Samuel No.17 Adullam - Cave of Refuge

I cry aloud to the Lord. I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out my complaint before him.

Before him I tell my trouble. When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who know my way. In the path where I walk, men have hidden a snare for me.

Look to my right and see. No one is concerned for me. I have no refuge.

No one cares for my life. I cry to you, O Lord. I say, you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.

Listen to my cry, for I am in desperate need. Rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me. Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name.

Then the righteous will gather about me, because of your goodness to me." Now let's come back to the first book of Samuel and to the twenty-first chapter. I take up the reading from the tenth verse. 1 Samuel 21, verse 10.

That day David fled from Saul and went to Achish king of Gath. But the servant of Achish said to him, Isn't this David, the king of the land? Isn't he the one they sing about in their dances? Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands. David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath.

So he feigned insanity in their presence. And while he was in their hands, he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard. Achish said to his servants, Look at the man.

He's insane. Why bring him to me? Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house? David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and his father's household heard about it, they went down to him there.

All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered round him and he became their leader. About 400 men were with him. And now another fascinating verse, tucked away at the end of Hebrews, the last chapter, Hebrews 13, 13.

Let us then go to him, the Lord Jesus. Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

I was reading an old preacher late last week and he said this, There is a cave of Adullam in the life of every man. There is a cave of Adullam in the life of every man. I would want to revise that and say there should be a cave of Adullam in the life of every Christian person.

Now it may well be that you're there or it may well be that you're just about to get there or it may well be that you've been there and you need to go back. But one of the things I say to you from the Lord this morning is that every Christian person ought to frequent the cave of Adullam. Now obviously I'm not speaking geographically.

Just to follow that line through, the cave itself is somewhere near Bethlehem. There are lots of hills, lots of caves. Sometimes the caves you reach them by many, many small narrow passages.

It's a place is Jerusalem or is Bethlehem and it's hills for hideouts, perfect country for outlaws. And there David, who is to be King of Israel, finds himself sort of secreted away for quite some time. Now there is an affinity between David and the Lord Jesus.

That's why on occasions we refer to the Savior as Great David's greatest son. And although the original King David left a great deal to be desired in terms of his personality, for he was a sinful man, there were certain aspects about David which bespeak Great David's greater son, our Lord Jesus. And incredibly there are some experiences that David has that seem to anticipate the journey of Christ through this world.

More of that in a moment. But let me disclose this fact, which is probably not known to you. I have it on the strength of a Hebrew concordance.

The word adulam means rest. And the cave to which David goes is known therefore as the cave of rest. And I remember Great David's greatest son one day saying, Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

And on occasions with a handful of mediocre men selected as his followers, he tells them because they're spinning around like uncontrollable tops to stop for a moment, to come aside with him and to discover rest for their soul, for their personality. The cave of adulam is a cave to which you and I must go. But let me fit in the context a little bit.

You see, here is David and he's had great problems in working through what is the will of God in his life. Some of you who have been plugged into these series of addresses from Samuel during these past few weeks and months will well recall that David has been given indication by God that he has to leave the country that he knows well, the countryside which encloses Bethlehem and all the environs where he was brought up as a lad. He is to move away from society.

And the reason being that King Saul, who is on the throne, hates David and sees David as being an alternative to him, a threat to his power. Now David has a friendship with Saul's son Jonathan and on one occasion, told so graphically in the preceding chapters, Jonathan is used by God to indicate to David through the message of arrows which went far beyond where David was expecting them to land, that David is to move away from Saul, from the palace, from all that he's ever known, all the securities of his past life. It's necessary for this man of faith who is to be caught up in the purposes of God.

And one of the things that you and I, my dear brother and sister, oftentimes find so difficult is to surrender ourselves entirely to those purposes. That's why I blushed when someone asked that we sing Francis Wrigley Havergill's famous hymn last Wednesday. Take my silver and my gold, take my intellect and use, take my powers and so on and so forth.

The whole life spread out before the Lord and the request is to take it. And most of us are putting a break on every verse as we sing it. That's why you rarely have it selected by me.

Not because I don't agree with it, but because I'm afraid of making congregations into hypocrites. Here is David, you see, and he needs to go to Adullam. He needs to leave the place of security, but he argues against the will of God.

And I see not so much David, I see myself, don't you? David the arrows. They say, Adullam, oh no Lord, settle for Nab. Settle for that little sanctuary where there are 86 priests and let me go there and have some time with them.

And as a result of David going out of the will of God, 85 of those men ultimately will die as David lies to them as to the reason why he is there at Nab, you remember? You see, we put up great obstacles in getting to Adullam. The Lord wants us in the cave. He needs us to come aside and to rest with him, but sometimes we believe that our understanding of what we ought to be doing is far superior to that of the Lord.

Won't you settle for Nab? Won't you settle for the priestly sanctuary? No, David, he won't settle because God is the one who is absolutely sovereign, who should have every control over your life. I don't know whether the Hebrews had the expression from the frying pan into the fire. If they didn't, nonetheless David could have used it as descriptive of what happened to him next in such a mess with the priests.

He leaves and he sets off, you remember, can you believe it, David who has felled the giant Goliath, he sets off to Philistia and there he asks the king of Philistia if he can have sanctuary. King Achish, you can read all about it in the last verses of the twenty-first chapter. And ultimately David realizes that he has got himself into a worse mess than he was in a few days ago.

And so this mighty man of Israel feigns madness and spittle oozes out of the side of his mouth and onto his beard so that Achish, who according to legend had a wife who was mentally deranged and also a family who suffered from the same sort of problem, thought he got enough madmen around, thank you very much, let's send this Jew back to where he belongs. And we are told, verse 18, David fled from Saul and later on, verse 13, so he feigned insanity and then the first verse of the twenty-second chapter, David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. See how difficult it was for God to get him there.

How difficult it may be, my friend, for God to get you to the place where he wants you to be in your life. You see, there is the permissive will of God, God has not reduced us to being robots. We're not puppets on a string.

He has all sovereignty, he has all power, but there is room for human initiative, there is room for you to rebel against the Lord and say with Jonah, I will not go to Nineveh, I'll settle for Joppa, I'm getting a ticket out of your will. Or to do a Peta. I always grimace and then smile at Peta.

Here he is, this remarkable man who has divine insight, well given by God as to the nature of Jesus. Who do men say that I am? But Peta, who do you say? Lord, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. That's right, Peta.

And then Jesus goes on, after there's the disclosure from the lips of the fishermen as to who Jesus is. The Son of God, omnipotent and sovereign. Jesus, the Lord, goes on to tell Peta about the cross and all that is in front of him.

And Peta says, not so, Lord, not so. You see, you really need helping out a little bit. You know, you have my intelligence to place alongside your infinite intelligence just to guide you properly.

It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic, wouldn't it? Not so, Lord. How many times, my dear brother and sister, have you missed going to Adullam, the cave of Adullam? Because you have argued with the Lord and made it difficult. You've had your not so.

Ultimately he'll get you there. But how much more wonderful it would be if you would cooperate with the leadings of God when first he puts the impulse into your life. So David finds himself at the cave of Adullam.

Adullam, indicating, as I have mentioned to you, the place of rest. And what happens when that man gets there? It's important we ask and we answer the question, you see, because the experiences that David has at Adullam can be and will be reproduced in your life. There is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God, a place where sin cannot molest, dear to the heart of God.

Oh, Jesus, blessed Redeemer, sent from the heart of God, help us who draw before you, dear to the heart of God. You see, in that subterranean vault, hidden from anyone, but not hidden from the Lord, in the bowels of the hill around Bethlehem, David finds a fresh experience of the Lord. So that there are songs or psalms that David composes which rise to an understanding of God and His nature far more than all the other psalms do.

He prays at Adullam. There he's on his own, at least to start with, and he rediscovers something of the freshness and the vigor that he had when he was a shepherd boy out on those hills. And so he starts to write the psalms.

The 142nd, those of you who are taking notes, the 34th, the 56th, they all come from that time when David is in the cave. Let's go to the 142nd psalm just for a moment or two, and then back to the others that I quoted. Here is David, probably this was the first of the psalms that he penned during this experience when he's back at Adullam.

And in the final verse he says, set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name. You know, the amazing thing about caves sometimes can be the echo that there is as a person starts to sing or to clap. When I was a lad, I was often visiting the potholing caves in North Derbyshire, and sometimes with my brother as we were in the bowels of those hills, we'd shout to one another, and you could hear the echo and echo and echo and echo.

And so here's David, and he's singing about the delivery that he's had, and that he's still wanting from his circumstances, set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name. Let's go back to the 34th psalm, because here he's working through even more the blessings that are now his, that he hasn't experienced for a long time. I will extol the Lord at all times.

His praise will always be on my lips. No longer the spittle feigning madness that causes Achish to expel him from Gath, but the fruit of the lips is now giving to the Lord the worship that's due to his name, as David is ensconced at Adullam. And then later on in the psalm, the third verse, glorify the Lord with me.

Let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord, and he answered me. He delivered me from all my fears.

And then telling us even more that at Adullam, he knows a dynamic encounter with the Lord. He says those who look to him are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame.

And the seventh verse, the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them. David has re-found confidence in God. You see, he who felled Goliath has known what it is to be afraid of Saul, and of the murderous intentions of Saul upon his life.

David, who is emotional more than most because he's a poet, not only knows great bouts of courage, but also at the corresponding other end, great experiences of fear. But now his fears have gone. Why? Because he realizes that the angel of the Lord are encamped around those who fear him.

Now when you've had an experience of God's grace, of God rescuing you in your circumstances, you want to tell others, don't you? So the eleventh verse, come, come my children. Listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

Here is David the tutor. Here is David the chorister. Here is David the conductor, bringing together all who will listen to him as he rehearses what God has done for him and preserved him, even from his folly of endeavoring to disobey the known will of the Lord.

And so he tells us even further in the eighteenth verse, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. And go on, if you please, to the fifty-sixth chapter, to the fifty-sixth psalm, the third psalm of the caves. And there, right at the end, or rather at the beginning of the psalm, in the third verse, you discover him saying, when I am afraid, I will trust in you, in God whose words I praise, in God I trust.

I will not be afraid what mortal man can do to me. He's lost his fear of man. He's under his vows.

Once again, verse twelve, I'm under your vows to you, O God. I will present my thank offering to you, for you have delivered my soul from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life. It's good, my friends, that we hear the echo of the songs of the caves as we turn to this particular experience of David.

And yet, as I tried to tell you earlier, there's a more important man who will speak to you from the cave, not just David, but our Lord Jesus Christ, who will say, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your soul. Where do you discover the rest that you need? At Adullam, where you and God alone can work through some of the precious promises that he's already made plain to you.

My peace, says Jesus, I give unto you, not as the world gives, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you to hear the voice. It's the echo from the cave.

You'll never find another echo with a voice like that. However far you go in the world, the man of the cave, the man with the song, the one who sings out a prophetic chant for all 20th century people to tune into and listen, do you hear? Do you come to him? Great David's greatest son, never known to have plucked a harp, but to give you and me cause to praise him on every instrument that there is for his goodness and for his grace. And so you see the significance of the writer of the Hebrews when he says, let us go outside the camp to him.

Let's go to the Lord Jesus. Because you see, in this sense, David typifies the Savior. David has been expelled, not just from Gath, more importantly, he's been expelled from the courts of Saul, from the palace, from all that he has ever known before.

He's out in the beyond, and that's where Jesus lived his life. Don't you know he's a man of the wilderness? Jesus was not a townsman. Read the gospel of Mark carefully.

Whenever he has private moments, he's back in the wilderness, he's towards the caves, because there is that within the town that repels him. And out there in the wilderness, amongst God's nature, he'll tune in with the Father, he'll get his bearings, and he can have his sorties once again into the towns. With the message of the cave ringing from his lips, Jesus our Lord was a wilderness man.

They didn't want him in the cities. They didn't want him in the towns. You see, here again we see not only David, we see the Savior even in this passage.

Who is the King of Israel? You say it's Saul? No. No, Saul has forfeited his rights to be king. He's nominally king.

He's visibly king as far as the uninitiated are concerned, but you and I, we're in on the secret. Samuel has come. The horn has been filled with oil.

David has knelt at Bethlehem, the seventh, the youngest son of Jesse. He has known the anointing. Samuel knows.

Jesse knows. It seems as though the brothers know, and increasingly it's the most public secret in the whole of Israel. David is destined to be king in the sight of God.

He's already king. Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him. The wise men were never more cute than when they so approached Herod and indicated the reason for their journey across so many hundreds of miles.

The king of the Jews, where is he? Herod is the king of the Jews. Caesar Augustus rules supreme in the world, but those who are in on the secret know that in manger, hidden away as David is hidden away in the cave, is a baby who is ordained by God to be the king of the Jews and indeed the king of the world. But when the baby becomes a man and engages in a short but remarkable ministry that span only 36 months, by and large, they don't want to know.

The Jewish theologians, the influential leaders, they have no king but Caesar. But there are those who follow King Jesus, not the great of the land, not those who feature in who's who, but rather the sort of people to whom Paul makes reference when he tells us that God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the things that are mighty. Not many of you are wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth.

He chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. You say, but what's that to do with David? Well, don't you see, my friend, it's everything to do with David. Here he is at the place of rest, at Adullam.

And who comes to David? You see, Israel has been tested as to its loyalty and its love to David. Check the 18th chapter, the first verse, Jonathan loves David and is as one with David. Go to the 18th verse, but all Israel and Judah loved David because he had led them in their campaigns.

All right, here's David on his own, ostracized by Saul, excommunicated from the palace, away there where the arrows have landed at Adullam. Now who is on David's side? Who does he call to himself? Who is attracted to follow David to go to Adullam? When his brothers and his father's household heard about it, they went down to him there. All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him and he became their leader.

Isn't it choice? The distressed people, the ones who'd gone around Palestine and were disgusted with the behavior of Saul, the ones who felt that life at the moment counted for very little. The prodigals, don't you see them? They shuffle off to Adullam because there they believe there may be hope with David in the cave. There may be a message, there may be a reason for living that they have never discovered heretofore and so they set off a motley crew, the despised, and they go to Adullam.

Not only those who are distressed but those who are in debt, having problems with the mortgage. People who, if we update this and put it into the New Testament context, have fallen short of the glory of God, failed to be what he wanted them to be. People in debt.

Who's attracted to the Lord Jesus? The influential? Not on the whole. The professional theologians? Not by and large. You see what happens at Adullam is repeated in the ministry of Jesus.

It's repeated in the history of the church. It's the despised. It's the offscouring of humanity as the Christian believers were sometimes called in the early days.

It's that type of person who follows the Lord Jesus Christ. The ones who are discontented, bitter in spirit to translate it from the Hebrew with more words in the English. Those who failed.

Those who tried the broken cisterns but all the waters failed and they listened to the voice from Adullam and they believed that the man there could help them. The Mary Magdalenes who'd sold their virtue and were exploited by men. The Zacchaeuses who'd got their business into such a fix because they had constantly been robbing other people and there was a terrible guilt that he was having to carry around with him.

It's that sort of person who comes to Adullam. Not many might he says Paul. In fact he could have said not many at all.

When Jesus speaks to the disciples in Luke 11 or Luke 12 he says, my little flock. Only 400 gathered to David and they had this one thing in common. They were in desperate need.

They believed that the man in the cave at Adullam could help them and so they piled in together and they made David the captain and David brought them all these nondescript personalities into one fighting regiment until they became a legend in Palestine as the crack division of troops. And those who follow the Lord Jesus who come to Adullam they give to him a title that acknowledges that he's unique amongst them. They call him Lord and they kneel before him and he takes of these disparate people.

These people with completely contrasting personalities and he brings them together as one and he calls them his body, his church, his army and he releases them into the world to live for him until one day the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Christ and he shall reign forever and ever as David took over from Saul and as the Hebrew empire stretched to territory it was never to occupy again. So our Lord Jesus is gradually taking over as his gospel is being proclaimed and as men and women are brought to him from every tribe and from every nation until the day comes of his public coronation when everyone shall recognize who he is and the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. But till then for you, for me, it's necessary now and frequently afterwards to come to Adullam and find in the place of rest the cave songs ministering to us and speaking of the purposes of God in which he wants to involve the likes of you and me because of the magnetism of his son who draws men to Adullam.

Let's pray. Father we thank you for the way that your word applies to our hearts. Many of us here have tried the broken systems.

Some of us Lord have made it so difficult for you to get us to Adullam but we ask you in the name of Christ continue your work. Lock up every other option until we find ourselves in the place where David discovered and there at wit's end where may we find with him too that there you meet us. The angels of the Lord encamp around those who fear him and if we fear you then there's nothing else to fear.

Lord give us songs in the night to be able to sing to you even when we're on our own and we pray oh God and Father that all our experiences may be impregnated by this one fact that God is our God and that you minister to people who separate themselves from this world to the Lord Jesus Christ. Father may we know his company and may we ever be obedient to his will and as a result may we have the self-fulfillment of peace and rest that comes as a consequence of submitting to the Lordship of Christ at Adullam. Amen.

Let's sing again shall we. 419 the men of Israel were tested as to their love for Jesus as to their love for David. Here we respond to the challenge about our love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thee will I love my strength my tower. 419. I love.

In darkness willingly I strayed. I sought thee yet from thee I roved. Far wide my wandering thoughts were spread.

Thy creatures more than thee I loved and now if more at length I see it is through thy light and comes from thee. Father that sums it up. Some of us have done a David.

We've gone to the priestly sanctuary at Nab. We've gone into the ranks of the Philistines. We've gone anywhere but failed to submit to the direction where your arrows have indicated that we ought to go and as a result the peace that we should have received thus far has been kept from us.

Now as obedient children we come to you and say lead on. Lead us to the caves. May we hear the song of the caves.

May we receive the blessing of the caves. May we go out to our Lord Jesus outside the city outside the camp and there take ministry from him and keep us ever going back until that time comes when we're taken into our eternal adolem, our eternal rest. Amen.