and it's very likely that David has been staying home for more, for about a year. Now he's still been doing the court musician stuff, which is public duty, but I rather think he would have had a hard time driving him away with a stick from that. I mean, it seems he would have found great joy in that. And Michal being the king's daughter, I think would probably have been pretty understanding about that. But I find it interesting that when David flees, where does he go? You would think he'd leave town, but where does he go? He doesn't leave town. He runs home. He goes home to the place where he finds comfort. He's supported by his wife. Doubtless she had been a joy to him during this year of marriage. But now she's going to have to be the one to help him escape from danger, even at the expense of her own happiness. David wanted some semblance of, you could probably hear his mindset when Saul throws that spear yet again. Here we go again. Is there any place, is there any time when I can just be at peace? I'll go home, go to my wife, find comfort there. Well, it's not that she's unhappy with him and there's no, There's no dissent between them on this. He listens to her advice and she pops him out the window, lets him down. Shades of Rahab and the spies, right? And Saul being let down in a basket out of the city of Damascus to escape. But she's got to, even at the expense of her own happiness, she has to help him get out of there. And it doesn't tell us what David thought about that. He doesn't say to her, why are you booting me out? And why she doesn't go with him? I don't know. It's really interesting. That's why I say this passage is so interesting. You try to figure out what's going on in these people's minds. It's really a challenge to try to figure out. And actually some of these things you really can't answer. But one thing is clear, Saul is dishonoring his daughter again. He's not interested in her happiness. Certainly not interested in David's happiness. He's not interested in any of that. He expects her to be more loyal to him than to her husband. He sends watchers to go and surround the place. And it kind of makes me think that their house must have been on the wall to let him out. But in any case, the watchers are there. Does anybody like the idea of thinking that somebody might be outside watching your house? What if those people watching your house are watching to do you harm? We're talking about familiar surroundings. Home is a place where we want to feel safe, where we want to feel protected. And Saul is violating that big time with sending these watchers over there. And David can find no peace in those familiar surroundings. The familiar surroundings of the court where he'd been happy, that's out. And now here at home. So Michal is forced to some desperate measures. But now things get even weirder in this passage. In her desperation, she resorts to some very strange but revealing behavior. Beside the fact that the ruse of putting a lump in the bed would fool nobody. The watches are outside. I'm really befuddled as to what she thought that was going to accomplish. It just seems pointless in the extreme. But on top of that, there's the whole matter of the image. In our sanitized imagination, we might want to think that, oh, this is just a statue of something they had laying around and put it down. But the word is teraphine, which translates to household idols. And there's really kind of no way around this word. One commentator suggested that it was life-size, a life-size idol. It could have been smaller ones that she just piled up, too. But either way, we have to wonder what Michal was doing with them. We have to wonder whether David knew about them and why Saul seems completely unconcerned that Michal has them at all. He's more concerned about being deceived by her. He's not concerned at all that she has idols in her house. It just kind of makes you think. If it is life-size, especially, it's hard to believe that David didn't know it was there. Pay no attention, hun, to that big thing over in the corner. Put a screen in front of it as a... I found out in a discussion earlier this week, a life-size carving could weigh somewhere around 1200 pounds, 1500 pounds, depending on what was going on there. It's not like it's going to be able to be hidden. So why did David allow it? If they're smaller gods, perhaps it's something along the same lines of Rachel in Genesis chapter 31. Remember when she stole her father's household gods? presumably to help, help in quotes, with her barrenness. She wasn't able to have children at that particular time. And so perhaps Michal and David were having trouble conceiving and having children. Well, if that was the issue, then the idol, big or small, would have been a Baal, who was the Canaanite god of fertility. So there's a Baal in this house. This is the first time that we begin to see, at least possibly, again, there's a lot of questions unanswered here, but a possible chink in David's armor. Up to now, David's been pure as the driven snow, at least in what we have here. Now we start to see him in a little bit more fuller dimension, a little bit more complexity. with who this man, who is called a man after God's own heart, who he really is and what's happening with this. But we may have a chance to come back to deal with some of David's chinks, because if this indeed is one, it won't be the last, sad to say. And yet, still, as I was thinking about that. I mean, I don't like to think about it. David's one of my heroes. I don't like to think about him, you know, slipping up on something kind of this big. It's a big deal. And yet, the reflection came to me. I was so thankful that Yahweh chooses the imperfect to do His will. Really, that's the whole pool. So it's not like there's any other option except his own son. So I'm thankful that he does choose as the imperfect to serve him. Well then, so this is, these familiar surroundings, which may or may not be as great as we might think, Then there's the matter of the lies. Michal is afraid. That's very clear. She is full of fear. Fear of her dad. What a horrible thing. What a horrible thing. There are three lies here in this passage. The first one is the whole image thing is a lie. The second one is claiming that David is sick, which he's not. And then the third one is claiming that David was threatening her life, which he wasn't. But she is clearly afraid. She's looking out for herself. But the problem is that none of these lies, none of them is convincing. None of them. And none of them does any good. In fact, they really do more harm than they do good. I mean, if, and I'm not, honestly, the sick one, Saul might've believed, but David killing his daughter, it's clear. He says, you're just deceiving me. I mean, he knows that she's lying to him. So it doesn't do any good at all. It would have been easier for her and smarter if she would have just let him out the window and just said to her dad, he escaped, which is the truth. He escaped. and just let it go. But, you know, fear like this and sin in general can make you do all sorts of stupid things, can really affect your thinking ability. And certainly that's happening with Michal here. Nevertheless, though, in the midst of this confusion, David escapes. And the Lord boots him out of his familiar surroundings, a place where he thought he would find comfort, The wife that he was looking for comfort in is making matters worse by her lying, and even though she does help him out the window, which is a good thing, but where he thinks the man is in his castle there, well, his castle's surrounded, so there's no safety there, and the Lord moves him out, pushes him out. Verse 10, by the way, and this is something that you see a lot in the Old Testament narratives especially, You'll see summary statements, and then you'll see a development of it, and then sometimes you'll see a repeat of the summary statement, as we have here. David fled and escaped that night. It's not a separate escape. When you first look at it, you're thinking, well, yeah, he fled the palace and then went home. This is just a summary statement for the whole escape. He got out of the palace, went home, and then he does actually uh, escape. And then it's that verse, that idea is repeated again to kind of wrap it all up in verse 18. Now David fled and escaped and he gets to Samuel. So let's talk about this word escape, because we've talked about the comfort that there is of regular service. We get really into our routine. We love these things. And the Lord sometimes says, no, you're done with that. I've got something else for you to do. I'm going to shake you out of there because you're hanging on with a death grip to the things that bring you the most comfort right now. but I've got something else for you to do. And we want to be surrounded by what's familiar to us, what's warm and fuzzy, and it just makes us feel all safe and secure, but the Lord says, no, I need you to be a little unsettled because I've got something else for you to do. If you get too comfortable here, you won't get out and get into where else you're supposed to go. And that brings us to verses 13 through 17. where we see these lies of Mikau unfolding. There's service, there's surroundings, but there is also, there's a comfort in expected safety, for lack of a different word. In the service, it was David's court life. In the surroundings, it was his home life that he was looking for comfort in and found peace in and order. Here, the focus here, even though it's about Michal and the stuff she's doing, she's doing it in reaction to her father, who is, as the king, has a role in the nation as a protector. And he's not fulfilling that role at all in David's case. It's interesting that throughout the account of David's life, you will see the idea or the actual word of escape repeated many times. It's a common activity on David's part until, and actually even after he becomes king, because he has to escape from Absalom at one point. But of the actual words that are translated, word that is translated escape, There are eight of those, and half of them are in this passage. David has gone from, as he was before, everything's great, to escape, escape, escape, escape. is the one who should have been working to protect his servant. Instead, that would be expected. But what was happening was that Saul was actively pursuing his life for no legitimate reason. Whether he believed that David was sick or not, whether he was calling the bluff or not, the point is, is that even if David had been sick, Saul was willing to murder an innocent, defenseless man on his sickbed. that tells you his mindset. This, and to make it worse, as I mentioned before, this comes after his oath, in Yahweh's name, that he would do no harm to David. David could have very well been hanging on to that oath. It's the fact that Saul swore this in Yahweh's name. Surely he will uphold that. It was a public oath, too. It wasn't just in private, so it was known to others. And public oaths like that tend to be more binding on us, right? Well, it wasn't on Saul. But even here, we can see Yahweh's hand sovereignly moving events. Saul was intent upon killing David. So why did he not send soldiers to just do the job immediately? And if he was that intent upon it, and he was intent upon it, just get it done. But instead he sends messengers. And they're supposed to watch all night so that in the morning Saul could kill him. Now, I think one of the reasons he didn't send soldiers to have them kill him right away is because it seems that Saul really wanted to do the job himself. Why, though, he didn't just go and do it himself that night, I don't know, maybe he was too lazy to go out and, you know, well, talking about comfort zone, I'm already in my slippers, you know, I'm going to go take care of this in the morning. I don't know. Perhaps it was the remnants of a guilty conscience that he just put the brakes on it just a little bit to delay just a little bit. Again, we're not told. But in any case, it was a tactical mistake. David slips through the net. In Saul's case, we see that old adage that sin makes you stupid, borne out. If you really want to kill your enemy, quit wasting around, just go do it. But he didn't, by God's sovereign hand. And David was able to escape. Alright, let's think a little bit about what all this means to us. It's an interesting story. All kinds of things that are fascinating. And there's some questions we still don't have answered and won't have answered. But we can draw some things out for us. Just, first of all, just because we like the things that we are currently doing, even if they're for the Lord, doesn't mean that they're permanent. Again, we can get pretty comfortable in our routines, right? Sometimes it takes some drastic action, drastic from our perspective, anyway, to move us forward. Now, it's not always an enemy threatening your life, as it was in David's story, but the Lord often uses life-shaking events to help us to turn loose of our comfort It could be the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, unexpected confrontation, betrayal, failing health, or even seemingly accidental challenges in life, like disasters or losses of various kinds. Those things can all turn our comfortable worlds upside down, can they not? Sometimes it's not even a negative thing. Sometimes it's just an unexpected crossroads that we come to, a decision that from here, there's no kind of riding the fence. We've got to go one way or the other and we're not sure what to do. And it can totally discombobulate us, causes us to reevaluate everything to be. And in that reevaluation process, that crossroads, can help remind us that the Lord has a plan for our lives that for the sake of his glory and our good may not include our immediate comfort. Yahweh does indeed know how to move you out of your comfort zone. But he also knows how to preserve you in spite of the discomfort and restore that comfort in his good time. Let me tell you a little personal story. Years ago, I was working in our Tacoma church. I was in seminary at the time. And over the course of the seven years that we were there in Tacoma, I got heavily involved in the ministry there at Tacoma Church, working with the young people and developing that whole aspect of the ministry there, as well as music. I was heavily involved in music, choir, and all the various musical things that were going on in the church. Absolutely loved it. I was exceedingly happy. I was content, was prepared to stay there the rest of my ministry life doing that. I just absolutely loved it. Loved working with the kids, loved working with the music. It was very fulfilling. Right about that time, the Soviet Union started to fall apart. And I was made aware of a situation in the little country, Baltic state of Estonia, which by the way appealed to me because of their love of music nationally. It stirred me up. I was all interested in this and what was happening there. I found out that all over the Baltic States and other places too, the Soviets just left behind fully developed facilities of all different kinds. And I was made aware of this property that was on some lake somewhere that had been used for training you know, Soviet youth kinds of stuff. Communist Party youth. Full of buildings everywhere. It's on this lake. Saw pictures of it. It's gorgeous. Many, many acres. Here's a land that had just been under the Soviet thumb for so long. Now they've got liberty from that. And just the ravages of communism on faith and all of that. I was just stirred up by that and this longing came into my heart to go to Estonia to establish this property, by the way, it was like 60 acres or something with all this stuff, $20,000. That's it. It could have been mine. I thought I could go do that, build churches, have this youth ministry that can reach out to the whole country. You guys know me, you know I start I had big dreams, I had big plans, and all of a sudden, that comfort, it was this crossroads. What do I do? Obviously, if I go to Estonia, I can't stay here. But the Lord took something that drastic to shake me loose from Tacoma, even though He never intended me to go to Estonia. As I went to pursue that, and I pursued it actively, my wife can tell you, wrote letters, wrote letters to Estonia, to the government there, to all kinds of other people, Trying to figure out, every single door was slammed in my face. There was no, it wasn't happening. I remember one Estonian wrote me, said, send us your Bibles, but you stay home. We don't need you here. Okay. You know, it was that kind of thing. I'm like, okay now, Lord, what? I'm in this wonderful place, I've loved it, but now I'm restless. Now I want to go somewhere else. Now I feel like there's something else I'm supposed to do. And in the midst of that confusion, trying to figure out what was going on, I got a letter from a family in St. Helens, Oregon saying, will you come help us start a Bible study? We're interested in starting a church. And I remembered from my call to the ministry way back in, 1980, that I had had a heart burden for the Pacific Northwest and particularly Oregon at the time. I was like, you know, some part of you must go, Lord, you could have just said, you know, no, I needed to be shaken loose because I was in my comfortable place. That's where I wanted to be. And church planning is not all that comfortable. And yet what a glorious thing. that it is. It took that Estonian crossroads to shake me out of my comfort zone. And as I look back now, I'm so thankful. I mean, yes, it could have been a wonderful thing, but with the churches the Lord has given me, the believers that I've known and been able to minister among and the missions work and all that other stuff that would never have happened if I'd have gone to Estonia. The Lord knew what he wanted, but he knew he had to shake me out of my comfort zone. So anyway, let's get back to David for just a couple of minutes as we wrap up for today. Up to now in the Samuel narrative here, we haven't actually heard from David very much, just a couple of times and very briefly. So it's really tantalizing to wonder how David and what David was thinking through all of this. Well, wonder no longer, because David has not been silent. He wrote Psalm 59. If you read by the title, it says when Saul was seeking his life and he had to be let down and escape. He writes about this event, this strange set of events that finally finally removed him from the court, the comfort of the court, such as it was. And in those words of Psalm 59, we find this marvelous pattern of how you and I should respond when Yahweh moves us out of our comfort zones. So God willing, in our next message, we're going to go to Psalm 59. We're going to spend our time there examining that pattern that David exhibits there. with an aim to live it out ourselves in our own service for the King. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for this remarkable passage and what it teaches us about patiently living through the changes that you bring, sometimes drastic, sometimes fearful, but but good and useful to move us in the direction we need to move so that we can serve you according to your will. We thank you that we have this example from David's life. I pray that you would help us to be faithful in the callings that you have upon our lives. In Christ's name we pray.