Galen Call's Sermon Library
"The Bitter Fruit" - November 25, 1984
When we talk of faith and its biblical examples, one of those people that needs to be included would be David. Although David is not listed in Hebrews 9 any more than in passing, he nonetheless in his faith walk with God proved to be as great a man of faith as any of those who are listed there in more length. From his introduction to us in 1 Samuel 16 and the ensuing battle with Goliath in the Valley of Ela, up to his reign as the most popular king of Israel, he was a man who loved God and who trusted him. We see this expressed in a number of the songs that he wrote. You may want to turn to the book of Psalms with me and notice some of his expressions. We'll just look quickly at several of them. In Psalm 3, for example, in verse 3, "Thou, O Lord, art a shield about me, my glory and the one who lifts my head," verse 5, "I lay down and slept, I awoke. So the Lord sustains me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about." Then Psalm 4, verse 3, "But know that the Lord has set apart the godly man for himself. The Lord hears when I call him," call to him, verse 8, "In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for thou alone, O Lord, does make me to dwell in safety." Psalm 7, notice how it begins, "O Lord, my God, in thee I have taken refuge." Notice his faith is in the Lord. Psalm 11, very similarly he says, "In the Lord I take refuge." Psalm 16, verse 1, "Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in thee." That is David's way of saying, "I trust in you. I trust in you," David was a man who trusted the Lord. In Psalm 18 he says, "I love thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies." How well those selected verses reflect the direction of his life and the disposition of his heart. He was a man who loved and trusted in the Lord his God, but there were occasionally other directions and dispositions in the heart of David as well. Occasionally, the disposition of his heart was unbelief and its direction, doubt and fear. And we come to a passage like that tonight in 1 Samuel, chapter 20. As we study the lives of great men in the Word of God, it is good for us to appreciate and follow their example of greatness. But let us remember that they too were mere human beings. They dealt with sin in dwelling them just as you and I do. They faced temptations, and there were sometimes when they succumbed to temptations. We can identify with people like that. I can admire someone who is perfect, but I can identify with someone who fails too. Someone who liked David, who while he had the direction of his heart and loving and trusting the Lord, occasionally came short of that. We see an example here in the first three verses of 1 Samuel 20. Remember that Saul at this time is seeking his life. Then David fled from Neoth to Raima and came and said to Jonathan, "Remember that was the son of Saul, what have I done? What is my iniquity? What is my sin before your father that he is seeking my life?" He said to him, "Far from it, you shall not die, David. Behold, my father does nothing, either great or small, without disclosing it to me. So why should my father hide this thing from me? It is not so." He says, "Dad's not trying to kill you." Yet David vowed again, saying, "Your father knows well that I have found favor in your sight." And he has said, "Do not let Jonathan know this lest he be grieved." David had heard that word from someone in the court, "But truly as the Lord lives and as your soul lives," he says to Jonathan, "there is hardly a step between me and death." So David feels pressure at this point. Now he has felt pressure before, but for some reason he responds to this situation differently than he had responded before. This time he pours out his heart in complaint to his friend Jonathan and begins a period of backsliding in his life, a time of failure. As we look at this tonight, I want us to remember that this is only an episode out of a long story. What we are going to see does not reflect the general bent and direction of David's life, but it does tell us about an occasional direction that he experienced. Let's look tonight at the results of David's fear instead of faith, his doubt instead of trust, his backsliding. Note number one of David's backsliding is that he began to live a lie. Fear took control of David's life at this point, and when fear takes control, truth often leaves. It did with David. In the first place, he lied by his friend Jonathan. That's what he says in verses 4 and 5, "Johnathan said to David, 'Whatever you say I will do for you, all these two men were close.'" And Jonathan, as a good friend, says, "David, just tell me what to do. How can I be of assistance?" David said, "Tomorrow is the new moon, and I ought to sit down to eat with the king, but let me go that I may hide myself in the field until the third evening. If your father misses me at all, then say, 'David earnestly asked leave of me to run to Bethlehem his city because it is the yearly sacrifice there for the whole family.'" Now, what's wrong with that? Well, it's a lie. David wasn't going to Bethlehem. He wasn't going down there to sacrifice with his family. He was going to be hiding out in the field. They asked his friend Jonathan to lie for him before Saul. Now the reason that he asked him to lie was acceptable. He was trying to find out the true disposition of Saul. The end was okay, but the means did not justify his end. The way he was going to find out about Saul's attitude was through a lie. And so we see that in the first place he lied by his friend Jonathan. He took advantage of that friendship in a way in which he should not have. So often that is the way backsliding is when we begin to live a lie. Sin causes us to use people. To manipulate their friendship perhaps to some advantage for ourselves. And so deceitful is our heart that sometimes we do that without even realizing that we're doing it. Sin can cause any of us to do the same thing as David did with Jonathan. It can cause us to use people to our own advantage. In this regard I was thinking this afternoon of one of the congressmen who sat on the committee trying to determine whether to impeach Richard Nixon. I don't recall his name, it seems to me he was from Florida, I remember he had dark black hair at that point, a rather distinguished looking gentleman. He was the stongest supporter of Nixon on the whole committee. And he seemed to have an answer for all the charges that were brought against the president. But eventually there came out that information concerning a certain set of tapes. And when those tapes were transcribed it became clear that the information that the congressmen had to work with, what he had been told by the president was not true. And thus he ended up, as I recall, voting to impeach the president because the friendship that the two of them had enjoyed had been betrayed and the president had lied to him hoping to use his influence on the committee to his advantage. Well, you say that's only politicians that do nasty things like that. Well, we don't say that if we examine our own selves honestly. Because we are all very capable of this kind of manipulation of people. As part of backsliding David began to live a lie and he first lied by his friend. Now, the result of that was that Jonathan almost got killed. When he told his father Saul what David told him to tell him, Saul immediately knew it was a lie and tried to kill him for it. And he cursed him in the most vile terms possible. David then fled because he knew that Saul was quite sincere about this effort to kill him, and of course Jonathan now was convinced. And so he fled. In chapter 21 we see that he lied by his speech. David left his friend Jonathan in the field and came to knob to a hemilec the priest. And the hemilec came trembling to meet David and said to him, "Why are you alone and no one with you?" And David said to a hemilec the priest, "The king has commissioned me with a matter and has said to me, 'Let no one know anything about the matter on which I am sending you, and with which I have commissioned you, and I have directed the young men to a certain place.'" David says, "Look, a hemilec, I am 007, and I have sent the men this way, and I am here on a secret mission for the CIA and of Saul, and I cannot tell you what I am up to." Is that the truth? No. Here he not only lies through someone else, but he directly lies to the priests of Israel. The disposition of his heart was one of fear. And fear comes, truth leaves, David began to lie, and that disposition in his heart was evidenced by his tongue. He lied to a hemilec. And we'll come back later to pick up some more of that story, but let me summarize it by saying David then left knob, and in verse 10 it says, "He arose and fled that day from Saul and went to Akish, king of gas." But the servants of Akish said to him, "Is this not David, the king of the land? Did they not sing of this one as they danced, saying Saul has slain his thousands, and David has ten thousands?" Quite a testimony. David's testimony had preceded him into gas. And David took these words to heart and greatly feared Akish, the king of gas. Can anybody remember where we've talked about gas before this? Let's see. There was somebody from gas. Do you remember who it was? That's right. It was Goliath. This is Goliath's hometown. So David disguised his sanity before them and acted insanely in their hands and scribbled on the doors of the gate and let his saliva run down into his beard. And so here he lies by his life. He lied by his friend, he lied by his speech, now he lies by his life. He begins to act in a way that is contrary to what he really was. He would scribble on the gate to the city. He would allow his saliva to run down into his beard, what a mess that must have been. And it was an indication to them that he was insane, and that was his intent to trick them, to deceive them into thinking that he was crazy. And so we see backslidden David, the man who loved the Lord, the man who made the Lord his refuge, now lying, living a lie, was not Sir Walter Scott, I think, the one who wrote, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." David stepped into the web of a lie and he got more and more entangled, the longer that it went. He adjusted his behavior, finally, to protect himself. Before we become too critical of David, I think that we probably ought to get a mirror out, though, and examine where some of us have been, maybe where some of us are tonight. For how easily we find to compromise our lifestyle in order not to appear different, in order to fit in with the situation so that we won't be in trouble with those in the world. David lied by his life, and all of us identify with that. Now there's a second result of David's backsliding. The first one is that he began to live a lie. Number two, his failures affected others. Number two is a result of backsliding. When you and I backslide, we never do it by ourselves. It always, it always affects others. We drag others with us in the impact of it. Let's look back earlier in the chapter 21 and notice again this time with the priest, a hemilec. David says, furthermore to him in verse 3, "Now what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever can be found." In the priest answered, "David, there is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is consecrated bread." That is the bread of the presence. It was called in verse 6. This was bread that was put out periodically fresh, it was put on a small table in the tabernacle. It was 12 flat loaves of bread as they baked bread in that day, and they were in two stacks. They each loaf of bread represented a tribe of Israel, and it was called sacred bread. It was the show bread or the bread of the presence. It indicated the presence of God with all of the tribes of Israel, but that was the only bread there. That was the only food there that a hemilec had, and he says, "There is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is consecrated bread if only the young men who were with David or purportedly with him have kept themselves from women." And David answered the priest and said to him, "Surely women have been kept from us as previously when I set out, and the vessels, perhaps the bodies of the young men were holy, though it was an ordinary journey. How much more than today will their vessels be holy?" So the priest gave him consecrated bread, but that was not necessarily wrong. In fact, Jesus in the New Testament goes back to this and refers to it as proof that the Sabbath can be broken for necessary use, and that was the occasion here. The bread was being employed for a satisfactory purpose, therefore, what the priest was doing was perfectly within the law of God. So the priest gave him consecrated bread. There was no bread there, but the bread of the presence, which was removed from before the Lord in order to put hot bread in its place when it was taken away. Now one of the servants of Saul was there that day detained before the Lord. Now why he was there? We don't know. For some reason he had to hang around the tabernacle. Maybe it was because of impurity, and he had to be there in order for a certain vow to be fulfilled. Perhaps he was there to be checked for leprosy. We do not know why this man was there, but his name was Doeg, the Edomite. If you take the E out of his name, you have a better description of this man, in my opinion. Now an Edomite was Hu, descendant of whom? Remember, Esau, that's right. The jealous, envious, bitter brother of Jacob, and the descendants of Esau, the Edomites, hated with a passion, the descendants of Jacob or Israel. So immediately you see a conflict here. This man, though he was an Edomite, was a servant of Saul, but he was there, in fact he was the chief of Saul's shepherds, and he happened to be there at that time. That's all it says at this point. And David said to a hymnalec, "Now is there not a spear or a sword on hand? For I brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king's matter was urgent. I had to really get out of there," the king said, "hurry." The priest said, "The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elba, behold, it is wrapped and cloth behind the Ephod. If you would take it for yourself, take it. For there is no other except it here," and David said, "there is none like it, give it to me." So he took it. And so much for the story. But now let's go to chapter 22. The chapter begins by relating that David went to Adulum, a cave, and there people came to him who were in distress or in debt or discontented, and they became his band, quite a band. Imagine an army of people who are in debt, who are in distress, who are discontented. That's the group that David started with. That was his band of rascals in the cave of Adulum. So about 400 of them. And so it relates regarding some of their events. And then in verse 6 it says, "Then Saul heard that David and his men who were with him had been discovered. Now Saul was sitting in Gibia under the tamarish tree on the height with his spear in his hand, and all his servants were standing around him, and Saul said to a servants who stood around him, "Here now, O Benjaminites, will the son of Jesse also give to all of you fields and vineyards? Will he make you all commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds?" He says, "Do you think this man, David, is going to do more for you than me? I am a bent might like you are. You should be loyal to me, for all of you have conspired against me so that there is no one who discloses to me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. And there is none of you who is sorry for me or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me, to lie and ambush as it is this day." So he accuses David here essentially of becoming a revolutionary, a man who was conspiring to take the kingdom from him. Was that the case? Of course not. God had appointed David to be the king, but David was simply allowing God to bring it to pass. God is not conspiring himself against Saul, verse 9. Then doge, or doge, excuse me, the Edomite who was standing by the servants of Saul answered and said, "I saw the son of Jesse coming to nob to a hemlock, the son of a height of him, and he inquired of the Lord for him and gave him provisions and gave him the sword of Goliath, the Philistine. And so we have a tattle-tail here. This Edomite took it upon himself to report on David what he had seen. He essentially became a spy for Saul. And the king sent someone to summon a hemlock, the priest, the son of a height of him, and all his father's household, the priests who were nob, and all of them came to the king. And Saul said, "Listen now, son of a height of him." And he answered, "Here am I, my lord." Saul said to him, "Why have you and the son of Jesse conspired against me?" So now you see the priest and David are linked together in Saul's mind, in that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him that he should rise up against me by lying in ambush as it is this day. That is absolutely not true. David was not lying in ambush, but that's how Saul with his jaundiced eyes saw it. The height of answered, the king said, "And who among all your servants is as faithful as David, even the king's son-in-law?" That may have not been the right thing to say. "Who is captain over your guard and is honored in your house? Did I just begin to inquire of God for him today, far, be it from me? Do not let the king impute anything to his servant, or to any of the household of my father, for your servant knows nothing at all of this whole affair. He pleases ignorance." He says, "King, I don't know anything about this." The king said, "You shall surely die, I him elect you and all your father's household." The king said to the guards who were attending him, "Turn around and put the priests of the Lord to death, because their hand also was with David, and because they knew that he was fleeing and did not reveal it to me, but the servants of the king were not willing to put forth their hands to attack the priests of the Lord." They were smart. And the king said to Doeg, "You turn around and attack the priests." And this unclean Gentile did that. He turned around and attacked the priests, and he killed that day 85 men who wore the linen ephod. That was the dress of the priest. And he struck nob, the city of the priest, with the edge of the sword. Both men and women, children and infants, ox and donkey sheep, he struck with the edge of the sword, but one son of a hymnalect, the son of a hightob, named Abiathar, or Abiathar, escaped and fled after David. And so every one of his family was wiped out by this Edomite at the behest of Saul, except for one man, Abiathar. Do you see how David's lie, how his backsliding had affected others? He went to the priest who really was innocent and ignorant of this whole matter. He lied to the priest, got the priest to cooperate with him, and the priest and his whole family ended up dead as a result of that association with David. In light of this occasion, David wrote Psalm 52. Just turn there a minute and get a flavor of the psalm. Psalm 52. Notice the inscription to the psalm. David writes, "Why do you boast an evil, O mighty man? The loving kindness of God endures all day long. Your tongue devises destruction like a sharp razor, O worker of deceit. You love evil more than good, falsehood more than speaking what is right. Verse 5, "God will break you down forever. He will snatch you up and tear you away from your tent and uproot you from the land of the living." He's talking undoubtedly here about Doeg, that Edomite, and yet some of those words could reflect the disposition in David's own heart, for it was because of his lie, his lie, that hemilec was killed. I want to point this out though before we go further. And that is that the sovereignty of God was overseeing this. In his providence, God allowed this to happen because it accomplished another aspect of his will. You see, a hemilec was a descendant of a man by the name of Eli. For those of you who read the Old Testament will recognize that name. It is the man who was the high priest of Israel in the days when Samuel was a little boy. I want you to turn back to the third chapter of this book, 1 Samuel, and look briefly at some words that were given to Eli. You'll recall that Eli was a very lazy, slovenly high priest, and he did not discipline his sons who committed terrible immorality with the women who came to offer sacrifices at the tabernacle. It's a despicable scene. And in response to that, God gives judgment to him, and in 1 Samuel 3, verse 11, the Lord said to Samuel, "Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. In that day I will carry out against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end, for I have told him that I am about to judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knew because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them. And therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for it, for shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever." And elsewhere God says every one of them will be out of the priesthood. There will not be a priest in the family of Eli because of the sin of Eli and his sons. But do you see how God allowed that judgment to be carried out? All of his descendants at nom are killed except for the one man, Abiathar. If you read a little further in the first kings, the second chapter, you come to some words of Solomon, we will not take time to look at it tonight, but Abiathar is still alive at that point, however Solomon removes him from the priesthood. He allows him to live, but he removes him from the priesthood. So ultimately you see down to the very last man who was a descendant in Eli's family, they were all taken out of the priesthood by death or by the king's decree. So you see God's will was accomplished even through the failure of David. Now there is a third result of David's backsliding that we'll look at and then we'll be on our way. Result number one, he began to live a lie. Result number two, his failures affected others. Dad, do you realize that your failures affect your kids? Mom, do you realize that? Sunday school teacher, do you recognize that your failures impact your students? Do you realize what happens when your home, a Christian home in the neighborhood explodes? What that does to your neighbors around you? How careful we must be because of this second result of backsliding. But the third result is that David's testimony was marred. I want to look at this in chapter 21 again. We've read about David and his pretended madness. In verse 14 it says, "Then Achish said to his servants, 'Behold, you see the man behaving as a madman, why do you bring him to me?' Do I lack madmen?" Somehow I kind of like that statement. I think there are probably a lot of people in political leadership who could say about the same thing. "Do I lack madmen that you have brought me this one to act the madman of my presence? Shall this one come into my house?" Essentially what he says is, "Get him out of here, he's nuts." Now what's the tragedy here? The tragedy is David's testimony. You see, his testimony was, as is stated in verse 11, "It was a testimony that glorified God, but now think of the testimony that he had in gas." His testimony was that of a man who was insane. We're not going to take time to read it, but there are two Psalms actually that were written either during this time or shortly afterward. There are Psalms 34 and 56. And if you read those Psalms you will see phrases that relate back to exactly what was taking place. But I think the thing that is underscored to me is this, that while David was the feigned madman in his heart he knew better. For those Psalms reveal meditations of faith, they reveal a heart that is still warm toward God, though he was in a backslidden state. Now what happened to David? Well he went to the cave of Adalem, and there in the solitude and the quietness, the loneliness of that place, it seems that he realized his sin and returned to the Lord. And once again we have a psalm that tells us something of his inner thoughts during that time, Psalm 57. There he expresses again his faith in the Lord. David had a period of backsliding in his life, tragic results from it, but because he was a true child of God he was recovered, he came back to the Lord. Now you say, "Pastor, why do you talk about David being backslidden?" Well I guess because we talk so well of David that sometimes we put him on a pedestal that is a little too high as sometimes we are want to do with people that we only see superficially. David was a man. He dealt with fears, doubts, lust, and he was a man who knew failure and sin. He was a man who backslidden, but don't leave him there. That's another reason I wanted to talk about David in this episode because though David went through that period he came out of it, he came out of it. He came back to the Lord and God reclaimed him there in the cave of Adalem. God may have led us to talk about this tonight because there is someone here who is sitting in that cave with David. You've been away from the Lord and the backsliding and all of its fruit may not even be seen yet though some of it may be, but there in the solitude and the loneliness of where you find yourself tonight God is saying to you in love, "My backslidden child returned to me." And what I want to challenge you to do is to respond positively and come back to the Lord as David did. To recognize the episode that you've been through over the last week, month, year, I don't know, to recognize that what you've been through has been sorrowful and tragic in its consequences and that you indeed are repentant of it. But to say as David did, "Lord, I'm coming back and I'm returning to you and I love you and I trust you and I want to walk with you." You see despite this record that we have here in chapters 20 and 21 of 1 Samuel, God still called David a man after his own heart. And that's the kind of a person God wants you to be and God wants me to be. And we can be, but we need to come when necessary to that cave of a dolem and do business with God. Are you there tonight? Will you do business with him? Let's pray. With our heads bowed and as God, the Holy Spirit speaks tenderly, lovingly to each of us. As perhaps you sit there in the cave of a dolem in your heart and you've heard the voice of the Lord. Will you tonight by the uplifted hands say, "Pastor, I have been backslidden and God is dealing with me and tonight I want to respond like I know I should. I want to come back to a place where I'm a man, a woman after God's heart and I'm walking in obedience and faith." By the uplifted hand I'm saying that tonight. Will you put your hand up to that? Yes. God bless you, a number of hands. Anyone else? I want to pray for you. Oh, Father, thank you for the lessons that all of us have learned tonight, but for that special voice of the Spirit that has been sounded in the caves of these who've lifted the hand. Would you right now totally reclaim those lives? Would you restore that love and faith to a place of warmth, a place of obedience? And Father, I pray that you would recover these ones from the backslidden journey where they've been. And may all of us tonight take heed of the lessons that we've seen from David's example. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. the Lord. the Lord. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]