Title: How To Behave In A Cave – 2
“David’s Cave – Five Keys to Victory – 1”
Text: I Samuel 22:1
Last week I started a very powerful series on “How to Behave in a Cave.” I know that many people were touched by the power of the Holy Ghost through the Word of God and in the after service. I believe that we have started our journey of coming out of the cave.
A cave is a natural underground void large enough for a human to enter. Some people suggest that the term cave should only apply to cavities that have some part that does not receive daylight.
There were several men in the Bible that dwelled in caves for a season of their life. A cave is a type of a dark hour, a struggle, a trial in your life that you face. It seems to be void of light. We all go through them. There are several people in this congregation that are in a spiritual cave as we speak, but after last week we were and still are encouraged that we are coming out of that cave. We determined last week that we don’t care how long it takes or what it takes, we are coming out of that old cave.
Jesus said in John 16:33; “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
We Pastors like to focus on the wonderful God that we serve and I still will through this message, but sometimes we have a tendency of misintrepreting the Pastor and we think that he is saying that your life is full of roses when really your life is full of the thorns that hold the roses up.
Last week we just began by telling people the things that we need to remember when we face the caves of life. When we are in the midst of the caves of life, we must remember that this cave did not come to stay, it came to pass away. Every trial, struggle, dark hour that you face in life never comes to stay, it always comes to pass.
The second thing we must remember when in the cave of life is who God is. We learned from several Scriptures last week that says He is:
1. Your shield
2. Your exceeding great reward
3. Your Almighty God
4. Your healer
5. Your Saviour
6. He is the first and the last and everything in between
7. He is the Comforter
8. He is full of mercy or merciful
9. He exercises lovingkindness
10. He is the Bread of Life
11. He is the Door
12. He is the Light of the world
13. He came that we might have life and life more abundantly
14. He is the Good Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep
15. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life
16. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end
We could go on for a lot longer if we had the time to tell you who God is. We summed up everything with just four words. Does anyone remember those four words: GOD – GOOD; DEVIL – BAD
We know that the character of God is good. Once we understand whom God really is then we understand that He wants us coming out of that cave. He does not want you to dwell in caves or dark hours all your life. That is not His plan for you.
More than a 130 years ago this country faced what people would historically call the Panic of 1873. The banking industry failed, markets crashed, and ripples washed through the entire world’s economic system. Does any of this sound familiar? Kind of like the day we are living in. This was a dark time.
The events of that year kicked off many years of Depression, but during that same time a focused inventor and businessman decided to open a laboratory and begin work on perfecting a way to distribute power and light. The inventor was Thomas Edison, and his invention is the common light bulb.
While everyone else was pulling back, Edison pressed forward. In the years that followed, he founded a company to bring “light” to the masses. That company, General Electric, is now one of the largest companies in the world. Founded during a world-wide depression, it has weathered through the harshest of economic storms, including the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
This was a very dark hour in the history of the United States, but even in the midst of the dark hour there was a man that was not willing to let his surrounding determine his outcome. I tell you this story this morning to encourage you that even though you may be facing a cave this morning, do not let it determine your final destination. Determine inside your head that you are refusing to stay there.
Some of you may be saying, “But things have never been this bad before in my life. How am I supposed to get ahead when I am so far behind?” I know some of the questions that are flooding your mind. When we lose focus on the fact that we are coming out of this storm we have a tendency of beginning to panic. But God wants you to let Him take control of your situations for He says, “Cast all your cares upon Me for I care for you.” We have to know that God cares before we can fully trust Him in this midst of this cave. So, I want to remind you today to remember that this cave did not come to stay, it came to pass and remember who the God that you serve is. Remember His character, remember his loving kindess, remember His compassion. You serve a good God that is bringing you out even as you speak.
Today we are going to start briefly on the first cavemen and begin to dissect his life to figure our how he behaved while in the cave. The important thing to remember about all these cavemen is that none of them stayed in the cave, they all came out! All of them learned principles on how to get out of their caves. You can apply these same principles that they learned to your own situations and if you will apply these same principles then you too will come out of your caves much better then when you went in.
David is the first caveman that I want to talk about. We might spend a couple of weeks on David’s life because there is so much information on this man’s life that we can glean from. Written in the Psalms we have his personal record of survival through the caves of life. So we can learn a lot about this man on how to behave in a cave.
Most likely you have heard the story of David’s life, it is an extreme story of a little shepherd boy that turns into a national hero. When he knocked down the giant Goliath with a slingshot and a stone he became the talk of the town. People started singing on the street – how Saul had killed his thousands but David has killed his tens of thousands. Truth be known, these people should have kept their big mouths shut. They made a lot of problems for David. They sang so much, it made Saul furious. He became totally consumed with jealousy and wanted to kill the little shepherd boy. So David ended up running for his life.
I Samuel 22:1-2; ¶ “David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam: and when his brethren and all his father's house heard it, they went down thither to him. 2 And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.”
Four hundred men went with David into the cave. However, they were not exactly the kind of people you like to surround yourself with when you’re going through a trial. Usually, when you are down, you want to try to find people who are up. But here, people who were in distress, in debt and discontented surround David. These guys were losing at the game of life.
We know that all these guys were losing at the game of life, but we also know that God specializes in transforming failures into successes and turning losers into winners. Look at some of you this morning. Think about what you were when the Lord found you and what you are now. Even if you don’t feel like a winner this morning, you are because the Bible says that you are more than a conqueror. God specializes in people and things that look impossible.
Something happened to those men when they followed David into the cave. They may have been discouraged when they went in, but they didn’t stay discouraged. They didn’t stay in debt, they didn’t stay in distress and discontentment. God showed them how to get out! And He wants to show you in the next few weeks how to come out of your cave.
In fact we find these same men in I Chronicles 11:
I Chronicles 11:9-10; “So David waxed greater and greater: for the LORD of hosts was with him. 10 ¶ These also are the chief of the mighty men whom David had, who strengthened themselves with him in his kingdom, and with all Israel, to make him king, according to the word of the LORD concerning Israel.”
These same men were so successful and blessed that they joyfully contributed out of their vast wealth to finance the building of the temple of God. Now that is success! Something has happened to them. They were not the same men when they came out of the cave as they were when they went in. That is God’s desire for each of us. He wants us to come out of our caves different then when we went in. He wants to strengthen us. He wants to renew us. He wants to make us mighty warriors for Him but sometimes we have to face the cave first. The cave experience was the best thing that could have ever happened to these men but I am sure that they did not think so when they were in the thick of that cave.
We have to remember that David and those men discovered that there were some key things that they had to do to go from being a loser to a winner and from a failure into a success. They had to learn how to behave while in the cave.
There were certain principles that they applied during those early days that established a firm foundation for their success. And we are going to find out exactly what those principles were.
I am going to close this morning with the reading of Psalm 57. In this Psalm we find five important keys to successful behaviour in a cave. This Psalm is David’s own record of his own thoughts when he fled from Saul into the Cave of Adullam.
Psalm 57:1-11; ¶ <
I am not going to share with you what these truths are until tonight. I will tell you that in this Psalm we find the keys that led not only David but everyone around him out of the cave Adullam and into victory. If you want to live in victory and come out of your cave, please come back tonight to learn these truths for yourself and apply them to your own life.
