Misled by a Misguided Heart, Part 1

God is at work in spite of David's lack of trust. I love the text where Paul reminds Timothy, when we are faithless, God is faithful. He cannot deny himself.

That is, we in Christ are in him. He can't deny us as his children. Even when we are faithless, God is faithful. We don't take that for granted.

We don't take it to the bank. We don't live in disregard of his holy justice and his discipline, but he is faithful. How would you describe the quality of your spiritual life these days? Have you gone through a time when your spiritual life seemed dry? Perhaps your appetite for God was small.

I think from time to time, all Christians experience that to greater or lesser degree. King David certainly did. And we're looking at that period as we continue through this series on David's life.

Stephen Davey is in a series called The Singer. He's calling the message you're about to hear misled by a misguided heart. This is Wisdom for the Heart and here's Stephen with today's message from God's Word. One author I have come across in my study retold the legend. You may have heard a little bit of it, a parable of sorts.

It has a primary point that I felt was an interesting point to make. The devil decided to put his old tools up for sale to use some newer versions. On the date of the sale, the tools were all spread out and made open for public inspection and each tool was marked with a price. There are all kinds of treacherous looking instruments labeled hatred, envy, lying, lust, pride, ambition, so on. But separated from the rest of the tools was a rather harmless looking one that looked kind of like a corkscrew. It was small but well worn. The price was astronomical. What's the name of that little tool? One of the purchasers asked. Oh, said the devil, that's discouragement. Well, why have you priced it so high?

No one will be able to afford to buy that one. Well, that's because it's more useful to me than most other tools. I can pry open and get inside a person's heart with that one when I cannot get near him with these other tools.

Once I get inside, I can just about make my target think whatever I want. It's badly worn because I use it on almost everyone and it is especially powerful against Christians because most of them have no idea this tool belongs to me. Parable closes by informing the reader that the devil never did sell that instrument and it still is his primary tool to this very day. In many ways I would agree. Discouragement is certainly a tool that can move effectively against a believer and take them off the path of discernment and wisdom and service and fruitfulness and blessing than just about any other tool. This is going to be a nearly fatal chapter in David's life.

And I'm going to do a lot of review, a lot of, I should say, survey to cover two and a half chapters. But you'll remember if you've been with us that David is the crown prince, but even still he's living really on the edge of starvation. He's moving from one hiding place to the next. He's literally begging for food from sympathetic farmers and ranchers and we discovered in our last study that not all of them are sympathetic.

David knows he's the next king of Israel, but for the past several years he hasn't seen the inside of the king's palace. He's a fugitive. He's a wanted man. He's on the run. It's been years now. As soon as he marries Abigail, the next chapter kind of repeats the same story we studied previously.

I won't go into it today. Saul has him cornered and instead of killing him, David respectfully refuses the opportunity, only this time he takes his spear and his canteen and then at a safe distance he wakes Saul up and says, look, I mean you no harm. And Saul, you know, comes out with that apology, tears, promises. His promises don't last for long and David is on the run again. Trouble is David has a following that's growing. It isn't just 600 men, it's families along with them, wives and children.

Now that's good news. There are more people in this company of isolated Israelites that are sort of without a country, but it's bad news too. David is now responsible to feed and protect and try to hide all of this following. This group will swell very quickly into several thousand people. Even now, as we re-engage in the narrative, the stress would be incredible, the pressure would be unbelievable, the running would be weary. As much as we don't like to see a hero of our faith crumble, David will reach the end of his rope. He's going to make one disobedient, disastrous decision after another. And I have to admit to you, I have never heard a sermon from this chapter and I've never preached it either. Maybe that's because it's uncomfortable or maybe it's just in the way and we want to skip over it to the coronation which will come soon after.

Let's not do that though. There are some powerful lessons to learn here. So open your Bibles to 1 Samuel chapter 27. The first clue that David is heading in the wrong direction, by the way, and on dangerous ground is the way this scene opens. Verse 1 says, then David said in his heart, note that, we'll come back in a moment. Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There's nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines. And Saul will tire or despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel and I shall escape out of his hand.

That doesn't fit what you'd think you'd read. He has been delivered again and again. Saul has had him dead to rights and God works it out to where he escapes more times than we can notice again. Then David said in his heart, I'm going to die. Saul is going to catch me. He's going to kill me.

I know it. We need to escape to the Philistines for help. He said in his heart, that's the first problem or mistake. What you should be reading is something like then David said to God in his heart or then something like David cried out with his heart to God or maybe even David complained in his heart against God.

Those would all be better. David is carrying on a private conversation and he's saying in his heart. In fact, in the chapters that we'll cover in our rather quick survey, David will not mention God one time. In fact, one commentator writes that from chapter 27 all the way through the middle of chapter 30, which we'll cover today, are what he calls godless chapters. In other words, he writes, David was under severe pressure here and he looks to Philistia rather than to Yahweh for security.

Can you imagine? He convinces himself that he'd be better off living with the enemy of God than continuing to trust in the God of Israel. Ralph Davis in his commentary on this text writes rather bluntly and yet perceptively on the scene he says, you know, we all talk to ourselves. We do, don't we?

You ever seen anybody driving down the road, nobody in the car with them and their mouths just and then you realize you're doing it too. Davis writes, we deliver propaganda to our souls. How crucial it is to feed our souls with true propaganda, especially about the adequacy of God. Like the farmer, Davis reminded me of, who said, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years.

Eat, drink, and be merry. Davis concludes, the junk you feed your heart can make all the difference in your world. What are you feeding your heart? Are you having a conversation with your heart?

How many secular songs and movies and even, you know, the great Disney ones for kids, how many of them follow the same theme? Follow your heart. Follow your heart. Jeremiah the prophet says, your heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.

Don't let your heart lead the way. You see, unfortunately here, David is not having a conversation with God or with the word of God or with the priest of God who for the most part has had nothing to do for 16 months or won't. Distraught and deeply troubled. There's a man who pastored a church probably less than 200 people his entire life who lived in the UK. I have a little paperback that he wrote.

It's been reprinted more than 100 years ago. His name is F.B. Meyer and he wrote on this text that we're studying.

In fact, his commentary, that little paper book is at the heart and in the theme of every commentator I read. He writes this, when making major decisions, never act in panic. Calm thyself and be still. Force thyself into the quiet of thy closet until thy pulse beats normally and the scare has ceased to perturb you. When thou art most eager to act is the time when thou wilt make the most mistakes. Do not say in thine heart what thou wilt or wilt not do at that moment but wait until God makes known his way. Isn't that good? Go into the closet and wait till your pulse slows down.

Count to 10 or 100 or 1000. Now let's not be too hard on David. It's easy, you know, in 21st century America to talk about this guy, you know, going off the reservation, missing the path.

Can't imagine, can we? He's misled certainly by his misguided heart but he has every reason to be absolutely discouraged. He looks around at the circumstances. He looks at this growing throng of people. He weighs the pressure and the balances. He measures the responsibility and the stress and he's chased by this mad king. What we can't see is to add to that that invisible spiritual enemy that's working away with his favorite tool, that corkscrew of discouragement. He pries open David's heart and he just pours in reason and rationale and excuses and weariness and circumstances and David says, you know, I've been thinking.

I'm convinced it's right. I'm going to die at the hand of Saul. I'd be better off leading you all into the land of the Philistines, misled by a misguided heart. Well, that's my introduction. Let me take you now into chapter 27 and I've outlined it with four words that come to mind and we'll cover 27, 29, and half of 30.

It'll be miraculous, okay? The first word is the word conniving. Look at chapter 27 and verse 2. So David arose and went over, he and the 600 men who were with him, we learned later, with their families, to Achish, who's Achish, the king of Gath. By the way, does that sound familiar?

It ought to. Several years earlier, David had shown up there and as soon as he showed up, he thought he'd find refuge. He was alone and Achish sees him and they begin to sing that little chant they'd made up about him killing thousands, ten thousands, and David realized he's in deep trouble. He begins to act like he's insane. He claws on the gates of the city and he begins to drool down his beard and Achish says, I got enough crazy people around here to get rid of this guy. And so he lets him go. This time, Achish is going to be happy to see him.

Why? Because he brings 600 highly skilled warriors and he'll explain later to other Philistine kings, David and his men defected to me. He's happy now to see them. He's happy to add these troops to his army.

Some time passes. It happens quickly in the text, but verse 5 informs us that after some time, David says to the king, he says, look, if I found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns that I may dwell there, for why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you? In other words, look, king, we don't want to crowd your style. We're cramped in here in the headquarters of the capital city. Why don't you give us one of the country towns and let us settle there? Verse 6 informs us that the king gave David the town of Ziklag. Ziklag was originally given to the tribe of Judah, transferred a few years later to Simeon, only in recent days captured by the Philistines but left unoccupied. It's deserted.

You can kind of see this western southern town with ragweed just sort of rolling through the town square. You can have that city, David. David moves in. Keep in mind that David is also moving into a spiritually barren and dry season of life. During these days, David will not compose any sacred song. No songs are credited to this period in his life.

The singer of Israel has been silenced. But he's not sitting still. In fact, the rest of this chapter that I'll just overview shows him raiding Philistine towns.

He's leaving no one alive to tell the tale so he can keep his front up. But he is effectively, and this is a study all its own, but he's effectively as the king-elect beginning the conquest of the land. Even in his disobedience, God's purposes are being fulfilled.

Aren't you glad that happens? Now his raids will bring in necessary food and clothing for this group of people that is growing, camels and cattle. Whenever Achish drives down south for dinner, he's missing sweet tea and grits and all that, and comes to eat with David, says, well, I got all this stuff from raiding those pesky Hebrews, and King Achish is thrilled.

David says, I've been battling in the Negev, that is the dry land, the southern region around Beersheba. Before we leave this scene, go back up to verse 4 just for a moment and look at the last phrase. And when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him. That's great news, isn't it?

Or is it? Well, Saul quit looking for him. David's plan worked.

He asks for a southern city, and his request works. Achish is deceived by David whenever he visits. David's deception works. Look, it works. My plans that I concocted in my heart, they're working perfectly.

Must be right. Listen, part of the problem of following your own heart, even when it is misguided, is a false sense of peace and security. We're too quick to say, oh, I now have peace. Well, what did you do? Well, I got from underneath that responsibility.

I feel better. Must be God's will. The pressure's gone.

Oh, part of the problem is that security and peace is not from the Lord. Another author writing on this passage said the pressure might be gone and it might be a relief. The responsibility is relieved.

There's a release of pressure. That's great. You're left to believe my decision paid off.

Trouble is, it isn't going to last very long. The second word that soon follows conniving is the word cornered. Go to chapter 28 and verse 1. In those days, the Philistines gathered their force for war to fight against Israel. By the way, David has been living in Ziklag now for over a year, okay? Achish said to David, understand that you and your men are to go out with me in the army.

They're going to fight Israel. Uh-oh. David said to Achish, well, very well, you shall know what your servant can do.

And Achish said to David, well, very well, I will make you my bodyguard for life. Uh-oh. His plan is backfiring. He is effectively cornered. He can't say no because that'll ruin everything.

He can't say yes, can he? He can't fight his brothers. Can you imagine him marching with his men toward that battlefield as they did to join with, if you can believe it, the Philistines in battle against Israel? Well, he is cornered.

Can't imagine now the pressure and the stress life looked really good on the run back then. Now this king wants me to be his bodyguard for life and we're now going to fight the Israelites. One author said David is chugging away this canteen only it's filled with Pepto-Bismol. He's stuck. He has no idea what to do. His perfect plan is unraveling.

He is about to be found out. Let's pause for a minute. Can you think of some event in your life where you had a perfect little plan? The deception was just right and then it unraveled. None of you ladies, of course, but the men.

You're with me, right? I did a little inventory and came up with a story I'll admit in public. I can still remember in junior high, that one afternoon when I was asked to stay for detention, don't know what I'd done wrong, probably something really minor, but I remember the cruel and unusual punishment of having to wash the windows on a ladder, second floor windows on the outside. Actually, it wasn't that bad.

What would be bad is if my parents found out. How many of you grew up in an era where the students were always wrong and the teachers were always right? Horrifying childhood, wasn't it? None of your excuses helped or mattered. Well, that's my childhood.

They never carried any weight. How many of you grew up at a point in time when if you got in trouble at school, you automatically were in trouble at home? Yeah.

Okay. That's why we all need so much counseling. At any rate, I decided to keep the home front in the dark on this particular episode of detention because the good news was I was on the middle school soccer team and we had practiced that afternoon and it was going to be over at exactly the same time detention was going to be over. I considered that the grace of God.

And it just worked perfectly. So I just didn't say anything about it and I had such peace about that and a false sense of security. I can still remember being up on that ladder, washing a second floor window of the school building and hearing the crunch of tires on the gravel of the school parking lot behind me. And I happened to look over my shoulder and there came the family car with my father behind the wheel. He looked at me with as much surprise as I looked at him. He's thinking, what's he doing up on a ladder?

And I'm thinking, why was I born? Evidently, my father had decided to come early and watch us practice. He had never done that before ever. He never did it after. I don't know where he got the idea. The pit gave him that idea.

I'm sure that it came from below. He decided to spend some quality time with his son and we did spend some quality time together in close proximity. My perfect plan had fallen apart. This is obviously a lot more serious. David's plans have boxed him in. He's either going to lose his credibility and his right to rule as Israel's king for having killed Israelites or he will lose his life. Satan in the background, I can just see him wringing his hands in delight. I've got him.

Checkmate. By the way, keep in mind before we go to the next text, this is the battle where Saul will be killed and Jonathan too. This is the event prior to the coronation of David. Alan Redpath wrote years ago in his commentary on this text that man's extremity is God's opportunity.

That's a great idea to follow through with. God is at work in spite of David's lack of trust. I love the text where Paul reminds Timothy, when we are faithless, God is faithful. He cannot deny himself.

That is, we in Christ are in him. He can't deny us as his children. Even when we are faithless, God is faithful. We don't take that for granted.

We don't take it to the bank. We don't live in disregard of his holy justice and his discipline, but he is faithful. Now what happens next chronologically is not what takes place in your Bible. What takes place chronologically next is chapter 29. So look ahead there at verse 2.

I want to follow this narrative to its completion. Let's go to verse 2. As the lords of the Philistines were passing on by hundreds and by thousands, as they're at the battlefield now and they're parading by, and David and his men were passing on in the rear with Achish. The commanders of the Philistines said, what are these Hebrews doing here? And Achish said to the commanders of the Philistines, is this not David the servant of Saul, king of Israel, who's been with me now for, note this, days and years since he deserted, literally defected to me, I've found no fault in him to this day. Look guys, he is a Philistine.

Don't worry about it. You're not going to hear any of it. In the next paragraph, David and his men are forced to return home to Ziklag. Verse 8, David kind of acts with this, well I'm offended, you won't let me fight with you. He acts like he's disappointed.

His acting skills are worthy of Oscars. Achish has no choice now but to send David and his men packing, and this is God at work behind the scenes, getting those Philistines all stirred up. We're not going to let David fight, he could be a fifth column, he could turn against us, send that Hebrew home. So David acts like it bothers him and his men are literally rescued out of what we would have considered checkmate.

God is always working for David's good and God is always working for your good as well. Please make sure to join us again tomorrow because Stephen will be back to conclude this message on tomorrow's broadcast. This message is entitled, Misled by a Misguided Heart. You might want a copy of this lesson for yourself so that you can refer to it from time to time. We have it available as a manuscript that you can download free of charge.

In fact, we offer a free manuscript to every sermon in our archive. You can find that and more at our website which is wisdomonline.org. If you have a comment, a question, or would like more information, you can send us an email if you address it to info at wisdomonline.org. We have a special place on our website where Stephen answers questions that have come in from listeners like you. In fact, you can go back any time and look at what other people have asked and read those answers. It might be that someone had the same question you have. Again, those are posted at wisdomonline.org. Thanks again for listening. I hope you'll be with us as we conclude this message tomorrow right here on Wisdom for the Heart.