CALL TO CONFESSION

1 Peter 3:9

Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

O God, We come before you as people who desperately need to see you with clear vision. We need to behold your majestic glory and feel our smallness; we need to gaze upon your awesome holiness and feel our sinfulness; we need to see Jesus' humble self-offering at the cross and feel how truly loved we are. Father, help us to see how unlike you we really are. We eagerly repay evil for evil to those who have wronged us and nurse anger when we are hurt. You, however, have loved us while we still hated you and you have richly blessed us, even as we continue to look anywhere and everywhere else for our blessings.

Lord Jesus, you know exactly how it feels to receive undeserved evil. You were mocked and beaten for us: when sinful men reviled you, you were silent like a sheep before its slaughterer; when people cursed you, you spoke words of forgiveness and blessing in return. Thank you for living the life of unmatched goodness that we should have lived, and for taking our place under the curse that our sin merits.

Holy Spirit, help us to live lives that are truly a blessing to those around us. Help us to love those who are unkind and unfair to us, to speak kind words to those who mock us, and to be gentle with those who are harsh. Thank you that your declaration of blessing upon us is sure and unmovable, rooted and grounded in your unchanging, an eternal character. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.

“Take a few moments to personally confess your sins to the Lord.”

ASSURANCE OF PARDON

“Hear these words of comfort and assurance.” 

Ephesians 1:3-6

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us[a] for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

• As we read 1 Samuel 23:14 last Sunday, we received the key behind David’s survival: “And Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him into his hand.” 
• Every morning, King Saul woke up with a standing army and the resources of an entire nation at his disposal, driven by one all-consuming goal: find David and kill David. 
• He was like an ancient terminator, on a rage-fueled quest to eliminate the Lord’s chosen king. 
• And every single morning, God overruled him.

• Now, we have that verse in our Bibles to tell us why Saul ultimately fails in his attempts on David’s life. 
• But David didn’t have that verse. 
• All David had were spy reports on Saul’s troop movements. He had to hide in caves and rocks, trying to evade capture without knowing how the story ends. 
• You can imagine how vulnerable he must have felt. The mental and emotional toll of living under that daily kind of threat. 

• David was under massive pressure. Some of you know exactly what that feels like to live under that kind of relentless pressure, when circumstances, fear, or spiritual battle close in from every side.
• Today, God’s Word shows us how he sustains his anointed servant when everything is falling apart and the enemy is closing in. 



• As we study our text, our theme is: In the wilderness, God strengthens us through covenant fellowship and he saves us by his sovereign providence. 

1 Samuel 23:15-18

• David was hiding in the wilderness of Ziph in the southern part of Judah, in a place called Horesh. Horesh means ‘wooded place.’
• David knew Saul was hunting him and sought to kill him. He was staring death in the face every day. 
• He was afraid. He may be the Lord’s anointed, but he was still a human being.

A WELCOME ARRIVAL

• Now up to this point, Saul couldn’t find David. But someone else did. 
• It’s a beautiful moment in the story. Jonathan found David at Horesh to strengthen his friend. 
• This was a risky move for Jonathan. If Saul caught Jonathan sneaking out to help David it would likely have meant death for Jonathan. 
• But he risked it all for David. He headed out into rough terrain and the danger of the forest and searched until he found his brother. 

• And upon finding him, notice what he does, he “strengthened his hand in the Lord.” 
• How did Jonathan strengthen David’s hand? 
• The Hebrew word for “strengthened” means to ‘make strong, to grip something tightly.’ 
• “Strengthening the hands” is a common expression in the OT for putting courage back into someone. (Nehemiah 6:9)
• Hands are what you need to work, carry a load and hold a sword.  When your hands go slack, you cannot work and you cannot fight.  
• Jonathan found David with his hands down, exhausted and afraid, and he took hold of them to make them strong again. 
• And here’s the key. He strengthened his hand “in God.” 
• He is not trying to strengthen David with human optimism. 
• He is not strengthening David’s hands in what he could do for David.
• He is not strengthening David’s hands by having him look to himself.
• No, what he does is grab David’s trembling hands, and places them back into the hand of God. 

• Notice the three grounding truths he speaks to David:
• First truth, “Do not fear, for the hand of my father shall not find you.” 
• He reassures David of God’s sovereign power to protect David. 
• “Do not fear,” is the great covenant word of God to his people. 
• Second truth, “You shall be king over Israel…” 
• He reminds David of God’s clear promise. God had anointed David. 
• God’s decree will stand and there is nothing Saul or his army can do about it. 
• Third truth, “…and I shall be next to you. Saul my father also knows this.” 
• He reaffirms his commitment to stand alongside God’s chosen servant. 
• He had relinquished his own claim in humble submission to God’s plan.
• His act of self-denial proved how much Jonathan loved the kingdom of God more than he loved his own place in it. 

• Jonathan anchored David’s weak, trembling faith back into the solid rock of God’s unshakeable promises. 
• He shifted David’s focus away from the size of Saul’s army and placed it back on the greatness of God’s covenant and his sovereign power. 

WE NEED TO BE STRENGTHENED IN GOD

• We all need people to strengthen and encourage us when we’re going through the wilderness.
• We weren’t made to walk through the wilderness alone. 
• When you’re going through a trial and difficult season, your spiritual vision gets clouded. You forget the promises of God. 
• We need brothers and sisters in Christ who will love us enough to step into our wilderness and strengthen our hand in God. 

• There’s a big difference between cheerleading and biblical encouragement.  
• A cheerleader looks at your wilderness and offers you empty platitudes and cliches. 
• Cheerleading is cheap. It places the burden of rescue back on your fragile shoulders. 
• Jonathan didn’t do that. He strengthened his hand in God. 
• The biblical encourager doesn’t hand you human optimism and cheap cliches.
• They pull out the Bible and anchor your weak faith back onto the Rock and the promises of God. 

• Cheerleading tells you to trust in yourself. But when believers face fear or failure they don’t need a pep talk on self-reliance.  
• Biblical encouragement grabs your trembling hands and places them back into the hand of God. 
• We need friends who when they see us drifting and struggling, will reach out, sit down with us, and open the Scriptures and remind us of Jesus. 

COVENANT FELLOWSHIP

• This is the third time these two have made a covenant before the Lord. 
• They share a bond with a third party. God is the witness and the guarantee. 
• This is what we share as brothers and sisters in Christ. This is why we have covenant membership in the local church. 
• It’s not that we’ve just found people whose company we enjoy. We have made a commitment before God that we will watch over each other’s souls, that we’ll encourage and strengthen one another. 
• Human loyalty is fragile; covenant fellowship is rare. Let’s all strive for that. 

• Jonathan headed back home to Gibeah.
• This was the last time Jonathan and David would ever see each other on this side of heaven. 
• Jonathan said he would be at David’s side when he became king. And that didn’t happen. Jonathan is killed on Mount Gilboa. 
• So did the promise fail? No, Jonathan’s faith was in the promise of God about the kingdom, and that promise did not fail. 
• Jonathan stands in the long line of the faithful that Hebrews 11 tells us about.
• Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
• There are promises we hold on to that we may never live to see. 
• The salvation of a wayward child we have prayed for.
• The fruit from a ministry we have poured ourselves into.
• A believer's faithfulness is not wasted.

• David remained at Horesh, in the woods.  
• But David was not the same man. His heart had been renewed. 
• His faith had been strengthened in God. 

1 Samuel 23:19-24a

• The Ziphites’ betrayal hits right after Jonathan leaves.  The Ziphites belonged to the tribe of Judah. David was hiding out in their land.
• Yet, the Ziphites made a decision to betray David to King Saul. Saul didn't summon them, they went to Saul of their own initiative and they even offered to help capture David.
• Why did they do that? The text doesn’t say but we can guess they were afraid of Saul. Maybe they wanted some political favor or advantage. 

• Saul’s response is baffling. V21 he proclaimed a blessing over them. 
• He used religious language to justify his wickedness. As if God would bless a people who conspired with Saul to commit murder. 
• People have always used God’s name to cover up their own selfish motives. 
• Saul thought that because things were going his way, God was endorsing his cause. 

• Imagine the sting of betrayal that David felt.
• In Psalm 54, the title reveals David wrote this song during this exact moment when the Ziphites betrayed him. 
• Psalm 54:3 "For strangers have risen against me; ruthless men seek my life; they do not set God before themselves."
• He considers the people of his tribe strangers and ruthless men who have no fear of the Lord. 

• How do you respond when people let you down? 
• What do you do when you try to do what is right and you’re misjudged, or when you’re talked about behind your back, or when someone close to you betrays your trust? 
• If your faith is anchored in human approval, then betrayal or being let down can break you. 
• We will be failed by someone close to us at some point. We will be let down. 
• But our ultimate trust is not in the loyalty or approval of men. 
• Our trust must be in the unwavering faithfulness of God. 

• God put David’s wilderness experience in the Bible and he didn’t edit out these painful moments from David’s story. He doesn’t minimize it in David’s story and he doesn’t in yours. 
• And look at what David says in the next verse of Psalm 54. 
• Psalm 54:4 Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life.
• David tells the Lord about it. And he preaches to himself about who God is and what he has done. 

• If you’re wounded by a brother or sister in Christ, if you've felt let down or maybe even sinned against, walk through the steps of reconciliation that our Lord outlined for us in Matthew 18. 
• Go to the Lord in prayer and go to the person. If they repent you have won your brother and sister. 
• Extend forgiveness and grace. Don’t let unforgiveness fester in your heart. 

• Saul was still playing the victim card. “You have had compassion on me.”
• Self-pity is what drives him. A man who is convinced he is the victim can murder priests and still think he is the one who has been wronged. 
• Saul is a warning held out to us in Scripture. You can dress the part, talk the part, use the name of the Lord, and underneath it be someone who is fighting God and knows it. 
• Saul had light and he refused it for years. Don’t be like Saul. 
• If you’ve been resisting God and have become really good at pretending to be a follower of Christ, there is forgiveness and mercy for you. Repent and come to Christ while it is still called today. 

1 Samuel 23:24b-29

• The chase was on.  It is a dramatic scene, full of tension and suspense.
• Saul and his army tracked David down to the wilderness of Maon. That’s further south than where David was. This is a desolate country that is called Jeshimon in Hebrew, and it means, “wasteland.” 

THE CHASE

• You have to picture this in your mind. They’re both on a single ridge line or mountain peak. 
• David and his men are on one side of the mountain, hurrying to get away from Saul.
• And Saul’s men are on the other side of the mountain, spreading out, moving in both directions to surround David. 
• David knew Saul was closing in, so they were scrambling to get away.
• He is moments away from being completely surrounded.
• Humanly speaking, the story of David should have ended right here on this mountain. 
• Has David done something wrong? No, he is right where he was supposed to be. And he is about to be captured and killed. Obedience doesn’t exempt one from the noose. 
• Sometimes being faithful to the Lord means you’re on the wrong side of the mountain with the soldiers closing in. 

THE RESCUE

• v27 is the hinge of the narrative. 
• A messenger comes to Saul telling him he needs to get back because the Philistines have raided the land. 
• That’s the rescue. Just a message causing Saul to withdraw and abandon the chase. 
• God’s timing is remarkable. The messenger arrived at the exact second Saul almost had his grip around David’s neck.
• And we know who did all this. It was the Lord in his sovereign providence who orchestrated the delivery of an ordinary message at the exact moment it needed to be delivered, forcing Saul to make an immediate decision to return before his kingdom was destroyed by the Philistines, in order for David to escape. 
• God controlled the movement of the Philistines and God controlled the timing of the messenger’s delivery.
• God commands the universe and every molecule moves according to his divine sovereign will. 

• We keep waiting for God to do something spectacular all the while failing to realize that most of our deliverances are going to look ordinary. 
• It will look like a phone call that comes at the right moment. A job that opens up for us at the last minute. A doctor who happened to look at one more scan. 
• They’re all messengers God sends at his appointed time and they’re not usually something dramatic and they don't come at the time we want them to come.
• God’s timing regularly feels late to us. But he has never once been late.

THE ROCK OF ESCAPE

• David called that place where he was almost captured, The Rock of Escape. 
• It can also be translated as the rock of division or the rock of parting. 
• It was where the two parties got separated and David and his men slipped through.
• From there David went to live in the rocky heights in the strongholds of Engedi.  
• But every time David would look back on his life, he would remember that rocky slope on the mountain. 
• He would remember that when all human hope was gone, God was his ultimate refuge. 
• We saw that in chapter 7 with Samuel who set up the stone and called it “Ebenezer, “till now the Lord has helped us.” 
• He did not want the people to forget how God rescued them.

• We have a greater Rock of Escape. 
• Centuries after David ran around that mountain, the Son of David stood on another hill outside Jerusalem called Calvary. 
• On that hill, the enemies of God gathered around Jesus. 
• At Maon, a messenger diverted the sword from David. At Calvary, no messenger came. There was no rock of escape for him. 
• They nailed him to a cross, placed him in a tomb, and sealed it with a stone.  He was not delivered from death.
• To the world, it looked like total defeat. 
• But on the third day, God rolled the stone away. 
• What looked like the ultimate victory of evil was actually God’s sovereign plan to secure eternal salvation for his people. 
• The sword fell on the Son of David so that he could become our ultimate Rock of Escape. 
• On the cross, Jesus took the judgment we deserved so that we could find safe refuge in him forever. 
• He did this so that when our final enemy, death, closes in, there is a rock you can hide in that will keep you safe. 

CONCLUSION

• Take a close look at your life today. Where do you find yourself on that mountain?
• Maybe your hands are hanging down today. You’re exhausted by the chase, weary from the wilderness, and you’ve been trying to survive on your own strength.  If that’s you, stop running alone. Reach out to a brother or sister and let them speak the unshakeable promises of God over your life.
• Perhaps God is calling you to be a Jonathan this week. Look around. Who is sitting near you whose hands are slipping? See how you can strengthen their hands in the Lord.  Pick up the phone. Send the text. Drive to their house and take the Word of God to them. Sit down beside them and strengthen their hand in the Lord.  Let’s be a church family that actively strengthens one another’s hands in God.
• Above all, fix your eyes on your true Rock of Escape.  You may feel surrounded today.  You may feel like the enemy is coming around the bend and time is running out.  But the God who controlled the movement of the Philistines, and the timing of the messenger, is the same God who holds your life in his sovereign hand.  He is never late. He is never outmaneuvered. When the wall closes in, when your strength fails, run to the cross.  Hide yourself in the Son of David. For in him, your enemy is defeated, your future is secure, and your Rock will never yield.  
• May we all have our hands strengthened in God. 

APPLICATION AND REFLECTION

In light of today's message....

• What did I learn about the gospel?
• How can I apply what I learned about the gospel to my life?
• With whom can I share the gospel this week?