This is a fairly extensive passage, but if you're able to remain standing, we'll do so. 1 Samuel chapter 23, and we'll be reading from the English Standard Version. Now they told David, behold, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah and are robbing the threshing floors. Therefore, David inquired of the Lord, shall I go and attack these Philistines? And the Lord said to David, go and attack the Philistines and save Keilah. But David's men said to him, behold, we're afraid here in Judah. How much more then if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines? Then David inquired of the Lord again. And the Lord answered him, arise, go down to Keilah, where I will give the Philistines into your hand. And David and his men went to Keilah and fought with the Philistines and brought away their livestock and struck them with a great blow. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah. When Abiathar, the son of Ahimelech, had fled to David, to Keilah, he had come down with an ephod in his hand. Now it was told Saul that David had come to Keilah, and Saul said, God has given him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars. And Saul summoned all the people to war to go down to Keilah to besiege David and his men. David knew that Saul was plotting harm against him, and he said to Abivor the priest, bring the ephod here. Then David said, O Lord, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah to destroy the city on my account. Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down as your servant has heard? O Lord, the God of Israel, please tell your servant. And the Lord said, he will come down. Then David said, will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the Lord said, they will surrender you. Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition. And David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him into his hand. David saw that Saul had come out to seek his life. David was in the wilderness of Zipf at Horish, and Jonathan, Saul's son, rose and went to David at Horish and strengthened his hand in God. And he said to him, Do not fear, for the hand of Saul, my father, shall not find you. You shall be king over Israel and I shall be next to you. Saul, my father, also knows this. And the two of them made a covenant before the Lord. David remained at Horish. And Jonathan went home. Then the Ziphites went up to Saul at Gebeah, saying, Is not David hiding among us in the strongholds of Horesh on the hill of Hakela, which is south of Jeshamun? Now come down, O king, according to all your hearts desire to come down, and our part shall be to surrender him into the king's hand. And Saul said, May you be blessed by the Lord, for you have had compassion on me. Go, make more sure. Know and see the place where his foot is and who has seen him there. For it is told me that he is very cunning. See therefore and take note of all the lurking places where he hides and come back to me with sure information. Then I will go with you. And if he is in the land, I will search him out among all the thousands of Judah.' And they arose and went to Ziph ahead of Saul. Now David and his men were in the wilderness of Ma'on, in the Ereba, to the south of Jeshimun. And Saul and his men went to seek him, and David was told. So he went down to the rock and lived in the wilderness of Ma'on. And when Saul heard that, he pursued after David in the wilderness of Ma'on. Saul went on one side of the mountain, and David and his men on the other side of the mountain. And David was hurrying to get away from Saul. As Saul and his men were closing in on David and his men to capture them, a messenger came to Saul, saying, Hurry and come, for the Philistines have made a raid against the land. So Saul returned from pursuing after David and went against the Philistines. Therefore, that place was called the Rock of Escape. And David went up from there and lived in the strongholds of En Gedi. Sends the reading of God's written word. You may be seated. It was 1776, and George Washington was general of the Continental Army. He was in the middle of New Jersey. This was before his significant small victories at Trenton and Princeton. Things were not going very well for the Continentals. His adjutant, Joseph Reed, was off somewhere in New Jersey trying to raise up more militia troops and so on. And in the midst of this discouraging situation, there came a letter from General Charles Lee, Washington's, the other general that was in charge of the Continental Army, to Washington's adjutant, Joseph Reed. Well, Joseph Reed was not there, so Washington opened the letter because he assumed it was Army business. And he read the letter and he noticed that Charles Lee and apparently his trusted adjutant were kind of conspiring against him. They talked about Washington's kind of terrible lack of decision and so on. So he realized, you know, I've got a conspiracy going on in my own army. Well, he just sealed the letter up and put a note on it to Joseph Reed saying that he apologized for opening the letter and so on, and he sent it on to Reed. Now, that doesn't seem like much. You're in these dire circumstances and things are going against you, but at least there was one advantage Washington had. He knew that there was a conspiracy among his own men against him. And now they knew that he knew. And it read the letter. Difficult times, but nevertheless a certain advantage nonetheless. That's sort of the thing you see in 1 Samuel 23. You remember the storyline from this morning and so on, and we're just going on to the next chapter. But this is the time when David is in his outlaw days. He is being hunted and hated and haunted by Saul and trying to stay alive and so on. And with his, well, it's now a group of about 600 men that he has. And we have to realize as we come to this text that David is special in a way that we are not. David was God's king elect over his covenant people. He has a position, you might say, in redemptive history and an importance that I don't have and that you don't have and so on in the same way. However, When you think about it, why does the scripture go into such detail to tell us of the troubles of David and so on, and how God kept him, unless there's a spillover for ordinary believers as well? Well, it seems to me this is telling us not only how God dealt and protected and kept David, but how he tends to deal with all his people as well. And so if there's an outlaw's advantages that we see here, certainly these are, are they not, our advantages as well. What are those advantages? Well, first, David has access to God's guidance. Verses 1 through 14, access to God's guidance. Now he talks about in the first five verses this town of Kila, which was 18 miles southwest of Jerusalem. And the Philistines had attacked it. They were carrying off the grain. This would mean a little bit of starvation time come winter and so on. Saul should have been the one, as the king of Israel, to go down and redress this situation, but David actually was the one, at God's direction, who went down, drove off the Philistines, knocked them off in battle, and delivered Kilo. All right. Then you have, in verse 6, a little parenthesis. It's an FYI note, for your information. Just a little parenthesis. When Abiathar, the son of Abimelech, had fled to David, to Kelah, he had come down with an ephod in his hand. Leviather was a priest. He came with the ephod. The ephod was a garment that the high priest wore and so on. And if you go back to Exodus 28 verse 30 and so on, you find there was a breast piece that was attached to that ephod. And in that breast piece, piece, there were some things, maybe they were small stones or something, we don't really know, but these things called Urim and Thummim, and I don't know of anybody who really knows what those things were, except that they were some way, the priest using these things would get direct answers from the Lord to give guidance to his servants and so on. So anyway, a biother had the effort, had these Urim and Thummim with it and so on so that he could get direction from the Lord. Now, That probably explains, in verse 6, that probably explains how David inquired of the Lord in verses 2 and 4. But certainly it explains how he inquired of the Lord in verses... Further on in verses 7 and following, 8, and so on down to verse 12 and 13. So he gets, he has, he's in this dilemma. Saul, he knows Saul's going to come down to Keilah. Here's David in a fortified town. If Saul assaults the town, how will David make out and so on. So he wants to know some things and he asked the Lord through Abiah, through the priest. Will Saul come down? And if he comes down, will these men of Keilah, whom I've delivered, I've delivered their community and so on from the Philistines, will they hand me over to Saul? And the answer was, Saul's going to come down. And will the men of Keilah be a bunch of ingrates and hand me over to them? And the answer was, they will hand you over. When push comes to shove, they'll They'll side with the government, in this case, and so on. So this was the answer that he got. Now, Saul, remember, was completely cut off from any direction from God. We saw that this morning. But notice that David has access to God and his guidance through Abiathar the priest. So David is able to make this harem scarum escape that you read about in the last part of these verses. David's men just scattered. They couldn't stay together. They would join up later, but they just took off wherever they could go in small groups, I suppose. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. So that was because David had access to God's guidance through God's priest. Now, you may look at that and you may say, that really has nothing to do with me because I don't have a priest like a biother. Well, yes and no. No, not like a biother, but you do have a priest. Do you remember the last words of Hebrews 4? Having, therefore, a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all respects, like we are, except without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help at just the right time. That's Hebrews 4. No, no. You have a greater than a Biother. But do you see here how crucial that access through God's appointed priest was here. All was chaotic and confusing, but there was one essential matter in place. David had access to God through God's appointed priest. That one thing in all the mess. Reminds me of a story from World War II. It was during what was called the Market Garden Offensive. Well, General Montgomery's troops were trying to get behind German lines apparently and it didn't go so well. And so in this particular place, British leader Colonel John Frost had a contingent of British soldiers and so on and they were pinned down. I don't know if they were in the They may have been in the basements or something, lower stories of some of the Dutch homes in this village and so on. But at any rate, they were getting plastered. The German artillery were just beating the daylights out of them. And at one point, they were low on ammunition, they hadn't had food maybe for 48 hours or maybe no sleep for that time. These British troops were pretty well done in. And it just so happened that Colonel Frost just happened to come out of the toilet. And he bumped into a Catholic chaplain, Father Egan. And his eyes lit up. With a smile, he was all grubby. He had several days' growth of whiskers on him. And he was tired and messy and so on. But his face lit up as he came out of the toilet. And he said, Father, the window is shattered. There's a hole in the wall and the roof's gone, but it has a chain and it works. We're kidding. plastered by the German, and so on and so forth. But we have a toilet that flushes. We have one thing in the midst of it all. Now that's sort of a, I hope you can see the element here. Here's all kinds of uncertainty and confusion and perplexity, but there's one thing David has. He has access to his God through the appointed priest. If you have that, In all your confusion and distress and darkness, in all the messes you face, if you have access to God through Jesus, your priest, don't you see that you have the one thing that matters more than all else? So whatever your troubles and anxieties and emergencies are, If in the middle of them you can heave your anchor and hook it around the front leg of the throne of grace and bring those troubles to Jesus there, you realize what a gift you have. So access to God's guidance through the priest. That's the first advantage. Well, the second of David's advantages is that he has encouragement from God's servant. Encouragement from God's servant. Verses 14 to 18, if you would look there, you notice that he's apparently in the area of Ziph, according to verse 14. Ziph was a village probably four miles southeast of Hebron. Hebron was a town in the very south of Judah, 19 miles southwest of Jerusalem. So this is quite deep in the territory of the southern territory of the tribe of Judah. And you see, I want you to see especially verse 16 here. And Jonathan Saul's son rose and went to David at Horesh and strengthened his hand in God. Now I want you to look there at v. 16 and at that. That's the encouragement from God's servant. And you see how ironic it is. Because in v. 14, it said Saul sought David every day, but God didn't give him into Saul's hand. But then in v. 16, it says, Jonathan, Saul's son, rose and went to David at Horesh. Saul couldn't find David. Couldn't run him down. But Jonathan, Saul's son, and David's friend, knew right where David was. It's just kind of ironic. It's kind of funny in a way. Now, notice too how beautiful this is. He went to David and strengthened his hand in God. Now there are some translations that try to interpret that for you and they'll put in courage David or something but I like the literal translation there. He strengthened his hand in God. How many of the Lord's people often need precisely that? And then notice how possible this encouragement is. You notice that Jonathan wasn't just commiserating with David and so on, and just sympathizing with him, but rather in verse 17, he says, do not fear, for the hand of my father Saul shall not find you. You shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you. Notice that he's stressing Yahweh's promise to David that David was going to be the King of Israel. And he reminds David of that promise. So the way he encourages him is not just by being with him, but by reminding him of the Word and the promise that God had given him. And then you notice how solemn this is. In the last of verse 18, David remained at Horesh and Jonathan went home. That was the last time. they ever saw each other alive in this world. Jonathan will die on Mount Gilboa at the end of 1 Samuel, but they never saw each other again. But the last meeting was the one in which Jonathan strengthened David's hand in God. Now, the thing I want you especially to notice here, though, is how necessary this encouragement was. Well, I think it was. I've tried to explain why I think so. Do you notice the placement of this episode here in verse 16? What comes before and what comes after? Well, before it, you have the, what can we call it, the weakness of Kilo. That when the chips were down, the Lord said, the men of Kela will surrender you, David, over to Saul and to his tender mercies. They won't resist him, they will cave. So the weakness of Kela. Now then, do you notice what comes after this? Verses 19 to about 24 or so. What comes after it? Well, it's the treachery of Zipf. These people around Zipf know exactly where David is hiding out. And they're from David's own tribe of Judah. You would think if they had any leanings at all, they would be pro-David. But no, they want to get in good with the government. And so they're treacherous. Here's the treachery of Zipf. They go up to Saul and say, Saul, if you just come down, we'll lead you right to David and you can nail him. Now here you have beforehand the weakness of Keilah, afterwards the treachery of Ziph, and in between the encouragement of Jonathan. Do you see how Crucial, that encouragement might have been in that context. What if it hadn't been there? What if there had just been the disappointment over the men of Pila and then the treachery from the men of Ziph and so one on top of another, as Paul would say, what if David had sorrow on top of sorrow? But he didn't. In between, God wedged this cushion, you might say, of encouragement from Jonathan. Sometimes when we have that, we're able to bear the troubles that come hurtling upon us because God puts in a little cushion of his encouragement, sort of like an Oreo cookie, isn't it? You know, you have the hard top and the hard bottom, and especially if you have a double-stuffed Oreo, then you have this white cushiony stuff in between in the filling. Hard stuff on top, hard stuff on the bottom, but in the middle, it's kind of a pillowy thing, isn't it? Sometimes God gives us the relief of a pillowy time. Sometimes he places the cushion of his encouragement in the midst of our troubles, lest we be overwhelmed and crushed by them. And that's what you see here. That's often the way God sustains his people to keep them from being totally crushed. Hank Aaron, who was the star outfielder and so on and slugger for the Milwaukee Braves and later the Atlanta Braves, tells in his autobiography about a time when Aaron was, this would probably be back in the 1950s maybe, when he was playing in the minor leagues. And of course, let's be direct here, in the minor leagues, most of them, because of the warmer weather, played in the South. Well, for Hank Aaron, as a black man and as other black players on his team, this was a problem because when they went, they couldn't go into a restaurant with the rest of the team. The rest of the team would have to bring hamburgers out to the bus so these three or so fellows could eat there. They couldn't stay in the regular hotels with the other team. They had to stay in a more run-down hotel. in another part of town, and so on. That's just the way things were at that time. And Hank Aaron tells of their manager, a fellow by the name of Ben Garrickey. Ben Garrickey was not a suave, debonair sort of fellow. He was a white fellow. He really knew baseball, but he wasn't, you know, polished and that sort of thing. But he liked his players. And there was a day, Aaron said, when the team was invited out for a tour, I guess, of Fort Benning in Georgia. And they were out there. And it came time, I think, for lunch. It came time to eat. And so Aaron and a couple more of the black players were shuffled off to the kitchen, where they were supposed to eat. They sat down with their food there. And immediately, here comes Ben Garricky with his plate. And he sits down, and he eats with his black players in the kitchen. Gehrig wasn't some radical or something. He couldn't overthrow some of the customs that were in place with segregation and all of that. But he just showed that he was willing to share their situation and to be with them and eat with them. It had to be a tremendous encouragement to Hank Aaron. Another person. who becomes an encouragement. And that's the way the Lord often encourages his people, through another servant of God, another believer, a Jonathan. It doesn't always come out of the blue, does it? It's often another one of the Lord's people who helps to encourage. Haven't you found that to be so? I don't know if you've happened to you or not, but sometimes you may be going through a very difficult time and all of a sudden you get a note in the mail from a friend that you haven't heard from in maybe three years. And he or she says, well, you've been on my mind a lot lately and I've been praying for you and I just wanted to touch base with you and see what's going on. Strange how that can be an encouragement. And sometimes there may not be a Jonathan. Sometimes there may not be another believer. What then? Well, sometimes the Lord Jesus himself steps in, doesn't he? Do you remember what Paul said in 2 Timothy 4 near the end of the chapter? He said, at my first hearing, that is probably the preliminary trial, no one stood with me, no one was with me, they all deserted me, and so on. And then 2 Timothy 4, 17 says, but the Lord, now he means the Lord Jesus, but the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength. So there's encouragement from God's servant. He has that advantage. Now there's a third advantage our outlaw David has, and that is relief in God's providence. Relief in God's providence. Look at verses, well, really 19 through 28, but we'll focus on about verse 26 or so, and I'll try to fill in the details. When I say providence, by the way, I'm not trying to use long-handled theological terms. By providence here, I just mean God's interesting, fascinating, delightful way of providing for the needs of his people. That's all I'm using it for. Relief in God's providence. Now as you look at verses 24 to 28 and so on, the people of Zipf have guided Saul down. Saul's closing in on David. He can almost taste it and so on. And you notice the crunch time in verse 26. It's really getting close. And if we had a musical score to go with the text, it would have you on edge and all tense and ready to develop a coronary or something. Saul went on one side of the mountain and David and his men on the other side of the mountain that David was hurrying to get away from Saul as Saul and his men were closing in on David and his men to capture them. Verse 27, a messenger. came to Saul, saying, hurry and come, where the Philistines have made a raid against the land." Relief in God's providence. What's fascinating here about God's providence is, one thing, the instruments he uses. Do you see who he used? The Philistines. Saul gets the telegram. They didn't have one, I know, but it would read something like, Philistines have attacked. Stop. Come immediately. Stop. Situation dire. Stop. Well, Saul had to give up. He was just ready to get David in his clutches. And he gets news about the Philistines having made an attack somewhere else in Israel and he has to go tend to that. What's interesting is the Philistines, well they're the Philistines. They're Israel's enemies. In verses 1 to 5, who was it that attacked Keilah? And that David drove out? And so on. It was the Philistines. They're Israel's enemies. But here, Israel's enemies are David's saviors. Because they attacked somewhere else in Israel. David is relieved from Saul's assault. David had to accept the Philistines as his personal saviors, you know. That's what happened here. Isn't it interesting? The instruments God uses. You may not like the Philistines, but the Philistines are good for something. Look what the Lord did with them, the instruments God used. This is so creative, isn't it? It's like back about 1899, I think it was, in New York City, a fellow who later became a president, Theodore Roosevelt, was a police commissioner. Well, there was a fellow coming over from Germany who was an anti-Semitic rabble rouser. His name was Rector Allwart. Well, the Jewish coalition in New York City didn't want Roosevelt to allow him to come to New York. Well, Roosevelt couldn't ban him from coming to New York and so on, but he did perhaps a better thing. He selected Allwart's bodyguard for the time he was going to be in New York. They were 40 very large, very unhappy Jewish cops. And that tended to suppress the anti-Semitic rants that all work was going on. Isn't that creative? You think, my, that's wonderful. Yes, that's like using the Philistines to deliver your servant David. That's so creative. Now then, there's something more here, isn't it? Notice the timing he arranges. Not just the instruments, but the timing he arranges with all the suspense that goes with that. When Saul was ready to get his me hooks into David from the other side of the mountain, just at that very time, Saul gets the message that he has to leave. So God uses the Philistines of all people at just the right moment of all times to preserve his servant. That is so typical. of Yahweh. His ways are so interesting and fascinating. And why does he tell us this here in this part of the text? Now watch out here. It's because he expects a response from us as the readers. There was some time ago in Reader's Digest An anecdote sent in that a woman was a worker in an office. I don't know what it was, but it was an office where there were a number of women working and so on. And she was off for maternity leave, had gone off to have a baby and so on. And while she was still on leave, she came back with her seven-year-old son and with her baby to show to her colleagues there at the office. And they were oohing and aahing as They will do over a baby like Jonah or anyone. But they were all gaga over her infant. And while they were there, her little seven-year-old boy asked Mommy, can I have some money to buy a soda? And his mother said, what do you say? And he said, you are thin and beautiful. And she gave him the money. You might think she was asking to say he should say please, but no. She had a response she wanted and he knew what it was. Now, why does the text tell us of God's marvelous work in his providence here with David? And you're reading that. The text wants a response from you. It doesn't want you to say, oh, I see what the Lord did there for David. Next chapter. No, no. You see, it's as if the Holy Spirit is reaching up out of the print of the text and grabbing you by your sweatshirt and saying, what are you going to say about this? Shouldn't you worship and adore a God that works like this? How dare you go on to the next chapter before you bow and worship here? Am I exaggerating or isn't that what the Lord's trying to get out of us as well? So why is it then that God's servants endure? Well, you stay on your feet because you have a God who is on the loose among his people and he pities and provides and protects them. Let us pray. Oh Lord, in the Psalms one place it says that your footsteps are not seen, your footprints are not seen. And yet Lord, you leave evidence of your work all around your people. We thank you that though your footprints are not seen, your fingerprints are are very noticeable on the circumstances of our lives. And we give you thanks that even in the midst of our troubles and confusion and difficulties, you not only give an outlaw like David advantages, you give them to us as well. And we adore you because you are such a God. Amen. I think our last hymn is number 64 tonight, God the Lord a King Remaineth. If you would stand to sing please. O pitiless defamer, thee hath murdered him with might. Alleluia! Alleluia! All is clear in death and life. In her own everlasting station, Earth is poised to serve no more. Thou hast slain thy foes, Thou nation from old time earth-born free. O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? ♪ They burst upon the shore ♪ ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ ♪ O'er the ocean's rocky shore ♪ ♪ With all tones of waters winding ♪ ♪ Glorious hymns of rejoicing ring ♪ ♪ Glorious, beautiful, splendor of ending ♪ ♪ God who reigns on heaven's high sphing ♪ ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ ♪ Songs of oceans never sling ♪ ♪ In our ways, our ways ♪ the perfect clarity of my eternal dwelling holiness shall you make me. Now may the companionship of the man of sorrows and the power of the king of glory rest upon you this day and all your days. Amen. Thank you so much. Thanks Jason