Exile

So what's the then? God had just rescued him once again from Saul and his superior army by causing them to fall into a deep sleep. And David came in and took the spear and the jug of water and we just walked through that last week.

God had supernaturally, miraculously protected and provided for David to once again be saved from the hand and the spear of Saul. And it's after this moment of deliverance, the text continues and says, then David said in his heart. Interesting phrase.

We all do this. We talk to ourselves. We start imagining where things are going. We start fixating on the circumstances around us. David, just like you and I, gets mired in negativity. He takes his eyes off of the faithfulness of God, and he turns his attention away and his affection to the trials and the trouble that he finds himself in.

1 Then David said in his heart, “Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul.

1 Samuel 27:1b (ESV)

Yeah, God got me out again, but you know what? This can't go on forever. I'm going to perish. That's an interesting Hebrew word there. It's the verb safah, and it's a word that means to be destroyed. It literally means to be swept away in a flood.

David's looking around. He's out in the wilderness. He doesn't see a light at the end of the tunnel. He doesn't see a happy ending. He just... And he talks himself into despair. He doesn't operate by the faith that we've seen in him so many times, the faith that caused him to stand up to the giant, the faith that has caused him to trust God over and over and over again. He just crumbles.

1 Then David said in his heart, “Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand.”

1 Samuel 27:1 (ESV)

David convinces himself that God is not going to be the one that ultimately rescues him from Saul, that he's going to have to take things into his own hands. I know you would never do something like that with God, but maybe just on the off chance for somebody you know, you might want to think about what David does here.

I know that Saul's going to get me one day. He's going to kill me. I mean, God's protected me multiple times, but I'm going to have to take things into my own hand. And his solution, I'm going to flee the land. I'm going to leave the land of promise, the land that was promised to Abram and his descendants, the land that God brought Israel out of Egypt and guided them through the wilderness and led them into, the land where God dwells in the midst of his people.

David says, the only way I can save myself is to leave the land, is to leave God, is to leave the covenant and the promise. In the ancient Near East and for ancient Israel in the Mosaic Covenant, the land mattered. The land mattered. That's where God reigned. That's where God's people were to dwell and to function as a light from that specific place.

The other lands, it's not that God was not the God of all the earth. He was. He is. He always will be. But in that time and in that season... God is working in and through Israel to bring light to the nations. David's choice here is unbelievably tragic. And in a moment, you're going to see just how crazy it really is.

And maybe there's a lesson here. When we start talking to ourselves and we take our eyes off of what God has done and what God is doing and what God can do, and we let our reality be defined by our circumstances and by our problems and by our pain, and when we let fear in, we probably don't make the best decisions. Is that fair to say? Think back on the bad decisions you've made in your life. They usually flow out of a bad state of mind, a place of fear and anxiety.

So where does David decide to go? He decides to go to the land of the Philistines. What has David been doing for the last decade? Killing and fighting the Philistines? Yeah, so much safer there, David.

This is what happens. This is what happens when we abandon wisdom, when we walk away from faith, when we live and dwell in fear. And it's worse than just the Philistines. It says:

2 So David arose and went over, he and the six hundred men who were with him, to Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath.

1 Samuel 27:2 (ESV)

So David's got this little mercenary band. And they're good fighters. They're loyal to David. And so they go with him.And it says that they go to Achish, the son of Maoch, the king of Gath. So Achish, the king, his name, it's non-Semitic, it's a Philistine word. It means one of two things. It either means gift or giving a gift, which fits the context of this story, or it means snake, which I like better. And he's the son of Maoch. Maoch means to crush or oppress. It literally means to press down, as in making wine, which is what Gath means. Gath means wine press.

So he goes to the city of Gath, the city ruled by the oppressor, the city whose king is either the snake or the gift giver. I don't know if you want the gift that the snake has to give, but... It's a sign and a symbol of abundance. Gath was a significant city of the Philistines, one of the five capital cities ruled by one of the five kings of the Philistines. It was a staging area for most of the Philistines' advancements into Israel and the surrounding areas. It's a place of commerce and warfare. And it's also the home of Goliath.

I'm not safe here from Saul. I know where I'll go. Think about that. We know. We're going to encounter this later in the text. Goliath had family. He had brothers. Big brothers. This is... Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire, right? This is a really strange choice, but this is what David does.

3 And David lived with Achish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel, and Abigail of Carmel, Nabal’s widow.

1 Samuel 27:3 (ESV)

Maybe this gives us a little bit of insight into why David would make this choice. For a long time, they've been out in the wilderness running and hiding from Saul, separated from their families. They had to leave their families behind in safe places. And so you kind of get this sense, and you can understand that this is difficult. I'm not trying to pick on David. We shouldn't look at this and go, oh, David, how?

This is the world that we live in. It's a scary place. We're faced with difficult decisions. So David and his men, they choose to go and dwell in Gath, be reunited with their families, and at least for a temporary short-term measure it works.

4 And when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him.

1 Samuel 27:4 (ESV)

So David's plan did work. If that's what you want to consider working. He's once again reunited with his family. Saul's no longer chasing him, trying to kill him. But he's outside of the land. He's apart from God. He's away from the covenant and the covenant blessings. And he's dwelling in the midst of people that radically want to kill him.

5 Then David said to Achish, “If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns, that I may dwell there. For why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?”

1 Samuel 27:5 (ESV)

Now we don't know exactly how much time passes here, but David's been there and he's been serving Achish. And he's there with 600 men. So this is a mercenary force, which is very common in the ancient Near East. And what David's doing here is entering into a vassal treaty with the king. He's developing an allegiance and an obligation. “Okay, well, I'm here. I'm with you. You don't really want me and 600 warriors in the royal city with you. Why don't you give me a piece of land? I'll go there. We'll dwell there, and I'll continue to serve you.” Very common practice in the ancient areas.

So we will be your vassals and you will be our king and we'll serve you.

6 So that day Achish gave him Ziklag. Therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day. 7 And the number of the days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.

1 Samuel 27:6–7 (ESV)

which on one hand isn't a long time, but on another hand is a significant amount of time that David, the anointed and chosen king of Israel, serves as a vassal to a pagan Philistine king. That is tragic.

How is he serving? Well, he's serving the Philistines like a Philistine. David and his men went up and made raids. Part of life and reality in the ancient Near East is that there was very little safety. And the Philistines, well, the Philistines weren't native to the land there. They were a seafaring people that had come from somewhere. Scholars really aren't sure exactly where they came from. But I like to think of the Philistines as the Mediterranean Vikings. That's what they were. They were seacoast people that in their ships came and came in and pillaged.

And something happened to their homeland that caused them to come to Israel and put down roots in Israel, in the land, and yet they continued their practice of raiding. So you're there in your little village, your little town, and all of a sudden a force of warriors shows up and takes what they want, does what they want. The time of “might makes right.”

8 Now David and his men went up and made raids against the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites, for these were the inhabitants of the land from of old, as far as Shur, to the land of Egypt.

1 Samuel 27:8 (ESV)

And unless you're a Bible nerd, those words are meaningless to you. Let's just be honest. It was a long time ago. When we dig into the biblical narrative and the biblical story about the Geshurites and the Girzites and the Amalekites, what we see and what we learn is that these are not only people that have showed open hostility against Yahweh and his people, but all of these groups are peoples that are connected by bloodline to the Nephilim. This is tying into the deeper story. It's very, very interesting what happens.

9 And David would strike the land and would leave neither man nor woman alive, but would take away the sheep, the oxen, the donkeys, the camels, and the garments, and come back to Achish.

1 Samuel 27:9 (ESV)

So we have this interesting kind of echo of the conquest where Joshua led the nation in to defeat the peoples that were in the land, that were connected to the bloodlines of the Nephilim, the giants that were in the land, the cosmic rebellion that God is eradicating through his people Israel. And Joshua and Caleb and the conquest did not wipe them all out.

So it's interesting that even while David is outside of the land, and even while he's living as a vassal to a Philistine king, as he goes out and does what the Philistines do and raids, he goes and he raids against the bloodlines that God had called his people to go against. And if you remember, as we walked through the conquest in Joshua, that cherem, devoted to destruction only took place in the context of peoples connected to the bloodlines of the Nephilim. And once again, it's a partial cherem. He destroys everybody, but he takes the goods and he brings them back to Achish because that's what he has to do to survive.

10a When Achish asked, “Where have you made a raid today?” …

1 Samuel 27:10a (ESV)

So David shows up. He's got some wheat, some gold, some silver, some jewels, some things that he has taken from the peoples that he has destroyed. And he brings a big portion, probably, to Achish as the vassal lord. And Achish says, “Where'd you go? Where'd you raid?”

10b David would say, “Against the Negeb of Judah,” or, “Against the Negeb of the Jerahmeelites,” or, “Against the Negeb of the Kenites.”

1 Samuel 27:10b (ESV)

This is not where he'd been raiding. These are all peoples of Judah or peoples in relationship with Judah, which is the southern part of Israel. So he's going out and attacking the enemies of Yahweh, who are the allies of the Philistines. And then goes back to the Philistine king and says, oh, I've been attacking Israel.

And there's a part of you that might admire that and say, oh, that's crafty. That's clever. But you know what another word for that is? Lying. Yeah, it's deception. David lies. He deceives. You say, well, he had to. Well, yeah, he had to. Because he'd walked down a road of self-preservation rather than trusting Yahweh to preserve him.

11 And David would leave neither man nor woman alive to bring news to Gath, thinking, “lest they should tell about us and say, ‘So David has done.’” Such was his custom all the while he lived in the country of the Philistines.

1 Samuel 27:11 (ESV)

Think about that. In order to preserve himself and to protect the lie... When he goes out and raids, he will show no mercy. He will kill everyone so that no word can come back and unravel the lie that he has been spinning.

This is what happens when we begin to live out of fear, when we begin to walk our own way. One lie leads to another, leads to violence, leads to action that we would never see ourselves taking. But we back ourselves into a corner where it seems the only way out.

And so, David, the man of faith, the giant slayer, the man who was described not by Samuel or any other man, but was described by God as a man after God's own heart, has left God in the land, has entered into a treaty with a foreign king, is engaging in deception and murderous genocidal violence. Because he saw it as the only way to protect himself.

In verse 12, it was working.

12 And Achish trusted David, thinking, “He has made himself an utter stench to his people Israel; therefore he shall always be my servant.”

1 Samuel 27:12 (ESV)

And Achish is like, “he's made himself an utter stench.: You know what that means in the Hebrew? Exactly what it says. It's an utter stench. Made himself revolting, disgusting, an abomination to his own people, Israel. Therefore, he will always be my servant.

David lies. David deceives. And it worked. But Achish bought it, and David was safe. Now, if I haven't made this clear, let me be super clear right now. This is descriptive about David, not prescriptive for us.

In the same way that describing the fact that David had two wives is not an endorsement of or an encouragement for polygamy, describing David's deception here and the pragmatic reality that it worked is not an excuse for you and I to say; “Well, if David could lie and it worked out for him, I'm on the lying train.” This is not how the text functions here.

The texts function is to show us that even though David was a man after God's own heart, he was a man with feet of clay. It highlights not the faith of David, but the fear of David. Not the success, but the failure. His deception was born out of his fear and his letting go of faith.

And even so, God's still got a plan for him. Even though he's been faithless, God is still faithful. And God is going to orchestrate and use. I find so many levels in this text where already we see God using, even in David's sin and rebellion and lying and deception and God is still using him to do what the true king of Israel is supposed to do, which is go out and fight against the enemies of Yahweh and eradicate the bloodline of Nephilim.

Even when David is running from God's sovereignty, God is still acting and working. This is the greatness of our God. I'm reminded of that great, great verse at the end of Genesis. Joseph declares, in Genesis 50:20 (ESV), “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

There's no one like our God. He works everything together for our good. That does not mean that everything in our life is good. That's not what that means at all. Many things are incredibly evil, incredibly painful, incredibly hurtful. Our God has a sovereignty. Our God has a power and an ability to take and work in even our failures into something that will result in good. There's no one like our God.

My guess this morning is that it's not very difficult for you to see yourself in David. In fact, here's the crazy thing. Isn't it easier to see ourselves in David's failures than it is to see ourselves in David's successes? We all would like to be the giant killer. If I was there, I would have done that. No, you wouldn't. You would have been with his brothers. You would have been with Saul. You would have been hiding out, going, somebody should do something.

In moments of desperation, you've chosen the pragmatic way over the righteous way, haven't you? We've all trusted our own wisdom over God's. That's fundamentally what David is doing. He said to himself in his heart, “I'm going to die. Saul's going to take me out. The only thing I can do is go away.”

And the tricky part of the text that it brings out is that it appears to work. He's with his family, and Achish buys the lie, and he's got some safety for a little bit, and you don't have to read too much farther in two chapters that falls apart. That's the thing. What does “it worked” mean? And what's the time frame? And how are we looking at it?

I probably quote this proverb more than any other proverb. Proverbs 14:12 (ESV), “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” That's probably a great summary statement for 1 Samuel 27. The way that seems right to him and the way it leads to death. That's what David is doing. It seemed right to him. Our way, our wisdom seems so right. I'm sure for David, it felt like, it looked like the only solution.

Our ways are not God's ways. I don't know about you, but I love Isaiah 55. Isaiah 55:8-9 (ESV), “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Let me be honest. Some days that annoys me. I think, God, if you would think like I do... We should all be so grateful that God does not think like we do. There's a big gap, right? God's ways, God's wisdom is so much greater than ours. And we must remember this, especially today, when we're faced with enemies and circumstances that are too big for us.

It's in those times specifically that we must choose God's way even when it doesn't make sense. Because the way that seems right to us leads to death. But God's way, that very often doesn't make sense to us, leads to life. That's what another Proverbs says. Proverbs 12:28 (ESV), “In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death.”

In this chapter, 1 Samuel 27, David points us to Jesus, not by his conformity to him, but by his contrast to him. David is a shadow and a type of the true king to come, the king of kings, the Lord of lords. And in many ways in the last several chapters, he's been a model that looks like Jesus. In this chapter, he's a model that doesn't look like Jesus, that highlights the beauty of Jesus.

While David chose to lie and deceive in enemy territory, while David chose to go his own way rather than God's way, Jesus, the true king, took a different path. He didn't rely on his own wisdom. He didn't go his own way. He cried at the moment of his greatest testing, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

John 1:14 (ESV), “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Full of grace and truth. Jesus was committed to the way of God, to the way of righteousness, not the way of pragmatism, to doing what God asked him to do, to saying what God told him to say, not doing what seemed right in his own heart.

In John chapter 18, Jesus is on trial. He's brought by the Sanhedrin and brought before Pilate.

37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.

John 18:37–38 (ESV)

That's what truth is. Living in the truth is living in the truth. It's living without guilt. It's doing the right thing. It's choosing God's way every time. David was a lot of things, and he was a man after God's own heart, but he didn't choose God's way every time.

And here's the rub, and let's just be honest with this. There would be those that say, David chose to lie and he lived; Jesus told the truth and he died. And that's true if you're short-sighted and hasty and have the reading comprehension of a kindergartner. It's true that Jesus was killed, the spotless Lamb of God. He did die a death he didn't deserve. But the story doesn't end there.

Proverbs 12:28 (ESV) says, “In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death.” Because Jesus walked the path of righteousness, death could not hold him. The grave couldn't keep him. Yeah, he died, because he walked the path of righteousness. Yes, he died because he didn't fall into despair or into deception, because he chose God's way. Death couldn't keep him, and he arose victorious over death and the grave.

This is the glory of Jesus. This is the heart of the gospel. The salvation that is offered in Jesus the King is that he is the true and better David. David's path was marked by fear and compromise. Jesus walked in perfect righteousness, offering himself as the spotless lamb to atone not for his sins, but for mine and for yours.

Through his death on the cross, he took upon himself the penalty we deserve. And in his resurrection, he conquered death once and for all. This is not simply historical information. It's God's invitation. When we place our faith in Him, confessing our sins and trusting in His finished work, we receive forgiveness of sin and eternal life.

Jesus doesn't leave us in our exile of sin. Death doesn't get the last word because Jesus has defeated death. He brings us reunited to the Father, makes us co-heirs with himself in a kingdom that knows no end.

And here's the profound mystery. That's just the beginning. The righteousness of Jesus becomes ours. The Bible calls this the great exchange. Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

David's deceptions highlight our own failures. But in Christ, we're not defined by our sin anymore. We're defined by his righteousness. God credits Jesus' perfect obedience to our account. It's as if we have lived his sinless life, which we clearly haven't.

This freely given righteousness is a gift. It's not earned. It's received by faith. Romans 3:21-22 (ESV), “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law... the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”

In Jesus. We're not defined by our fear. We're not limited by our failures. We're remade in the righteousness of Jesus himself. If anyone is in Christ, he or she is what? A new creation.

We stand justified before God, clothed in his holiness and righteousness. Righteousness. And his life becomes ours. Through union with Jesus, we share in his resurrection power. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now dwells in your mortal bodies.

We're not left to our own willpower or skill sets. God himself takes up residence within us. The very power of God, the life of God, the life of Jesus manifests within us. Allowing faith to triumph over fear. Calling to us to walk on the path that Jesus walked.

David's exile was temporary survival. Jesus' victory gives us eternal, abundant, overcoming life. Here's the message this morning. Don't look to David. Look to the Son of David. Look to the true king. Look to the one who always chose the way of wisdom, and because of that, defeated death, and has ascended to the place above every power, given a name above every name, and who one day will come back and set everything right.

When he comes back, may he find us faithful. Today, if you're afraid, if you're worried, if you're anxious, today, as you're tempted to go your own way, let the broken example of David cause you to run to the one that David pointed to. The one who never failed. The one who never fails. The one who will never leave you or forsake you. The one who is always with you. Run to Jesus. And rest in his grace.

Amen.