is 1st Samuel chapter 23. 1st Samuel 23 verse 1, Hear now the inerrant, infallible, and inspired word of God. Then they told David, saying, Behold, the Philistines fight against Kelah, and they rob the threshing floors. Therefore David inquired of the Lord, saying, Shall I go and smite these Philistines? And the Lord said unto David, Go, and smite the Philistines, and save Kelah. And David's men said unto him, Behold, we be afraid here in Judah, how much more then, if we come to Kelah against the armies of the Philistines? Then David inquired of the Lord yet again, And the Lord answered him and said, Arise, go down to Kelah, for I will deliver the Philistines into thine hand. So David and his men went to Kelah and fought with the Philistines and brought away their cattle and smote them with a great slaughter. So David saved the inhabitants of Kelah. And it came to pass when Abiathar, the son of Ahimelech, fled to David to Kelah, that he came down with an ephod in his hand. And it was told Saul that David was come to Kelah. And Saul said, God hath delivered him into mine hand, for he is shut in by entering into a town that hath gates and bars. And Saul called all the people together to war to go down to Kelah to besiege David and his men. And David knew that Saul secretly practiced mischief against him. And he said to Abiathar the priest, bring hither the ephod. Then said David, O Lord God of Israel, thy servant hath certainly heard that Saul seeketh to come to Kelah to destroy the city for my sake. Will the men of Kelah deliver me up into his hand? Will Saul come down as thy servant hath heard? O Lord God of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant. And the Lord said, he will come down. Then said David, will the men of Kelah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the Lord said, they will deliver thee up. Then David and his men, which were about 600, arose and departed out of Kelah, and went whithersoever they could go. And it was told Saul that David was escaped from Kelah, and he forbear to go forth. And David abode in the wilderness in the strongholds, and remained in a mountain in the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into his hand. And David saw that Saul was come out to seek his life, and David was in the wilderness of Ziph in a wood. And Jonathan Saul's son arose and went to David into the wood and strengthened his hand in God and said unto him, For the hand of Saul my father shall not find thee, and thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee, and that also Saul my father knoweth. And they too made a covenant before the Lord, and David abode in the wood, and Jonathan went to his house. Then came up the Ziphites to Saul to Gibeah, saying, doth not David hide himself with us in the strongholds in the wood, in the hills of Hakila, which is on the south of Jeshimon? Now therefore, O king, come down according to all the desire of thy soul to come down, and our part shall be to deliver him into the king's hands. And Saul said, blessed be ye of the Lord, for ye have compassion on me. Go, I pray you, prepare yet, and know and see his place where his haunt is, and who hath seen him there, for it is told me that he dealeth very subtly. See, therefore, and take knowledge of all the lurking places where he hideth himself, and come ye again to me with the certainty, and I will go with you, and it shall come to pass, if he be in the land, that I will search him out throughout all the thousands of Judah. And they arose and went to Ziph before Saul, but David and his men were in the wilderness of Maon, in the plain on the south of Jeshimun. Saul also and his men went to seek him. And they told David, wherefore he came down into a rock and abode in the wilderness of Maon. And when Saul heard that, he pursued after David in the wilderness of Maon. And Saul went on this side of the mountain, and David and his men on that side of the mountain. And Saul, I'm sorry, and David made haste to get away for fear of Saul, for Saul and his men compassed David, and his men round about to take them. But there came a messenger unto Saul saying, haste thee and come, for the Philistines have invaded the land. Wherefore, Saul returned from pursuing after David and went against the Philistines. Therefore, they called that place Selah Hamalekot. And David went up from thence and dwelt in the strongholds at En Gedi. May God add his blessing to the reading and hearing of his most holy word. So in this chapter, the first division is at chapter, at verse six. So one of the things that came out of Doeg slaying all of the priests of God is that Abiathar escaped. And when Abiathar escaped, he brought with him an ephod, and this gave David the opportunity to inquire of the Lord. So keep in mind that in every difficulty and in every calamity and in every evil that there may and usually is some good thing also that we can be thankful for. We are perhaps not very good at that. We look at the evils and forget that among those evils there are often goods that come with them. So what came to David that day? Abiathar and the ephod. And we will see that this figures very largely now in David's movements. Because David desires to hear what God would have him to do. Okay, so that is a precursor. So now they told David, somebody told David, we don't know exactly who, perhaps his men, perhaps others, some kind of intelligence. Behold, the Philistines fight against Kelah, and they rob the threshing floors. Not only are they killing the inhabitants of Kelah, they are robbing their grain for the year. This is not something like, oh, well, we'll just go down to Costco and get us another big bag of grain. Well, they can't do that. When the threshing floors are robbed, they go hungry in the winter. They go hungry until the next year when they can grow more grain. So David inquired of the Lord, saying, shall I go up and save Kelah? This is the ephod. Although it's not said directly, it's implied, especially as we see in the next section when David makes particular use of the ephod again. And so it's implied then that David asks of the Lord, and what was the ephod? The ephod was that vest that the high priest wore, and it had a pocket in it. And in that pocket, we believe, this is a rough description because the scripture doesn't tell us exactly what went on, but there were two devices. They were called the Urim and Thummim. And one could, when in times of distress like this, go to the Lord via the high priest who used the epa to answer yes or no questions by the urim and thummim, kind of like a casting of lots, but in a way that God had authorized through his high priest. And so he would reach in, and you couldn't tell the difference between the stones. And you would pull them out, and one stone stood for yes, and one stone stood for no. This is what we think it was, or something similar, a way to discern the answer to a yes or no question. And so David understands here that he is to go and save Kelah. And so notice his courage and his obedience. And notice his willingness to go. This is a country that has sent him on the lamb, if you will. It's ruled by a man that would kill him if he could find him. So shall we go ahead and add danger upon danger? Saul's after us here, but shall we go and confront the Philistines even while Saul's after us? Wouldn't that be foolish? Some of his men go ahead and ask him that. But he receives the answer from the Lord that is a yes answer. However, David, because all of these men have come to him and called upon him as their leader, David shows the part of a good leader here in that he will ask the Lord a second time on their behalf. David doesn't need this assurance, but his men need the assurance. And so David, out of kindness to them, will ask the Lord a second time, should we go to Kelah and save it? Well, this is good leadership to hear those that are perhaps your subordinates in the Lord, and that when they have objections to a course that you have chosen, you have a couple of choices. You can simply double down and say, get in line, I'm the leader here, and you can press your authority, or you can understand that no man is an island, and that you can take counsel, and you can ask the Lord again, and you can go through that decision-making process one more time to make sure that everything is in order, which is what David does, which shows not weakness, I think, but good leadership. And so now when they go to Kelah, they are assured that this is what the Lord would have them to do. there are no doubts. And away they go. And of course the Lord gives them the victory. It says that they took the Philistines' cattle and they killed many Philistines. They smote them with a great slaughter and David saved the inhabitants of Kelah. And it is here then in verse 6 that we hear that Abiathar is there with the ephod. So what happens next is perhaps odd. David has saved the men of Kelah, and now Saul hears that David is there, and he's going to gather his force. And so David makes use of the ephod, and he asks the Lord, will Saul come down and encompass us here? The answer is yes, Saul will come. Will the men of Kelah give me up after I've saved them? Of course, I added that last phrase. It doesn't say that in the scripture, but that's the implication. David has just saved them from the Philistines. And the answer of the Lord is, yes, they will give you up. Well, Kelah is a city of gates and bars, so David and his men know what to do. Saul is on his way there. It's an urgent condition, and so they depart and go wherever they can, is how the scriptures put it, which tells us how urgent the situation was. But the Lord delivered them out of the hand of Saul. So David inquired of the Lord via the ephod, and that takes us down through verse 13. Now in verses 14 through 18, notice that while Saul is unable to find David, Jonathan is. Jonathan maybe has better scouting skills. I don't know, it doesn't say in scripture. Maybe the Lord simply led him there. But we see the great friendship between these two men. We see the covenant that they made between themselves. And this is still a covenant that is pressed to an inferior by a superior. Jonathan says to David, promise me, that you will have me by your side, and that you will not blot out my seed, as he said before. All of those things are still viable, and so Jonathan and David made a covenant, that David responded to his superior in that way. When our superiors ask us, in times of wait and moment, for godly promises and pledges, we should give them. However, when our superiors abuse that authority and call for promises and pledges in times that are not of wait and moment, we want to say at that point, although I respect you, I'm simply going to let my yea be yea and my nay, nay. Authorities don't have absolute sway, as we have said before. So Jonathan, notice, he is no longer traveling with Saul. He went to his house. He left off from chasing after David. All right, so then in verses 19 through the end of the chapter, we have the third section. And so now we have this deception under which Saul interacts with the Ziphites. The Ziphites, for their part, they want to turn David over to Saul. They would appreciate the king's favor. We understand that. For their part, they may not have known that David was persecuted wrongfully by Saul. So let's not be so hard on the Zephites, except to say that they offered to find David and offer him up to Saul. And Saul says, no, you search out where he is, and when you find him, I'll come and we'll all go together and find David together. But notice the deception that Saul uses. Here's what he says. Blessed be ye of the Lord, for ye have compassion on me. What does that mean? You recognize that this guy is a threat to my kingdom, a threat to my authority. You realize that I'm pursuing him as one who really, if he could, would pursue me. You've had compassion on me. You've taken my side. You've seen how I have been wronged here, and you've had compassion on me. It's deception, isn't it? Saul has lied to himself and he's lied to the Ziphites about what's actually going on. He should have listened to the counsel of Ahimelech who told him and who is a better servant than David thy son-in-law who has fought the Lord's battles and took his life in his own hand when he did so. But Saul is too focused on his retaining the kingdom to think of David as anything other than a persecuting enemy. And so he's just going to persecute him first. And notice the vehemence of his demand, no matter where we find him, even among the thousands of Judah. And so we see his diligence in wrongdoing. Well, we see this often in the Psalms, don't we? And let it never surprise us in the heart of the natural man to lay awake at night on his bed plotting mischief. And, beloved, let it never surprise us to see the remnants of that corruption still present within ourselves, such that we would desire to wipe it out wherever it is found. All right, and then finally we see God's sovereign protection of David by moving the Philistines to invade. Notice that David did not rise up and prepare to face Saul's forces, but rather Saul was on one side of the mountain, David was on the other side of the mountain. David was more comfortable, listen now, David was more comfortable in being pursued by Saul than in standing up against him. because it was not his fight. It was the Lord's fight. Although David might have had what we would call proper rights of self-defense, If Saul's forces actually encompassed him and they attacked, certainly they would have played the men and defended themselves. But David in no way would rise up against the Lord's anointed, not in battle and not in person. And this is where the chapter ends. And in the next chapter, we will see that played out in a very specific example. All right. With that then, let's stand.