We're reading our text from 1 Samuel chapter 22. This takes up in David's outlaw experience and he has just escaped from Philistia and so on. So we're taking up in the middle of things a bit. Let's look at it and fill in some gaps later. 1 Samuel 22. David departed from there, that is, Philistia, and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in death, and everyone who was bitter in soul gathered to him, and he became commander over them. And there were with him about 400 men. And David went from there to Mizpah of Moab. And he said to the king of Moab, Please let my father and my mother stay with you till I know what God will do for me. And he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold. Then the prophet Gad said to David, Do not remain in the stronghold, depart and go into the land of Judah. So David departed and went into the forest of Herod. Now Saul heard that David was discovered, and the men who were with him. Saul was sitting at Gebeah under the tamarisk tree on the height with his spear in his hand, and all his servants were standing about him. And Saul said to his servants who stood about him, here now, people of Benjamin, Will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards? Will he make you all commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds that all of you have conspired against me? No one discloses to me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. None of you is sorry for me or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me to lie in wait as at this day. Then answered Doeg the Edomite, who stood by the servants of Saul, I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech, the son of Ahithob. And he inquired of the Lord for him, and gave him provisions, and gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine. Then the king sent to summon Abimelech the priest, the son of Ahithob, and all his father's house, the priests who were at Naub. And all of them came to the king. And Saul said, Here now, son of Ahithob. And he answered, Here I am, my lord. And Saul said to him, why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him so that he has risen against me while I am late as at this day? Then Ahabalek answered the king, and who among all your servants is so faithful as David, who is the king's son-in-law and captain over your bodyguard and honored in your house? Is today the first time that I've inquired of God for him? No, I want the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father. But your servant has known nothing of all this much or little. And the king said, you shall surely die of him elect you and all your father's house. And the king said to the guard who stood about him, turn and kill the priests of the Lord because their hand is also also is with David. Then they knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me. But the servants of the king would not put out their hand to strike the priests of the Lord. And the king said to Doeg, you turn and strike the priests. And Doeg, the Edomite, turned and struck down the priests. And he killed on that day 85 persons who wore the linen ephod and nob. The city of the priests he put to the sword, both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey, and sheep he put to the sword. But one of the sons of Ahimelech, the son of Ahitab, named Abiathar, escaped and fled after David. And Abiathar told David that Saul had killed the priests of the Lord. And David said to Abiathar, I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul, I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father's house. Stay with me. Do not be afraid. For he who seeks my life seeks your life. With me, you shall be in safekeeping." Here ends the reading of God's written word. You may be seated. Well, it was 1864, and Abraham Lincoln was going to be re-nominated, apparently, for the presidency But he was having a little flack within his own party. Some of the Republicans apparently were a little discontented, and they held a counter-convention in Cleveland. There were about 400 of them. It wasn't a very powerful opposition, but there they were in Cleveland disputing and trying to Get someone nominated to run against Lincoln. They told Lincoln about this, and they reported about these 400 who were meeting in Cleveland, and Lincoln picked up the Bible that was on his desk and turned to 1 Samuel 22, and he read this, and everyone that was in distress, and everyone that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented gathered themselves unto him, and he became a captain over them, and there were with him about 400 men. Lincoln, he wasn't saying that he was David or anything like that, but he was showing the analogy of malcontents and so on. This motley crew that gathered to David would surely show his skill and leadership with a bunch of malcontents of those that came to David here at the Cave of Adullam. And so Lincoln saw a little bit of an analogy, and it was a rather humorous way to look upon his opponents. But David's here in the cave of Adullam. We need to fill in a little bit on the story of David. If you go back a little bit, you go back to 1 Samuel 20, and you find there that David knew definitely in chapter 20 that Saul was out to eliminate him. He was perplexed over Saul's motives, over the why, and so on. apparently, but Saul definitely wanted to eliminate David. So, at the end of chapter 20, what does David do? He apparently didn't have any provisions with him. He apparently couldn't go back to his home. It would be too dangerous to get his weaponry and so on. He went to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest, where the tabernacle apparently was. and he got some food from a Himalaya, and he asked him if he had any weaponry there, and he said, well, there's a sword of Goliath, whom you knocked off a while ago, and David took Goliath's sword and so on. Well, then what's he going to do? Please understand. Now, David, I think, wasn't thinking too clearly here, but you can understand why he wasn't. Where is he going to go? Where is he going to turn? The king's out to get him. What can he do? He decides to go to Philistia, down to the west to the Philistines. But think about it. He goes to Gath. Gath was Goliath's hometown, whom David knocked off in chapter 17. And he comes into Gath with Goliath's sword. That's not really too smart to bring those kind of memories. But you see how desperate he was. He didn't know where to turn, didn't know what to do. Well, he got in trouble in chapter 21 because they remember David. And David was apparently under arrest of some sort and in danger, and he turned on his insanity act. And King Achish of the Philistines said, well, I don't need more people that are bananas around me. I'll let the guy go. So he gets back, and he comes, chapter 22, where we pick up in our text of the cave of Adullam. Now, Adullam is about 16 miles west, southwest of Jerusalem, if you get your mental Bible geography going. And he's in a cave. Now, this cave is not just a hole in the side of the hill. It's kind of cramped and so on. A number of years ago I was in some of these caves in the western hills there in the territory of Judah, and they're really quite capacious, some of them. They may be 20 feet high. Some of them would be as big as this room and so on. So they didn't have flush toilets or anything like that, but there was room there. and David's men could hide out and so on. So he's in this cave of Adullam and it's not the high point of David's life with this mangy group of 400 men around him and so on trying to hide from Saul. But let's ask ourselves as we look at this passage, what do you see if you place yourself here in the cave of Adullam? What do we see in front of us in the text? Well, first of all, you see a hint of providence. Verses 3 and 4, a hint of providence. You notice that David went to Moab. He went to the king of Moab. Now Moab is east of Israel, across the Dead Sea from Israel. The text doesn't fill us in on how long did it take David to get there and so on. How did he evade Saul getting over there to Moab? It's not interested in those details. It's just saying David got his parents who were elderly apparently, they couldn't be going from pillar to post with his gorillas trying to get away from Saul in the middle of the night or something. He had to have some kind of place where he could get asylum for his parents. So he took them to the king of Moab and asked him to keep them in verses three and four until David would know how things would turn out for him. And the king of Moab consented to that. I'm saying here, you see a hint of providence here, of God's provision for, in his interesting way, for his servant. Now, why do you suppose the king of Moab was willing to give David's parents asylum? Well, maybe he thought anybody that was willing to disturb Saul's kingship and so on should be supported, but I doubt if that cuts it. Do you remember the book of Ruth? Do you remember how Ruth is described in that book repeatedly? Ruth, the Moabitess, right? She married one of Elimelech's sons. She was widowed. She's Ruth the Moabitess who comes back with Naomi from the country of Moab to Bethlehem and sticks with her through thick and thin and so on. So that when you get to the end of the book of Ruth and you have that little family history and you see that Ruth gave birth to Obed and Obed to Jesse and Jesse to David and you realize, oh, David's great-grandmother was Ruth the Moabitess. Don't you think that would have been a little bit of leverage with the king of Moab? Oh, this guy's got a little bit of Moabite connection in his history. That might have been very convincing, you might say, to the King of Moab for allowing David's parents to stay with him in safety. That puts a whole different picture, you know, on all the hardship and the distress and the suffering of Naomi, of Ruth, and that book and so on. And it shows, doesn't it, Now, if that's the case, if that's just a hint of God's providence that David has a great-grandmother who's a Moabitess, that shows that God was working long before David's situation here in his behalf. It's sort of like, well, former President Reagan One of his aides once was telling about President Reagan and talked about how he was a fitness nut and he had worked out so often and so on and his chest and stomach muscles were so developed and so on, even some of his medical advisors told him that he needed to let up because they were afraid it might lead to a hernia later on. And one of Reagan's advisors said that he was so developed that when that assassin shot him, one of the bullets went through his stomach, came into his stomach muscle, and the stomach muscles, apparently, he said, slowed the bullet down and it stopped an inch from his heart. That's interesting. Do you suppose Ronald Reagan at one time said, you know, I'll bet sometime there might be an assassin that might want to shoot me, and I think I better develop myself to the utmost of my ability. No, no, no, you don't do that. But wasn't it interesting that there seemed to be a provision ahead of time that one had no idea one might need, that would come later. You see, David needs to find refuge for his parents. Isn't it interesting that over a century before, He had a Moabitess, who was his great grandmother, that apparently became leveraged with the king of Moab. You see what that's telling you? It's saying sometimes God is at work before ever we're aware of it. And that's something of what Romans 8.28 means, I think, when it says God works all things together. were good to those who love him. So here in the cave of the Dolom, and then you see a hint of providence here. Now, secondly, you also see a word of prophecy. You look at verse five. Then the prophet Gad said to David, do not remain in a stronghold, depart and go into the land of Judah. So David departed and went into the forest of Herod. Now, We don't know much about Gad, the prophet. He's mentioned several times. He and Nathan and Samuel, according to 1 Chronicles 29, all wrote historical accounts about David's life and times and so on. He's called Gad the Prophet, Prophet Gad. And you might look at verse five and say, well, so what's the big deal there? Nothing important, really. He just gives David advice. No, it's called Gad the Prophet. He is one who bears, as a prophet, bears the word of the Lord. And he tells David what he should do in this situation. That's a word of prophecy that he gives him, and direction, and guidance. And you may say, so what? Well, think a minute. Go back. You didn't come to church today just having read through 1 Samuel, but pretend you did. Go back to 1 Samuel 16. And when David was anointed as king, you remember what it says right after the spirit comes upon David? It says, the spirit of Yahweh, or the spirit of the Lord, departed from Saul. And a distressing spirit from the Lord terrified him. And then in chapter 18, verse 12, it says that Saul feared David because he saw that Yahweh, or the Lord, was with him but had departed from Saul. Saul doesn't have any prophet giving him a word from God. He's cut off from God's guidance. But here, here's Gad giving David a word from the Lord. Not a big deal in a way. Not startling perhaps. It's just here's what you need to do now, David. Here's a word from the Lord through me, and this is the next step you need to take. This is the way, walk in it. But David has guidance from God's prophet that Saul doesn't have. Now, we don't have a prophet speaking to us. You don't have the prophet Gag sneaking up on your side when you're in dilemmas and so on, do you? No, no. No, we don't. But we have what 2 Peter 1, verse 19 calls the prophetic word as altogether reliable. That's the way I would translate it. We have the prophetic Word. Peter's talking about the Scriptures. We have the prophetic Word as something altogether reliable. That is, we don't have a prophet giving us the Word. We have the prophetic Scriptures. that direct us for as Romans 15 verse 4 says, Paul says there, the things written beforehand in the Old Testament scriptures were written for our learning that we through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, he means the encouragement the scriptures give might have hope. What do we have in our distresses and darkness and dilemmas? We have not just a prophet giving us the word, we have the prophetic scriptures. We have a word of prophecy, you might say. And this ought to cause you to prize those prophetic scriptures all the more. It was William Tyndale. You may remember he was executed in 1536 because he translated the scriptures into English, and they didn't want that done, so they were going to execute him. But before his execution, he was in a prison about nine miles north of Brussels, and he He, well, some years ago they uncovered a letter that William Tyndale wrote at that time in their research. They uncovered a letter that he wrote to the head knocker at the prison asking the head of the prison to direct the procurer, as he calls him, the one who held all of Tyndale's possessions that they took when they captured him and threw him in prison, asking him to order the procurer to give Tyndale certain things, and this, I'll just quote from this letter. Tyndale says, I entreat your lordship that by the Lord Jesus, that if I'm to remain here during the winter, you will request the procurer to be kind enough to send me from my goods, which he has in his possession, a warmer cap, for I suffer extremely from cold in the head. A warmer coat also. And then he said, I wish also his permission to have a lamp in the evening, for it is wearisome to sit alone in the dark. But above all, he writes, I entreat and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the pure, pure, that he may kindly permit me to have my Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may spend my time with that study. But above all. I might have my Hebrew Bible. What do I want in the darkness and difficulty? I want the scriptures. I remember well, some years ago, being in a home for an evening, in the home of one of my friends and colleagues at Reformed Seminary, and he happened to have that evening as a guest, Elizabeth Elliot, who you may remember Her first husband was slaughtered by the Indians in 1956 in Ecuador. And so as the evening went on, some of the college students that were there were asking her questions. And I remember one that was asked, well, what What was there for, what did you lean upon, so what recourse did you have in the face of your husband's death and so on? And I well remember Elizabeth Elliot's very first words. She said, well, certainly the scriptures. You have not just a word of prophecy from a prophet, but you have the encouragement given by the scriptures as well. Now then, thirdly, when you're in the cave of Adullam, you see a preview of Antichrist, verses 6 to 19, a preview of Antichrist. Pick up the story there in verse 6, and if you look at verses 6 through 8, you see that King Saul is at Nubia, And he's sitting there as he always has a spear in his hand and so on, and his lackeys are around him and so on, and he's having a pity party. He is moaning and groaning about how though he may give government positions to those in his tribe and so on, they have not been very faithful to him in keeping him informed about the fact that there's a conspiracy, he says, of David against him. Now, he was all wet in that, but this was Saul's deranged idea, and so he was moaning about this. And so, in verses 9 and 10, you see this Doeg the Edomite. Now, Doeg the Edomite happened to be, in chapter 21, happened to be at Nob, at the tabernacle, when David had come to get food and a weapon from Ahimelech the priest. And Doeg had been there. So now he tattles on David, and he says, I saw the son of Jesse Saul, if you want to know what's been going on. And Himelech, the priest, inquired of the Lord's guidance for him, and gave him food, and gave him a weapon, and so on. And so Saul summons the priests. And you see that in verses 11 to 16, a Himalek. He's to come. And it's a futile interview. You know what's determined right at the beginning. He called the Himalek to task. And Himalek gives quite a good defense of his actions and so on. But we know it's all predetermined. You get down to about, what, verse 16 or so? And you see, you shall surely die and Him elect you and your father's house. And then Saul turns to his guard and he says, wipe out the priests of the Lord. And they had too much reverence. They wouldn't do it. They didn't move. So he asks this pagan, Doeg, the Edomite, you kill them. And so he does. He wipes them out. It says he took the lives of 85 priests. And he not only did that, but he went to Nob, their hometown, and he completely devastated the people and everything there as well. Now, here's Saul, who was anointed as king. in order to deliver and protect Israel. And now you see Saul, who is destroying and butchering Israel. This is what we call a preview of Antichrist. You might say, well, what does this, you know, I don't give a, well, let's come at this whole thing about Antichrist from the back door, all right? Now, before some of you were born, Some of you, though, may remember that after Richard Nixon left his office in disgrace, his vice president, Gerald Ford, became president. And Gerald Ford kind of had a certain aura about him that He was kind of Mr. Nice Guy. I mean, you can have all kinds of politicians, but Jerry Ford seemed to really be a congenial nice guy. There are types of people like that, you know. Maybe few and far between, but there are types of people like that. And you may remember that there was also a president by the name of Jimmy Carter. And Jimmy Carter had a brother by the name of Billy Carter. And Billy Carter was kind of a swaggering, beard-guzzling, maybe tobacco-spitting, redneck type that was kind of an embarrassment to the family and so on. Well, there's Billy Carter. But you know, there are other Billy Carters. There are other people like that. There's a type of people. Now, when you think of Antichrist in the Bible, there's something like that. Remember, 1 John 2, 18, John says, you have heard that Antichrist is coming. And even now, many Antichrists, plural, have come. What's John saying? There is such a figure as the Antichrist. But there are also ones that kind of prefigure and represent him. There are many antichrists that have come. Like what? Well, John says in that context, 1 John 2, 22 or so, there are some who deny that Jesus is the Christ. This is antichrist. Antichrist can seek to implant false doctrine among God's people. And then there's another aspect of antichrist. You see it in Daniel 7. Verses 21 to 23, I believe it is. You see it in 2 Thessalonians 2, the one that Paul calls the man of lawlessness. You see it in Revelation 13, the one that's called the beast out of the sea, this figure who's going to come before Christ's second coming, but he's going to seek to crush and eliminate and devastate the people of God. That's what Antichrist will do. But if we take John's in 1 John 2, 18 clue, there's not only antichrists, there are also many antichrists that have come. There's a sort of a tradition of that type that seeks to crush and harass and eliminate the people of God. And you know, that's true. You think about there's a whole tradition, isn't there, of antichrist types. You remember Pharaoh in Exodus chapter 1 seeking to eliminate the males of Israel and so on. You remember perhaps Balak, the king of Moab in Numbers 22, trying to get the diviner Balaam to put the hokey on Israel so that he could wipe them out. You remember Jezebel in 1 Kings 18 who was killing the prophets of the Lord. You remember Athaliah in 2 Kings 11 who wiped out the royal seed, the Davidic line, all except one infant that she didn't get. You remember also Haman in the book of Esther who tried to commit genocide on the people of the Jews throughout the Persian Empire. And you remember Herod in Matthew 2, don't you? Butchering all the infants, or toddlers rather, from two years old and under in the greater Bethlehem area. in order to think that he actually got the Christ child. There's a whole string, there's a whole tradition of Antichrist and what a shame that Saul is in that line. He's an Israelite and he's destroying Israelite people. It's a preview of Antichrist that you see here. So what's that mean for us? We should see that that's a continuing matter. You may not feel it sitting in padded pews this morning, but if you're in Myanmar and you know that the military, the government military, actually uses aerial bombardment and artillery to destroy and to kill Christian tribes, even when they're in displaced person camps. There are still many antichrists. If you're in northern Nigeria, Nigeria and Islamic terrorists butcher and kill outright Christians in their villages. One report might have that there were nine killed. Others might have 17. Others might have 32 and so on. And they burn homes and churches and so on. And it seems like No one does anything about it that's because they're Christians. That's the kind of thing antichrists will do. And there are even now antichrists who seek to crush God's people. And that's why 1 John 3.13 says to us, don't be surprised if the world hates you. You may not feel it right now. But the only surprising matter would be if we're surprised at this. And here we see a preview of Antichrist, you might say, in Saul. And that's part of the graciousness of God, because he doesn't put this in fine print that you can't read. He puts it right out there. This is something. You need to realize you could possibly face a preview of Antichrist. Now, fourthly, notice that you have here a pattern of preservation. Look at verses 20 to 23, please. Let's look at verse 20 particularly. But one of the sons of Ahimelech, the son of Ahithob, named Abiathar, escaped and fled after David. Now, is that just a statement of fact? Or does that tell us something a little bit more about our God? Now, there may be more in that than you think. Don't downplay the significance of that fact that Abiathar escaped. Now, let Joseph Stalin, the old Soviet dictator, be your teacher here. Stalin was far worse than Hitler. There was a time when they made the movie version here in the States of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's novel and so on, that depicted the dire and desperate and poverty-stricken era of the Depression and so on, and of people going to California and so on and the desperate conditions they were in. And the filmmakers really wanted, apparently, to show how bad things were in the United States. But Stalin wouldn't allow that film to be shown in the Soviet Union. Why not? Looked like it would be good propaganda for him. Look how bad it is in capitalist countries like that. No, no, Stalin saw a very significant fact in the movie. You see, the movie showed that poor people in the United States had old, beat-up trucks, and they could go wherever they wanted, and that was too political. He thought that was very significant. No, I'm just saying, by analogy, think here of Abiathar's escape, not just a matter of fact, but a significant fact. It's a pattern of preservation that God follows. God always preserves a people for himself. Now, you know, sorry, let's just touch again. You know that's a pattern. We don't need to exhaust the scriptures. Remember Moses in Exodus 2? that all the male babies of Israel in Egypt were to be chucked to Davy Jones' locker in the bottom of the Nile. But one was spared anyway, Moses. And you go to 1 Kings 19, and Elijah is told by the Lord, when Baal worship seemed to be sweeping the land of Israel, the Lord said, I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees of whom have not bowed to Baal. I'll have a remnant. I will preserve a people. And the same thing, we mentioned Matthew 2, where Herod butchered the toddlers and infants in Bethlehem, but one escaped, didn't he? Jesus was taken to Egypt in safety. God always preserves a people or himself. Now this isn't a promise of immunity, it's just a promise of preservation. Abiathar's escape does not mean that God's servants are immune from the world's butchery. It means that the world's butchery can never completely wipe out all of God's servants. You may want more than that, but it at least tells you that. That there's always God always preserves a people, no matter how difficult. I saw kind of an analogy of this in a book called The Pessimist's Guide to History. The authors compile all the disasters that they know of in history and relate them. It's not exactly an optimistic book. But they were talking about the Johnstown flood. In 1889, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, had the Johnstown flood. The day after the flood, 2,200 people had been killed, and 99 entire families had been wiped out. Yet there were some survivors. Among them, a five-month-old baby. The infant was found unharmed in Pittsburgh after floating 75 miles down the river on the floor of a house. pattern of preservation, even in what we call secular things. But here, this is the pattern that God follows even in dire times. He always makes sure he preserves people for himself. If you see this in scripture, it ought to put some steel in your faith. To borrow a phrase from one of Charles Wesley's hymns, it's saying, his kingdom cannot fail. It's as if God is saying, I will have a people preserved in this world. It's the same thing as you see in the chapter 25 of the Westminster Confession of Faith where you almost have a defiant note where it says that God will always have a people to worship him on earth according to his will and not Saul or anyone else can do anything about it. And that's a marvelously encouraging note. It doesn't lift your depression and it doesn't solve all your problems. It only tells you that Jesus is going to win. So, was there a blare of trumpets or fanfare? No, no. It was just a disheveled priest by the name of Abiathar coming into David's camp and saying, is David here? The pattern of preservation. You can actually see a good bit if you stay in the cave of Avalon for a while. Let's pray. Oh, our God, your servant David once prayed that he would want to dwell in the house of the Lord every day of his life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. And we pray that we have seen something of your beauty, O Lord, in these strange hints and testimonies left in 1 Samuel 22, that we might delight in you, that you are our God. And we give you thanks for it in Jesus' name. Amen. Closing hymn is number 311, Hail to the Lord's Anointed. And we will stand to sing, please. He comes to break the crash, to set the captives free. ♪ And rule in equity ♪ ♪ He comes with comforts feeding ♪ ♪ To those who suffer low ♪ ♪ To folk of poor and needy ♪ ♪ And with the weak restored ♪ ♪ To give them songs to shine ♪ ♪ Whose souls condemned and died ♪ ♪ Were precious in His sight ♪ ♪ He shall come down like flowers ♪ ♪ Upon God's pure fire ♪ ♪ And of joy open flowers ♪ ♪ Bring Him His wrath to bear ♪ and righteousness in fountains from hill to valley flow. Let grateful victorious be all ye chosen ones, ♪ And makes new age more glorious ♪ ♪ A blessing in the blest ♪ ♪ The final function of man ♪ ♪ His power and reward ♪ ♪ His name shall stand forever ♪ ♪ And name to us still ♪ Now may the God who never abandons you and never lets go of you go before you in your darkness, stand beside you in your fears, hold you up in your sorrows, and keep you faithful in your temptations until Jesus comes. Amen. Thank you.