1 Samuel 29:1 - 30:31: David Returns to God

1 Samuel 29:1 - 30:31: David Returns to God

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of 1 Samuel, and today the next passage we come to is 1 Samuel chapter 29 verse 1 through chapter 30 verse 31, so I’ll be reading a selection of verses from that passage. Hear now the words of the Living and True God:

¹ Now when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid against the Negeb and against Ziklag. They had overcome Ziklag and burned it with fire ² and taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great. They killed no one, but carried them off and went their way. ³ And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. ⁴ Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. ⁵ David’s two wives also had been taken captive, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. ⁶ And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. ⁷ And David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, “Bring me the ephod.” So Abiathar brought the ephod to David. ⁸ And David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I pursue after this band? Shall I overtake them?” He answered him, “Pursue, for you shall surely overtake and shall surely rescue.” ⁹ So David set out, and the six hundred men who were with him, and they came to the brook Besor, where those who were left behind stayed. ¹⁰ But David pursued, he and four hundred men. Two hundred stayed behind, who were too exhausted to cross the brook Besor. ¹¹ They found an Egyptian in the open country and brought him to David. And they gave him bread and he ate. They gave him water to drink, ¹² and they gave him a piece of a cake of figs and two clusters of raisins. And when he had eaten, his spirit revived, for he had not eaten bread or drunk water for three days and three nights. ¹³ And David said to him, “To whom do you belong? And where are you from?” He said, “I am a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite, and my master left me behind because I fell sick three days ago. ¹⁴ We had made a raid against the Negeb of the Cherethites and against that which belongs to Judah and against the Negeb of Caleb, and we burned Ziklag with fire.” ¹⁵ And David said to him, “Will you take me down to this band?” And he said, “Swear to me by God that you will not kill me or deliver me into the hands of my master, and I will take you down to this band.” ¹⁶ And when he had taken him down, behold, they were spread abroad over all the land, eating and drinking and dancing, because of all the great spoil they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah. ¹⁷ And David struck them down from twilight until the evening of the next day, and not a man of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who mounted camels and fled. ¹⁸ David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken, and David rescued his two wives. ¹⁹ Nothing was missing, whether small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything that had been taken. David brought back all. ²⁰ David also captured all the flocks and herds, and the people drove the livestock before him, and said, “This is David’s spoil.”  

May God bless the reading of his Word.

 Let’s pray: Father, we know it’s your will that we be conformed to the image of your Son, Jesus. And we also know that the way that happens is by your Spirit and through your Word. So, please, Holy Spirit, take this passage and use it to accomplish your purposes within each one of us. Lead us to Christ and conform us to his image. And it’s in his name that we pray, amen.

Very few things are able to get our attention as quickly or effectively as pain. C. S. Lewis once wrote that, “[P]ain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world….” This naturally raises the question of what exactly God seeks to communicate to us through our pain and what purposes he seeks to accomplish.

So, Lewis continues, “Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us…. We [consider] God [to be] an interruption. As…Augustine says, ‘God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full—there’s nowhere for Him to put it.’ Or as a friend of mine said ‘we regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but he hopes he’ll never have to use it.’ Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for…. What then can God do in our interests but make ‘our… life’ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness? It is just here, where God’s providence seems at first to be most cruel, that [he] most deserves praise….” 

In other words, when we’re far from God and are instead preoccupied with the lesser blessings of this world, God will temporarily allow us to experience pain so that we recognize our need for him and turn to him and ultimately experience greater delight in him than we’ve ever known before.

And even though Lewis seems to have written this primarily with reference to those who aren’t yet Christians, it can pretty easily be applied to Christians as well. When a Christian begins to drift away from God and deviate from the way God says to live, God will use pain as his “megaphone” to get our attention and bring us back to him. And that’s precisely what he does with David in the passage of Scripture we’ll be looking at today of 1 Samuel 29-30. 

The main idea of this passage is that, after a season of moral compromise, a severe trial in David’s life drives him back to God. Again, after a season of moral compromise, a severe trial in David’s life drives him back to God. And as we walk through this passage, we’ll learn a lot more about how God uses trials to accomplish his purposes within us as well as how we can find comfort and strength in the midst of the trials we face. 

Now, to remind you of what’s been happening so far in 1 Samuel, God promised David that he’d be the new king of Israel. However, the current king—Saul—has been doing everything he can to keep that from happening. So, David’s been forced to flee for his life from one place to another as Saul pursues him. 

Yet, in chapter 27, David takes matters into his own hands and—without consulting God—goes over with the 600 men under his command to the Philistines in order to offer his services as a mercenary. And David does some truly terrible things in that capacity. Even though David may have convinced himself that being a mercenary for the Philistines was okay since the people he was killing also happened to be Israel’s enemies, the reality is that this was a season of severe moral compromise in David’s life. 

After that, one of the Philistine rulers named Achish thought so highly of David that he decided he wanted David to join him in an upcoming battle against David’s own people—the Israelites. 1 Samuel 28:1 states, In those days the Philistines gathered their forces for war, to fight against Israel. And Achish said to David, “Understand that you and your men are to go out with me in the army.” I imagine this was quite the surprise for David and something he probably hadn’t planned for. After all, conducting raids on random towns was one thing, but having to fight against his own people was something else entirely.

Thankfully, chapter 29 records that the other Philistine rulers didn’t trust David and therefore made Achish send him and his 600 men back to their town of Ziklag. It’s in this way that God providentially rescued David from an otherwise impossible situation of having to fight alongside the Philistines against Israel.

And that’s where the story picks up in chapter 30 verses 1-3. It says, ¹ Now when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid against the Negeb and against Ziklag. They had overcome Ziklag and burned it with fire ² and taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great. They killed no one, but carried them off and went their way. ³ And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive.

Now, at first, when David made arrangements with Achish to be Achish’s mercenary, he probably thought he was being pretty clever. Yet, as we now see, David’s supposedly “brilliant” plan turned out to be a disaster. The Amalekites—who were one of the peoples David had previously raided as a mercenary—now return the favor and raid David’s town of Ziklag while David and his men are away. The Amalekites were undoubtedly aware that pretty much all of the men of fighting age had left Ziklag to join the Philistine forces in preparing for battle against Israel, so they took advantage of the situation and decided to raid Ziklag while it was relatively unprotected. This is yet another demonstration of a key truth we looked at last week that’s expressed so well in Galatians 6:7. It says, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” And in our main passage, David sees firsthand just how true that is. After making a habit of raiding others, David’s now raided himself.

This raid against David also demonstrates the fact that God will often allow his people to experience the natural consequences of their sins as a way of disciplining them and ultimately bringing them back to him. Hebrews 12:5-11 tells us, ⁵ And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. ⁶ For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” ⁷ It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? ⁸ If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. ⁹ Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? ¹⁰ For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. ¹¹ For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

So, we see in these verses that discipline is an expression of God’s fatherly love for us. You know, as a father, I sometimes have to discipline my kids—and it’s never easy for me to do that. There’s a sense in which it pains me to have to discipline them. Now, I don’t think I’d ever say, “This will hurt me more than it hurts you”—it’s hard to imagine that being true. But I certainly don’t enjoy disciplining my kids. However, I understand that discipline is necessary in order for them to learn important lessons and develop good moral character. So, ultimately, I discipline my kids not because I hate them or want to make life miserable for them—although they may sometimes feel like that’s the case. Instead, I discipline them because I love them.

And that’s why God disciplines us as well. In the words of verse 10, God knows that discipline is necessary “that we may share his holiness.” You might compare it to a famous sculptor creating a masterpiece. In order to transform a large block of stone into a beautiful statue, the sculptor has to chisel away every part of that block of stone that isn’t going to be a part of the statue he’s creating. Similarly, God has to chisel away from us everything that isn’t a part of the perfect masterpiece he’s creating. And even though that chiseling process is sometimes rather painful, it’s absolutely necessary.

This also means that, sometimes, God’s discipline has to be more severe—as it was with David in our main passage. Sometimes, there’s a very large piece of stone that has to be chiseled away. Yet, even then, we can trust that God knows what he’s doing and that he’s doing it because he loves us.

Then, moving forward in our main passage, we see how David and his men respond when they discover that Ziklag has been raided and all of their wives and children have been carried way. Look with me at verse 4 through the beginning of verse 6: ⁴ Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. ⁵ David’s two wives also had been taken captive, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. ⁶ And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters….

So, I think we can safely say that this is rock bottom for David—undoubtedly one of the lowest points in his life. And as if it weren’t bad enough that his family was carried away, David’s now also in danger of being stoned by his own men because of how “bitter in soul” all of them are. That phrase “bitter in soul” in verse 6 is nearly identical to the way David’s men were originally described in 1 Samuel 22:2, which told us, “And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became commander over them….” So, David’s men originally came to him because they were “bitter in soul,” and now here they are “bitter in soul” once again—and perhaps even more so than they were originally.

And I believe this is truly a decisive moment in David’s life. How will he respond to this extreme trial he’s facing? More specifically, what effect will it have on his relationship to God? Similarly, whenever we face a significant trial in our lives, we have a decision to make: Will we allow the trial we’re facing to drive us away from God, or will we allow it to drive us closer to God?

Truth be told, I believe the effect that trials have on us often functions as a fairly reliable indicator of the genuineness of our faith and whether we’ve experienced genuine conversion or not. Charles Spurgeon once said that “The same sun which melts wax hardens clay.” When someone with genuine faith experiences trials, those trials have the effect of refining their faith. This is what James 1:2-3 is talking about when it says, ² Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, ³ for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. It’s also what 1 Peter 1:6-7 is talking about when it says, ⁶ In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, ⁷ so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

By contrast, these same trials also have a way of exposing false converts. In Jesus’s parable often known as “The Parable of the Sower,” Jesus tells the story of a sower sowing seed on four different kinds of soil—which represents the Christian gospel being proclaimed to four different kinds of people. We’re told in Luke 8:6 that some of the seed “fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture.” Jesus then explains this in verse 13, “And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away.” So, again, trials function as a test of our faith. The genuineness of our faith is seen in whether we allow trials to drive us away from God or whether they drive us closer to God.

And we can certainly see this dynamic as we compare David and Saul. Verse 6 of our main passage tells us that “David was greatly distressed.” This language of being “greatly distressed” is nearly identical to language Saul uses to describe himself in chapter 28. As you may remember from last week, Saul had said in verse 15, “I am in great distress, for the Philistines are warring against me….” Yet, unfortunately, in Saul’s case, his distress led him to seek out a medium who could bring up the prophet Samuel. That course of action speaks volumes about Saul’s spiritual condition.

So, then, what about David in our main passage? Will he allow his “great distress” to drive him further from God—as Saul did—or will he allow it to drive him back to God? We find the answer in the second part of verse 6: “But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” This is the first time anything has been mentioned about David thinking about God or interacting with God in any way since chapter 26. For the past several chapters, we’ve only been reading about David’s own plans and strategies for taking care of himself and haven’t read a word about David exhibiting any kind of trust or reliance upon God. But all of that changes here in verse 6. After spending an extensive season wandering from God, David now turns back to God.  

And I love the way this verse describes it: “David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” When everything in his life had just been turned inside out and upside down, “David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” Imagine someone who’s spent all day working extremely hard at a task that’s very physically demanding, laboring all day to the point of near exhaustion. I’ll admit that it’s been a while since I’ve put in a full day of work quite like that, but there have been days when I’ve done that. So, I can tell you from experience that, after doing hard manual labor for 8-10 hours, I’m exhausted. So, naturally, the only thing I want to do in the evening is seek to “strengthen” myself by eating a nice hearty meal and then relaxing in the recliner. That’s how we strengthen ourselves physically—through food and rest.

Similarly, we read here that David “strengthened himself [spiritually] in the Lord his God.” This means, first of all, that his heart was radically reoriented so that, instead of trusting in himself, he was broken of his self-sufficiency and began once again to trust in God and look to God as his hope and refuge and deliverer. This involved David recognizing that he lacked within himself the necessary resources to get through the crisis he was facing and then looking to God for the strength to carry on.

 Although David didn’t write Psalm 34 with regard to this exact situation, I believe Psalm 34:4-8 is a wonderful picture of what it looks like to strengthen ourselves in God. David writes, ⁴ I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. ⁵ Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. ⁶ This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. ⁷ The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. ⁸ Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

In addition to this, there’s also a clue earlier in 1 Samuel about what it means for David to strengthen himself in God. In 1 Samuel 23, David’s hiding out in the wilderness as Saul seeks his life. Verses 16-17 then tell us, ¹⁶ And Jonathan, Saul’s son, rose and went to David at Horesh, and strengthened his hand in God. ¹⁷ 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. Saul my father also knows this.” So, notice the similar language. Just as David “strengthened himself in the Lord his God” in our main passage, Jonathan “strengthened [David’s] hand in God.” And how does Jonathan do this? By reminding David of God’s promise to make him king. Jonathan strengthened David by reminding him of God’s promise.

So, what will you do when you find yourself at your wit’s end and feel spiritually depleted and perhaps even question whether you can go on any longer? Will you strengthen yourself in God by reminding yourself of the many things he’s promised you in the Bible? God’s promises are a source of immeasurable comfort—especially in the midst of trials and when life just feels overwhelming.

However, let’s remember that we’re only in a position to benefit from God’s promises if we familiarize ourselves with them and study them and hide them in our hearts. You know, in order to benefit from water, you have to drink it. In order to benefit from medicine, you have to take it. And in order to be comforted and sustained and upheld by God’s promises, we have to be thoroughly familiar with them so that the Holy Spirit can bring them to our minds at the appropriate times.

Then, returning to our main passage, after David strengthens himself in the Lord his God, he proceeds to do something very important. Look at verses 7-8: ⁷ And David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, “Bring me the ephod.” So Abiathar brought the ephod to David. ⁸ And David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I pursue after this band? Shall I overtake them?” He answered him, “Pursue, for you shall surely overtake and shall surely rescue.”

As you may recall from previously in 1 Samuel, the ephod was the elaborate and ornate garment of the high priest that had within it—or perhaps affixed to it—two special gemstones called Urim and Thummim. These gemstones were a method authorized by God for seeking his guidance and determining his will. We’re not told exactly how they worked, but that was their purpose.

So, the important thing for us to see here is that David’s now seeking to determine God’s will instead of following his own reasoning and intuition—as he’d been doing for the past several chapters. And not only does David inquire of God, he also follows the direction God gives. When God says pursue, David doesn’t have to be told twice. He pursues. Verse 9 tells us, “So David set out, and the six hundred men who were with him….”

We then read about David finding an Amalekite servant who had been left behind by the Amalekites after their raid because he fell sick. And in exchange for an immunity deal, this servant tells David where to find the Amalekite party that had just raided Ziklag.

Verses 16-20 then tell us: ¹⁶ And when he [the servant] had taken him [David] down, behold, they [the Amalekites] were spread abroad over all the land, eating and drinking and dancing, because of all the great spoil they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah. ¹⁷ And David struck them down from twilight until the evening of the next day, and not a man of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who mounted camels and fled. ¹⁸ David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken, and David rescued his two wives. ¹⁹ Nothing was missing, whether small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything that had been taken. David brought back all. ²⁰ David also captured all the flocks and herds, and the people drove the livestock before him, and said, “This is David’s spoil.”

So, even though it initially seemed as though all was lost, the story actually has a happy ending. David recovers everything that the Amalekites had taken, including—most importantly—everyone’s wives and children, even down to the very last sheep.

And as we consider this story as a whole, the element of the story that speaks to me the most powerfully is the mercy of God toward those who have strayed away from him. As we’ve said, David strayed away from God for a prolonged season. Chapter 27 told us that David lived in the land of the Philistines for a total of a year and four months. Yet even after such an extensive season of spiritual wandering—and even though David did a lot of things during that season that were grievously sinful—God still received him back with open arms of mercy.

And that’s what God offers to do for everyone who turns to him. Isaiah 55:6-7 expresses God’s invitation especially well. It says, ⁶ “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; ⁷ let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

And this applies not only to those who aren’t yet Christians but also to those of us who are already Christians but who have wandered away from God. One of the most comforting descriptions of God in the Bible is Ephesians 2:4, which describes God as “rich in mercy.” Take a moment and consider what it means for God to be “rich in mercy.” All too often, we imagine that God’s patience toward us must be wearing thin after the many times we’ve sinned against him. Surely, his mercy must be about gone after we’ve failed him on so many occasions. Even though we usually don’t say anything like that out loud, that’s nevertheless what we’re sometimes tempted to think.

Yet, for God to be “rich in mercy” means that he’s a trillionaire when it comes to mercy. Imagine asking a trillionaire for a thousand dollars. You could ask a trillionaire for a thousand dollars and receive a thousand dollars from him every day of your life for the rest of your life, and you’d still never even come close to exhausting his supply of money. In fact, I’m pretty sure that trillionaire would be earning enough return on his investments each day that you wouldn’t even be depleting his supply of money. He’d be earning money faster than you’d be asking it of him. Similarly, not only will we never exhaust God’s supply of mercy, we’ll never even deplete God’s supply of mercy. God’s mercy toward his people is infinite. It has no limit and no end. So, even though we sin and even though our sin has very real consequences, God stands ready to be merciful.

And the reason God’s able to offer sinners like us such mercy is because of the payment Jesus made for our sins on the cross. Apart from Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross, we’d have to face the punishment our sins deserve. Because, even though God is indeed merciful, he’s not merciful at the expense of his justice and righteousness. God’s perfectly merciful while at the same time also being perfectly just and perfectly righteousness. He therefore can’t leave our sins unpunished—since doing so would violate his own righteous nature.

However, the good news of the gospel is that God loved us so much and was so full of mercy toward us that he sent his own Son Jesus to come to this earth and suffer the penalty for our sins in his death on the cross. God the Father’s righteous wrath against our sin was poured out on his own Son Jesus so it wouldn’t have to be poured out on us.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my family and I went to downtown Pittsburgh and walked to the Point State Park. And as we stood right at the tip of the point, we saw a marker in the ground identifying that area as the “point of confluence” where the Allegheny River meets the Monongahela River and the two of them together become the Ohio River. Likewise, in a manner of speaking, the cross is the point of confluence where God’s mercy and God’s justice meet together. Both the mercy and justice of God are expressed most fully at the cross.

Then, after Jesus died, he was raised from the dead and therefore now stands ready to cleanse us of our sins and impart to us his own righteousness so that we can be fit to dwell with him for all eternity. And the way we can receive the rescue Jesus offers is by turning from our sins and putting our trust exclusively in him—not in Jesus plus our moral accomplishments or Jesus plus our religious observances, but rather in Jesus alone.

And even though there will unfortunately be times when we stumble and begin to stray away from God, we can have confidence that Jesus will always be ready—with arms wide open—to show us mercy. He won’t hold against us the very sins for which he died. And this is likewise the basis upon which God was merciful to David in our main passage. The only reason God could show David mercy even after David had sinned in such a grievous way was because God looked forward in time and anticipated what Jesus would do. The atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was retroactively applied to David so that God could show him mercy even as he maintained perfect justice.