Sermon Tone Analysis

Through Thick and Thin.

Intro

Have you ever had one of those moments where you are in desperate need, and then out of nowhere, someone shows up to help you?

Once in the dead of summer, my dad and I were driving down to the church when the car overheated on the freeway.

It was an 89 chevy caprice.

Dad pulled over on the highway and lifted the hood, and flames came pouring out.

Dad was yelling at me to get out of the car and come to where he was up in front of the vehicle.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a police officer with a fire extinguisher.

He must have pulled in behind us without me noticing, but it seemed as if he showed up out of thin air.

He put the flames out and waited with us until the tow truck came.

My dad always said that he must have been an angel; what are the chances that at the very moment we happened to need a fire extinguisher, their one was.

I am sure that you can think of instances in your own life when God brought about a deliverance that saved you.

Usually, these are formative experiences that forge our character.

We have been traveling with David through his wilderness experience as a fugitive from Saul.

David has had numerous times where it seemed hopeless, yet God intervened.

David has learned to rely on God, seeking his will before acting and trusting in him to keep him safe.

Hebrew storytellers have one main rule that they stick to tenaciously, too, brevity.

Often characters are not developed beyond a few sentences, the dialogue is short, and they are not overly descriptive.

They also do not usually tell us overtly the point of their stories or give us the interior development of the characters.

That is, of course, except for in the case of David.

Not only do we have the narratives of his exploits in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Chronicles, but we have David's own thoughts recorded for us in the psalms, sometimes even with the situation that prompted him to write them.

Psalm 54 was written during the events of 1 Samuel 23:19-29, "WHEN THE ZIPHITES WENT AND TOLD SAUL, “IS NOT DAVID HIDING AMONG US?"

That psalm provides us with an inside look into David's thoughts and how he reacted to this situation.

His response is instructive for our own cliff-hanger moments when we desperately need God to deliver us.

So to understand this text, it will be helpful for us to keep our finger in Psalm 54 as we learn from David how he deals with the treachery of betrayal.

But more importantly, seeing How God delivers David from his enemies.

You may not have physical enemies who threaten you with death every day, but you certainly have enemies—Not least of which is the enemy of your soul, Satan.

The situations David faces will be instructive for how God delivers us from our enemies?

Since God delivers us from our enemies, we must give him thanks.

Summary of the Text

David has already faced betrayal, certainly being hunted down by your father-in-law must feel like a betrayal, even if Saul only ever gave his daughter to David to entrap him.

Plus, there was the betrayal of Doeg, who, although a foreigner, should not have treated the priests of Nob the way he did.

Then last week, David finds out from the Lord that the inhabitants of Keilah, even after delivering their city from the philistines, would have given him up to Saul.

So he leaves there quickly before they have a chance.

After he does, Jonathan comes down to David to encourage him.

David and Jonathan have formed one of those deep and lasting friendships that have left an indelible mark as the ideal of male friendships.

Jonathan is a type of Christ,

Philippians 2:6–8 (ESV)—who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Although David is abandoned by many within even his own tribe, in Jonathan God sends the kind of encouragement only a friend could give.

It seems God sends Jonathan at such crucial times in David's life, right when he needs it the most.

Because just after he leaves the Ziphites, who know of David's whereabouts, turn as Doeg did, into opportunists and offer to help Saul find David.

Saul is grateful of course, but skeptical because David has, with the help of the lord, eluded Saul over and over again.

So he tells the Ziphites to be sure of David's whereabouts.

Nevertheless, he pursues David.

And he gets rather close to finding him, although he doesn't know this.

But as he is on oneside of the mountain David is hurrying to flee from him on the other.

Saul is so near to closing in on David, that unless the Lord had intervened he would have apprehended him.

But Saul hears the Philistines are making raids against the land and has to stop his pursuit.

We see that God first delivers David from internal fears through the strengthening of Jonathan, before providing a way of escape when Saul again pursues him.

But as we examine these two ways that God delivers David, I want to frame this all with Psalm 54.

Really this is a two for one, two expositions for the price of one.

And who doesn't like a deal?

Psalm 54 is a personal lament.

We study some fo the lament Psalms in 2020 and found that a lament is a form of prayer meant to move us from a place of pain to a position of trust.

That comes out clearly in the two sections of this psalm v. 1-3 and then 4-6.

First David cries out for the Lord to deliver and vindicate him from his enemies.

Strangers and ruthless men have risen against him and seek his life.

Then in v. 4 the tone shifts.

The psalmist is moving to a place of trust by recounting God's past faithfulness.

God is his helper and has upheld him and therefore will deliver him from his enemies.

Because he is confident in the Lord he pledges to offer a freewill offering and to give God thanks.

And so the context for David's deliverance is thanksgiving.

God delivers us from our enemies by the strengthening of friendship.

First then, God delivers us from our enemies by the strengthening of friendships.

It's not surprising that some of the same themes have surfaced repeatedly as we have followed David in his sojourn in the wilderness as a fugitive, trust, and reliance on God, friendship, community these have come up again and again.

So as Paul said to the saints in Philippi, "To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you."

Jonathan comes to David at an opportune time to bolster his faith in God, strengthening him in the Lord.

It's not printed in your bulletin, but if you will remember from last week in v. 14, the narrator tells us that Saul sought David every day.

That's what we call relentless.

I have been in battle, fought in a war.

Still, I cannot say that someone sought to kill me every day.

What would it feel like to be pursued like that?

It makes me think of our Christian brothers and sisters in countries openly hostile to the gospel.

They are constantly on guard because they know their every word, every correspondence, every move is being scrutinized.

The mental exhaustion this kind of toll takes is astounding.

Some cannot make it under this strain, their minds give way, and they break.

Even the best need the encouragement of another.

Ours is a therapeutic age.

Part of this is because we have replaced the meaningful community connections in everyday life with the soul-crushing despair of our isolated individualism.

We have rejected the wisdom of the community so we could be free to follow our hearts.

We have to rely on therapists and psychiatrists because a network of relationships that once sustained communities across this country have been torn down.

It used to be that you could depend on the wisdom of the previous generation.

Still, the youth culture developed since at least the middle of the twentieth century has been conditioned to distrust authority and mock their parents' traditions.

They are often skeptical in all the wrong areas and not the least bit skeptical where they should be the most—skeptical of themselves.

Our culture's hunger for a community presents a helpful point of contact.

For Christianity is the community of the called-out ones; that's what it means to be the church.

We have been gathered together as one body, with many members into a communion of saints.

Since the pandemic, the gathering of the church has been under attack.

People have often claimed the church isn't a building.

It's a people, and that's true.

But it would be better to say that the church is "a people assembled in a place."[1]

David is facing tremendous external pressure because of persecution, but also to protect and provide for the small band of people who have fled to him for leadership.

As Paul so eloquently put it in 2 Cor.

2:5, "fighting without and fears within."

David also had internal struggles, doubts, and fears.

First, fears about why.

Why is this the path God has him walking on, why through the wilderness?

Whenever we encounter difficulty in the Christian life, you can be sure that Satan is there, ready and waiting with his lies designed to make you doubt primarily the goodness of God.

He whispers into your ear, is God even good?