Samuel No.15 Arrows that speak

Now, would you take your Bibles, please, and turn to 1 Samuel, chapter 20. We're continuing our studies in this book, and you'll remember that last week our pastor was speaking to us from chapter 18. We were reminded of that David, in the service of God, had been used in a very great way, in a way which was greater than that which Saul had been used.

And this led to jealousy. And in chapter 19, we read of how Saul's jealousy led him to attempt the murder of David. And David is able to escape from Jerusalem, and yet the close relationship with Jonathan was not broken.

And it's that in mind that we have this morning in chapter 20, this very real bond that God established between these two men. And at great personal cost, David is warned by Jonathan to beware of the plans of his father Saul. So we take up the story, chapter 20 and verse 16.

So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, May the Lord call David's enemies to account. And Jonathan made David reaffirm his oath out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself. Then Jonathan said to David, Tomorrow is the new moon festival.

You will be missed because your seat will be empty. The day after tomorrow, towards evening, go to the place where you hid when this trouble began, and wait by the stone Ezel. I will shoot three arrows to the side of it, as though I were shooting at a target.

Then I will send a boy and say, Go find the arrows. If I say to him, Look, the arrows are on this side of you. Bring them here.

Then come, because as surely as the Lord lives, you are safe and there is no danger. But if I say to the boy, Look, the arrows are beyond you. Then you must go, because the Lord has sent you away.

And about the matter you and I discussed, remember the Lord is witness between you and me forever. So David hid in the field, and when the new moon festival came, the king sat down to eat. He sat in his customary place by the wall.

Jonathan sat opposite him, and Abner sat next to Saul. But David's place was empty. Saul said nothing that day, for he thought, Something must have happened to David to make him ceremonially unclean.

Yes, surely he's unclean. But the next day, the second day of the month, David's place was empty again. Then Saul said to his son Jonathan, Why hasn't the son of Jesse come to the meal either yesterday or today? Jonathan answered, David earnestly asked me for permission to go to Bethlehem.

He said, Let me go, because our family is observing a sacrifice in the town, and my brother has ordered me to be there. If I've found favor in your eyes, let me go to see my brothers. And that is why he's not come to the king's table.

Saul's anger flared up at Jonathan, and he said to him, You son of a perverse and rebellious woman, don't I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of the mother who bore you? As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now send and bring him to me, for he must die. Why should he be put to death? What has he done? Jonathan asked his father.

But Saul hurled his spear at him to kill him. Then Jonathan knew that his father intended to kill David. Jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger.

That second day of the month, he did not eat, because he was grieved at his father's shameful treatment of David. In the morning, Jonathan went out to the field for his meeting with David. He had a small boy with him, and he said to the boy, Run and find the arrows I shoot.

As the boy ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. When the boy came to the place where Jonathan's arrow had fallen, Jonathan called out after him, Isn't the arrow beyond you? Then he shouted, Hurry! Go quickly! Don't stop! The boy picked up the arrow and returned to his master. The boy knew nothing of all this.

Only Jonathan and David knew. Then Jonathan gave his weapons to the boy and said, Go, carry them back to town. After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times with his face to the ground.

Then they kissed each other and wept together. But David wept the most. Jonathan said to David, Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, saying, The Lord is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever.

Then David left, and Jonathan went back to the town. Love is patient. Love is kind.

It does not envy. It does not boast. Yes, love is patient.

Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast.

It is not proud. It is not rude. Neither is selfish or easily provoked.

It keeps no record of wrongs. It keeps no record of wrongs. And does not delight in evil.

But rejoices, rejoices, it always rejoices, rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.

Love never ends. For love is of God, and God is love. Love is patient.

Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast.

Yes, love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy.

It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude.

Neither is selfish or easily provoked. It keeps no record of wrongs. It keeps no record of wrongs.

And does not delight in evil. But rejoices, rejoices, it always rejoices, rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.

Love never fails. Love never ends. For love is of God, and God is love.

Love never fails. Love never ends. For love is of God, and God is love.

Let's come before the Lord again as we turn to his inspired word, as we discover it in the 20th chapter of the first book of Samuel. We've been making our way through this particular historical book for some while now at the tab, not galloping along, but on the other hand not progressing too slowly. And I've omitted the 19th chapter and brought you into the 20th chapter, not because there wasn't much to share in the 19th, but because you'll see that the contexts merge as you discover the nature of the problem in which David finds himself.

Now the burden that's on my heart this morning as you're flicking your way through your Bibles and getting to that 20th chapter, it's most important that you check up what I have to say, because my commentary is not of great value, but what is of value is the authoritative word of the Lord. What I have in mind this morning is to speak to folks who perhaps in their Christian life are finding the bundle of circumstances that have recently developed very difficult to undertake, very difficult to come through. It might well be that you're wondering where in the name of sanity is God in your life? Why has He allowed to happen the various things that have befallen you during these recent days or weeks? That's the problem, if you like, that I think is presented to us very, very clearly in this 20th chapter of the book, the first book of Samuel.

You remember it's the prophet, or rather it's the psalmist, Asaph, who says in Psalm 77 and verse 9, when he speaks of God's peculiar dealings with him, has God forgotten to be gracious? That's the authorized version. Has God forgotten to be gracious? And there are times in our lives, and certainly that devolve from the experience of the great men and women of Old Testament days, when it seems that one can bring in no other conclusion than that one, that the Lord somehow or other, completely out of character with him, has forgotten the mercy that is part of his personality and usually part of his dealings with us. Now here is David, and he is confronted with a very difficult, a very serious situation.

You see, you read of him in the beginning of this chapter with his friend Jonathan. Now Jonathan and David give an illustration of friendship which is at its best. Thank God I never cease to do this, and I mean it very, very sincerely, for the friendship that I have with my brothers who helped to pastor this church.

If one was to ask me the strength of the tabernacle, I think amongst other things, very high on my list, would be the way our eldership relate to each other, the confidence that there is. Thank God for the depths of friendship that are possible amongst Christian men and Christian women. And here is David with Jonathan, his best, his dearest friend, of whom he was to say in an epitaph when Jonathan died, his love to me was wonderful, far surpassing the love of a woman.

And it's an incredible thing, really, that Jonathan and David should ever be mates, should ever be pals. You see, Jonathan, at the human level, is destined to be the future monarch of Israel. It's his right by succession.

But David, in the purposes of God, he is going to be the one who shall displace Saul and become the second of Israel's kings and its greatest. It's his right by ordination. And one might feel that, therefore, there will be static between these two, Jonathan and David, a rivalry, a jealousy.

But to the contrary, we discover that the two are one, their hearts are knit together in one of the most amazing, purest of relationships. But, you see, that friendship that David and Jonathan has, or have, is bedeviled by Saul, the murderous, treacherous father of Jonathan, who has towards David very evil intent. And so you discover at the beginning of this chapter, David and Jonathan coming together, and David telling Jonathan something of his worries and his concerns, and so they make a pledge.

Jonathan will go back to his father's court because his father will not keep anything from his heart. And if Jonathan discovers that Saul is still murderous in his intentions towards David, then he'll let his bosom pal know. And he'll do so by coming to the spot where David is hidden.

And as a result of sending some arrows to a target and deliberately overshooting or undershooting, David will know whether it's safe for him to return back to the court of Saul. So Jonathan goes to his father, and he spends two days there. And Saul is aware of the fact that David should be present but is not, and he confronts Jonathan with David's absence.

And in the outcome of their conversation, Saul appreciating the love of Jonathan for David but despising it, picks that familiar javelin up with which he would have skewered the life out of David, and he darts it towards his son. And Jonathan appreciates that never again can David with safety be in the presence of his father. So he goes back to the spot where the original conversation was held, as recorded earlier on in the chapter.

He's got a little boy with him. And Jonathan takes his bow and he takes his arrow, and he sends three arrows out into the distance, and he deliberately overshoots. And the little lad is sent to look for the arrows, and as he starts searching, so Jonathan's voice comes through to the boy to tell him that the arrows are beyond.

He has to go further. And then the little lad, having found the arrows, brings them back to his master, is given the bow and is told to leave for home, Jonathan remaining by the spot where David has been hiding. Now that's the scenery.

And the important thing for you to do at this very moment is to concentrate on those arrows. You see, these arrows speak. They spoke to David, and he didn't like what they had to say.

They speak to you. And the message may be no more palatable in your hearing than it was in the hearing of the son of Jesse centuries ago. And that may result in your utter perplexity as to why God has allowed certain things to happen in your life.

Of what do the arrows speak? Well, they speak of a man who is afraid, a man who is afraid of the future. You see, David has been hidden in this particular place, waiting for those arrows to be shot and hoping that he would never hear the voice of Jonathan telling his young helper, the arrows are beyond. Because if the arrows are beyond the target that Jonathan ostensibly was aiming at, it meant that David would have to go beyond.

He would go far distant from the company of Jonathan, far removed from the court of Saul, much displaced from the place which had been home for David for many a long year. Bethlehem, with all its attractions and all the memories that it had for David of his earlier, happier, youthful days, would be impossible for David ever to draw near to. And so you see this man, crouched, hiding, invisible as far as the young lad is concerned, but seen by God and known by Jonathan to be in the vicinity.

And David waits with bated breath for the whoosh, the whoosh, the sound of the arrow as it flies by. Will Jonathan put unusual strength behind the bow and cause the arrow to go into the distant? Or will the arrow fall short? You see, the destiny of a man is being conditioned by the flight of those arrows. As many an occasion in your life, your destiny is being controlled by ordinary incidents at the human level that become extraordinary and of great significance as your life develops.

Of what do these arrows speak? I put it to you. Listen to me carefully here. I say this with measured breath.

The word I bring, I bring to you in the name of God, from the Lord. The arrows of which I speak, they indicate that life is not capricious. You say, what do you mean? I mean by this, that life does not develop by chance.

The arrows do not fall from the bow. There is direction. There is purpose.

There is meaning. Sometimes, you see, accidental things occur as seem to appear. Take this little boy.

He's Jonathan's young chum. Prince Jonty, perhaps that's what he called him. Maybe he was his uncle, and his uncle had contacted him.

Many of the time, he'd done this because Jonathan was that sort of man. He loved lads, and lads loved him. And often, this boy had been in the area, and they played, well, a familiar game, bow and arrows.

And the lad liked to scrummage around that area, looking for the arrows that Prince Jonty shot. Sometimes, they'd hit a tree. Sometimes, they'd fall into the grass.

Occasionally, they would be in the marsh. It was a great afternoon sport to get those arrows back for Prince Jonty. Such is the innocence of youth, that life is just sometimes a bundle of surprises, a bundle of unexpected incidents.

It's so capricious. It's so chancy. And that's what makes our childhood so very wonderful, as we, with more mature years, look back upon it.

You see, that's how the lad sees the situation. But there's a man, don't you see him, hiding away, for whom this is a very significant day, perhaps the most significant day in the whole of his life, certainly since he fell the giant Goliath. The boy doesn't see it.

But Jonathan, the man who's got his hand upon the bow, he knows, and David knows, that the flight of the arrows, whether they go beyond or fall short, will determine David's future, and will also determine the measure of the intimacy of the relationship between the one who shoots the arrow and the one who, with eagle eye, watches the arrow in flight. I see David. I see him very really.

I think I can empathize with David as he watches as to what is about to happen. And when the arrow goes into the distance, David realizes that the arrow speaking of his life, everything that was precious to him before, the love of Michael, his wife, the home where he lived in Bethlehem, being able to take down his harp and play the latest scriptural song, which was really going around Jerusalem, or really going around Israel at that time, being able to lead men in worship, one of the most exquisite actions on the face of God's earth, all this would be removed from David if the arrow goes into the distance. And he sees it.

And he doesn't want it. What man wants to be plucked from the life, from the wife that he loves, from the home that's precious, from the safety and the security of being in the courts of Saul with all the authority and the influence that that will bring? But this is David's problem, you see. That's why I say, with bated breath, he watches the flight of the arrow.

He's concerned because he realizes that his future is in the balance. No wonder he groans in his spirit. The arrow goes to the beyond.

And that's where David will go. Into the scrubland, where men have to grasp a living from the soil, and it's hard, where only the vagabonds really exist with any degree of wanting to be there. The cave of Adullam, the scorched earth, where water is scarce, where the possibility of going to the wells of Bethlehem and drinking that cool liquid that is there in such profusion, all this David is going to miss as he moves out towards the beyond.

Those arrows, they speak of a future that for David is utterly unacceptable. You never heard? The arrow go by? Have you never wished that God would drop the arrow a little short of the mark? So that the developments in your life might freeze at that point? So there would be no further change? So that all that you had come to recognize as your security remained intact? You can hardly be a follower of God. And at times, not reproduce the experience of David in your life? You see, at the moment it's not so much David that I visualize, but David's greater son.

Here he is, perhaps not so far distant from where David was actually hiding centuries ago. It's night, and he's in an olive grove, and there's just the silvery light of the moon that allows his body to stand out in silhouetted form. And if you dare draw near, you'll hear Jesus praying.

He's got his vision upon the future. And from his lips, there's an agony prayer that's traceable to the psychology of the Christ who stretched a breaking point at this particular moment in his experience. The word that describes the temperament of Jesus at this stage in the original Greek is the word that you would use for pulling a violin string as taut as you possibly can without snapping it over the bridge.

That's Jesus, as in the garden with the olive groves, as the silent spectators. He prays, Father, let this cup pass from me. The arrows, let them fall short.

Not into the distant, Lord. Not into the beyond. Not there, Lord, because that means estrangement.

That means the wilderness. That means the outlaw existence. That means that the scapegoat will have to be illustrated and come to fulfillment in my life.

Anything, Lord, but not the arrows beyond. If it be possible. Let this cup pass from me.

But it wasn't possible. The arrow came. The velocity was more than was required for it to reach the mark.

It went beyond. And a greater than David recoiled at the thought of the developing purposes of Almighty God, which at the human level were utterly unacceptable. Now I bring it back to you, my friend.

You see, my purpose as a pastor is not a mere excursion into history, be it Old Testament or New Testament. My concern is to gather you into my bosom and to try to show you as an individual, not as five or six hundred people, how it can be that God can allow the most perplexing of circumstances to develop in your life and yet for He not to be construed as being capricious in what He allows to develop. You see, I need to talk about the arrows and you.

Not just the arrows and David. Not just the arrows and Jesus. But the arrows and us.

I repeat what I've said earlier. There's never been a man of God, a woman of God, who hasn't heard the noise of the arrows go by at some time. I think of William Carey.

Sometimes when I read of Carey, I just want to weep for that man. Weep for all that he achieved and I haven't achieved. All that he endured and I've never endured.

Weep for the man who made his home some 50, 60, 70 miles north of Calcutta. Who saw his wife's sickness develop into a melancholia, into madness. Saw the work of the decades go up in smoke as the manuscripts on which he had translated the Gospels into the Hindi script were suddenly set alight by a fire which blazed in his crude printing works.

And I think of how Carey reacted to the arrows going beyond. Making his life increasingly difficult and more difficult. And yet the way that he was able to take his pen and in the late hour of an Indian night he was able to say, nonetheless the Lord is with me.

I believe that the arrows are being shot by God himself for his eternal purpose. And I think of the strongest church that exists now in Burma. And parts of north India, Nagaland, where the work of Carey lives on.

And I begin to realize that if Carey had not yielded to the purposes of God and reacted to the arrows going beyond, then a great chunk of north India and Bangladesh and Burma would never have responded to the Gospel of Christ. Carey never lived to see it, but I've seen it. And I know what Carey perhaps didn't know.

Why the arrows went beyond. And maybe for some of you, life was so much easier, wasn't it? There you were in London in your forties, in your fifties, before you retired and came down to the south coast. You're in a large church fellowship.

You had a good wife, a good husband. All was well with you. Your health, it was relatively strong.

It was so easy in those days. But then, and you almost damned the day, the arrows went beyond. And you didn't want to leave what was there.

The security of the court, so to speak. The friendships of those who had woven their emotions around you so that your life seemed to be utterly dependent upon them. The arrows came.

And you reacted badly to the fact that God was moving you on and stripping off from you certain things that you were not to have in terms of blessings anymore. And how did you cope? How are you coping? Younger person, I could cast this into your teenage days as they are now or into your early twenties. So you were successful at one point, but then the examination came that was crucial and you muffed it.

And you asked God why. Why did you allow this to happen to me? Or maybe there you were in a happy family circle and then mother and father collapsed in terms of their marital relationship and what was a pleasant family home became a nightmare. And you ask yourself, Lord God, in your grace, in your mercy, why did you allow the arrows to hit me? You see, they come.

The archer does not stop at the 70-odd-year-old as opposed to the 17-year-old. We are called, as David was, to respond to the developing purposes of God in our life even though at times those purposes are unpalatable. I have little time for the preacher who will come and tell you that the Christian life is such an easy life that all you need to do is to sit back and enjoy health, wealth, and happiness.

That's not the path that the man that we saw in the moonlit Gethsemane garden trod. And he said that the way that he went was the way that his followers would also go. And there would be times when the arrows would be shot beyond and you would have as great a difficulty as he had in being able to accept that within the distance, for you, would be the purposes of God.

So now it just remains for me to gather my message together. And I want to do so by a final application, by taking you back to the heart of this story in the 19th and 20th chapter. You see, there were two men who used weapons at this time in the experience of David.

Not so. There's Saul. Twice he's taken his javelin and he's endeavored to spear David, to crush the very life out of David, but he missed.

And he also did it once with Jonathan. The second person who takes a weapon is Jonathan himself. He is the archer.

Now here is the problem, my friend. Think it through and you can understand why when this hit me in the early hours of this morning, it sent me to my knees in prayer before Almighty God, asking Him to forgive me for the many times when I have confused the javelin for the arrow. The hand of God for the hand of Saul.

It's easy to do this, you see, but the difference between Saul and Jonathan is as great as that between the south and the north pole. Saul has in mind the destruction of David, thus the javelin. God has in mind the direction of David, thus the arrow.

The one and the other, you see, they're utterly contradictory in their objectives, but the possibility is, my friend, that you can take the wish or whoosh of the arrow as it goes by your ear and consider it to be always from the hand of Saul when actually it's from the hand of Jonathan which is steered and guided by the hand of God because God will send His arrows into your life not for you to incite fear but rather for you to engage gear and move on into the unpromising wilderness, into the nightmarish future and out there amongst the unknowns where only your faith in God will keep you going. The possibility is that your impact upon your contemporaries will be far greater than it ever has been previously in your life. The moments I speak with reverence and with holy fear lest I blaspheme the Christ for whom I give my life, the moments that counted more than any other in the life of our blessed Redeemer were when the arrows went beyond and He stepped out of Gethsemane and came back to Jerusalem and ultimately was surrendered to the death, the hideous death of crucifixion on that skull-shaped cross.

Without that, all He had ever done, all that He had ever achieved would have been as lasting as water is under the heat of the Palestinian sun at noon. It would have evaporated. But He went on towards where the arrows were pointing into the future on His own as it was with the greater than David so it was with the lesser.

Out there in the wilderness, in the caves of Adullam, the men, they came from all over. David was able to make this bunch of vagabonds into one of the mightiest armies that Israel has ever known. There in the wilderness, the theological revelations that David had of God in Bethlehem were even taken into a deeper perspective so that he understood more and more of God.

There in the wilderness, David was stripped of everything that he had relied upon previously until it was just God and himself. There's no Jonathan there, David. And that's the rub.

When you love your Jonathans, when you love your people and you're taken away from them, then it's you and God. And don't you see, my beloved brother and sister, that's the essence of the Christian faith. If I can't exist out there in the beyond, then all that I'm doing here is merely play-acting.

For the present is always preparatory to the future. And God is saying to David, go beyond. There's no Jonathan.

There's no Jesse. There's no Saul. There are no Perks.

There's no grass. There's no cool water. But one thing you can be sure of, David, there's me.

And David, who's a passionate man, like every poet is passionate. David, who's a feelingful man, like every musician is feelingful. He embraces Jonathan.

And of the two, he weeps the most. For this side of glory he'll never see his friend again. But he'll never forget him.

Until the day comes when he waxes eloquent again in the psalm. And he praises God for the love of a man which surpassed that of any woman. David went into the beyond where the arrows were pointing, about which the arrows were speaking.

And ultimately, in the glory, he praised God that he ever heard and responded to the message of the arrows. As it was for David. And great David's greater son may it be for you, for me.

Let's pray. Father, I have no words. So listen in the silence to the words of my brothers and sisters.

And help us to respond to the voice of the arrows. Amen. Let's sing together number 42.

God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform He loads his horses in the sea and rides upon the storm He bid unfathomable He treasures his sovereign will and shall reign Amen. Now Father as we prepare for the holy act of taking bread and wine grant that we may sense the presence of our Saviour as we come before the table and those who legitimately can and must go be with them and bless them and help them in the weeks and months to come.

And Father we just carve out a moment for another prayer. Bless our activities this afternoon. Lord will you kiss them with your presence we ask and may something be achieved that shall transform some lives this day and move them into the kingdom of our Christ and of our God forever.

Hear us then and thank you for our time around your word. Amen.