It seemed like just another day in the sleepy little town of Gath. Merchants selling their wares in the little local market. People standing in front of the shops, discussing the latest news and gossip. Small town folks just going about another typical day … when “they” appeared. Now … any strangers showing up in Gath was a cause for excitement but these guys … there was something frightening and intense about them. They looked like soldiers … warriors … dragging into town after fighting a mighty battle or being out in the field for a long, long time. They were dirty, disheveled. They looked hungry … tired … beaten down … their eyes nervously scanning the people as they walked past.
The villagers stopped what they were doing and stared at this bedraggled and somewhat menacing group of men as they walked down the main street of Gath. The villagers of Gath had never seen anyone who looked like them before … wild, dirty, cautious, tough-looking men. One thing was sure … wherever they came from they were clearly not Philistines. As tired and dirty as these men looked, they also had a bearing of strength and pride about them … the kind that you find in seasoned warriors … which was odd because none of them were carrying any of the accoutrements of soldiers or warriors … no shields … no weapons … except for one man who had a sword … but no ordinary sword.
The sword was huge … taller than the man who wore it in his belt. In fact, the sword was so long that the tip of it dragged on the ground behind him. The sound of it dragging in the dust drew everyone’s attention away from the soldiers to the sword itself. There was something oddly familiar about this unusual sword … and then a murmur began to sweep through the villagers as they watched this weird spectacle. The sword! It began to dawn on the villagers where they had seen that sword before. It was unmistakable! It once belonged to their hometown hero and legendary champion of Philistia … Goliath of Gath!
How did this tired, dirty soldier come to possess it? As far as anybody in Gath knew, Goliath’s sword had been entrusted to a priest by the name of Ahimelech in the City of Nob.
And then it hits them ...
Is this …? Could this be …? Naw … not here in Gath! Not here in Goliath’s hometown! David was known for his bravery but this was nothing short of insane … to march into Gath wearing the very sword that David used to cut off the head of Goliath. No way! There was just no way! But who else could it be? This guy was clearly no priest, so it couldn’t be Ahimelech. It couldn’t be anyone else but David.
Needless to say, word of David and his men’s arrival spread through Gath like wildfire. As David and his men looked around they noticed that all the villagers’ stares had turned from that of curiosity to recognition … and then to growing hostility. What seemed like a good idea last night … well … now … surrounded by an increasingly hostile crowd … they realize that this was actually a pretty stupid and very dangerous idea.
Sitting around the campfire in a cave, coming to Gath seemed like a perfectly sensible idea … brilliant even. The last place that King Saul would go looking for David would be in Philistia … let alone the very hometown of Goliath … it had a kind of poetic flair to it … and they figured that they would get away with it because no one in Gath had ever seen David and it would never cross anyone’s mind that David would do such a brazen and insane thing as attempt to hide from King Saul in Gath. Even if King Saul found out that David and his men were laying low in Gath, what could he do about it? If King Saul tried to enter Philistia it would be seen as an act of war and the tribal kings along the border of Philistia would gather their troops and ride out to stop King Saul’s “invasion.” So … on paper … it made pretty good sense.
Most of you probably know the story of David’s rise to fame. It started with … [pause] … David’s defeat of Goliath … the giant of Gath. Armed with nothing more than a slingshot, five smooth stones, and his faith in the God of Israel, David killed Goliath and then … as we just heard … he cut Goliath’s head off with the giant’s own sword … the one he so foolishly wore into Goliath’s hometown.
After David killed Goliath, David became something of a teenage celebrity in Israel. The number one hit on all the music charts was a song celebrating David’s stunning victory over the Giant of Gath. The chorus went like this: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands” (1 Samuel 18:8). Everyone … especially the women … were singing it … and King Saul became very jealous of David’s growing popularity. To get rid of David, Saul made him a commander in his army and sent him out to battle … hummmm, sounds somewhat familiar, doesn’t it? It’s what David did to Uriah, hoping that Bathsheba’s husband would get killed in battle. Now we know where he may have gotten the idea, amen?
Saul’s fear rested on the fact that David clearly had God’s favor … a fact and a fear that was confirmed by David’s growing string of military victories. In fact, says the Bible, David had more success than all the servants of Saul (1st Samuel 18:30) … making David more popular with the people than ever.
After Saul made several attempts on his life, David decided the smartest thing that he could do would be to split and leave town. For several years, David lived as a fugitive with a price on his head. He never had a moment’s peace … always having to look over his shoulder … always wondering if someone had sold him out or would betray him … always on the run … always wondering if Saul was waiting to ambush him and his men around the next bend or in the next town. And the same went for his loyal comrades who followed him from one place to another … either fighting or fleeing but never safe. At one point, Saul commissioned 30,000 of his crack soldiers to bring David back to Jerusalem … dead or alive.
During this harrowing and difficult time of his life, David’s trust in the Lord was rock-solid … God was his champion. David only did what God told him to do. He only went where God told him to go … and he always had the sense that God was with him … beside him … always giving him strength in the midst of all his trials. Like all of us, however, David was a human being made of flesh and blood. All that running … all that paranoia … the constant fear of capture … the possibility of death hounding his every step ... well, that would take a toll on anyone, amen? If only he and his men could catch a break. If only there was somewhere they could stop … catch their breath … collect their thoughts … and come up with a new plan.
Unfortunately … we don’t always make our best decisions when we’re tired, hungry, stretched to the limit, or running on empty, do we? Decisions made in the midst of our fears are usually rash and short-sighted. And standing there on the main street of Gath, surrounded by angry Philistines … well, maybe they should have given their plan a bit more thought, you think?
Actually, their plan might have worked … if it weren’t for Goliath’s sword. It seemed like maybe Goliath was going to get his revenge from beyond the grave. Why would David do that? Fear perhaps. It was the only weapon that they had at the time. Pride? I doubt it. Perhaps he carried it with him for reassurance … the weight of it in his belt … the sound of it dragging on the ground behind him reminded him of its presence and how he came to have it. The sword was a powerful symbol of God being with him and giving him the victory against impossible odds. Unfortunately, it was a symbol of humiliation and defeat to the Philistines … something that David and his men failed to consider when they made their plans … but as I said, these poor guys were only human, amen?
Of course, David is immediately arrested. Achish, the tribal king who ruled over Gath and the surrounding region, can’t believe his eyes when he sees David being dragged before him. “Is this not David the King of the land?” Achish’s advisors gloat. “Did they not sing to one another of him in dances, ‘Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?” (1st Samuel 21:11).
Ooops! Rut-row! You see, one person’s victory is another person’s defeat. While Goliath’s sword was a symbol of reassurance for David and his men, it was a symbol of the humiliation and shame and defeat of their gods against the God of Israel. A song that was meant to praise David for his victory over Goliath … a song that became a kind of national hymn … well, that same song had a completely different meaning to the king and good citizens of Gath. When it speaks of Saul killing his thousands … it’s praising Saul for killing thousands of Philistines. When it praises David, it praises him for killing ten times more Philistines than Saul. A song that was written to praise him is now being used to condemn him.
Like I said … rut row! David needs to come up with plan … and quick. Coming to Gath was clearly insane … maybe acting insane will get him out of Gath … and that’s exactly what David does … act insane. He starts acting cuckoo for cocoa puffs … looney tunes. He begins to growl and spit … then babble incoherently. He runs around the courtyard and begins clawing at the doors of the king’s palace like a wild animal caught in a trap. It was a pitiful sight … a great warrior like David acting like the town idiot … actually, even the town idiot felt pity and disgust for him.
David’s plan was so insane that it actually worked. Seeing this once great warrior acting like a rabid dog sickened King Achish. “Look at ‘this’ … I can’t even use the word ‘man’ … Look at this … this beast … this raving madman. This idiot … this raving fool is no threat to me. Get him out of my sight right now. If I want to watch an idiot drool on himself, I can get a dozen of ‘em right outside the gate there. Shame on you for bringing this spectacle into my house. I can barely stomach the sight of him. Take him outside the city gates and send him off into the wilderness to die.”
Needless to say, David goes babbling and growling off into the distance with his men behind him … and once again, David and his men find themselves sitting around a campfire in a cave. David takes the time to reflect upon what just happened. Usually David would go to God for direction and advice before he made a move … but he didn’t do that this time and look what happened. When he was being dragged before King Achish, did he pray? Did he call upon God to give him strength … to give him wisdom? No. He panicked. He relied on his own cunning and quick thinking … which, praise God, worked.
To make sure that he never forgot the lessons that he learned in Gath, David wrote them down in a poem … we know it as Psalm 34. You’ll notice what it says at the top of Psalm 34 … “Praise for Deliverance from Trouble” … and then underneath that it says, “Of David, when he feigned madness before Abimelech, so that he” … meaning King Achish … “drove him” … meaning David … “out, and he” … David … went away.”
“Who,” you might ask, “is ‘Abimelech’”? “Abimelech” is not a person … it’s a title … like “duke” or “earl.” We don’t know exactly what the title “abimelech” is, so it we translate it as “king” … but a more accurate understanding would be that of a tribal king or “chieftain.” So, Psalm 34 is a psalm remembering the time that David pretended to be insane before a tribal chieftain who was so sickened by David’s display that he ordered David to be driven out of town … and David was only too happy to oblige.
Psalm 34 is a gift from David to us. It gives us a rare and honest glimpse into the heart of a Godly man who was overwhelmed by fear and fatigue and for a moment panicked … just as we are being constantly being overwhelmed and worn down by what seems like a non-stop barrage of bad news lately. Like David, it seems like there’s no let up, no rest. Before the pandemic, we had the best economy in our history. Life seemed to be pretty good for the most part. Like the citizens of the City of Gath, we just went about our lives as usual … until suddenly … BOOM! Overnight we find ourselves hiding in our houses from a virus … and it has only gotten worse from there. Every time it seems like things are beginning to settling down … possibly taking a turn for the better … we’re confronted with new problems, bigger challenges … our television and social media are constantly filled with images and scenes that we never could have imagined three weeks ago happening all around us … further heightening our fear and our insecurity. So … what can we learn from David hiding in some cave 3,000 years ago that can help us today? Well, open your Bibles to Psalm 34 and let’s find out together, shall we?
When David stood before Goliath, he was standing in God’s will. When Goliath threatened to leave David’s dead body on the field of battle for the birds to feed upon, David told Goliath that the God of Israel would give him the victory and that the birds would feast on the flesh of dead Philistine soldiers so that “all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel … for the battle is the LORD’s and He will give you into our hand” (1st Samuel 17:46-47). When David stood before King Achish, he was in the middle of his own will. He knew that he was a ‘dead man walking.’ When he wrote Psalm 34 in the Cave of Adullam, it was the lowest point in his young life thus far. He had been chosen and anointed by God to become the king of Israel and yet, here he was, hiding in a cave … being pursued by the very king he was supposed to replace. Like us today, David couldn’t see how God was going keep His promise and make any of this happen … and for a moment, he doubted and took the matter into his own hands … and God’s plans and David’s life could have ended right there … but it didn’t … and David knew why.
I wish we had the time to go over all 22 verses of Psalm 34 but, unfortunately, we don’t so I want to concentrate on the first seven verses to unearth four of the lessons that David learned from his nearly tragic situation.
The first thing that David realized that he needed to do was to put himself back in to the center of God’s will. When he was being led to Abimelech Achish, David should have turned to the LORD and not to himself and the way that we do that is by praising God. “I will bless the LORD at all times, His praise,” says David, “shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1) … even when he and his men were hiding in a cave … even when he was standing before Abimelech Achish … even when we’re holed up in our homes or waiting in a doctor’s office … we praise the LORD!
That’s easier said than done sometimes, amen? I can hardly blame David for freaking out and panicking. When I am consumed by fear … when terror has my heart in its icy grip … when fear and terror shut my brain down … the last thing I feel like doing is praising and worshipping the LORD! I hate to confess this but praising God doesn’t even cross my mind when all the alarm bells and warning sirens are going off in my panic-stricken mind.
And yet, as irrational and as contrary as David’s advice may sound … it is exactly what we should do. The way to pass through our fear is to begin praising and worshipping God. The first three verses of this psalm contain some of the most powerful and meaningful descriptions of praise and worship found in the entire Book of Psalms. David starts by saying that he will bless the LORD when? “… at all times” (v. 1). His praises shall be on his lips when? “ … continually” (v.2) … as in always … constantly. He not only praises the LORD continually with his lips, his very soul “makes its boast in the LORD.” And then he encourages us to do likewise: “… let the humble hear and be glad … O magnify the LORD with me … and let us exalt His name together” (Psalm 34:2-3).
Praise the LORD at all times … even when we are standing before the throne of Achish. Praise the LORD at all times … even when we’re hiding in the Cave of Adullum. Praise the LORD at all times … when times are good and when times are bad … when our hearts are filled with joy and when our hearts are filled with fear and terror. We praise in the LORD in the night … we praise the LORD in the midst of our adversity. When we are filled with fear, what does David tell us to do? Yes … praise the LORD. When we are filled with panic and want to go hide in a closet or under our bed, what does David tell us to do? Yeah … you got it … praise the LORD! At all times we must praise the LORD … at all times we must worship the LORD … at all times we must boast in the LORD … at all times we must magnify the LORD … at all times we must exalt His name, amen?
When we praise and worship God in the midst of our trials and fear, our fears, our anxiety just disappear, right? Ahhh … I hate to tell you this … but they do not … sorry. What does happen when we praise the LORD, when we worship the LORD, when we boast in the LORD, when we magnify the LORD, when we exult the LORD is that it puts our fears and our anxiety into perspective.
As you no doubt have heard before, we don’t tell God how big our problems are, we tell our problems how big our God is, amen? When we praise God, guess what we’re doing? We’re telling our problems how big God is. He is the Creator of the universe and everything that is in it. He is the Creator and Sustainer of all life. Can such a God handle our problems? Oh yeah! You bet! Praise and worship lifts God up in our minds and in our hearts and paints a vivid picture of who God is and just how powerful and loving and caring He really is.
Praising God reminds us of how great and all-powerful He is, but it also reminds us that He is there with us in our trouble. David’s problems were greater than anything I’ve ever had to face in my life. I’ve never had a jealous king throw a spear at me or put a bounty on my head … I’ve never had 30,000 soldiers scouring the countryside looking to separate my head from my body ….I’ve never been brought before the king of my enemy and had to feign madness to save my life … I’ve never been holed-up in a cave in the middle of nowhere … but, there, in that cave … David knows that God is right there with him … so he praises God … he worships God. I can hear him praying:
“Well, LORD … looks like I’ve messed up my life … again … but somehow I know … I know it with all my heart and soul … that You’re gonna get me through this somehow. Even though I’ve been forced to hide in this cave … even though I have no idea how You’re gonna fix all this and get me out of this mess … I know … I know beyond a shadow of a doubt … I know it in my very bones … that You will rescue Your servant … and so … right here … right now … I’m gonna praise You! I’m gonna worship You! I’m gonna boast about You! I’m gonna magnify You! I’m gonna exalt You!”
Praising and worshipping God puts our problems and our fears into perspective and reminds us that we are not alone … that God is with us, amen?
The next thing we do is acknowledge… to own … our fear. Acknowledging our fear is usually pretty easy, amen? The problem lies in the twisted notion that we are expected to handle our fear on our own. I don’t know where that idea came from because I know that the best way … and sometimes the only way … to keep fear from paralyzing us is to ask God for help. In verse 4, David says, “I sought the LORD, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.”
David sought the LORD to help him with his fear. I believe that David was seeking the LORD and even praying to the LORD while he was drooling and growling and acting like a lunatic before the king of Gath. “Good, LORD, what am I doing? This is nuts. I hope this works or the jig is up if it doesn’t. LORD, the only way this is going to work … the only way I’m gonna get out of this thing alive is if You help me. Seriously. I’m up the creek without a paddle here … flying blind. I don’t know what I’m doing but I hope and pray that what I’m doing will work … I’m gonna die here, LORD, if you don’t help me!
Here’s the thing … sometimes I don’t pray to God when I’ve messed up because I’ve messed up. My fear is based on the notion that God isn’t going to help me because I messed up and the fact that I’m neck deep in trouble is proof that God is either punishing me or has abandoned me … in either case, I deserve what I’m getting because I messed up and it an would be an insult … an affront … to God to ask Him to help me when I’m the one that got myself into this situation in the first place.
But David reminds us that God doesn’t work that way. Yes, David and his men should have consult with God before they strolled into Gath and David certainly should have hidden Goliath’s sword and gone back to get it later … but they were tired … stressed … not thinking straight … and God knew that. We’re human … flesh and blood. We get tired … we get stressed … and we make poor choices and bad decisions all the time … and God knows this.
What we learn here from David’s example is beautiful. Even though he messed up, God didn’t hold it against David. He didn’t punish David. He didn’t stand by and let David suffer the consequences of his poor decision. He stepped in and delivered David from all his fears … which means that He will also step in and deliver us from all our fears … even when we mess up or make poor decisions. God’s patience and mercy are like no other, amen?
In verse 6, David calls himself a “poor soul” … and it’s easy to forgive him for sinking into self-pity. He has no food … no weapons … he has no army … he has no throne. He has been anointed by God’s prophet, Samuel, to be the next king but now, hiding here in the Cave of Adullam, it doesn’t look like he’ll ever be king. At this point, he has nothing and no one except for a handful of loyal companions. And yet … David has the most important thing a poor soul could ever want or need … a rich God! In middle of his weakness, David has no choice but to lean upon God … and in so doing, discovers a Source … with a capital “S” … of power and wealth beyond anything found on the face of the earth or the history of the world. It is in our weakness that we find our ultimate Source of power and strength. David tried to rely on his own strength in Gath … and it proved to be extremely insufficient. The best that he could come up with was to degrade himself by acting like a rabid dog gone mad. Reflecting on that moment in the cave, he realizes just how weak and poor he really is … but then he realizes that he is indeed safe in this cave and not rotting away in some prison or literally losing his head in Gath. Clearly, for him to be sitting with his companions around the campfire as he penned the words to this poem, it had to be the work of God because, well, it was pretty obvious that his plan only worked because God intervened.
Like David, own your problem … or at least your part in it. Don’t play the victim card … it only keeps you stuck in your problem instead of seeking a solution to your problem. Confess where you are … confess how you got there … and then ask God to do for you what you can’t do for yourself … and He will deliver you from all your fears.
David started out his poem by praising God … then he owned his shortcomings and the part that he had to play in arriving at a such a hopeless place … and then he repents … he turns his attention, his mind, from his situation to God and begins to pray. “This poor soul cried, and was heard by the LORD, and was saved from every trouble” (Psalm 34:6). David didn’t mumble and grovel. He cried out. He spoke loudly, directly to God. There in the cave, he comes boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy … to find comfort in this time of despair and strength and inspiration in his time of need. He comes boldly because he has no doubt that God will hear His prayer and that God will answer his prayer and show him mercy and shower him with grace.
As I mentioned before, we’ve somehow gotten the misguided notion that we cannot call out to God when we’ve messed up because He’ll either punish us or let us suffer for our mistakes … but David shows us that we not only can but that we absolutely should call out to God even when we’ve made a Class A mess of everything. Not calling out to God at a time like this is not only foolish and unwise but will only keep us wallowing in our fears and hiding in our caves all that much longer, amen?
Here are some wise words about defeating fear from a pastor who wrestled with the challenge of fear in his own life. “In my struggle with the fear of man,” he said, “I began to see how fear had subverted my confidence in God. He had been dethroned in my life … people had taken His place. I was no longer trusting God. Since fear of man cedes power to human beings that rightly belongs to God, it is actually a form of idolatry. When we are ruled by fear of man,” he concludes, “those we’re afraid of usurp God’s sovereign place in our lives.”
What is he saying? I mean, how can fearing someone make them my god? How do we commit idolatry if we live in fear of someone or something? Because that person or that thing has control over us and we feel that if we appease that person or that thing that they or it will show us grace and mercy and stop haunting or torturing us. The fear or the thought of that fear or the constant awareness of our fear becomes the focus of our attention. It can consume us. You start thinking on it the moment you wake up … when you should start out your day thinking about God, amen? You dwell on it all day when you should be dwelling upon God. You end your day thinking about fear, when our final thoughts should be on God, amen?
When fear rules my life, what I’m saying to myself and what I am saying to God is that I fear the power of my enemies more than I trust in the power of Almighty God. David feared King Saul and King Achish more than he trusted in the power of the Almighty. He feared what would happen to him more than he trusted God’s ability to handle the situation. Who or what do you fear more than you trust God? [Pause.]
When this happens … when we fear people or situations more than we trust God … we have to do what David did. We have to praise God. We have to remember that God is greater than anything we have to face or deal with in this world … and we have to keep praising Him … we have to keep reminding ourselves that God is greater than anything we have to face in this world … and we have to keep doing it over and over and over … a hundred times a day if need be. In order for us to do that, however, we have to keep praising God, we have to keep praying and asking God to give us the wisdom and the strength to keep going, to keep coming to Him in prayer. “God … I am totally freaked out right now. My problems seem so huge … insurmountable … but I know that You are greater than anything I have to face so keep reminding me of this truth as You continue to give me the strength to get through this situation or at least get through this day. Amen.”
And once we’ve prayed, we need to claim it! You see, praising God and then coming to God and asking for God to grant us strength … that IS the solution to whatever problem or situation we are facing. By the end of his prayer, David knows that God has his back. “The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him, and delivers them” (Psalm 34:7). At least six times in this song, David uses the word “save” or “deliver” to express this concept. In verse 4 he praised God because he sought God and God answered him. Again, he praises God for hearing his prayer and saving him from his troubles in verse 6.
In 2nd Kings 6 there is a wonderful story that beautifully illustrates what David is talking about in verse 7. The Prophet Elisha and his servant had been preaching and warning Israel on behalf of God to protect Israel from the armies of Syria. Every time the Syrian army planned to attack, God would tell the Israeli king and his generals where and when these attacks would happen and they would be prepared and thwart their enemy’s plans. Needless to say, the Syrian king and his military commanders grew very, very tired of this and decided to get ride of Elisha … and so, like King Saul … Aram, the King of Syria … sent out spies to find Elisha. Unlike David, however, Elisha didn’t hide his whereabouts and it didn’t take long for King Aram’s spies to find out that Elisha was in the city of Dothan … so he sent horses and chariots and a great army to Dothan and they surrounded the city under the cover of darkness.
When Elisha’s servant woke up in the morning and went out to fetch some water before his master, Elisha, woke up, his heart froze at the sight of the Syrian army surrounding the city. In terror, he ran back into the house to warn his master. “Alas,” he cried out to Elisha, “what shall we do?”
Do you know what Elisha said? Cool as a cucumber he told his servant to … [pause] … relax. That’s right! He told his servant to calm down … to chill. “Do not be afraid,” he reassured his terrified companion, “for those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (2nd Kings 7:16). I can picture the servant stopping from wringing his hands and pacing back-and-forth to look at Elisha like he had gone out of his mind. What? What could Elisha have that was stronger than the Syrian army right outside their door? Did Elisha have an army in his pocket? What, for God’s sake, could be stronger that the Syrian army that came to arrest and possibly kill Elisha? Elisha’s cool confidence seemed more than out of place … it seemed insane!
What does Elisha do? He prays. “O LORD, please open [my servant’s] eyes that he may see” (2nd Kings 6:17). And the LORD answered his prayer and opened his servant’s eyes … and what did he see … what did God reveal to Elisha’s servant? He saw God’s army surrounding the Syrian army with angels and fiery chariots ready to come to Elisha’s defense.
God answered Elisha’s prayer and opened the servant’s eyes to the spiritual reality that surrounded them and then He closed the eyes of the Syrian army … blinded them … so that they were now filled with terror. Elisha calmly watched at the Syrian army scattered in panic.
This is similar to what David experienced in the Cave of Adullam. He prayed and God opened his eyes to the spiritual truth that was all around him … an angel of the LORD encamped around him … an angel had delivered him from the hand of King Achish … a hand that had delivered him from the hand of King Saul over and over and over again.
Has fear driven you to hide in a cave? The thing about caves is that they can make you feel safe … surrounded by a mountain on all sides … with only a few ways in or a few ways out. But caves can also be quite terrifying … they’re dark … closed in … and you can’t see what’s going on outside of the cave … no idea who or what is going to emerge out of the darkness or come through the entrance.
Our fear can keep us trapped in the darkness. We can’t see what’s in front of us or what’s all around us … and our imagination can often be our worse enemy. Maybe we can see the source of our fear quite clearly, but we’re filled with fear or terror because we don’t know what to do. But if we praise God … if we pray … He will open our hearts and our minds and we will know … even if we can’t see them … that a host of heavenly angels are encamped around us, amen?
David stumbled into Philistia to hide. Jesus, on the other hand, came into our world … not to flee or hide … but to deliver us from an enemy that we cannot see … an enemy that surrounds us and seeks to destroy us. When Jesus went out to confront Satan and his hoards, He faced a giant far greater than Goliath. In fact, He faced two great giants … sin and death.
Jesus doesn’t hide. He doesn’t pretend to go nuts … and yet, Jesus’ detractors think that He must be insane to face Sin and Death alone … no slingshot … no sword … no army. His only weapon is the truth. And when Jesus died upon the cross, His enemies thought that they had won … until it came time for them to see what they could not see … an empty tomb!
When fear begins to close its icy grip upon your heart, what should you do? You should offer up praises to the LORD … worship the LORD … boast of the LORD … magnify the LORD … exalt the LORD … call out to the LORD in prayer … and then you should claim God’s provision of deliverance through Jesus Christ, our Deliverer, who is encamped around those who fear Him and delivers them.
Let us pray …
“God … we are totally freaked out right now. Our problems seem so huge … insurmountable … but we know that You are greater than anything we have to face, so keep reminding us of this truth as You continue to give us the strength to get through this situation or at least get through this day. Amen.”
