Desperation and the Wilderness
1 Samuel 21:1 – 9
How quickly things turn. One minute you are on top of the world, everything is going your way. Everybody loves you and there is not a care in the world. Everything is coming up roses.
But then as quickly as things began going your way, they changed, dramatically changed. Maybe it was a decision by one person that led to sudden unemployment. Maybe it was a diagnosis by a doctor that sucked joy from your world. Maybe it was a choice that you made that brought conflict and anger in what had been close relationships. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
This is the scenario that is playing out for David. He was blissfully unaware of the changes that we coming his way as he sat in the fields tending the family’s flock. But then came Samuel and the anointing of young David as God’s choice to be the king of Israel to eventually replace King Saul who was becoming so consumed by his own wisdom and power that he had stopped listening to the directions of God through the counsel of Samuel.
Last week, by contrast, we saw David having so much faith and focus on God that he helped the Nation of Israel face their giant as he slew Goliath with a single stone launched from his sling.
He taught them, as well as us, that by focusing on the power and authority of God, over all things and in all places, that we can slay the giants that lurk in the dark recesses of our mind and soul. Things were going well for David as Samuel writes:
After the giant was killed King Saul kept David with him and wouldn’t let him return home anymore. He was Saul’s special assistant, and he always carried out his assignments successfully. So Saul made him commander of his troops, an appointment that was applauded by the army and general public alike.
But something had happened when the victorious Israeli army was returning home after David had killed Goliath. Women came out from all the towns along the way to celebrate and to cheer for King Saul, and were singing and dancing for joy with tambourines and cymbals. However, this was their song: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands!” This made Saul very angry. 1 Samuel 18:4b – 8a, TLB
All of Israel and Judah loved David but the evil spirit that had come on to Saul made him want to get rid of David forever. This hatred by Saul would change David’s life for the next decade and would lead him into Desperation and the Wilderness.
Max Lucado says:
David went from serenading sheep to serenading Saul. The over-looked runt of Jesse’s litter became the talk of the town, handsome and humble. Enemies feared him. Saul’s son Jonathan loved him like a brother. Saul’s daughter Michal married him. But Saul hated him. His name toped Saul’s to-kill list. So David runs, looking over his shoulder, sleeping with one eye open. He’s on the lam, a wanted man in Saul’s world.
After the sixth attempt on his life, David gets the point, Saul doesn’t like me. With a price on his head and a posse on his trail, he kisses his wife Michal and life in Saul’s court good-bye and runs. But where can he go? If he goes home to Bethlehem he jeopardizes the lives of his family. Into the wilderness where no one is around? That becomes an option later. For now, he chooses another hideout somewhere closer to home. He goes to church.
As we see in our scripture lesson, David goes to a city by the name of Nob which was just about one mile northeast of Jerusalem. There the great-grandson of Eli, the priest that mentored Samuel as a child. Eli is the one that told Samuel it isn’t me, it is the Lord who was calling him in the night. It is this man by the name Ahimelech that headed up the monastery to which David rushes seeking sanctuary from his enemies. But David’s trouble with Saul precedes him and Ahimelech already is aware of David’s plight and his arrival stirs understandable fear in Ahimelech. So he asks David why he has come.
Desperate, David resorts to a mistruth which is unlike the David we know because so far David has been honest and forthright. The fugitive David tells Ahimelech that he is on “an urgent mission for Saul but in his haste, he left without food or a weapon”. Could Ahimelech provide bread and a weapon he asks?
Ahimelech tells him that the only bread around is the show bread which has been laid on the altar as a sacrifice and is to be eaten only by the priests after a week there. Through deception David convinces him that it would be fine to let him have the bread.
The only weapon in the sanctuary is a relic, in fact it is the sword of Goliath. The very steel David had used to guillotine the head of the giant. “This will do just fine,” David says. And the person who entered the sanctuary hungry and weaponless leaves with a bellyful of bread and the sword of a giant.
Under pressure we see that David’s faith is wavering. Not too long ago the shepherd’s sling was all he needed. Now the one who refused the armor and sword of Saul requests a weapon from the priest to fend off Saul.
As a result, desperation has set in and it is a lie-spawning, fear-stirring, truth-shading Desperation. What has happened to our hero? Simple, he’s lost his God-focus and focuses on Saul …… and himself. When we find ourselves in desperate times, having misplaced our faith, we too can become a lesser version of our previous selves.
That lost focus on the power of God leads David to go even further away from Saul and his friends and family. David believes that he is protecting them but in reality as with anyone that is on the lam, he is looking out for himself. Running further away from his problems David soon finds himself in desolate area of the Dead Sea to the cave of Adullam.
Erosion has scarred the land into a scene of caves, ruts and sparse canyons: a home for hyenas, lizards, buzzards and now it is home to David. Not by choice, mind you. He didn’t intend to swap the palace for the wilderness.
No one chooses to be in The Wilderness. Yet when you find yourself there it comes at you from all directions heat and rain, sandstorms and hail. But sometimes we have no choice. Calamity hits and the roof rips. The tornado lifts and drops us in the Wilderness. Not the desert in south-eastern Israel that David has run to, but the Wilderness and isolation of our soul.
Isolation from our faith and from those we love is emblematic of being in the Wilderness. Saul has effectively and systematically isolated David from every source of stability. So David goes to the only place where he can think without fear. The place where no one goes, he goes to The Wilderness.
He finds a cave. In it he finds shade, silence, and safety. David stretches on the cool dirt and closes his eyes and begins what ends up being a decade in the wilderness.
Can you relate to David’s story of looking for a place where your problems won’t follow you? Has your Desperation and The Wilderness dimmed your faith and the life that you previously enjoyed?
Under normal circumstances you would never go there but these aren’t normal circumstances. You wake up in a cave at what seems the lowest point of your life. You stare out at an arid, harsh, hopeless future and ask, “What do I do now?” Well dear ones, I suggest you let David be your teacher.
In the cave, David regathers himself and his faith, and the faithful shepherd boy remerges again. The Giant Killer from last week rediscovers his faith and courage. He returns his focus to God and finds refuge. Refuge is a favorite word of David’s. In writing his Psalms David uses it many times just like he uses it in Psalm 57. From the recesses of the cave the voice of the once innocent and sweet shepherd floats in praise of God:
Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.
David tells us that we all need to make God our refuge. Not your job, your house, your reputation, not your retirement, not any of the worldly things we collect around us! David is telling us to make God your refuge. Let him, not your challenges, encircle you. Let him be the ceiling that breaks the withering sunlight, the walls that stop the wind and the foundation on which you stand.
Max Lucado tells the story about a former cave-dweller that addressed his church one. He’d just buried his wife, and his daughter was growing sicker by the day. Yet, in his Wilderness refuge he found God. He said, “You’ll never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” Have you ever gotten to the point that you believe that Jesus is all you have left? I have! Those can be times of Desperation!
These two stories about David; at the temple in Nob and in the wilderness, can teach us two lessons about where we can find refuge from the pressures of the challenges in life. They are; you can find refuge among the people of God and secondly Wilderness survivors find refuge in God’s presence who is always with us.
Strong fellowships are populated with current and former cave dwellers, people who know spiritual isolation. Friends you can discover help among God’s people. Simply look around this room and see and you will see experienced cave dwellers in your midst, there are some with us here today.
Here the Good News my friends………
Are you in the Wilderness? Crawl into God the way a fugitive would crawl into a cave. Find refuge in God’s presence. Find comfort in his people. Find refuge in God’s presence and comfort in God’s people. They are your keys for Wilderness survival. Do this during your Wilderness periods and you, like David, will be reconnected to the grace and mercy that you need in the Living Waters of the Father.
Are you desperate like David in Nob, hungry for spiritual bread and needing a weapon to defend your soul against the onslaught of evil? Then come to the comfort of the fellowship of God’s people. Come to God’s sanctuary. Come to God’s church. Come to the refuge of God.
Author and pastor Eugene Peterson says this about David’s interaction between with Ahimelech at the church in Nob: “A sanctuary,” he writes, “is where I, like David, get bread and a sword; strength for the day and weapons for the fight.”
To the spiritually hungry, the church and its’ people offer nourishment. To the fugitive from pain and despair, the church offers weapons of truth to fend off evil. Spiritual bread and righteous blades, Divine food and Holy equipment, the church exists to provide both to those in need.
David teaches the us, the desperate, to seek help amidst God’s people. David stumbles in this story, desperate souls always do. But at least David teaches the desperate to seek help amidst God’s people. He stumbles into the right place, into God’s sanctuary and into God’s presence, where God meets and ministers to hopeless hearts and desperate souls.
Earlier I mentioned the quote “You’ll never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have” but now I would like to amend that slightly to say this “When you know you have Jesus, that is all you will ever need for Desperation and The Wilderness that you find in your lives”. Come and find refuge with God and his people! Amen.