"God's King to fight against...God's people?"

This has been automatically generated, and therefore may contain some unintended inaccuracies.

Yes. Our reading is from one Samuel chapter 29 found on page 301 in the church bibles. The Philistines gathered all their forces at Aphek, and Israel camped by the spring in Jezreel. As the Philistine rulers marched with their units of hundreds and thousands, David and his men were marching at the rear with Achish. The commanders of the Philistines asked, what about these Hebrews?

Achish replied, is this not David who was an officer of Saul, king of Israel? He has already been with me for over a year, and from the day he left Saul until now, I have found no fault in him. But the Philistine commanders were angry with Achish and said, send the man back that he may return to the place you assigned him. He must not go with us into battle, or or he will turn against us during the fighting. How better could he regain his master's favor than by taking the heads of our own men?

Isn't this the David they sang about in their dances? Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands. So Achish called David and said to him, as surely as the Lord lives, you have been reliable, and I would be pleased for you to serve with me in the army. From the day you came to me until today, I have found no fault in you, but the rulers don't approve of you. Now turn back and go in peace.

Do nothing to displease the Philistine rulers. What have I done? Asked David. What have you found against your servant from the day I came to you until now? Why can't I go and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?

Akish answered, I know that you have been as pleasing in my eyes as an angel of God. Nevertheless, the Philistine commanders have said he must not go up with us into battle. Now get up early along with your master's servants who have come with you, and leave in the morning as soon as it is light.' So David and his men got up early in the morning to go back to the land of the Philistines, and the Philistines went up to Jezreel. Please would you take up your Bibles again? If you've closed them, please open them up again to one Samuel 29 page three zero one.

And let me lead us in prayer as we come to God's word. Father, we thank you that we have your word. Thank you. It is a light to our feet and a lamp to our paths. And therefore, father, as we come to your word, help us to approach with humility, help us to be ready to listen and to be changed by it.

Teach us, father, we pray. Amen. So there is a truth that runs throughout the bible that is really on every page of the bible. Sometimes it is more in the foreground, sometimes it's more in the background, but it is always there and that truth is the truth of God's sovereignty, God's sovereign control in all things, that whether in the big things, national, international sort of things, or whether in the very small things, even a bird falling to the ground, The Bible says God is in control of everything. And as we read the Bible and preach different passages Sunday by Sunday and we read God's word day by day, we can become a little bit sort of almost punch drunk to that truth because it comes across so many times, we can think, oh, yeah, okay, I get it, I get it, the Bible says God is in control.

And yet, we need this truth drummed into us because it is a truth that we very readily abandon or forget. It doesn't take much in our daily lives for us to think, well, maybe God isn't in control. Maybe it just takes a traffic jam and suddenly all that doctrine of God's sovereignty vanishes, or it takes the Internet going down at the wrong moment or getting an injury or an illness, and suddenly your trust in God's sovereignty can feel like it just vanishes, just disappears. Things that maybe you sung about on a Sunday morning, suddenly they don't seem so real, so true. And then we might look at the news and we see things like floods in Nepal and Tibet, the tragedy that was there and the tragedy also at a Christian conference or festival over this last week where there was an accident and someone died and and all these things can stack up, big things, small things where we think, is God really in control?

Is he really sovereign? And that's why we need to keep coming back to God's word day by day, week by week and keep being confronted with this truth that the Bible teaches God is in control, and I need to keep rehearing this and keep being confronted by it because I need to be comforted by it. And it is a great comfort, this doctrine. Alec Mateer, is a theologian, great bible scholar, he said this about this truth. He says, never be afraid to exalt the sovereignty of God to the nth degree and beyond.

It's the pillow on which we can lay our heads. We are only safe in this world because it's his world. Now, of course, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, his control over all things raises in our hearts and minds a whole load of questions, and that is right. It will. But we must not abandon this truth because it is the pillow on which we can lay our heads.

And I hope by the end of this sermon, maybe your head might rest more on the pillow of God's sovereignty, because this is a truth that we see in one Samuel 29. Now what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna give you a quick overview of the story of one Samuel 29. I'm just gonna go through the story fairly quickly and then we're going to pick out five truths about the way God acts. Okay, so head through the story, then five truths about the way God acts. So where are we in the story of one Samuel?

Well, the beginning of one Samuel 29 starts with a scene which may seem utterly ridiculous. You start with David, who we know has been chosen to be the king of Israel, the king of God's people. He's been anointed, chosen to be king, but he is marching out with the armies of the Philistines who are God's enemies. You think, what is going on here? This would be like Donald Trump going out to fight with the Iranian army against America.

Think, what's going on for that? What's sad to have happened for that time? And what's going on for David to be going out to fight with the Philistines against the Israelites? And the answer is, well, it it's come about because of David's lack of faith. His lack of faith has led him there.

We saw in chapter 27, so two chapters back, that David has been on the run because he isn't king of Israel yet. Saul is king of Israel and Saul knows that David is gonna be his successor and Saul is jealous of David, so has been going out to try and kill David and so David has been on the run and at the beginning of chapter 27, we saw even though God has promised to David that he will be safe, yet David says, at some point Saul is gonna catch me and so I'm gonna flee. So he and his men flee from Israel and head to the Philistines, the enemy, which we said seemed like a ridiculous move, but it is what he does. And so David, amongst the Philistines, we saw in chapter 27 again, through deception, through lies, through killing, gets in with the king of king of the Philistines, who's called Achish, and Achish, by the end of chapter 27, has made David his bodyguard. The beginning of chapter 28, the Philistines are heading out to war against the Israelites and Achish says to David, you know, you're gonna have to fight with us.

Well, then you had a bit of a pause in that story, we were left on a cliffhanger, what's gonna happen? What's David gonna do? Is he really gonna fight against Israel? And there was a bit of a pause, the writers left us on a cliffhanger and Gareth preached on chapter 28 a couple of weeks ago where Saul went to a medium to consult a medium. Now back at the beginning of chapter 29, we're back with David marching out with the Philistines.

So will he fight against Israel? Chapter 29, we see how he ends up not fighting against Israel. As he and his men are marching along with Achish and the Philistine army, the commanders of the Philistine army say, you know, what about these Hebrews? In other words, what about these Israelites who are in our army? What are they doing here?

And Achish says to them, verse three, top of the page, is this not David who was an officer of Saul king of Israel, or more literally, is this not David, the servant of Saul king of Israel? And he says, David's been with me for a long time. He's been with me for over a year, and I found no fault in him. Now presumably, Achish is sort of saying this in a kind of boastful way, you know, look, here's here's David, he was servant of Saul, but now he's working for me, but the commanders of the Philistine army are not so impressed. They get angry and it's understandable that they do.

They say, well, look at past history or no, be reasonable, they say, not past history yet, we'll come to that. They say, be reasonable. This guy, David, the way that he could get back in with Saul would be to turn on us in the battle. We'll go out and fight, he'll turn on us and then he'll be back in with Saul, so it'd be madness for him to be with us, and then they think back on history and about the song that everyone's singing. They obviously know the songs that the Israelites sing, maybe it's on their Spotify list or something, but this song that they have where there's this chorus which is in verse five, Saul has slain his thousands, David is tens of thousands.

They know the songs of of the Israelites and who are these tens of thousands that David has killed? They're Philistines. So it'd be madness to have him with us, so they say you can't fight. Well, Achish then goes to David and says you can't fight. He says, I I know you've been loyal, I know you've been faithful, I know you've been good, but the commanders of the army say you can't fight, And at this point, David gives an answer which just baffles us and we'll come back to it, but verse eight he says, what have I done?

And he insists, I want to fight. We'll come back to that. And Achish says, no, you can't fight. Commanders of the army say, you can't you can't go with us, and so David leaves. So that's the overview.

That's the story of one Samuel 29. What do we see about how God works? We're gonna see five things. First, God acts quietly. God acts quietly.

One of the most noticeable things in chapter 29 is that God is hardly mentioned. God doesn't speak in the chapter. David doesn't consult with God. The only person who mentions God is Achish, king of the Philistines, and even that in passing. And yet, it is very clear throughout the chapter that God is the one who is at work, getting king David so that he is not fighting against Israel.

One commentator says, you know, we don't need, you know, as an explicit statement to say that God is at work here to see that God is at work. He very clearly is, and yet he's not mentioned. He acts quietly, and this isn't the only time in the Bible where we see this kind of thing. There are other places where you see God at work and yet God not explicitly named. It's not like there's a big label over it, a big announcement saying, here is God at work.

A famous example of this, which you may know of, is the book of Esther in the Bible, a book which famously God's name is not actually mentioned at all throughout the whole book, and yet in the twists and turns of the plot, see God is very clearly at work. It's a wonderful book to read in the Bible. So why do we have these, the book of Esther and this chapter where God is clearly working, but he's not named as working? Because that's how God often works in our lives, not through obvious miracles or dramatic rescues, very often unannounced in quiet ways that we need to spot. The Bible is saying, look at the world as it were with the cover off.

In our house when I was a child, we had a piano, you know, proper piano, not not a keyboard, not an electric keyboard, but a proper piano and just sometimes that we'd take the front off the piano, so that you could see all the strings and you can see the hammers and you can see it all working. That's probably the equivalent in the nineteen eighties of giving a kid a device or something like that, that you take the front off the piano, and you can see that they're staring at it for a while. But it was gripping that you could It wasn't gripping, but it was interesting. Gripping is pushing it. But it was interesting that you can see all the mechanics at work while you're pressing the keys, and you see what's happening, what's really going on, then you put the cover back on, you remember that, actually, yes, I pressed this, that's what's happening, and it's like the Bible is saying, look at the world as it were with the cover off, because very often we don't explicitly see how God is at work, yet the Bible tells us he is.

If you could see it all, if you could see all the mechanics, would see God is at work quietly in a whole load of different ways and we need to help each other to spot this. We need to help each other, not in sort of not in an annoying way, sort of every single moment, every single thing that happens, but but nevertheless in gospel communities and in conversations that when things happen that are good or there are things that are at work in your lives, that people might say, have you spotted this is God at work in your life quietly providing for you that he is sovereignly in control? God works quietly. Second, God works surprisingly. It's surprising how God works in this chapter.

As we've said, he doesn't issue a command, he doesn't work through David in a in an obvious way where he tells David what to do, and there are no miracles, there's no plagues, there's no parting of any seas, there's no bringing someone back from the dead, there's how does God work? What does he use to get David where he wants him to be? And the answer is, well, he uses a whole load of things, but that includes the anger of the Philistine army commanders. That's what he uses. That when they see David and they use their reason and they think about history and think about the song, that they get angry and they say, he's not coming with us.

God is, you see, in control even of them and their emotions and so they say, send him back. Do you see, God is not limited in his sovereignty, in his control. He's not limited just even to God's people. I think sometimes we can think that, that it's only Christians, only God's people God is really in control of, really in command of, but there may be people of other nations, of other religions. Well, God's not in control of them, is he?

Well, in this chapter, we see he is. He's in control of all things. Dale Ralph Davis, his book on one Samuel, then tells a story. He says it's a Christian children's story. I've I've not heard it before, but he says it's a story of a Christian woman who is very poor, alone and out of food, and she's praying to her heavenly father and asking him to provide bread.

And somehow her neighbor who's an agnostic or an atheist, not a Christian, overhears her prayer and decides to play a trick on her. He goes and buys two loaves of bread and puts it on her doorstep. When the woman opens the door, discovers the loaves, she bursts into a prayer of praise thanking God for the bread and the neighbour tells her what had happened. He bought the bread, he put it there. It wasn't God who'd answered her prayers, it was him who put them there.

The lady says, oh yes, it was the Lord who answered my prayer even though he used the devil to do it. God's ways are surprising and Dale Ralph Davis then at that point in his book says, when we see how God is at work in surprising ways, through surprising means, we ought to praise God and worship him for it. He says, there ought to be times when you throw up your hands and say out loud that God's decisions are unsearchable and his ways beyond tracing out. God acts quietly, surprisingly, thirdly, mercifully. We see that in this chapter, don't we?

Throughout the chapter, God is working on David's behalf even though David himself has been utterly unfaithful. The mess he's in is all his own making. He's in with the army of the Philistines because he didn't trust God's promises. He used deception, he's used lies in chapter 27 and it's all a good reminder that as we have seen many times in one Samuel, every hero in the Bible, every one of them apart from Jesus is very flawed, is sinful, and this is the greatest king Israel ever had. And yet God doesn't leave David to wallow in his sin.

He doesn't say to him that's that's enough. He says his mercy and grace towards David are relentless, rescuing him from his own mess. And again, we need to be reminded of this because we're made of the same stuff as David. We too are sinners, we get ourselves in terrible messes, there are definitely times, there are times every week where we don't trust in God and in his faithfulness and we make a mess of things and we can get ourselves into positions where we think, how did it come to this? You wonder whether David thought that as he was marching out with the Philistine army, whether he was thinking to himself, how did it come to this that I'm marching out with these guys?

And yet, we can do the same. We can end up in situations where we think, how did we get here? Our faithlessness can end us up in all sorts of places and we can think even, I don't even know how I go from here to get back to being faithful to God. I don't know the route back. You know, the useless direction that sometimes people give, you stop someone, you wanted directions to somewhere and you say, how do you get there?

They say, well, if if I was going there, I wouldn't start here. You go, well, that that's nice. We can think that about ourselves. If we're gonna be faithful to God, well, I wouldn't start here. Wouldn't start where I am now, and I don't know how to get out of this to get back to God, maybe I'm beyond God's help, beyond God's sovereignty.

And yet we see here God acting mercifully to David, though he has been faithless. So don't think that you are too far gone to come back to God. And if you aren't a Christian today, don't think that you are too far away to come to God. No one is too far. Whatever your past has been, however bad you have been.

Oh, we need to remember from the previous chapter that, yeah, time ran out for Saul, but I want to suggest you it's not because Saul was particularly bad, that he was particularly stubborn and wouldn't come back and persistently disobeyed God. We need to hear that warning, but we do also need to hear of the mercy of God that however bad we've been, it is not too late yet to turn back to him. There will come a point where it'll be too late, but it is not yet. Turn back to him. Turn to him.

God acts quietly, surprisingly, mercifully, fourthly to achieve his plan. Now this is where we come to the slightly baffling verse, David's response. He's been given a reprieve, he's been told by Achish, you can go, you don't have to fight and yet he says, verse eight, but what have I done? Asked David, what have you found against your servant from the day I came to you until now? Why can't I go and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?

We think, David, shut up. Keep quiet. Take the wind. Just leave. What's going on?

Why is he insisting on fighting? Well, the problem is we don't actually have an explanation. Let me give you a few suggestions, few options. I wouldn't go with the first one. First one is maybe he genuinely wants to fight.

He genuinely wants to fight against Israel and with the Philistines. I don't think that's very likely. No commentator goes that way. After all, in chapter 27, we've seen that David has been using lies and deception with king Achish to make him think that David is really on board with the Philistines, but he's been lying. It seems pretty unlikely now that David, he he's actually on board with the Philistines saying, stuff the Israelites, I'm with you guys.

So that may be one option, I wouldn't go with it. Second, maybe he feels he shouldn't back down too quickly, if he goes, oh, yeah, good, right, we're off, that looks a bit suspicious, so he feels he's got to say, no, no, I really want to fight with you. No, let me fight, as he's packing his bags and going, except it doesn't tell us or maybe, this is an intriguing one, Woodhouse in his commentary suggests, maybe that David actually wants to do what the Philistine commanders are frightened he will do. He actually wants to go and fight so that he can turn on the Philistine on the Philistines and fight against them and win a wonderful victory for Israel. And Woodhouse says, maybe that's what's going on in the fact that, actually, the end of verse eight is a bit ambiguous when he says now, sorry, when he says, why can't I go and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?

Doesn't actually say who my lord the king is. It might be Saul, in which case he wants to fight against the Philistines, but he's doing it in a sort of ambiguous kind of way, Maybe, you take your choice there. But okay, even if, okay, even if that's the case, even if David actually has some kind of faithful motive there, where he's saying, yeah, I'll go and fight and I'll turn on the Philistines, and then we'll win some great victory for Israel, although we're not told that, there's doubt about that, but even if that is not God's plan. God's plan is not that. We know, but David doesn't that God's plan is for the battle to happen and for Israel to lose.

So look back at chapter 28 when Saul consults the medium, not a good thing to do, but he does. Verse 19 of chapter 28, the Lord will deliver both Israel and you into the hands of the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The lord will also give the army of Israel into the hands of the Philistines. So God's plan there actually is that Israel will lose and Saul and his sons will die, but as I say, doesn't know that. He's unaware of this plan and actually there's bit of a timescale thing going on here that actually chapter 29 is probably before chapter 28.

There you go, come back to me afterwards if you want a bit more about the timeline there, but David doesn't know that this is what's going to happen. Now just consider therefore, okay, if this is David's plan, he maybe thinks I've got a plan here that will glorify God, I'll go, I'll turn on the Philistine commanders, I will fight them, we'll win a great victory for Israel. That's maybe what he's thinking. As he walks away, Achish having said, nope, you're not coming with us, he might be thinking, but God, I had this great plan. I was gonna fight for you, I was gonna do all this.

What's going on? And you have to realize actually God's plan is different. It's actually the opposite of what David had thought that Israel was gonna lose, and that's a reminder for us again that actually the Bible says God achieves his plan. It's about his purposes and sometimes they are very different from our purposes. In fact, very often they're very different from our purposes and sometimes they can even be the opposite of what we think should happen and we might have great plans to think, well God, I think you will be glorified if I do this and I do that and I do the other, and God might go, actually my plan is the exact opposite, but God might not tell you that.

He might just say, you just gotta trust me. I think of them, maybe you know people in similar situations, a family who were going to go and be missionaries in Africa and they got all their plans together, a whole load of work went into it, good place for them to go to, good place for them to work, they go out and for one reason or another within a year they're back and as far as I'm aware it wasn't because there was anything sinful, anything wrong, anything bad, it wasn't necessarily bad planning, it just didn't work out. And at that point, we could think, God, what's going on? Are you really in control? And we need to remember and be humble before God's going, no, he is.

It's just that his plan may be very different from our plan, and we have to trust him. And that's not just in ministry things, though it can be in ministry things, church things, things that we think should glorify God yet just don't happen. Sometimes it's in our own lives, job applications that aren't successful or school applications that don't go the way we want or a house purchase that falls through and things where we go, what? But Lord, why? And we don't get a word from God in that way, we just need to see actually God is working his purposes out.

So God acts quietly, surprisingly, mercifully and to achieve his plan and lastly to glorify Jesus. Our question as we've gone through one Samuel and keeps needing to be our question when we're looking at the Bible is how does this passage point us to Jesus? Because we know the Bible says the climax of the Bible is Jesus, so how does every passage, how does it each bit, each section point us to Jesus? Sometimes it's more obvious, sometimes less obvious. Well, three times in this passage, Achish, the king of the Philistines, defends David.

He says, verse three, have a look, verse three, right at the end of verse three, I have found no fault in him. That's what he says to the commanders, what he's about David. I found no fault in him. Verse six and seven, as surely as the Lord lives, you have been reliable, and I would be pleased for you to serve with me in the army. From the day you came to me until today, I have found no fault in you, but the rulers don't approve of you.

And then verse nine, I know that you have been as pleasing in my eyes as an angel of God. Three times Achish is saying of David, I find no fault in him. I find no fault in you. Now, it has to be said Achish has been fooled. He's been deceived.

David has lied to him and therefore on the basis of all that Achish knows, he is saying, David, I think you've been faithful. I think you've been without fault. But in order to see that of David, you do kind of have to half close your eyes. I mean, there's a way in which David has sort of been innocent without fault in the sense that he has not actually turned against Israel or fought against king Saul, but you kinda gotta half close your eyes to see that David is without fault. But do you see how there's a little echo here, a little echo beforehand, I don't know what that is, but a foreshadowing of an event in Jesus' life when Jesus is on trial that Pilate, who is also not an Israelite, says of Jesus that he is innocent.

And in two of the gospels, three times, Pilate says, he is without fault or he says, I find no basis for a charge against him. And with Jesus who is the great one greater than David, there is no need to half close your eyes. He really was innocent with no fault. And just as Achish caved into the pressure from others, so Pilate caved into the pressure from others. For David, it led to him having to leave.

For Jesus, it led to him having to go to the cross, to his death. David is on the cusp of getting the kingdom. Jesus went to the kingdom through the cross, and it was essential that Jesus be without fault, that he be innocent, a lamb without a blemish. He be spotless, innocent. Just a death for us would not be enough.

It could not merely be another person's death to deal with your or my sin, our wrongdoing. No. Jesus' sacrifice, he had to be faultless, genuinely one without fault so that he could stand in our place and take our guilt upon himself because he needed to be guiltless to take our guilt. And so one Samuel 29 does foreshadow Jesus, not so much in David but actually it's the words of Achish, words that he wouldn't have known were that significant, words that David wouldn't have known were that significant yet we see here is God's big purpose, that even in this chapter, even in one Samuel 29, there is a foreshadowing of Jesus and it points us through to him. And God's good and wonderful purpose here is actually to glorify Jesus, and that's the purpose he has for our lives too.

There's no better outcome for our lives than that Jesus be glorified. Maybe we like to think in becoming a Christian that God might come onto our plan and glorify us through our plans and purposes, that his great project would be to put us at the centre of all things and work for our, for what we want when actually the greater good is that we actually glorify Jesus. Well, hope one that Samuel 29 has helped you marvel more at the sovereignty of God and of his control in all circumstances and in all things, that we have seen that God acts quietly, surprisingly, mercifully to achieve his plan and to glorify Jesus. Let me end with that Alec Mateer quote again. I think it's a great encouragement for us and I hope it will be a comfort to you.

Never be afraid to exalt the sovereignty of God to the nth degree and beyond. It's the pillow on which we can lay our heads. We are only safe in this world because it's his world. Let me pray for us. Heavenly father, we praise you that this is your world, that you are sovereign over it in everything.

Please, would you help us to delight in this truth, to find it as a great comfort that you are in control. Father, bring those who maybe have not yet put their trust in you to put their trust in your sovereignty, your control of all things, and comfort us and strengthen us, father, where we are tempted to doubt or disbelieve this truth. Amen.