Samuel No.23 The Way Back

In this chapter, when you come to verse 6, you will see that David, once again in trouble, turns to the Lord. Today, being Remembrance Sunday, most of us are conscious of the fact that we have memories, and the older ones will have memories of the years of war. And I have no doubt that many have memories of times during the rigours of war when they were led, like David, to turn to the Lord and receive that help and encouragement and strength that we read of in the passage in a moment.

For our younger folk, who will not have experienced the distress in various ways and in the trail of wars, and we trust that they never will have to do so, nevertheless, as it was so ably demonstrated last year by our pastor when he led us through the Epistles to the Ephesians, we are in a spiritual war. And in this war there is no discharge. Apathy will not do.

We have to remind ourselves constantly that a Christian must resist evil. And the next fact, of course, is that we cannot do it alone. We need strength, so we have to turn to God in the way that David did.

Presently, we will be remembering another time of remembrance around the Lord's table. And as we share in the elements which remind us of that great sacrifice by our Saviour, let us remember also that that is the place from where we, too, can receive strength and help and encouragement. Let us pray.

Our gracious Heavenly Father, as Thy Word is read and as it will be expounded by Thy servant presently, we pray that it may go forth in power, to the honour and glory of Thy Holy Name. Amen. And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south and Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire, and had taken the women captives that were therein.

They slew not any, either great nor small, but carried them away, and went on their way. So David and his men came to the city, and, behold, it was burned with fire, and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters were taken captives. Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep.

And David's two wives were taken captives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite. And David was greatly distressed, for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters. But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.

And David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech's son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought hither the ephod to David. And David inquired of the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? Shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue, for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all.

So David went, he and the six hundred men that were with him, and came to the brook Besor, where those that were left behind stayed. But David pursued, he and the four hundred men, for two hundred abode behind, which were so faint that they could not go over the brook Besor. And they found an Egyptian in the field, and brought him to David, and gave him bread, and he did eat, and they made him drink water.

And they gave him a piece of cake of figs, and two clusters of raisins. And when he had eaten, his spirit came to him again. For he had eaten no bread, nor drunk any water, three days and three nights.

And David said unto him, To whom belongest thou, and whence art thou? And he said, I am a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite, and my master left me, because three days ago I fell sick. We made an invasion upon the south of the Cherovites, and upon the coast which belonged to Judah, and upon the south of Caleb, and we burned Ziklag with fire. And David said to him, Canst thou not bring me down to this company? And he said, Swear unto me by my God, that thou wilt neither kill me, nor deliver me into the hands of my master, and I will bring thee down to this company.

And when he had brought him down, behold, they were spread abroad upon all the earth, eating and drinking and dancing, because of all the great spoil that they had taken out of the land of the Philistines and out of the land of Judah. And David smote them from the twilight even unto the evening of the next day, and there escaped not a man of them, save four hundred young men, which rode upon camels and fled. And David recovered all that the Amalekites had carried away, and David rescued his two wives, and there was nothing lacking to them, neither small nor great, neither sons nor daughters, neither spoil nor anything that they had taken to them.

David recovered all, and David took all the flocks and the herds, which they drove before those other cattle, and said, This is David's spoil. And may the Lord richly bless unto us the reading of that word. Let's turn in our hymn books to number 41.

Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. Number 41. We stand and sing.

Amen. Shall peace from this life of evil one ensue, For us which we conframe? Shall there follow us in power of love, To pain and tears forsake? The day that we belong Before the rising sun And all its sons awaking Rise at the opening day Let's have our Bibles open at that passage from 1 Samuel chapter 30. And the verse that Douglas referred to, I read again.

Verse 6. David was greatly distressed, because the men were talking of stoning him. Each one was bitter in spirit, because of his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the Lord his God.

Back home we used to sing a little chorus which had the sentiments, There's a way back to God from the dark paths of sin. There's a door that is open and you may go in. At Calvary's cross it's where you begin.

When you come as a sinner to Jesus. Well, that poetry may sound to some sentimental. But it ministers to the hearts of many of us, as we identify with the claims of the Lord Jesus upon our lives.

And we enter our Father's house. But there is a sense in which some of us and perhaps all, at some stage in our Christian pilgrimage, need to retrace those steps. Need to sing that refrain afresh.

There's a way back to God from the paths of prodigality, from the paths of compromise. Thank God for the way back. Even for Christian or spiritual people who've let the Lord down.

There was a way back for Jonah, when the Lord's word came to him the second time. There was a way back for Peter, after he had denied the Saviour. And there is a way back for David.

David with a distressed heart, as he appreciates something of the circumstances in which he has got himself into. I'm compelled this morning to speak about the subject of backsliding. One of the things that I think proves time and time again the wisdom of going through a book of Scripture or following through one of the epistles verse by verse is that the preacher is not commanding the syllabus.

It's the Holy Spirit who compels us to look at the issues that are raised in these various narratives in this historical book of Samuel. And so now I have to bring you face to face with this whole difficulty of backsliding. Can you imagine David amongst those ranks? Friend of God, sweetest psalmist of Israel.

Does it not seem to you rather astonishing that the two leading men of Israel at this point in their history are found in differing circumstances, but both of them denying the very God who had an interest in their lives. Saul is face to face, you remember from my address on spiritism last week, with a muttering witch in a cave in Endor. And David, he is consorting with Achish, the king of the Philistines.

How are the mighty fallen? Does that astonish you? Well does the Bible say, put not your trust in princes. We thank God for good men and for men of leadership quality, but remember that the best of men are always men at best. And they have their frailings and they have their foibles, as you do my brother and sister.

And so we come to look at the thought of backsliding. How does one become a backslider? It's generally, I argue, a process and not a crisis. A process and not a crisis.

The collapse of the Christian life seldom occurs by a blowout. It's more often than not a slow leak. As Bishop Ryle put it a little more eloquently, men fall in private long before they fall in public.

Now it may well be, and in fact I would be utterly disbelieving if the 500 or so of you got up and said that it's not the case. That there are friends in my hearing this morning who are in the situation described in this chapter, or in a word, in the category of a backslider. What started David? Let's come to him because he'll help us.

What started David on this process towards a backslidden state? Well it seems to me that you've got to go to the other chapter that straddles, the one that speaks of Saul in the cave with the witch of Endor. The 27th chapter, where in the first verse, which we looked at when I spoke about the sin of unbelief two or three Sunday mornings ago, you find David cogitating. One of these days I shall be destroyed by the hand of Saul.

The best thing I can do is to escape to the land of the Philistines. I'll tell you this for starters. The way that a backslidden condition commences is when you refrain from trusting in God with all your heart.

And when, as an alternative, you lean to your own understanding. This is David's plight. This was Jonah's plight.

This was Peter's plight. And it might be your plight. Leaning to your own understanding.

David thought in his heart. He took counsel with no one else. Only his own distressed spirit.

And as a result of the conclusions that he came to, he started down the slippery slope of backsliding. There he was on the higher land of En Gedi with its caves. The ideal situation for him as a fugitive.

But he wants to exchange that for the lowlands, the Philistia, of those five Philistine cities. He exchanges the heights for the depths. And that's a consequence.

Spiritually, if I can make this as a parable, that's a consequence of a backslidden condition. You see, as you watch David move off, as last week we watched Saul move to the cave of Endor. As you watch David move away out of the will of God, there are four things that you can say of him that it seems to me apply to everyone who is a backslider.

David is not where God wants him to be. He's not what God wants. David does not go where God wants him to go.

That was my first point. He is not what God wants him to be. He can't do what God wants him to perform.

And he can't receive what God wants to give. Let me take those again. David is not where God wants him to go.

He cannot be what God wants him to be. He cannot do what God wants him to do. He cannot receive what God wants him to give.

Now, those are the natural consequences of being a backslider. As Spurgeon tells us, it may be hard at times in our life to go forward. It's worse going back.

David exchanges the smile of God in En Gedi for the favor of Achish, the Philistine king. And as a result of that terrible exchange, he gets himself into great difficulty. You see, if you work through the consequences of a backslidden condition in the life of David Moore, you discover this, that he's moved from En Gedi to the land of the Philistines.

And he's moved into a barren condition. Now, you can check through the book of Psalms and you will find time and time again some Hebrew song that David wrote when he was at En Gedi or the cave of Adullam. But you will never find David having composed a psalm when he's in the land of the Philistines.

How can you sing the Lord's song in a strange land? It's impossible. That's not to say that David never plucked his harp. But there was no inspiration that ever came.

Because you see, David is out of the purposes of God. He's out of contact with God. And there is no possibility where he is at this point until he comes to his senses of that spiritual relationship with the Lord being restored.

That's the problem of a backslidden condition. That's why Mr. Spurgeon was so right when he said, if the future looks hard going forward in the purposes of God, it's much harder to move out of the purposes of God. Not only does David know barrenness in his spirit, but he has to engage in a tissue of duplicity.

You see, this king, the king of the Philistines, Achish, he now takes David as being one of his trusted men. Now, he can't really trust David, though he believes that there is evidence to suggest that he ought to. And the only reason why that evidence seems good is because of the duplicity of David.

He's conducting warfare where Achish doesn't know where he is. And as a result of David's duplicity, he has to engage in the most barbaric warfare, as you will discover if you check the chapters through. He has to do to death the men, the women, and the children.

This is no way for a man who is a friend of God to behave. When you're in a backslidden condition, you can be so reckless. And it's not so much David I see time and time again as I read these chapters.

He blurs. And when I focus my vision, I see myself. Don't you? The recklessness of being away from God.

How could you sink so low? How could you connive? How could you have so many permutations running through your mind, which you know in better moments are contrary to the will of the Lord and the way that you would behave in better days? Ah, my friend, the option of a backslidden condition is something that I wish to God every member in this fellowship could jettison and never pluck up again. David's backslidden condition will ultimately lead him to the point where he, on invitation from Achish, the king of the Philistines, will move towards the Israelites. Can you imagine this? The whole drama is worked out in that 30th chapter and the 29th chapter.

Can you imagine David being invited by King Achish to come along, as is indicated in the opening verse of the 28th chapter, incidentally, to come with him to fight against his own people? Chapter 29, verse 1, The Philistines gathered all their forces at Aphek and Israel camp 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. If you ever get tired when you're on your journey, I tell you, you never got more tired or more lead in your boots than David had on that occasion.

Mile after mile, the consequences of his duplicity working themselves out as he, trailing along at the back of the Philistine army, is moving towards the point where he, David, will fight against Saul and Jonathan, his best friend. How on earth, David, are you going to get yourself out of this insanity? You thought in your heart that this was the thing to do, but you never asked Almighty God. You move from the web of a spider and you find yourself in a lion's den.

And every twist and turn of fate brings you into more and more difficulty. Ah, my friend, I tell you, if I'm hard on David, I'm harder still on myself. Because so often, I repeat, I can see myself in exactly the same condition.

But you see, there's a distinction. A distinction between Saul at Endor, in the lair of the Spiritist, and David. You see, in his depths of soul, David loved the Lord, and the Lord loved David.

And there's one thing that I find to be the choicest doctrine of Scripture, apart from that of my salvation. And it is that of my preservation. He keeps me.

I've always felt a little sorry for Christians who don't see this. How it is that God, in his grace, having saved us, keeps us. Because I cannot keep myself from falling.

But he will never let me down. That's the incredible thing about the whole of Scripture I see as a commentary on the patience of God. How he still deals with backsliders who deceive him or endeavor so to do.

And here is David at his wit's end. And what does this great Father heart of God do towards his servant? He demonstrates his love. The kindness of God is intended, says Paul, before writing his Roman letter, is intended to lead you to repentance.

The kindness of God. And sometimes God will get you in a pincer movement so that on the left hand you're in difficulty, and you go back to the right hand, and you're equally in difficulty. And you see how this happens with David.

He can't fight the Philistines. God interposes. He uses the Philistine soldiers to object.

What are these Hebrews doing here? Oh, the paradox. The incongruity of the situation. It hits secular men before it hits David.

They point a finger. As men have pointed a finger at other believers in times gone by and said, what on earth are you doing in this situation? Aren't you one of his disciples? You remember? And Peter has the javelin thrust right into his heart as he appreciates he's not where he ought to be. He's not aligned with the Lord whom he loves and whose deity he confessed.

What are these Hebrews doing here? You know, sometimes secular people, those who don't confess God as Lord and Jesus as Savior, have more perception than we have. The children of darkness, Jesus said, on some occasions are wiser than the children of light. What are these Hebrews doing here? Full mark for the question.

I, my friend, but was there never a time when someone could have whispered in your ear, what are you doing here? What are you doing in that bunch of circumstances? How did you get yourself involved here? The very confession that tripped from off your lips so easily denies you the privilege, if that's the right word, of being in that situation, of being in that circumstance. What do these Hebrews do here? Akish? And so they're sent back. Akish protesting that he has no reason to deal with David in such a fashion, but David, with the lead out of his boots, gets back to Ziklag to where his wives and his children, and the wives and the children of his men are.

But you remember my word, the pincer movement. God will put the pincers on David. He goes to Ziklag, and what does he discover? Well, his wives are there no more, neither his children, nor the family of any of his men, nor their supplies, nor their wealth.

The Amalekites have taken the opportunity, when David, in crass negligence, has left his city in Philistia utterly unguarded, to remove the wives and the kids. And when David gets back, there's such remorse that breaks from his heart and those of his men. Verse 3, chapter 30.

They found Ziklag destroyed by fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. The pincer movement.

You know that little proverb? It's not from the Bible, but it's got good sense. About bringing you to the end of your tether. And someone has said that when you get to the end of your tether, it's a good thing as a Christian, because that's where you find God.

And it was there, to quote the eloquence of F.B. Meyer, that David's point of honesty and return occurs. This, says Meyer, was a moment of his return to God in that dreadful hour, with the charred members of Ziklag at his feet, with the cold hand of anxiety of the state of his wives, feeling his heart, with the sense of duplicity and deceit for what he had done and practiced, and which had alienated him from God and his conscience. With this threat of stoning in his ears, his heart suddenly sprang back to its own resting place in the bosom of God.

David was greatly distressed, because the men were talking of stoning him. David's men stoning him for crass negligence. David can't look to the left.

He can't look to the right. He can't look behind. He can't look in front.

But when you've exhausted all the options, there's one more that remains for the child of God, even the backslidden child of God, man, woman, look up! And that's what David does. And thus, to quote Mayer again, he suddenly springs back into the bosom of God. David strengthens himself in the Lord.

You can't strengthen anyone else until you've strengthened yourself. I was preaching at Westminster Chapel last night, and I was addressing missionaries along this theme. It's just an impertinence to preach the gospel of strengthening unless you have been strengthened, to preach about having a vision of God unless you've had a vision yourself.

There are times, you see, my friend, when the person who most needs ministry is not anyone external to you, but you yourself. So David strengthens himself in the Lord. The context, frustratingly, doesn't tell us how he went about it, but we've enough evidence, we've enough knowledge of the character of the man to at least presume that there were certain things that he might have done.

Don't you sometimes wish for the tenderer years in your life? The years when you were just a young lady, a young man, and none of the temptations that broke through afterwards had actually hit you, and you weren't as compromised as maybe you became in the middle years or in later years. Now, in those early years, what did you learn? David, what did you learn? As a teenager on the undulating slopes around the city that ultimately was to be known as your city, Bethlehem, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

Aye, David. But how did you go on? He restores my soul. That's it, you see.

This great God, he's not only the Savior. Thankfully, he's the great Restorer. And David recalls that the days when he was on his own, when he was looking after the sheep of his father, and a bear came, and a lion came.

He's rehearsed the whole incident you remember before in the ears of Saul. And how, although David seemed to be utterly unarmed, apart from his staff and his sling, he was able to dispatch these wild beasts and to preserve the safety of his sheep. How did you do it, David? Because I had confidence in God.

And when that overgrown Philistine came your way, and when Saul tried to give you his own armor, which he wasn't prepared to risk himself in conflict with Goliath, what did you say? You went down that valley of Elah, and you confronted Goliath in the name of God. And here is David doing the same, you see. Strengthening himself in the Lord.

Every situation, every option has gone from him. He's only got, excuse the expression, there's only one card left. And that is the upward look to the Lord.

You see, the incredible thing about God is that he plunders our mistakes when in humility we present them before him, and he turns our mistakes in his providence to being an experience whereby he can use us in a remarkable way. To express that more biblically, he can turn the valley of Achor, that's an Old Testament expression, a Hebraism, the experience of crass difficulties, and there he can build a door of hope so that he can get you out. And that's what David is going to discover, you see.

Now remember this, because this is so important. The way you can test the genuineness of a returned backslider is by the way he reacts to the mercy of God when it's been directed to him. You see, the apostle Paul, I remind you of the little comment from Romans, he says that the mercy of God is intended to lead you to repentance.

Now, how does that repentance manifest itself? Well, two ways. First of all, it will bring to you a great concern to ensure that your life is now in harmony with the will of the Lord. And so verse 7 of chapter 30, then David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, bring me the ephod.

Abiathar brought it to him, and David inquired of the Lord, shall I pursue this raiding party? Will I overtake them? Let's not get into difficulties what the ephod was for a moment or two. I don't have chance to, opportunity to, to go into this. Accept it from me that it was a piece of equipment by which the ancient Hebrews, through the high priests, were able to attest what the will of God was.

But the principle that remains important for me to underline is this. David now consults God. That's so much different from the way that he got into his prodigality, into his backsliding.

One of these days I shall be destroyed by the hand of Saul. The best thing I can do is to escape to the land of the Philistines. And for a long time David has been outside of the reference point of God's purpose for him.

You know, it became proverbial amongst the Hebrew preachers in the days of the Old Testament to encourage the people back to the law and to the testimony. In other words, back to the Bible. You see, backsliders are not bothered with the Bible.

You remember the days when you were away from the Lord? I'm not saying you weren't a Christian. But your recourse to the word of God, it was feeble, it was infrequent. In fact, perhaps it never existed at all.

Now you can test whether you are a genuinely restored backslider by applying this maxim. Are you now back with the word of God? Are you consulting the ephod? Now David gets his instructions. He is to pursue after these men who've got his wives and all his substance.

And I don't have time, obviously, to go into the remainder of this chapter. It's generously packed with narrative. But let me try some sort of summation.

Here is David and ultimately he and his men are able to meet up with those who have plundered Ziklag. And in God's grace, we gather everything is restored. David is told to follow these men and in the 19th verse we get the response to all that has happened.

Nothing was missing. Young or old, boy or girl, plunder or anything else they had taken. And David brought everything back.

He took all the flocks and herds and his men drove them ahead of the other livestock saying, this is David's plunder. All right. How do you know that your restoration is genuine? Not only by the fact that you come to the word of God, to the revelation of God and live your life by it.

But by the generous way in which you deal with other people as a result of you having received the kindness of God. I'll illustrate my point and come back and lock it further into your mind. You see, there were those who were not able to keep up with David.

Some of his men were in dire condition and they weren't able to fulfill the routing of these Amalekites. And when the plunder, David's plunder as the men refer to it, when it's brought back and David is going to dole it out, then those who stayed by David to the end said, we'll not share it with these fellows who didn't come all the way. The last part of verse 22, because they did not go out with us, we will not share with them the plunder we recovered.

However, each man may take his wife and children and go. David replied, no, my brothers, you must not do that with what the Lord has given us. They said, it's David's plunder.

He said, no, it's the blessing of God that's been directed towards me. It's a lavish way that God has met with me and redeemed me from my folly. We cannot deal in a miserly fashion now.

You see, the mercy of God, it leads you to repentance and the genuineness of your repentance is discovered in the way that you live your life according to the revelation of God's word and the way that you treat other people. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. The mercy of God, it should lead to repentance.

This will prompt you to search out and to be obedient to the word of God. It will also cause you to be generous in your treatment of others. Is not this part of the teaching of the Lord's prayer? Was it not the point of the parable of the unmerciful servant? If you have been forgiven, you must forgive.

If God has dealt with you out of the lavishness of his kindness, so you must react to others. David teaches a great deal about a genuine return from a period of backsliding. The plunder he takes back from the Amalekites typifies God's goodness to him.

It must be shared equally and without recrimination with all his men. One verse in the Psalms is a commentary on this incident. Your gentleness has made me great.

The gentle way in which God dealt with David stimulated him to magnanimity. This generosity of David which we so applaud. David has learned the lesson full well.

The backslider has been restored. All the glory belongs to God. God brought him up out of a horrible pit and the miry clay.

He set his feet upon a rock and established his going. The Lord put a new song into David's mouth, even praise to his God. When David believed not, God was still faithful.

He always is. He always will be. With you.

With me. So may backsliders return. And may the kindness that God directs to them as they fall again into his embrace tie them more firmly to his word and cause them to deal with others in a way reflecting the treatment God has shown them.

Amen.