1 Samuel 21:10-22:1 KJV And David arose, and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to Achish the king of Gath. [11] And the servants of Achish said unto him, Is not this David the king of the land? did they not sing one to another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands? [12] And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Achish the king of Gath. [13] And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard. [14] Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man is mad: wherefore then have ye brought him to me? [15] Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house? [22:1] 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.
I. INTRODUCTION—FEAR
-Fear is a very real human reality and emotion that the fallen condition of man has dropped all of us into. Furthermore, it would appear from the Bible that there are times that fear can actually be a spirit that takes on a form that we contend with (2 Tim. 1:7).
-Time magazine covered the results of a survey by Chapman University. This survey was done in October 2015. The researchers asked a random sample of 1,541 adults to rate the level of fear for 88 different fear options across a variety of domains (like crime and natural disasters). Based on their findings, here were the top 10 fears for 2015:
• Corruption of government officials (58.0%)
• Cyber-terrorism (44.8%)
• Corporate tracking of personal information (44.6%)
• Terrorist attacks (44.4%)
• Government tracking of personal information (41.4%)
• Bio-warfare (40.9%)
• Identity theft (39.6%)
• Economic collapse (39.2%)
• Running out of money in the future (37.4%)
• Credit card fraud (36.9%)
-Interestingly, the researchers also found that half of all Americans believe in something paranormal, with 40% reporting they believe places are haunted by spirits, and over one fourth believing the living and dead can communicate. Also in the survey, 20% of people reported that aliens visited Earth in the past and that dreams can predict the future.
-There are a variety of fears that we have to deal with on a daily basis. Most of them come to nothing but we still have to deal with them.
II. 1 SAMUEL 21:10-22:1—DANCING WITH THE DEVIL
-I started to give this message a title of “Crazy as a Bedbug.” That is an expression that I have heard over the years but after digging into the heart of this story, I thought that it simply did not fit David’s actions. David was actually putting on a show of deception to save his life.
A. The Dilemma of Fear
-The predominant theme in this portion of Scripture would be David’s fear. In 1 Samuel 21:10 he fled because of the fear of Saul. But the deadliest thing that he had to contend with was his actions that are recorded in 1 Samuel 21:12. . . He laid up these words in his heart and was sore afraid of Achish. . . Fear can make you crazy and that is what was operating in the life of David.
Ecclesiastes 7:7 KJV Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad. . .
-Oppression was very much a factor in David’s life at this point. Earlier in this same chapter, 1 Samuel 21, we can read of the terrible story where that David is on the run from Saul and he goes to Nob and finds some relief there. Ahimelech supplies him with some bread and Goliath’s sword but soon he is on the run again from Doeg, who is one of Saul’s wicked warriors.
-Here is what fear will do to you. . . It will make you run!
• From Saul—Even though David had received strength in the house of the Lord.
• From Achish—Even though David had been supplied with a weapon (Goliath’s sword) that was more than enough to help him to defeat Achish.
-Saul has the eighty priests at Nob killed at the hand of Doeg and David is once again on the run from Saul. That fear is compounded and he ends up leaving the country for the first time but it is to flee to enemy territory.
-David’s flight from Saul will take him to three places over the next several months and years in his life.
• Gath—In Philistia—21:10-15
• Adullam—In Judah—22:1-2
• Mizpeh—In Moab—22:3-5
-But as these unfold in the life of David, it will end up that during these wilderness days that the grace of God will do some very good things in his life. He does not know it yet because life is something that is lived forward but as he would look back, he would give honor to the grace of God for that segment of his life.
-When we are faced with fear we have to make sure that time is essential to the interpretation of God’s ways in your life. Here is how time will work in the behalf of a child of God:
• The cruel wrong that Joseph and the anguish that Jacob endured proved to be good but it was only worked out with the passage of time.
• Forty years of wandering in the wilderness proved to be good for Israel but it was only worked out in time.
• Peter was better for the bitterness and the shame of his betrayal of Jesus.
-All things work together. . . Romans 8:28
B. Fleeing to the Enemy
-Because fear will warp your sense of direction, David decides to run to Gath, one of the Philistine strongholds. It is about a 25 mile run to the southwest from Nob. Maybe he thought he could find employment as a mercenary soldier. He knew that Achish had been the ruler of this city; in fact he had been the ruler for about 40 years. Achish would have been the governor of the city when David in the valley of Elah and had killed Goliath.
-David is doing one of the things that Scripture warns us not to do. . . Run to the wicked:
Proverbs 4:14-16 (KJV) Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. [15] Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away. [16] For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall.
Proverbs 24:19-20 (KJV) Fret not thyself because of evil men, neither be thou envious at the wicked; [20] For there shall be no reward to the evil man; the candle of the wicked shall be put out.
-The men who see David in this city immediately recognize him. Either they knew him by reputation or they may have recognized the sword that David had as the one previously owned by Goliath. Here is what is so ironic about the whole affair, the enemies of God were more afraid of David than he was of them. That same pattern holds true even in this day, the enemies of God that we battle in the spirit world are more afraid of us than we are of them but we are like David and cannot see that.
-David takes some very precarious steps in going down to Gath. He is going to the enemies of God and to a country of idols that hated his nation. He was looking for relief but it was likely to end in disaster except for the preserving grace of God. It was the wrong move for him to make.
Occasionally I think about what I have heard Brother Harrell preach to the church in Bridge City, Texas. He tells them that they can never go back to the world. He preaches that whether or not they realize it or not, the world and the devil hates them. You cannot be delivered from a life of sin and then expect to go back in and the world take you like you are with a redeemed heart, a transformed life, and a changed mind. It just wont’ work!
-From the Pulpit Commentary, Vol. IV, Ruth-Samuel, p. 400:
The present life of the righteous in a sinful world is one of discipline, in which they both reap some of the fruits of former imperfections and become trained to higher service. Our Christian course is a campaign in which dark nights of watching and groping and trembling are to be expected as well as bright days of onslaught and victory. The degree of clearness in which the pillar of fire and cloud may stand before us may be affected by our disordered vision—the result of imperfect health; or distraction, or sheer exhaustion.
-There is also the matter of false steps that further impale us at the wrong times of life (from the Pulpit Commentary as well):
Men would say he did the best under the circumstances, and in all sincerity of purpose. Nevertheless, the step was a false one, apart from his motive, both in itself and in its results. For it was shocking for a pious Hebrew—the assertor of the "name of the Lord" (1Sa 10:1-27; 1Sa 7:1-17:45), and the victor of Elah—to enter the abode and seek the service of the "uncircumcised Philistine," and the event proved that safety was not secured, but was so imperilled as to suggest the adoption of a most humiliating expedient. Oh, the bitter anguish of those who, having lived in the light of God’s countenance, find themselves sinking deeper and deeper into helplessness and sorrow! Thus may it be with us all in our "dark and cloudy day." Every new step we take only makes our path more painful, and taxes more severely our ingenuity. Peter’s "following afar off" led him amidst scoffing men and women, and their words (1Sa 21:11; cf. Mat 26:58, Mat 26:69-75) made a demand on his ingenuity more serious in its success than David’s feigned madness. And this has been the experience of multitudes.
-If we learn anything from David in this portion of Scripture, it would be to watch your steps!
C. David’s Goes Crazy
-So again out of fear, David resorts to something that would have humiliated his own self-respect. He starts acting like a madman.
1 Samuel 21:13 (KJV) And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.
-The phrase, “feigned himself mad” is used in other places in the Bible and looking at them gives us a little better picture of what David resorted to:
• Compared to drunkenness—Jer. 25:16; 51:7
• Terror—Jer. 50:38
• To driving a chariot recklessly—Jer. 46:9; Nah. 2:4
-When madness gets a hold of a person and you are there to witness their behavior, it can be a very unnerving experience.
Working on almost thirty years ago, an event took place in my life that I do not know that I will ever forget. I was in my last semester in nursing school and we were doing our clinical rotations through the mental hospital in Chattahoochee, Florida. We were on the criminally insane floor and every morning of that clinical, I along with one other nursing student would be locked up in a ward with 40 men who all had committed some form of horrific crime. I had been assigned to a fellow who was in his mid-50’s who had murdered his mother. Although I did not know this until the third week of clinicals because the instructors would not allow us to look at their charts because they wanted us to try to figure out why they were there and what course of treatment that should be offered. So we would spend eight hours a time on the ward with these people who had been deemed insane. Some of them appeared to be perfectly normal but the majority of these guys were truly insane. I observed all sorts of crazy behaviors.
One old fellow would get up on the half-walls and ride it like it was a horse. He had some cowboy boots and a toboggan that he wore while he was up on the wall acting like he was riding. The majority of them were chain smokers but they did not have access to cigarette lighters so they would have to light their cigarettes with a device that was attached to the wall. It was sort of like an electric cigarette lighter in your car. They would hold a switch and light it and then go off and smoke. I watched other men who apparently did not have enough money pick through the cigarette butts in the ashtrays and they would take them to the wall-lighter and hold them up to it until burner so they could get two or three puffs before it burnt totally down to the filter. There was another guy that they had nicknamed “Cowboy.” He would come in around 10 A.M. or so after returning from his group therapy and as soon as he was inside the door, he would start running down the corridor which was probably twenty-five yards long and would take off his jacket, shirt, and shoes and would put on a big cowboy hat and start pacing from one end of the corridor to the other. From the door to the end of the social area and back again which would take him about a minute to walk that distance. All the while he would be talking to himself. One day my patient told me very ironically, “You see that guy right there?” I told him I did. He then said, “That guy is crazy!”
But that is not the unnerving part that I saw. One morning, Andrea S. and I walked into the ward and the heavy metal door closed behind us. There is no sound quite like that one to hear a heavy metal door close shut and click loudly letting you know that you are in and cannot get out. Down at the end of the hall was my patient and as soon as he saw us he come walking toward us at a pretty steady pace. He was cursing loudly, yelling at the top of his lungs about how I had betrayed him. He had asked me for bread and I had given him a stone. He had asked me for a fish and I had given him a serpent. I was petrified along with Andrea as well. His actions had started a chain reaction and the whole ward is suddenly yelling and carrying on. Two huge mental health techs go toward the patient and the charge nurse and one other nurse grab us by our arm and pull us into the nursing station which also has a huge barred door and slams it closed behind us. It is chaos outside of the nursing station on the ward. There are about 20 men yelling, raging, and cursing to the top of their lungs.
I get a glimpse through the window of my patient and his face is contorted as the two mental health techs are wrestling with him. He is fighting them and they take a restraining device and wrap him up with it in seconds and take him down. A third tech had a foam mat and he shoves that behind my patient as they take him down so he won’t land on the concrete floor. Then a nurse comes up with a syringe full of Haldol and gives him an injection in his upper arm. It was one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen. After it was all over, one of the mental health techs said that the psychiatrists had been adjusting his medicine and this behavior had been going on for several days.
-There is no way to know if David acted like that or not but the account in 1 Samuel does tell us that there were a couple of manifestations of David’s actions:
• Scrabbled on the doors of the gate—Marking the doors of the gate like someone who has to count everything that they see. Sort of like an obsessive-compulsive kind of activity.
• Letting spittle run down into his beard—Obviously we get the picture of that but it is more than just that, it would have been a wild-eyed crazy look in his eyes.
-Get this thought in your mind; here is a man who really was destined for the throne. Samuel had anointed him and God’s hand was on his life but because of going into enemy territory to dance with the devil, every bit of his self-respect was tossed out the window in self-preservation.
-There are two more times that David will have to deal with Achish (1 Sam. 27 & 29) and both of those times he will again resort to some form of deception to deal with him.
-He manages to get away from Achish and he goes to the cave in Adullam and it will lead him to meet a merry band of outlaws that he will end up transforming into some most noble warriors and leaders that Israel will have in their entire history. But that is for another day!
-At this point in David’s life he is less than 25 years old and has already been through enough experiences for two lifetimes. But you need to remember the description that is said about David. . . A man after God’s own heart. . . To become a man or a woman after God’s own heart, you will have to endure some things in your life that are treacherous, challenging, and discouraging but if you stay faithful to the Lord, both you and the Lord will prevail!
III. TWO PREVAILING PRINCIPLES
-There are two prevailing principles that come from this portion of David’s life.
A. The Danger of Consulting a World of the Enemies of the Faith
-David was in a place of darkness because of the very real fear that had him backed up in the corner. But when he went to the Philistines who were mortal enemies of Israel, he potentially was causing them to scorn their God.
-Romans 2:24 cautions us that we should not get into a place where the name of God will be blasphemed among the Gentiles (world). If the Philistines had taken David in, he would have been guilty at some point of telling them all of the troubles of the people of God.
-F. W. Krummacher in his biography on David has this to say:
It is always a dangerous course when believers look to the children of this world for protection and help. Without taking into account that too easily in the circle such benefactors and deliverers do they lose their balance, and, making court to them for their favor, yield to the temptation to disown their faith, and in word and conduct to place themselves on an equality with the world. Such a step gives to the latter occasion secretly to triumph, that they who are so willing to be called “the chosen,” when distress comes upon them know not how to be contented with their God and his help alone, but gladly permit themselves to see aid from those to whom they do not otherwise concede the name of brethren. Never will they succeed in truly reconciling the enemies of their faith by means of affected accommodation to them and their forms of life for, according to the well-known testimony of God, the enmity between those who are “after the flesh,” and those who are “after the Spirit,” is a fixed principle, and though covered with many a fair garland of courtesy and politeness, yet, even when universal love bears the scepter in the heart of God’s children, that enmity cannot be abolished till regenerating grace has made of the “twain one.”
-When we read the words of Paul to the Ephesians about the shifting winds of doctrine (Eph. 4:14) and when we read of his words to Timothy (2 Tim. 3) we have to realize that our worlds are not the same and we cannot afford to seek comfort and aid from the enemies of our Lord Jesus Christ.
B. The Blessing of a God He Could Trust
-There are two psalms that give us some insight into what David thought as he looked back on his life. Psalm 34 and Psalm 56 are the two that come from those sorrowful events at Nob and Gath.
-He has repented for his lack of faith and his dancing with the devil. What prevails in both of those psalms is a sense of thanks for the grace of God and His deliverance from that snare. When you really contemplate what happened to David when he ran to Gath was that he did not lose his life.
Psalms 56:1-13 (ESV) To the choirmaster: according to The Dove on Far-off Terebinths. A Miktam of David, when the Philistines seized him in Gath. Be gracious to me, O God, for man tramples on me; all day long an attacker oppresses me; [2] my enemies trample on me all day long, for many attack me proudly. [3] When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. [4] In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me? [5] All day long they injure my cause; all their thoughts are against me for evil. [6] They stir up strife, they lurk; they watch my steps, as they have waited for my life. [7] For their crime will they escape? In wrath cast down the peoples, O God! [8] You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? [9] Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call. This I know, that God is for me. [10] In God, whose word I praise, in the LORD, whose word I praise, [11] in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? [12] I must perform my vows to you, O God; I will render thank offerings to you. [13] For you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.
-From the ESV. . . Look at the verbs:
• Trample
• Oppress
• Attack
• Injure
• Stir up strife
-He said that this was going on “all the day long.”
-There are a number of responses to fear but the best one will always be to trust in the Lord:
Psalms 56:3 (ESV) When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
IV. CONCLUSION—THE COYOTE’S WAIL
When businessman Allen Emery was in the wool business, he once spent an evening with a shepherd on a Texas prairie. During the night, the long wail of coyotes pierced the air. The shepherd’s dogs growled and peered into the darkness. The sheep, which had been sleeping, lumbered to their feet, alarmed, bleating pitifully. The shepherd tossed more logs onto the fire, and the flames shot up. In the glow, Allen looked out and saw thousands of little lights. He realized those were reflections of the fire in the eyes of the sheep.
“In the midst of danger,” he observed, “the sheep were not looking out into the darkness but were keeping their eyes set in the direction of their safety, looking toward the shepherd. I couldn’t help but think of Hebrews 12: ‘looking unto the Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. . .’”
-That is exactly what we must do in our walk with the Lord through this life. We have to keep our eyes on Him and turn them away from our fears.
Philip Harrelson
June 4, 2016
