Desperation!
I Samuel 21-22
Desperation:
1. Abnormal circumstance causing fear, threat of harm or loss.
2. No sight of it easing or letting up.
3. No clear direction or action.
4. A sense of aloneness or isolation.
5. Ears may have become deaf to God's promises.
6. Faith has become weakened by being knocked down.
Attitudes and actions:
1. Run away (yet that doesn't remove it).
2. Subtle dishonesty.
3. Inevitably bring others into circumstances.
4. Poor decisions.
5. Irresponsible actions.
But in all this God still showed himself mighty in taking care of the elect-King.
To Nob for help. In the midst of danger, David is sustained by a piece of bread (the loaves are witness to Yahweh as provider). Problems perhaps with all David's deceptions. Ralph Davis: "When everything is scraped down to the bone, I receive my daily bread not because I am godly but because Yahweh is gracious" (76). Are you under a heavy load? Cornered? Boxed in? Strained? Pressured? But are you still eating every day? God's small provision of bread offers a larger assurance that Yahweh is my provider - Psalm 23.
Irony:
- Escapes to Gath - Goliath's hometown
- Carries with him Goliath's sword, "there is none like it"
- Enters a city where he ahs created widows
- Knowledge of David was popular due to the song of Israel's women
- Even pagans saw David as King
- He would have been enemy #1
He had to be desperate to attempt this, though a "defection" might go over well. He was certain Saul would not find him. "When Achish is my best hope I'm in real trouble" (Davis 76). This passage doesn't call for similar foolish acts but is a reminder that even in our mistakes, God delivers and deserves our praise. See Psalm 56 and 34.
Why Moab? David's great-grandmother, Ruth, was a Moabite. Think of all that Naomi suffered in Moab: death of her husband and sons, facing poverty. Finally, on the remarkable marriage of Ruth to Boaz! Naomi's suffering bore fruit a century later!
Illustration:
"In 1938 Roman Turski, a Polish flyer, was returning home from France. His plane developed engine trouble, and he had to land for repairs in Nazified Vienna. Next morning, as Turski stepped out of his hotel to buy souvenirs before resuming his flight, a fellow came running through the door and slammed into him. Before Turski could inflict verbal vengeance he saw the man was white with fear. When he said, "Gestapo! Gestapo!" Turski rushed him through the lobby, up to his own room, and arranged the man's slender body under the covers at the foot of his bed. Turski made himself look like he'd just gotten up. And after the visiting Gestapo had checked his passport and shouted questions, they left without searching the room. The pilot showed his grateful visitor his flight map; they communicated by gestures. No, Turski couldn't take him to Warsaw - he had to land for fuel in Cracow and, drawing prison bars on the margin of the map, he indicated his new friend would be arrested at any airport. He would land in some meadow just over the Polish border and his passenger would be on his own. They did and he was. When Turski landed at Cracow the police were there to search his plane; they'd been told he'd assisted a man to escape from Vienna. They found nothing, so had to release him. He asked why the man had been wanted. He was a Jew!
Turski served as a fighter pilot in the Polish Air Force. After Poland's defeat he and others crossed to Rumania, where they were caught and sent to concentration camps. Turski managed to escape and join the French Air Force; after France's fall he went to England and fought in the Battle of Britain. On one of his missions he rammed a German plane and was hit by a scrap of its tail. Partially blinded with blood, he was unconscious when he crash-landed his Spitfire in England. His skull had been fractured and the chief surgeon at the hospital thought it useless to operate.
But he awoke and saw a narrow face looking down on him. The fellow in the white smock spoke: "Remember me? You saved my life in Vienna." Turski remembered and learned the rest of the story.
The fugitive passenger had eventually arrived in Warsaw. Before the war he escaped to Scotland. He heard that a Polish squadron had distinguished itself in the Battle of Britain; he thought Turski might be in it; he wrote to inquire; he was. He knew Turski's name because it had been written on the margin of his map. The day before he had read of a Polish hero shooting down five enemy planes and crash-landing near a certain hospital. The piece had indicated the flyer's condition seemed hopeless. He asked the RAF in Edinburgh to fly him to the hospital named. Turski asked him, "Why?" His answer: "I thought that at last I could do something to show my gratitude. You see, I am a brain surgeon - I operated on you this morning.
Who could have guessed that by shielding a fugitive one was saving his savior! One would think that would not have anything to do with anything. The twists of Turski's story, however, were confined within the scope of several years. In David's case all the unusual arrangements had been made over a century before. Yahweh plans his kindnesses long beforehand. He directed circumstances long in advance in order to bring a ray of relief in David's present distress. It was not something David set in place; it was a gift. Yahweh "arranged" it long before. Nor is it something he does only for chosen kings. A great number of his saints have stories to tell about desperation and providence.
David received special guidance. Saul did not nor would he. Saul was on his own. David may have been hunted and desperate; but heaven was not silent to him. God speaks to us in our desperate moments from his Word.
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