1 Samuel 23:14-29

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning we are at 1 Samuel chapter 23, 14 through the end of the chapter. We're going to continue on in this kind of interesting life David has for himself here. So let's have some coffee, we'll pray, and we'll get into God's Word. By the way, sorry I wasn't online yesterday. I have a whole bunch of sickness moving through the house, and it hit me with sinuses pretty bad. So here we go. 1 Samuel chapter 23.
Well, we should probably pray first, huh? God, we need clear minds. We need your help. We need you to lead us and guide us and help us, Lord. Sometimes we don't feel well. Sometimes we struggle with things going on in life and sickness. So, Father, we pray that you would please help us even now as we read your word to understand it. In Jesus' name, Amen.
And David stayed in strongholds in the wilderness and remained in the mountains of the wilderness of Ziph. Saul sought him every day, but God did not deliver him into his hand. So David saw that Saul had come out to seek his life, and David was in the wilderness of Ziph in a forest. Then Jonathan, Saul's son, arose and went to David in the woods and strengthened his hand in God. And he said to him, Do not fear, for the hand of Saul my father shall not find you.
You shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you. Even my father Saul knows that. So the two of them made a covenant before Jehovah. And David stayed in the woods, and Jonathan went to his house. Then the Ziphrites came up to Saul at Gebeah, saying, Is David not hiding with us in strongholds in the wood, the hill of Hekilah, which is on the south of Jeshimon?
Now therefore, O king, come down according to all the desire of your soul, to come down, and our part shall be to deliver him into the king's hand. And Saul said, Blessed are you of Jehovah, for you have compassion on me. Please go and find out for sure and see the place where his hideout is, and who has seen him there, for I am told he is very crafty. See therefore and take knowledge of all the lurking places where he hides, and come back to me with certainty that I will go with you. And it shall be, if he is in the land, that I will search for him throughout all the clans of Judah.
So they rose and went to Ziph before Saul. But David and his men were in the wilderness of Moab, in the plain of the south of Jeshimon. Then when Saul and his men went to seek him, they told David. Therefore he went down to the rock and stayed in the wilderness of Ma'an. And when Saul heard that, he pursued David in the wilderness of Ma'an.
When Saul went on one side of the mountain, and David and his men on the other side of the mountain, so David made haste to get away from Saul. So Saul and his men went circling David and his men to take them. But a messenger came to Saul, saying, Hurry and come, for the Philistines have invaded the land. Therefore Saul returned from pursuing David and went against the Philistines. So they called that place of the rock of escape. Then David went up from there and dwelt in the strongholds at Ngedi. Well, we need to ask ourselves, A, what is this about? B, what's the best for us to summarize? And C, what are we called to do? All right. So what's the section about?
This is about David running from Saul. Yeah, right. So there's David running from Saul, David being delivered by the Lord from Saul's hand, right? And so in my margin notes, so I've got a journal Bible here. And so I've got all sorts of crazy stuff written down. But in my Bible, I have like a mountain and David on one side and Saul on the other. And they're like running circles around each other.
It's interesting, though, that David or Jonathan knows how to find David. you have this again like restrengthening you like when you become king i'm going to be your right hand man i'm going to be right here next to you right make it renewing their covenant the lord together we'll see if that actually plays out but uh what about these people in this land of ziph what are they like I tried to betray David. Yeah, you tried to betray him. Good.
And who spares David's life then? God. That's the Lord who does all this, right? And what finally gets Saul off David's tail? Philistines. Philistines come back. So, can't keep chasing David forever. I like this stuff he has to actually do. Yeah, good. All right. So, what would you say, if you got one sentence, seven words or less, to describe this half a chapter, what would it be? Solve, chases David, and David gets away. Good. All right.
What do you think you would underline as the best verse to summarize this section? Probably 14. 14, he stayed in the stronghold of the wilderness and remained in the mountains of the wilderness of Ziph. Saul sought him every day, but God did not deliver him into his kingdom. Yeah, I like it. Good.
Alright, let's talk about seek calling. What are we called to do? What is our, how does this point us to Jesus Christ? Oh, I know what you're called to do. I'll chase you around the house. I'll go this way, but by the time I get here, I want you over there. That's not what the application... Okay, so what's your call to action then? Well, I don't think there's a soul chasing us today, but... I don't really know. Yeah, right.
So, I think this is one of those areas where it's going to be pretty tough for us to find an explicit application, unless you want to talk about maybe like if David is a type of Christ, then maybe we're somebody like Jonathan, right? We can covenant that he must be greater, and we must be less, that we can support the rightful Messiah, right? That we can count our lives as willing to serve. We can take note of Saul's kind of pride and his desire to do his own thing rather than have his own dynastic rule rather than entrusting the Lord. I think there's things that we can pull out of it, but certainly I think we can see there's both David who's a type of Christ and Saul who's an anti-type.
We're able to say, hmm, Jesus is hounded and persecuted. People are constantly trying to kill him. And yet Jesus has narrow escapes and is righteous in everything he does. And then Saul who's acting more like Herod or somebody else like that is the king of Israel.
We can look to Jesus as one who's not like that. So, we don't want just straight moralistic examples, but we do want to also find out what are legitimate typologies here. There's nothing in the New Testament that I know of that refers back to this, and so we don't want to allegorize all of it either. Good?
Father, we pray that we would indeed know that there is a kingdom far greater than us. And there is a King, a Messiah, who has been anointed, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who sits upon the throne. Father, we pray that you would incline and turn our hearts to worship Him, and that we would love you all of our lives. Help us, God, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. May the Lord cultivate in you a heart of humility. May you continue to see pride washed away out of your life as Jesus is exalted more and more in your heart. And we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.