Come To The Cave Of Refuge And Find Rest

Message: Turn Your Life into a Testimony

Text: 1 Samuel 22:1-2, 2 Samuel 23:8-39

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Are you in distress and despised by your friends? Are you in seclusion and rejected by your friends and called names you can’t even bear to hear? Or do you consider yourself a failure because of your huge mountain of debt? Maybe the heaven over you seems like brass. Perhaps you are suffering the bitterness of the soul, being misunderstood, undervalued, underestimated and persecuted? Maybe you are abandoned, caught up with a horrible crisis and have no place to run to. Even if that is the case, don’t waste your sorrow, because there is hope.

Even if that is the case, there is a greater debt, a spiritual debt to the law. A debt no man can offset by any means. Are you indebted to the laws of God? Are you spiritually discontented with life? Is there a vacuum in your life you cannot fill? Then, you are the materials God wants to use to bring to light his purpose and plans for the church and the nations. You might have been unprofitable in the past. God our Father said in the book of Isaiah 66:1-2, 5, that to you will I look, a man broken and contrite in heart.

Just like David who was appointed and anointed king of Israel by God and rejected by man. A king in-waiting. A man after the heart of God. He did all things right without fault only to suffer and pass through the valley of death. He was hunted by an autocrat, his friend whom he helped out of various difficulties. Now David is abandoned, the people’s hero who slew a giant that taunted the nation of Israel. Abandoned by men, but not by God. Our God has not given up on the man whom He created in His own image.

For his personal safety, he escaped into the deep places of the land. He sought for a refuge and found a cave called Adullam which means a “refuge”. There he lodged and called it home, a place of safety. Also, gathered to him where the four hundred motley crew. Now the cave is a type of the visible church on earth. People came to find refuge in the church from the threatening problems of life. People in debt, distressed, dissatisfied, discouraged, and discontented. They all come to meet with the person in the midst of the church.

However, it is not the place that makes the difference, but the person in the place. It is not the place that transforms, but the person in the place that does the work. Therefore, we do not come to a place, but to a living person that dwells in a place. The place He has appointed to meet with all that believes in Him. Let us take hints from the gospel of John. The Samaritan woman asked after the place of worship instead of the person worthy of worship. When Andrew called his brother, he simply said come and see, not the place but the person. The same with John and Philip, who called Nathaniel, they all left their places of work and dispositions to come to the Lord Jesus.

In his distress, he wrote Psalms 57, 63, and 142 while spending time in the cave. Throughout the ages, the Psalms have sweetened the heart of the children of God in all generations. He was a man lonely and broken, and in his brokenness, God led a multitude of men that were distressed, in debts, and discontented to join with him. They kept coming and the ranks swelled and reached the four hundred marks of men that choose David over Saul the tyrant.

The kind of people that flocked to him were the rejects, the misfits and the unlikely. People who needed a change in life circumstance, unsatisfied with the way things are, and the way things are run in the nation. They came from various corners of Israel and choose to be identified with David. They were the “dirty dozen”. They were debtors. We all know what it is to be a debtor and a slave to the lenders. We stand many risks, of our properties and perhaps the enslavement of our family.

In those days in Israel, to be a debtor means you are in perpetual slavery. Others were in distress, maybe about the situation they find themselves. Many of us may be passing through same or various stages of distresses. Finally, others were dissatisfied, discontented, and discouraged. The Bible said every one of the no-names came to David, to dwell in the cave.

David became a prince or captain over them, men numbering over four hundred men. We know something of their past. But what can the future hold for such misfits and outcast and outlaws as the world would call them? Let see from the Scripture. 1 Samuel 25:14-16. After being with David they became men described as disciplined, reasonable, teachable, good, respectable, virtuous, non-violent, honest, brother's keepers, protective walls, and well behaved.