Leaving Matters with God (Part 1 of 2)

David's Journey to the Throne First Samuel 24, and reading from the first verse. When Saul returned from following the Philistines, he was told, "'Behold, David is in the wilderness of Engedi.' Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the wild goats' rocks. And he came to the sheepfolds, by the way, where there was a cave. And Saul went in to relieve himself.

Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. And the men of David said to him, "'Here is the day of which the LORD said to you, behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.' Then David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul's robe. And afterward David's heart struck him, because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe.

He said to his men, "'The LORD forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the LORD's anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the LORD's anointed.' So David persuaded his men with these words and did not permit them to attack Saul. And Saul rose up and left the cave and went on his way. Afterward David also arose and went out of the cave and called after Saul, "'My lord, the king!'

And when Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the earth and paid homage. And David said to Saul, "'Why do you listen to the words of men who say, Behold, David seeks your harm? Behold, this day your eyes have seen how the LORD gave you today into my hand in the cave. And some told me to kill you, but I spared you. I said, I will not put out my hand against my lord, for he is the LORD's anointed. See, my father, see the corner of your robe in my hand. For by the fact that I cut off the corner of your robe and did not kill you, you may know and see that there is no wrong or treason in my hands. I have not sinned against you, though you hunt my life to take it. May the LORD judge between me and you. May the LORD avenge me against you, but my hand shall not be against you. As the proverb of the ancients says, Out of the wicked comes wickedness, but my hand shall not be against you.

After whom has the king of Israel come out? After whom do you pursue? After a dead dog?

After a flea? May the LORD therefore be judge, and give sentence between me and you, and see to it, and plead my cause, and deliver me from your hand. As soon as David had finished speaking these words to Saul, Saul said, Is this your voice, my son David?

And Saul lifted up his voice and wept. He said to David, You are more righteous than I, for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil. And you have declared this day how you have dealt well with me, in that you did not kill me when the LORD put me into your hands.

For if a man finds his enemy, will he let him go away safe? So may the LORD reward you with good for what you have done to me this day. And now, behold, I know that you shall surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in your hand. Swear to me therefore by the LORD that you will not cut off my offspring after me, and that you will not destroy my name out of my father's house. And David swore this to Saul.

Then Saul went home, but David and his men went up to the stronghold. Amen. Your word, Lord, reminds us that all the things that were written down concerning the past have been recorded for our encouragement, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have the hope about which we've just been singing. And we pray now that our study in this twenty-fourth chapter of 1 Samuel will fasten us to the rock that is higher than ourselves, even to Christ himself. For we pray in his name.

Amen. Well, if you're looking for a summertime read, a book that you can enjoy, let me suggest to you a book called The Meaning of Everything. It was written by Simon Winchester. It's not a book about science. It's actually a book that concerns the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.

I think some of you are probably already taking that off your list rather than putting it on. But it is very fascinating, under the editorship of a Scotsman by the name of James Murray, who was called Professor James Murray, although he was never a professor. Anyway, I won't spoil the book for you. You will only be interested if you share my interest in the origin of words, etymology, as it's called, technically, and particularly the way in which the meanings of words often change with the passage of time. For example, the verb to grab. To grab. That word comes out of Middle Dutch or Middle German in the sixteenth century.

And the meaning of the word, its essential meaning, is to see something forcibly or roughly, or to get something by unscrupulous methods. Now, allow that to settle in your mind, and then acknowledge with me that it is quite common today to be invited, for example, if you have attended a church service, and someone says to you, If you do not have a bulletin, why don't you grab one right now? Or, why don't you wait for a moment, says the waitress, and I will grab for you a menu? Now, depending on your age and your cultural context, you may have been taught not to grab, but instead to wait until you're served, so that in family life you remember your mother saying, Now, don't grab from your sister.

Wait until she gives it to you. Now, the reason for this brief introduction is in order that we might note that this passage gives us an indication of how David refuses to succumb to the temptation to grab something which is only God's to give. He refuses to grab at it, recognizing that it is only God's to dispose. You see how important it is that our understanding of the verb to grab is in concurrence with this unfolding story. You have it, actually, in relationship to the priesthood in Hebrews, where the writer to the Hebrews says of the priesthood, No one takes this honor for himself, or no one grabs this, but only when called by God just as Aaron was.

So that's the principle. Now, in this twenty-fourth chapter, all of the action is in the first seven verses, and then what you have in the balance of it is a conversation. Or, if you like, the drama is in verses 1–7, and the dialogue follows in verses 8 to the end. First of all, we recognize that here we're told that Saul renews his pursuit.

We have been following along as David has been chased from one place to another. And most recently, he and his men had made their way up from the Dead Sea into the caves that are in the region of Engedi. And Saul, who had been diverted from his pursuit because of a war with the Philistines, has now apparently dealt with the Philistines. Incidentally, it was his legitimate task to deal with the Philistines.

It was entirely illegitimate for him to be doing what he was doing, which is seeking to kill the Lord's anointed. And so, out of twenty-three and into twenty-four, the scene moves from the Rock of Escape to the Wild Goats Rocks. And if you have had the privilege of visiting Israel, you will have this scene very firmly in your mind, because it would be surprising if your guide did not take you here, up in the region from the Dead Sea, up to Engedi, where a perennial spring pours out and down that hillside, offering respite to the parched travelers who are trying to make their way to the top, and dotted all around it a variety of caves. We're told that Saul has taken three thousand chosen men out of all Israel. If you remember at all, you will take you all the way back to thirteen, when that is how the whole story of Saul begins—with him taking hold of three thousand chosen men.

And in some ways, not much has moved on, and yet a whole lot has moved on. You see, the disparity between the force that he is able to amass and the six hundred people that David now has—a variety of losers and vagrants and misfits. And so, when you look at that on the basis of simply the numbers alone, it appears very clearly that Saul and his men have the upper hand.

But, as we're about to see, things are different from that. And Saul chooses to use one of these caves as a toilet. This is a detail that doesn't often come into the Scriptures, and so it comes very purposefully, because it is a key part of the narrative—a reminder that even kings have to go to the bathroom. Little did he know that the cave that he had chosen was the exact cave in which David and his men were sequestered. You see that in the text, that he went in there, and David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave.

It's a really quite funny picture, isn't it? In he goes—he's completely oblivious to this—and I imagine that somebody says, It looks to me that someone has just come into the cave, looking out from the depth where they find themselves. Someone says, Well, can you see him?

And the person says, Well, actually, he has his back to me at the moment. Oh, but wait a minute! It looks like Saul! Saul! Says, Someone, this is perfect!

This is ideal! Surely this is the day of which the Lord has spoken. Here is our chance, looking at David, to eliminate him. And you can see there in verse 4 that the men of David seek to interpret the circumstances as being a clear indication of the plan of God. They're the ones who apparently know what David should do.

And what they're actually doing is they're collating what they had heard previously. If you look back to chapter 23—it's easy for me, it's an open page here—in verse 4 of 23, David inquired of the Lord again, and the Lord answered him, Go down to Calah, for I will give the Philistines into your hand. Well, that was the word that God had spoken. I will give the Philistines into your hand. David's men, I think, are putting two and two together, and they're saying, Well, the Philistines are your enemy, and Saul is your enemy, he's your enemy continually, and therefore it seems only right, David, that you should go and do to him as it shall seem good to you. Let me just pause and say, let's be careful about taking counsel from people.

Just because there's a lot of them all saying the same thing doesn't mean they're right. And so what happens is that David then arose in response to this circumstance, in the balance of verse 4, and he stealthily cut off a corner of Saul's robe. Now, every time we have a mention of the robe, our ears should prick up. You remember that we had in 15, in that dramatic moment, the tearing of the robe of Samuel.

If you go way, way back to the very beginning, you remember that Hannah made for Samuel as a boy a robe, and the story of Samuel and his robe will appear again before we get to the end of the book. We remember too, in chapter 18, that it is the robe that Jonathan is wearing as the one who is the heir to the kingdom that he removes and places then on David. And so it is a very significant thing here that David does as he does by cutting off a corner of the robe.

Now, compared to what he could have cut off, this seems pretty tame. And it seems to me that his men were saying to one another, Well, goodness gracious, if you are not going to do this, then why don't we just take care of it for you? I think that's the significance of verse 7, where he has to persuade his men and grant them no permission to go and get ahold of Saul.

Now, in relationship to this, a couple of things to observe. How this has actually taken place, whether his cunning and his stealth as such and the sharpness of his sword makes it possible for him to execute this while the robe is still on Saul's back, or whether Saul had removed his robe in order to go about his business, we don't know. All that we know is he cut off a corner of the robe. Now, in light of that, how do we account for verse 5? And afterwards, David's heart struck him because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe.

I mean, our immediate reaction is to say, Well, surely it's no big deal. I mean, he didn't do what the men said. And we don't even know whether when he went toward Saul he even had it in his mind to do.

What we do know is his reaction to it. You see, David knew that although the Spirit of God had departed from Saul, he was still the Lord's anointed king. And he knew that the anointed of the Lord should never be cursed or killed. And so his conscience is immediately burdened by what he'd done. It's his conscience that gets him here. The men must have been mystified when he said to them, The Lord forbid that I should do this to my Lord, the Lord's anointed.

You see, what he is actually doing is he is cutting off—cutting off, as it were, symbolically, the kingdom. Conscience is a very important part of our lives, isn't it? In fact, there is a sense in which we could view this story in terms of a hardened, seared conscience as found in Saul, and a sensitive conscience as found in David. Conscience, the Bible says, is a basic building block of our very humanity.

And it's because of that, if you think about it, why is it that even from infancy—why is it from infancy? We know the experience of guilt or of shame. We know when our conscience is set right, the joy of innocence and of peace. Why is it that even when you're a tiny boy or a girl and you reflect on your words or you reflect on your actions, you attribute to them a moral evaluation? Children will come to you and say, I'm sorry, that was a wrong thing to do.

Or, I'm so glad that I did the right thing. And consider the fact that when Paul addresses this aspect in Romans chapter 2, where he has spoken about the law of God, how the law of God, the natural law, is written into the human heart. And then he goes on to say, But even people who don't know anything about the Ten Commandments, if you meet them, they also operate on the basis of this natural law.

Peterson paraphrasing a couple of verses in Romans 2. When we react in this way, we show that God's law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into, woven into the very fabric of our creation, something deep within us that echoes God's yes and no, his right and wrong. A guilty conscience is a heavy burden. In fact, conscience and a guilty conscience lies at the very heart of mental health. And it is in Jesus that conscience is settled. Walt Chantry, in a wonderful sentence, says, conscience is a friend to hurry you into the arms of the only Savior from the broken law and its curse. David had a sensitive conscience. Saul had a seared conscience.

What kind of conscience do you have? Now, back in quickly to the text. Notice that in verse 3 we're told that Saul went into the cave, and in verse 7 he came out of the cave. So that all that we have in the intervening verses he was completely unaware of.

He was unaware of the fact that he was so vulnerable, because the sword that cut the corner of his robe could easily have taken over his life. But with verse 7, the action ends, and we go to the conversation. Essentially, what we have are two speeches—one made by David, whereby he gives to Saul an explanation, and then one by Saul by which he gives to us a virtual confession. Verses 8–15, picture the scene. Saul is now on his way to join his men, and as he makes his way out of the cave and down the hillside, he hears his name being called.

Actually, not just his name, but his title—"My Lord the King." And when he turns, he sees his archenemy standing outside the entrance to the very cave that he had just used as a bathroom. And so here we have this pivotal moment. Not only does the Lord know when a sparrow falls to the ground, but he knows when Saul goes to the bathroom. And frankly, he knows when you go too. Saul might have looked and said, I can't believe it, that you would stand there, you rascal, you crazy rascal. Do you realize that I have got three thousand men here that I can call, and we'll take care of you in an instant?

It's interesting he doesn't do that. But he's got a history with David, doesn't he? I mean, at the very beginning, when none of his great soldiers, none of his army of three thousand would go out to fight Goliath. It was a boy, a shepherd boy, who had explained, The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me. Maybe that reverberated in Saul's mind as he looks at him there. You're listening to Truth for Life. That is Alistair Begg with the message he's titled Leaving Matters with God.

We'll hear more tomorrow. Our study in 1 Samuel helps us get to know God's chosen king, David, how he points forward to our eternal king, Jesus. Like much of the Old Testament, this narrative helps us better understand the Gospels. As such, it makes a worthwhile study for your small group to explore and to connect the dots between 1 and 2 Samuel and see how they both point to the coming Messiah. The transcripts of these messages are a great source for creating discussion outlines and they're all available online. You're welcome to print them and use them any way you find useful.

Transcripts are located right beneath the audio player for each message. Search for a study in 1 and 2 Samuel at truthforlife.org. As we are learning in this study in 1 Samuel, God blesses those who are obedient to his word and that's why we teach the Bible every day on Truth for Life. But beyond hearing God's word, it's important to read it and remember it. That's why we're recommending a booklet titled How to Memorize Scripture for Life. Memorizing scripture is an important spiritual discipline. It renews our minds. It aligns our thinking with God's will. This brief guide gives a formula and a schedule for how to memorize verses, full passages, even entire books of the Bible. Having God's word imprinted in your mind has so many benefits.

It's a preventive measure for avoiding temptation. It helps us gain wisdom and easily recall it, to deal biblically with issues we face today in life, or it helps us comfort and encourage others. The booklet How to Memorize Scripture for Life is yours when you give a donation today. You can give a one-time gift at truthforlife.org slash donate or you can arrange to set up an automatic monthly donation when you visit truthforlife.org slash truth partner. Today we saw how David revealed his faith by waiting instead of taking matters into his own hands. Tomorrow we'll see how Saul reveals a lack of faith by passing up an opportune moment. I hope you can join us. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.