King on the Run

the following message by Alistair beg is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truth for I went to read two passages of Scripture one of them now and then the other later I went to read from Leviticus chapter 24 and just the first nine verses the Lord spoke to Moses saying command the people of Israel to bring you pure oil from beaten olives for the land that alight may be kept burning regularly outside the veil of the testimony in the tent of meeting Aaron shall arrange it from evening to morning before the Lord regularly it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations he shall arrange the lamps on the lamp stand of pure gold before the Lord regularly you shall take fine flour and bake twelve loaves from it two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf and he shall set set them in two piles six in a pile on the table of pure gold before the Lord and you shall put pure frankenstein cents on each pile that it may go with the bread as a memorial portion as a food offering to the lord every sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the Lord regularly it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever and it shall be for Aaron and his sons and they shall eat it in a holy place since it is for him a most holy portion out of the Lord's food offerings a perpetual do amen again from the Bible this time again from this morning in 1st Samuel and chapter 21 and I won't read the whole chapter I'll only read to the ninth verse for samuel chapter 21 and reading from their Swan then David came to Knob to him alack the priest and a Himalaya came to meet David trembling and said to him why are you alone and no one with you and David said to him alack the priest the King has charged me with a matter and said to me let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I have charged you I have made an appointment with the young men for such-and-such a place now then what do you have on hand give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here and the priest answered David I have no common bread on hand but there is holy bread if the young men have kept themselves from women and David answered the priest truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition the vessels of a young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey how much more today will their vessels be holy so the priests gave him the holy bread for there was no bread there but the bread of the presence which is removed from before the Lord to be replaced by heart bread on the day it is taken away now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day detained before the Lord his name was dog the Edomite the chief of souls herdsmen then David said to a Himalaya then have you not here a spear or a sword at hand for I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me because the King's business required aced and the priests said the sword of Goliath a Philistine whom you struck down in the Valley of Elah behold it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod if you will take that take it for there is none by that here and David said there is none like that give it to me we pray along with the song we have sung that the Holy Spirit will be at work keeping us on the right track helping us to speak and listen and understand and live in the light of your word this is our humble and earnest prayer in Christ's name Amen well we this morning essentially had a long introduction to this text recognizing the peculiar challenges that are represented in it and we realized that in coming to this particular section and to essentially the concluding third of the book of 1st Samuel we are dealing with a repetitive situation with David the anointed king on the run pursued by his enemies and fearful of his one-time boss namely Saul and we ended this morning by recognizing that the picture has dramatically changed the conquering hero and all of his resplendent glory in chapter 17 has now been reduced to a hopeless and a helpless fugitive and he has made his way as we discover here in the text to the town of no you will remember from our early studies that it was to Shiloh that everybody went Shiloh was the place of the priests but along the way as a result of the invading forces that has now shifted to no and later on in the text into subsequent chapters we discover that knob is described there as the city of the priests now David on the run has gone a number of places and is still got and still as a number of places to go he ran away first of all you will remember at the beginning of chapter in the middle of chapter 19 to find refuge in Samuel the Prophet he then ran from there into the custody of his friend Jonathan he is about to run before the chapter is concluded into the context of the enemy camp quite surprisingly and in this section in these first nine verses he has run to the custody and to the potential security of a Himalaya the priests and here we have the record of his coming he came to nod - ahem alack the priest and a Himalaya came to meet David trembling and said to him now I don't think any of us would have been surprised if we looked down at that first verse and found that it was a description when it comes to trembling a description of David after all he is the one who is being pursued he is the one who is fearful for his life but there is something about this strange encounter that causes a Himalaya to tremble a Himalaya himself was actually a great-grandson of Eli and for those of you who are on the honors course you may even have a faintest recollection of the fact that the last we saw of Eli before he tipped backwards and fell off his chair and died was a trembling Eli who was trembling before the presence of the Lord and now here his great grandson in the encounter with David trembles also there is actually a lot of trembling when you read the philistines tremble and the israelites tremble as I think I said in passing there's a whole lot of shaking going on and and you find it again and again it we have to assume that there was something about David's appearance on this particular occasion I say on this particular occasion because if your Bible is open and you just have a chance to look at the fifteenth verse of the next chapter there we discover that it was not a one-off occasion when he went to a Himalaya and we'll deal with that in detail when we get to it but you'll notice that a Himalaya answers the king is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him he came to inquire of God he came to seek refuge and so on and at that point later on a Himalaya says this he's being challenged on these particular verses here verses one to nine there he lets us know that it wasn't a unique experience for David to have come to inquire of him as the priest thereby making it clear to us that there had to be something about this particular appearing of David on this occasion that caused a him a leg this kind of distress to get him shaking as it were in his shoes his question to David is an obvious one why are you alone and no one with you that in itself is interesting I I think the the the linguists among us would probably say that this bears testimony to the sort of use of parallelism because what does it mean to be alone except for no one to be with you and so it's very interesting why are you alone and no one with you why are you here alone and not a soul with you it just wasn't normal it just wasn't normal eliminate him Alec would know that David given his status given the approbation of the people and so on would almost inevitably be travelling with our entourage he would have those who would be around him not necessarily to protect him but certainly to accompany him and as I read this and thought about it I thought about Marcellus in in Hamlet remember when Marcellus at one point sees the ghost of the King sees the ghost of Hamlet's father and it is too merciless the great lion is given by Shakespeare something is rotten in the state of Denmark and I think that this is the kind of encounter that takes place here and a Himalaya is aware of the fact that something now is rotten in the State of Israel or in the cities of Israel and if we had occasion to ask him tell me what it was it really like I think he would have said something like well there was just something about the way he showed up out of the blue he was disheveled he sort of stared in front of himself with a faraway look and frankly made the hair stand up on the back of my neck I think that's the kind of encounter and it causes us to say could anyone have looked less like the anointed king the one who'd been the toast of the nation the one who had been the subject of their songs well David's answer comes then directly and in verse two and three we have it whether his answer was premeditated or whether it was spontaneous he tells the priest that he is on his Majesty's Secret Service and he creates the notion in the mind of the priest that there are actually people in his group and he has a rendezvous planned later on this of course is a fabrication and it is an indication I think of what is becoming in David's life something of a disturbing pattern because we've already seen that when McHale his wife did her little cover-up story he was clearly part of that cover-up too we have already learned that he was the one who came up with a useful lie to be given by Jonathan in the company of his father to explain his absence from the table and we looked at that last time and now once again in confronting ahem alack it appears that his new default position is actually to tell lies now somebody challenged me on this after the service this morning not by immediately but by text at least I took it as a challenge and it seemed to me that the inference was you're just allowed to do this you just you just can tell lies given the situation and so in passing let's just be clear that we do not believe in situation ethics we do not believe that that that the that the situation transmutes what is bad into something that is good because of the context a lie is still a lie is still a lie and although I may lie for example if someone comes to the front door of my house and says I've come to kill your wife and your children are they all in the house I may well lie at that point but it is a lie and it remains a lie and I am committed to tell the truth therefore unlike the situational ethicist who says don't worry about it that's the only thing you could do and should do the Christian believer says that was the only thing I was prepared to do but when I knelt by my bed in the evening I asked forgiveness for having broken the law of God and telling lies but David here is now on a run and it made me think and it's just conjecture on my part but I'll pass it on for your own consideration if it's helpful it made me think about the fact that in his great collapse which we then get in in 2nd Samuel when everything hits the fan if we may put it colloquially with with Bathsheba you know people look at situations like that and they say how did that happen it came out of the blue you know all of that deceitfulness and everything and what he's doing with Uriah and trying to make sure he can cover everything up he started to get a little bit of practice here remember what we were all told at Sunday school so a thought Reap an action so an action reap a habit so a habit reap a character so a character reap a destiny it is never right and it is never good and in actual fact when we get to chapter 222 we will discover the impact of this lie on the lives of many many people who died at the sword because he didn't tell the truth he could have told the truth he could have he could have trusted God and told the truth but he trusted himself and told a lie well he wants to suggest you see - ahem elec that everything is fine and dandy but it isn't and the question of course that is inevitable as we look at the text is well why does he actually do this is he telling a lie here as some people suggest to protect the priest by screening him as it were from the responsibility of having granted refuge to unknown outlaw in other words does he do it because he wants to be nice to a Himalaya or does he do it which i think is more likely because he felt that he couldn't trust the Himalaya there was no way that he could necessarily bring him into his confidence so what we have before us then is this collapse courage and faith have given way to cowardice and fear he has stood tall against a giant and he now shrinks before a priest again I say to you as I said this morning let us not be too quick to sit in judgment and that has reminded and remind ourselves at the same time that the text is not interrupted by any kind of ethical comment on the part of the narrator in other words the issue of the lies are not addressed not because it's unimportant but because the narrative is actually simply reporting what has happened it is not recur recommending what has happened now before a Himalaya has time for a follow-up question if you like David makes his request now then what do you have on hand give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here quite five loaves why five loaves I'm sure there is somebody has an answer for that I want you to know I don't the best I can imagine is that he said five to keep up the pretence of having other people to share it with and he said five because if he said much more than that he wouldn't even have been able to handle it beyond that I've got no idea but when it comes to this bread issue this is where as per our principle this morning we are helped by referencing scripture elsewhere and so that is why I read earlier from Leviticus chapter 24 where the record is given of Moses setting Aaron to the task with a regularity and a fastidiousness and humility and a sacredness of setting out on the table in the tabernacle every Sabbath day these twelve loaves representative surely of the provision of God for the 12 tribes of Israel so if you like there in that moment in that ongoing process the reminder of God's provision for his own what was was made clear now is this date and the Sabbath it may well be if it is then it ties in so wonderfully well doesn't it with Luke chapter 6 and the way in which Jesus makes reference to this incident we can't say that with any sense of confidence but when the bread was replaced as it was according to verse 6 just something I had there so the priest gave him the holy bread there was no bread there but the bread of the presence which is removed from before the Lord to be replaced by hot bread on the day that it is taken away so it didn't sit there and just and just languish as it were no it was removed and when the bread was replaced then the bread that was removed was now available to be eaten but only by the priests they didn't take it out in the street and say to anybody anyone made a loaf but no that was clearly how it was to be that is what makes it quite striking that a him elect then makes an exception and he makes an exception here and he says I can't give you any regular bread so goodness I don't know what was going on that they didn't have any bread except sacred bread but those are the facts i I've got nothing I could give you except at the bread of the presence and I'll give that to you if you can give me the assurance that you're you're young man of course there are no young man but anyway if you can give me it's going to be very easy to give me your shoe if you can give me the assurance that your young men are euphemistically kosher okay kosher according again to this particular question of having kept themselves from sexual relations with in the immediate proximity of this event now we would need to turn again to the Levitical law in order to do justice to this I don't want to do that tonight for a number of reasons but I commend to you your own particular study in that area and there you will find out why it is that the symbolism of the Levitical law made these kind of provisos you know it all has to do with being symbolic of death with the outgoing of life and in that post outgoing of life period then it symbolizes death and in the symbol of death then the individual is then rendered ceremonially unclean and therefore until that period of time has elapsed they are now Despard from any event such as this and so he decides that if they can give a reasonable answer to that question then we can we can go ahead incidentally it just comes to my mind but talking about david and bathsheba you remember in that dreadful business you remember when david says to to Uriah go down to your house and wash your feet that has got to mean something else than wash your feet okay i think that got cleaned up don't misunderstand me as it means what it says wash your feet all right and and and so and Uriah but not just wash your feet and Uriah went out of the king's house and there followed him a present from the king but Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house when they told David Uriah did not go down to his house David said Uriah why have you not come from a journey you come from a journey you're gonna sleep with your wife right why did you not go down to your house Uriah said to David the Ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths and my Lord job and the job and the servants of my Lord are camping in the open field shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink delight with my wife as you live and as your soul lives I will not do this thing what an amazing expression on a fundamentally practical level of the fact that what is being addressed here certainly is not this this is not some reference to some kind of ascetic view of marriage it is not that at all but it is rather making clear making clear the fact that in this strange episode God's purpose is going to unfold in a peculiar way even as this particular proviso is made gnosis David were all good I saw was the case our everything about us or our bodies our our backpacks our things they're all they're all entirely kosher they're all in clean condition here's the question if you're reading your Bible and thinking how does a Himalaya decide to hold fast to that question and yet bend the rules on the question of the fight that only the priests can eat the bread because he does he seems to pick and choose between them let me tell you what the majority view is the Martin majority view is that what we have here is simply a case of putting compassion ahead of ritual or if you like the the ceremonial bowing to the moral as in if you like the passage in Luke chapter 6 they are eating the grain and so on and and Jesus is making the point that these Pharisees cannot use the law of God to oppose the Lord's King I don't think that is just saying that I think that our friend Woodhouse who will get here eventually can get here soon enough as far as I'm concerned to help me with this book but Woodhouse suggests that the significance of this incident has to do with the one who is making the request that the reason for the exception is because it is David who makes the request because he would not suggest Woodhouse all for this bread to just anybody who came off the street looking for something to eat but that he does so because he is dealing with the anointed king you may actually find it helpful it to go all the way back in the story and to remind yourself of a very tiny incident where after saul is anointed king he comes up and into the community and of the things that are brought to him and offered to him are three loaves of bread I think if I remember correctly and the point that I think we made there in passing was there is some kind of symbolism of this in the provision of God for the servant of God so a hymn a leg then instead of opposing God's king by strident obedience to God's law by this decision provides sustenance for God's anointed king he spreads if you like a table before him in the presence of his enemies now you may be cost to say to yourself well I wonder does David deserve it does he's does he deserve this surely he should have been chased out of the building after all telling all these lies no he doesn't deserve it but neither do we deserve it we pray each day Lord give us this day our daily bread if he only gave us our daily bread on the basis of how well we've been doing most of us would be skeletons dear Ralph David has it wonderfully when he says and we receive this bread from God not because we're godly but because God is gracious and the anointed king in all of his disheveled chaos find sustenance from the priests of God because he is the anointed of God and walks under God's favor now we could stop there but I would like to just try and finish if you will stay in the room in verse 7 and the narrative pauses to inform us of something and it just is just here in order to almost tease us as readers because we're immediately going to say well I wonder why why this is mentioned here a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day now a certain man you remember the servants of Saul back in chapter 19 had been present when Saul spoke to them and said to Jonathan his son and to all his servants let's kill David ok so a certain man a servant of Saul was there consequently being there he was privy to these proceedings his name was Doig the Edomite there's something about his name that makes me instinctively not like him and that's not fair because I never met him but it's just like you know that I'm gonna call people that when I when I get annoyed with them and gonna say you know what's your problem Doeg the Edomite no it doesn't sound good this little this little thing here does not sound good because it isn't good but we have to hold our fire we have to wait until chapter 22 the word that is translated here the chief of Saul's herdsmen has potential for also being translated the mighty one or the violent one in other words the last man that you would want to be listening in while this event is taking place and we're going to learn in the next chapter the horrible consequences of this visit of David to know and how those consequences pivot on the presence of doric here it says that he was detained before the Lord I don't know what that means was he detained because he was ceremonially waiting for something it's all conjecture all we know is that the Lord had him there at that point and he was listening in so we must push to the end David has it's five loaves which of course will sustain him physically but only if he is still alive if he's killed prematurely than anyone even have a chance to eat them and so now he makes his second request do you have a spear or a sword at hand have you not here a spear or sword at hand I think almost the way in which it is rendered here in English suggests to us that David actually knew the answer to this question that it would be surprising if he was unaware of what had happened to the prized possession that was his as a result of the triumph over Goliath and it may well be that the very reason for David showing up and know is because he needed that sword he he knew that after he had fled after the encounter out in the field with Jonathan that he couldn't just keep wandering around without some means of protection do you have a sword or a spear here you'd only use that once but it used it to great effect before a Himalaya has actually a chance to ask why he would be on a secret mission without a sword why he would be out here unarmed he adds to the story I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me because the King's business required haste well of course he's made up this story about the Kings business to start with and he can't let it alone he comes back to it you know once you tell one light you're almost inevitably going to you have to tell another one to fill it in or to cover it up it's a never-ending journey that's why it's never good to start telling lies at all FEA ironically the King's business of course was what the reals King's business the King Saul's business was the killer and it requires haste AHIMA legs description of the of the sort is is fascinating in itself isn't it and the priest said or the sword of Goliath the Philistine whom you struck down in the Valley of Elah like he didn't know that he was easy he's not informing him I think he's he's being deferential towards him he's recognizing this maybe he's worried that if he gives it to him he might use it on him you're the one who struck him down we've got it wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod and if you will take that you can take it because there's nothing other than that here and David says well there is none like that give it to me there is none like that give it to me just an aside and then I will finish when I came on this race here the concluding phrase of verse 9 I said to myself now there is a there is a phrase that will preach you know there is none like that give it to me and I said to myself I bet if I go to Spurgeon we'll find it right on cue Spurgeon has an amazing sermon that entirely ignores the context of first samuel 21 pays no attention to my friend Doig or anybody else but preaches a masterful sermon under the heading there is none like that and I would have brought it this evening I say if I brought it I would have preached it it would mean more edifying but he has like there is none like that when it comes to the Word of God there is none like that when it comes to the person of Christ there is none like that when it comes to the work of Jesus in the church and so on it's an immense piece of work but you couldn't really call it biblical exposition and in fact I said to myself if only I could get into that it would be so much easier for myself and for the congregation they wouldn't have to sit there and listen as I pulled my ignorance with theirs working my way through these verses so he gets the sword and what does he do he rose and he fled that day from Saul from Saul but Saul hasn't even been in the story yeah but it's Saul it's aw he's afraid of him he knows that Saul is out for him and so that's where we leave him heading now to another place to seek refuge in arguably a very unlikely place and whatever we make of this strange episode we mustn't lose sight of the fact that we are following the footsteps of God's anointed king as I said to you this morning the final third of 1st Samuel is the journey of the anointed king towards his final destination and the final third of the Gospels is the journey of Christ God's King on his way to his destination and so when we come to this and we try and do what we said this morning remind ourselves of the primary purpose of Scripture when we take what is obscure and try and bring clarity to it from other passages then we remind ourselves that the Bible is always moving us forward especially when we consider at a picture of the king so that we would be aware of the fight that in Jesus something greater than David has come when you look at this story there were only a few people that were apparently on David's side Macau presumably Jonathan Samuel small-group for an anointed king go back and read Luke sakes before you go to bed and after that little incident it then says quite straightforwardly that the people in response to that encounter where he replies using first samuel 21 the people were filled with fury and they began to discuss what they might do to jesus so to the extent that we embraced the find that the bible is a book about jesus then in considering this somewhat forlorn king here our gaze goes beyond it to he who is the great king and he who also was despised opposed rejected humiliated and yet died in our place well thank you for your patience a brief prayer God our Father we thank you that when your word finds a resting place in our hearts and minds we build something of a reservoir to which we could return some days it seems more absorbable than others but thank you that eventually in the wonder of your revelation all the pieces of the puzzle eventually fit together and form up in the person of Jesus who is the king of kings and the Lord of lords so granted as we see him in all of his ascended glory that we might not be like those who oppose David who sought his death that we certainly might not be like this doing fellow we don't want to be like the Pharisees the Lord we want to embrace and love and follow Christ in whose name we pray and then this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living learn more about truth for life with Alistair beg visit us online at truthfortheworld.org

Channel: Alistair Begg

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Keywords: Biblical Figures, Lying, Morality, Truth For Life, 1 Samuel, King David, Alistair Begg

Id: fv8XeBTalYc

Length: 37min 58sec (2278 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 16 2020