We'll begin reading 1 Samuel chapter 22. We're gonna start at verse six. This is the word of God. Now Saul heard that David was discovered and the men who were with him. Saul was sitting at Gibeah 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 Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub. And all his father's house, the priests who were at Nob, and all of them came to the king. And Saul said, here now, son of Ahitub. 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 to lie in wait as at this day? Then Ahimelech 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 inquired of God for him? No! Let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of all this, much or little. And the king said, You shall surely die, Ahimelech, 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 also is with David. And 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. Then the king said to Doeg, you turn and strike the priests. Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests. He killed on that day 85 persons who wore the linen ephod, and knobbed 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 Ahitub, named Abiathar, escaped and fled after David. And Abiathar told David that Saul had killed the priest 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. And now we'll turn also to Psalm 52. Psalm 52, David says to Aviatar, if you stay with me, you will be safe. Now, where does David's confidence in his own safety come from? How can David go about giving such guarantees? Well, we read in Psalm 52, which is to the choir master, Amaskil of David, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul, David has come to the house of Ahimelech. Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man? The steadfast love of God endures all the day. Your tongue plots destruction like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit. You love evil more than good and lying more than speaking what is right. You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue. But God will break you down forever. He will snatch and tear you from your tent. He will uproot you from the land of the living. The righteous shall see and fear and shall laugh at him saying, see the man who would not make God his refuge but trusted in the abundance of his riches and sought refuge in his own destruction. But I, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. I will thank you forever because you have done it. I will wait for your name, for it is good in the presence of the godly." This is the Word of God. Last week, we were looking at 1 Samuel 22, sorry, 1 Samuel 21, and the first five verses of 1 Samuel 22, and there we saw God's King on the run. God's king on the run. David, a man who'd been anointed by God's servant Samuel, a man who had been set aside by God to be Israel's king, not dwelling in safety, security, comfort, but going through desolate places, running from Nob to Gath, to the stronghold, to Moab, to Adullam, to the forest of Hereth. Like the Lord Jesus said, David had no place to lay his head. Foxes have holes in the birds of the nest. The birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head." And so, we saw in David a type of the Christ who was to come, who was rejected by men, but in the sight of God, holy and precious. And we took as our theme last week this verse from Psalm 34, many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers him out of them all. David's afflictions were many. God delivered him out of them all. The afflictions of Christ. Never has there been anyone more righteous, but never has there been anyone more afflicted. Many are the afflictions of that righteous man, but the Lord, in the end, yes, the Lord delivered him out of them all. And so we can see for ourselves, our afflictions abound. They pile up on top of each other, but the Lord will deliver us from them all. This week now, we see kind of the flip side. Many are the afflictors, we could say, of the righteous. And what will their end be? What will their end be? Because here in 1 Samuel 22, verses 6 through 23, we see wicked men doing wicked things. Things they devised in the wickedness and the folly of their hearts and their minds, and we see them getting away with it. And we see them flourishing. And this fits the pattern that Scripture brings up again and again and again and again. And the reason Scripture brings it up again and again and again is because it is a pattern that has been set throughout human history. Those who are wicked, those who defy the Lord, seem to go from strength to strength. The wealthy, wicked men seem to simply become more wealthy and seem to simply accrue more influence and more power while the righteous people that they trample on are driven lower and lower and lower. We see this in our personal experience, perhaps. We certainly see this in a global sense. Dictators. Those who refuse to honor God or their fellow men, they simply seem to go from strength to strength. And we might ask, as the psalmist often did, where is justice? Where is the God of justice? When will justice come? Will the afflictors be dealt with? Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord will deliver him out of them all. But what about those who cause the affliction? Well, in this passage, we're going to see two men. Two men. who cause affliction, two men who devise evil and carry it out, who scheme together out of their pagan paranoia against the servants of God. And we will see that regardless of what they may do, God continues to sit on His throne and His plans will not be thwarted. So we begin In verse six, Saul heard that David was discovered. Now, how had Saul heard that David was discovered? Well, David had been hiding in Nob, and then he'd been hiding in Gath, but he couldn't stay in Nob, he couldn't stay in Gath. And so he had gone to the cave of Adullam, where many had gathered around him. You can read about this at the beginning of chapter 22. Many had gathered around him, his family, and a small army of about 400 men. And David had gone from Adullam to Moab, and he had left his family, his parents there in safekeeping in the palace of the king. But David could not stay in Moab. He was not the king of Moab, he was the king of Israel, or the king in waiting. depending on how you want to read it. And so David returned to Israel, and he returned at first to this place called the stronghold, probably a cave in a hillside, in a mountain somewhere, a place where he would not easily be found. But a prophet of God came to him, a prophet named Gad, and said to him, don't stay here where it's safe, don't stay here where you are, humanly speaking, secure, safe from Saul, hidden from Saul, no, depart and go into the land of Judah. And so David went from a place of fleshly security to a place of immense vulnerability, a place where he would more easily be spotted and discovered. And so it is in verse six here, Saul heard that David was discovered. David couldn't hide for very long. I mean, he's got 400 men with him. It's difficult to hide 400 men, even in a forest. Saul heard that David was discovered and the men who were with him. You see, David's allegiance to the Lord, his obedience to the Lord seems to have worked backwards. You'd think he obeys the Lord, he's gonna be safe. But no, David obeys the Lord, it puts him in a position of vulnerability, and Saul finds out. Saul, the man who wants to kill David, finds out where David is hiding. And in one chapter's time, next Lord's Day, Lord willing, we'll see how Saul pursues David in that wilderness. But for the time being, Saul cannot yet reach David, or at least he's not yet willing to reach David. But he's heard that David has discovered, and the men who were with him, that small army that David has around him. And Saul, he's sitting in his capital, in Gibeah, in this position of strength. Gibeah, likely a fortress city. And Saul's on the height. of Gibeah, the safest, the most secure place likely in the land of Israel, with his spear in his hand and his servants all around him. You might think Saul is in this position of strength, this position of invulnerability. Nobody can touch him in Gibeah. But what's going through Saul's mind, not, oh, I'm the king of Israel and I am very secure here in Gibeah, but I'm done for. I'm done for. My son is turning against me. My daughter's turning against me. My servants are turning against me. Everyone's turning against me. Where will I turn? Saul said to his servants who were standing 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? Saul has been gripped, it seems, by a severe form of paranoia. Paranoia, and I call it pagan. Paranoia. Paranoia is an unreasonable suspicion. It's when you think that everyone is out to get you. And it's pagan paranoia because Saul has completely rejected God. We saw this several chapters ago. And Saul, at this point, is simply serving himself. Well, this was not supposed to be the pattern for Israel's kings. Israel's kings were supposed to be those who restrained the people of Israel, kept them back from evil, kept them back from idolatry, and led them in service to God. But Saul here is doing the absolute opposite. He has chased off God's servant. He has alienated Samuel, God's other servant. And Saul has made himself into an enemy of God by rebelling against God, doing the opposite of what God had told him to do. Saul has been a dismal failure as Israel's king. And so God has said to Saul, I will take the kingship away from you. Saul may not take God seriously, but as David gains popularity, as Saul listens to the songs of the Israelite women, Saul has killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands. As David escapes from Saul's hand time and time and time again, Saul begins to imagine, well, it can't be a coincidence. It can't possibly be a coincidence. My advisors, my captains, my commanders, they must be siding with David. And so he says to them, can David do for you what I can do? You shouldn't be siding with him. You should be siding with me. Saul sees enemies on every hand. He says, no one discloses to me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. My son, my own flesh and blood, Jonathan, has turned against me. And none of you told me. None of you told me. None of you is sorry for me or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me there again. There again, Saul is just filled with this paranoiac suspicion. Everyone's out to get him. The commanders are out to get him. Michal's out to get him. Jonathan, well, Jonathan is allied with David so that he can steal the throne away from me. Saul has been gripped by a pagan paranoia. He tells his commanders, I used my power to try to honor you. to try to lift up the humble folk of Benjamin. And now you're stabbing me in the back. You're all on David's side. You're not on my side anymore. You didn't tell me when these things that were going on in secret were happening. Saul has become paranoiac. He's become suspicious. But Saul has been driven from, has driven himself rather from God, so it does make sense that his life would no longer make sense. Saul was supposed to be God's king for Israel's sake, but his kingship has become all about him. And he will do whatever he feels now, he must think or say or do to keep himself in that position of power, to keep himself on top. And pagan desperation attracts pagan desperation. Desperately wicked men choose despicably wicked counselors. Saul's servants do not answer him, but one of his servants, not a Benjamite, but an Edomite, One of the descendants of Esau, not of Jacob, comes to Saul, Doeg, the leader of Saul's shepherds, and he comes to Saul and he says, Saul, I saw the son of Jesse just the other day. He was in Nob. Yeah, he was in Nob. He came to Ahimelech, the son of Ahithob. You wanna know how far this conspiracy goes? It goes as far as Nob, at least. And Ahimelech inquired of the Lord for David, as though David were the king, as though that were his right. And Ahimelech gave him provisions, like he was giving bread to an army. And Ahimelech gave him the sword of Goliath, the Philistine. Saul, Saul, your paranoia doesn't go far enough. And Saul listens to Doeg the Edomite, because men who are desperately wicked will always look for excuses to expand their desperate wickedness. So the king sent to Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub, and all his father's house, the priests who were at Nob, and all of them came up to the king. And Saul is sitting now as a sort of judge, jury, and executioner, looking at these priests, examining the charges against them, not listening to their response, with this preexisting condemnation in his head. And Saul said, here now, you son of Ahitub, talking to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech answers, 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 to lie in wait as at this day? He's saying to Ahimelech, Ahimelech, you know that David is my enemy. You know that David has risen against me. You know that David has broken loose from my court, that David is counting on his popularity with the people and the priests and the prophets, and he is turning the whole nation against me. Ahimelech, you knew this. And Ahimelech answered the king, but who among all your servants is so faithful as David? Who is the king's son-in-law, the captain of your bodyguard and honored in your house? Saul, I had no idea. David is your commander-in-chief, second only to you. He's the one that you sent over the army. He's the one that functions as your bodyguard. You trust no one more than David. What on earth is going on? And besides that, today's not the first time that I've inquired of God for him. David came, it seems, more often to Ahimelech to find out what it was that God wanted Israel to do. You see there just a glimpse of the difference between Saul and David. Saul, a man who has rejected the word of God, who has rejected the prophet of God, who is on the verge of rejecting and destroying the priests of God. And David, a man who seeks the counsel of God, who seeks the word of God, the will of God in all things. Ahimelech says, David has often come to Nob to ask what it is that God wants Israel and Israel's armies to do. Let not the king impute anything to his servant, to me, or to all the house of my father, for your servant knew nothing about this, nothing great, nothing small. I didn't even catch the faintest inklings that David had turned against you. But Saul doesn't listen. Saul doesn't listen. You shall surely die Ahimelech, you and all your father's house. The sham trial in Saul's opinion is over. Ahimelech was guilty before he had stepped foot into the witness box. You shall surely die. The court is opened, the charge is given, the defense is ignored, and the condemnation comes down. And the king said to the guard who stood about him, turn now and kill the priests of the Lord, because their hand also is with David. And they knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me. Saul has become a man turned in on himself. He has become a man in whose eyes nothing is greater than his own survival and his own supremacy, his own strength, and the putting forward of his own cause. And so Saul has become so bold as to say, well, I have the right, don't I? I'm the king of Israel. I have the right to kill the priest of the Lord if I deem that necessary. But the servants of Saul, they know better. The Benjamite servants of Saul, those who have been raised in Israel, they know better. They know that this is not part of Saul's authority. He may not strike the priest to the Lord. And so they don't do it. They don't listen to their king. They listen to God rather than to this man. And so the king turns in desperation to this pagan, this man whose heart is just like his. 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, in Gibeah now, where the priests had come to appear before Saul, he killed on that day 85 persons who wore the linen ephod. That is to say, 85 persons who had been set aside by God, who had been anointed by God, who had been given their office by God. Saul sends his servant, Doeg the Edomite, and Edomite, willingly enough, strikes down the priests. You see a wicked man serving a wicked man, killing a righteous man who had helped a righteous man. And as if that was not enough, Doeg goes on. He goes on to Nob, the place where he had seen David at first. He goes to Nob, the city of the priests, and he puts the whole city to the sword. Men and women, children and infants, oxen and donkeys and sheep. He kills them all. He wipes out the city. You see just how far Saul has fallen. God's initial rejection of Saul was a rejection because Saul would not put to the sword God's enemies, Agag and the Amalekites. We read about that several chapters ago. Because Saul would not do that, but because Saul took the best of the Amalekite produce and the best of the Amalekite animals for himself, because Saul sought to exalt himself rather than God, God condemned him and took the kingship away from him. Saul refused to kill man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey, sheep, and camel. But now when it comes to the priests and the priest city, those who were on God's side, those who served the Lord God, Saul's got no problem taking them out. A wicked man, Doeg, serves a wicked man, Saul, in killing a city full of righteous people whose only crime was that they had helped a righteous man. And we might think, well, evil has triumphed. Evil has triumphed. Hate has won the day. What can the righteous do? What can the righteous do? The foundations are being destroyed. God's King is in rebellion against Him. God's priests, they're all dead. God's prophets, well, the King's not listening to them, so what power do they have? What authority, what impact can they possibly have? We've seen this before. God's people entering into a desperate situation because evil seems to have the upper hand. We saw this with Jacob. When Jacob, who was chosen by God, was pursued by Esau, hated by Esau, driven out by Esau. And we might have thought then, well, that's the end of Jacob. But God brings him back. We saw it with Joseph, didn't we? With Joseph, who was beaten by his brothers, who was stripped by his brothers, who was sold by his brothers into slavery and presumed dead. And we might have thought from a human perspective, well, that's it for Joseph. Moses. Moses, who was raised in Pharaoh's courts, might have been lost there, wasn't lost there, but then stands up for Israel and is cast out of Egypt, cast out of Israel. And we might have thought that's it for Moses. But God preserves His own. God preserves His own. Evil men, it seems, grow stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger, but the one who sits in heaven laughs. The one who sits in heaven laughs. Verse 20, but one of the sons of Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub, 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, I knew it was gonna happen. I knew on that day when Doeg the Edomite was there, he was there at the shrine in Nob, same time I was, I saw him there. I knew he was gonna go back to Saul and tell Saul, it's because of me that all the persons of your father's house are dead. 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. We see in David's words here the opposite of what we saw in Saul's words a little earlier. See, Saul was a very me before you sort of king. Saul was his own man for his own glory. He would do things his own way to prop up his own throne. Everything with Saul was about Saul. But we see the opposite here in David, don't we? David does not say, everyone's conspiring against me. David says, well, I'm at fault here. I'm at fault here. And he adopts a you before me sort of attitude. Because David knows that he is God's king. He's not his own, he belongs to the Lord. He is God's king for God's glory and for Israel's good. And so he does not say to Abiathar, he does not say, you know what, it's tragic what happened at Nau, but really, I washed my hands of the whole situation. He could have said that. After all, it was not David's fault that Saul was a madman. It was not David's fault that Doeg was desperately wicked. David displays here a Christ-like character. A Christ-like character that will put others before himself. A Christ-like character that will actually go to the point of almost denigrating himself for the sake of this priest of God, for the sake of this servant of God. David displays a Christ-like character, and as we saw in Psalm 52, he also displays a Christ-like heart. David, when he hears what Doeg has done, when he hears that Doeg had told Saul David has come to the house of Ahimelech, presumably when he heard about the slaughter that had taken place in Nob, he wrote this Psalm. Psalm 52, why do you boast of evil, O mighty man? Yeah, you boast, you brag that you are allowed to carry out your own will. You are allowed to do wicked things with impunity, it seems. It seems like God is not stepping in to stop you. But I know this, I know this, the steadfast love of the Lord, the chesed of God, endures all day long. Oh, you will last for this much time. And you will become this strong. But the eternal God, the Almighty God, will turn over every single one of your plots. He looks at the wicked man's character, the first few verses, your tongue, it plots destruction, you love evil, you love words that devour, you deceitful tongue. And then he looks at the wicked man's end. Because you are a wicked man, I know that this is going to happen to you. Because the steadfast love of the Lord endures all the day. The love of God will always last longer than the hatred of men. And the righteousness of God will always be more powerful than the wickedness of men, regardless of how they may appear at the time. But God will break you down forever. Oh, you are way up there. Saul is in Gibeah, surrounded by his army, surrounded by his guard, but God will break him down. Doeg has become the most favored servant in the court of Saul, but God will break you down forever. And then the righteous shall see and fear, that is, fear the Lord. And the laughter of heaven will be heard on earth, and they shall laugh at him, and they will say, isn't it foolish? Isn't he foolish? Look at this man. He would not make God his refuge. He trusted in the abundance of his riches. He sought refuge in his own destruction." And then David recounts the righteous man's end at the end of Psalm 52. But I am like a green olive tree. He uses language similar to what we see in Psalm 1. I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. You will be uprooted, oh wicked man. Your house will be torn down. Your domination will come to an end. I know this. because the steadfast love of the Lord endures all the day. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever, and I will thank you forever." He's now pointing to God. I will thank you forever because you have done it. He speaks of things in the future using the past tense. Really, he is so sure that these things are going to happen that he says, you have done it. You have made a promise and you will keep that promise. I will wait for your name for it is good. in the presence of the godly. See, when faced with powerful, wicked men, men who are in the grips of self-serving pagan paranoia, who serve their own ends using their own means, when faced with the wicked, David can confidently assert that he has got an eternity of joy laid up before him, joy in a salvation that, yeah, he can't see it yet, but it's guaranteed. It's guaranteed. And because of His unsinkable, unsearchable, unquenchable joy, He can wait. It's rather unglamorous. I think many of us would rather say He can resist. He can push back. He can topple the forces of oppression. And there's a time for that and a place for that. But that's not what David says in Psalm 52, because it's not that time yet. There will come a day when Christ gives to the children of God a rod of iron with which to rule the nations. But that day has not yet come. A day will come in David's life where he will be set on Israel's throne, and then he will be able to dispense justice. But that day has not yet come. So David says, I will wait. I will wait for your name, for it is good in the presence of the godly. David can wait, and he will wait for God to do what God has staked his reputation on. And I wonder, dear Christian, How many of us can do the same? The Apostle John in one of his letters says that Antichrist is coming. And many antichrists have come. One of my favorite commentaries, commentators rather, uses that verse as his title for his sermon on this passage. Many antichrists have come. Because in Saul and in Doeg, we see this pattern, we see this type. They are, if you will, anti-Davids. really patterns of Antichrist who is to come. This figure, at the end of time, who will take his stand against God in a way that nobody else has ever done. Who will accrue great power to himself. 2 Thessalonians says that he will perform great signs, great wonders by the power of Satan. And people will be amazed at him, as Revelation says. And they will say, who can stand against this beast? Who can stand? Well, God's servants can stand. God's servants can stand, and knowing that His salvation is sure, they can stand and they can wait, and they can hasten the day with their prayers, and they can pray for the downfall of wicked men, and they can look forward to God's final salvation with eager anticipation. Amen.