David’s Mighty Men August 24, 2008
1 Samuel 22:2
Remember – Saul is King, but his heart has been turned away from God
David is a teenager, has been anointed as the next king in secret, and killed the Giant Goliath with a stone and a sling.
Saul Starts to take David on every campaign that they go on – David does well in every battle, and Saul starts moving him up in rank in the army.
After one particularly successful battle, as they are riding victoriously through Israel, the women come out singing: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands”
At that moment, David stops being Saul’s asset and becomes a rival: He says to himself, “Before you know it they’ll be giving him the kingdom!" Saul starts to hate David.
Saul sends David on more and more dangerous missions hoping that the Philistines will kills him, but God is with David at every turn.
At various times, Saul himself tries to spear David while David was playing music for Saul.
Saul son, Jonathan loved David dearly, and he say that God was with him, so he’d talk to his father and try to get him to realize that David was an ally, not an enemy. Saul would wise up for a brief time, and then his jealousy would get the better of him and he would try to kill David again.
Things finally get too dangerous for David and he has to run for it in to the hills. Saul seems to get more obsessed with killing David than with defeating his enemies.
There is one funny story when David had escaped and went to Samuel the prophet, Saul sent a band of men after him to kill him. When they got there, the prophets around Samuel were “Prophesying.” That sounds like they were standing up very calmly speaking out words from God like we read scripture, but it was much more wild than that. They would have be lost in ecstatic frenzy. If you thought that worship during the height of the renewal was wild, it was nothing compared to these prophets. So this band of blood-thirsty killers come up to the prophets, and the Spirit falls on them to, and they join the prophets in their wild, frenetic, Spirit-led prophetic worship! Saul hears about it, so he sends more men – the Spirit comes on them to, and they join in! He sends a third group, and the same thing happens. Finally, he is fed up, and goes himself, he doesn’t even get to the place and the Spirit comes on him and he walks the whole distance acting like a mad man. When he finally gets there, he strips off all his clothes, falls to the ground and lays there all day and night babbling prophesies from God! And you thought God had no sense of humour!
It would be as if you were being chased by a street gang intent on killing you, you run into the Airport Christian Fellowship to hide, they run in after you, but as soon as they are through the door, the Spirit knocks them to the ground and they start to shake and speak in tongues, and they stay that way for 24 hrs! – cool.
Not only does God use unlikely means to save his people, and to accomplish his will, he uses rather unlikely people as well.
David runs by himself for a while, but soon, other men start coming to him. Samuel 22
David … 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 around him, and he became their commander. About four hundred men were with him.
It is pretty amazing that David’s jealous brothers came on side and joined him, but the other people are even more amazing – Samuel might as we have said that all the people living in the bottom of the barrel joined David. This is how Eugene Peterson translates it “…all who were down on their luck came around—losers and vagrants and misfits of all sorts.”
It’s probably a good thing that his family showed up first before the “wrong side of the tracks” guys did because if they saw who their brother was hanging out with, they might have turned right around and took their chances with Saul.
As we saw from the “March of the Unqualified” video – while these guys looked like losers, that is exactly the kind of people that God uses!
In fact, some of these men went on to greatness!
In 2 Samuel 23, David, at the end of his life, recounts the exploits of his mighty men. Read 2 Samuel 23:8-17.
God does this constantly – he is a redeeming God – He takes what is on the bottom of society and puts it on the top.
This is what Paul says to the Corinthians
1:26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: "Let those who boast boast in the Lord."
Paul isn’t putting them down, he goes on in chapter 2 to talk about himself:
“And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. [a] 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”
“Think of what you were when you were called.”
Ephesians 2:12-13
remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Even if you are like me, and have been a Christian as long as you can remember, you are probably aware of what could have been if it were not for the Spirit’s working in you.
Humility
If we keep this in our minds, it creates two great attributes – the first is humility. We are not to remember where we came from so that we feel like a worm all the time – by to guard against pride – so we don’t stand up and say “look what I have made of myself!”
There can be a unhealthy, or even sinful pride in Christians – “We believe so well, don’t we tell ourselves, don’t we take exclusive pride that we abide so far from hell…”
God says to Israel in Deuteronomy 7 “you are a people set apart as holy to God, your God. God, your God, chose you out of all the people on Earth for himself as a cherished, personal treasure.
God wasn’t attracted to you and didn’t choose you because you were big and important—the fact is, there was almost nothing to you. He did it out of sheer love, keeping the promise he made to your ancestors. God stepped in and mightily bought you back out of that world of slavery, freed you from the iron grip of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
We are only able to stand up and say, “Look what the Holy Spirit has done!”
Humility isn’t a “worm theology” that says that we constantly need to feel terrible about ourselves – it is a clear view of who we are, where we have come from, and what God has done for us. In humility you can take leadership and do great things for God and for others, humility doesn’t keep you down, but it allows you to rise up in God’s strength.
Hope
The other thing that the men who gathered around David do for me, and what Paul writes to the Corinthians does for me is to give me hope.
If God could use the unqualified in the past, he can certainly use me! It is not my great qualities that will bring success, but God’s power within me that will bring success. If God can use All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented… then, maybe he can use me!
