When You Are Hiding In a Cave….

 

David had perhaps the most difficult path to becoming king of Israel of any king in history. He did not seek the throne; rather the throne sought him. Samuel anointed him to replace Saul as king, and David remained true to his anointing, but it could not have been easy.

We have already seen in 1 Samuel 18-21 that David lost his position in Saul’s army, his wife, his mentor, Samuel, his friend, Jonathan, and his dignity and self respect. When 1 Samuel 22 opens, David is fleeing from Saul and he “escaped to the cave of Adullam.” He had no security, he had no food, he had no one to talk to, he had no promise to cling to, and he had no hope that anything would ever change. He was in a dark cave, away from everything and everybody he loved. Everybody except God. The only people with him were 400 people who themselves were “in distress or in debt or discontent.”

That would not be the last cave in which he would hide from Saul. We get a glimpse at how he felt about these experiences in Psalm 142, which is a record of David crying out to God while in the cave.

I cry aloud to the LORD;
I lift up my voice to the LORD for mercy.
I pour out my complaint before him;
before him I tell my trouble.
When my spirit grows faint within me,
it is you who know my way.
In the path where I walk
men have hidden a snare for me.
Look to my right and see;
no one is concerned for me.
I have no refuge;
no one cares for my life.
I cry to you, O LORD;
I say, "You are my refuge,
my portion in the land of the living."
Listen to my cry,
for I am in desperate need;
rescue me from those who pursue me,
for they are too strong for me.
Set me free from my prison,
that I may praise your name.
Then the righteous will gather about me
because of your goodness to me.

What does David do while he hides in the cave? He cries out to God; he pours out his complaint to the Lord. He recognizes that God is his refuge. He would continue for quite some time to flee from Saul, but in the cave he renewed his commitment to trust in God no matter how difficult his circumstances.

None of us are hiding in a cave with 400 distraught people, but at some time, we have all felt we were alone, with no one to help us, no promise to cling to, and no hope for the future. If you have faced such circumstances in the past, you will likely face them again in the future. There is only one person who can really help at such times. We should learn from David to cry out to the Lord, make our complaint to him. As he was for David, the Lord will always be there for us.

Unbroken

In her bestselling book Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand tells the amazing story of Louis Zamperini, 1936 Olympic distance runner and bombardier in the military during World War II and prisoner-of-war. His is a story of endurance and redemption that both reinforces and informs the mission God has given to the church as a body and to individual believers.

Zamperini was a prankster as a boy and through his teen years. Some of his pranks were harmful or illegal, yet he continually survived them. Then in high school he became a track athlete and became one of the best 5,000 meter runners in history and then one of the best mile-runners in history. He went to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. When he returned home, he trained for the 1940 Olympics, only to have them cancelled due to war.

From the story of those early years of Zamperini’s life, we learn our first lesson for the church: Young people who appear to be growing up to be a nuisance can develop into worthwhile individuals. We always need to realize this in the church because we are called to help people make the most out of their lives.

With his Olympic dream gone, Zamperini ended up in the army, serving as a bombardier in the Pacific. On May 27, 1943, Zamperini's bomber left Oahu in search of survivors from a downed plane. About 800 miles from the base, one of the engines cut out and the bomber plunged into the ocean. Zamperini and another soldier would stay afloat on a tiny life raft for 47 days—a world record for survival at sea. After confronting sharks, starvation, and dementia, their real battle would begin. Zamperini spent the next two years as a Japanese POW in the notorious Sugamo Prison. In particular, a guard named Watanabe (nicknamed "the Bird") ensured that Louis endured constant physical torture and verbal humiliation—all in an attempt to shatter the spirit of the American soldiers.

Zamperini would survive his prisoner-of-war ordeal, and leave us another lesson: Survival is possible even in the most extreme circumstances. Of all people, those of us who follow Christ should understand that people can overcome. It is, in fact, our responsibility in the church to nurture people through their difficulties in order to help them survive. At the same time, we need always to remember to trust God in our own difficulties.

In 1944, after Louis had been declared dead, he returned to America to a rush of publicity. Unfortunately, his life quickly descended into a new self-made prison of alcoholism and bitterness. In particular, Louis now endured constant nightmares about his past and an obsessive drive to murder "the Bird." But the walls of addiction and hatred started to crumble in 1949 when Louis attended a Billy Graham crusade and heard the gospel and trusted Christ.

After receiving Christ, in the words of Laura Hildenbrand:

When [Louie] thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him. He was not the worthless, broken, forsaken man that the Bird had striven to make him. In a single, silent moment, his rage, his fear, his humiliation and helplessness, had fallen away. That morning, he believed, he was a new creation.

Zamperini’s conversion leaves us another lesson: No matter how much suffering a person has endured, he or she still needs Christ. Zamperini’s suffering, as it does for many people, led him into his own destructive cycle until rescued by Christ. We need to watch for the suffering in people’s lives that shouts to us of their need for Christ, and share Christ with them.

Then there is one more lesson that we can learn from Louis Zamperini’s story. It grows out of the consequences of his conversion. Up until his conversion, he became obsessed with finding a way to return to Japan and murder his nemesis, “The Bird.’ After his conversion, Christ took away the bitterness and desire for revenge. Louis Zamperini not only received forgiveness, he was able to forgive his greatest tormentor. The lesson? If Christ forgave us, we need to forgive like that. The church should be in the business of teaching people to forgive others.

Zamperini has followed Christ in the long years since his conversion. He survived all the people who were part of his story, many of whom also followed Christ, people with whom he will share eternity. I recommend Unbroken. I especially recommend the lessons it teaches us about following Christ and serving in the church.

Contrasting King Saul and King David

King David, whose life we are learning from this summer, was a remarkable man who kept his heart right with God, despite his imperfections. His predecessor as king, Saul, began with the same opportunities that David had, but failed to trust in God. Much of what they each experienced in life is in fact a direct contrast to what the other experienced.

· Saul disobeyed God while David obeyed God. Both had physical qualities that opened doors for them. Saul was tall and described as an “impressive young man,” while David had “a fine appearance and handsome features.” Twice Saul disobeyed direct commands of God and then tried to make excuses and get around what he had done. David’s reign includes account after account of how he obeyed God. When he did sin, and he had some enormous public sins, he confessed his sin and walked the hard road back to God.

· Saul had the Spirit of God depart from his life while David possessed the Spirit of God in power. The middle of 1 Samuel 16 presents a direct contrast for the reader in this regard. In verse 13, we read about David’s anointing as king and are told that “the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.” In the verse next verse, we read that “the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul.”

· Saul trusted himself and his army, while David trusted the Lord. On two occasions, Saul was given direct instructions from the Lord through Samuel how to conduct a battle, but on both occasions he disobeyed God when things did not go the way he expected. Those two acts of disobedience led directly to his removal as king. David, even before he was king trusted God. In the most famous story from his life, David killed Goliath with one stone from his slingshot. When asked how he could fight a giant as a mere boy with no armor, he responded that “the Lord will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”

· Saul developed a great jealousy of David and tried to kill him, while David spared Saul’s life. Saul spent a great deal of time and energy pursuing David because he saw him as a threat to his throne. David, though, demonstrated remarkable composure in the light of these threats. On multiple occasions, David had an opportunity to kill Saul, but refused to do so, stating that it was not his right to slay the Lord’s anointed.

These are just four examples of how these two men’s lives contrasted with one another. Their stories, when compared with each other, offer us the choice of how we are going to live. We can disobey God, live without the Spirit of God, trust in ourselves, and respond to others out of jealousy. Or, we can learn to trust God, even in the midst of our sin and imperfection, and let his Spirit dwell within us, so that he can use us in mighty ways.

These are some of the lessons  from David this summer that I will be sharing with our congregation this summer as we continue learning from him to live with a heart for God.

Living With a Heart For God–The Life of David

“David.

“Jesse’s youngest son. Youthful shepherd of Bethlehem. Giant-slayer. Teenaged king-elect. Composer of psalms. Saul’s personal musician. Jonathan’s closest friend.

“He rose from hunted fugitive to Israel’s king. And he fell from champion in battle to aged and troubled monarch.

“David — a man of glorious triumph, yet great tragedy. Uniquely gifted, but human to the core; strong in battle, but weak at home. Why are we drawn to study his life? Because David isn’t a polished-marble personality. He is blood and bone and breath, sharing our struggles of spirit and soul.”

Chuck Swindoll begins one of his studies of David’s life with those words. David is one of the most remarkable men to have ever lived. He is the only one in Scripture to be called “a man after God’s own heart.” He is mentioned more than any other Old Testament character in the New Testament. One of his psalms is among a small handful of the most well-known passages of Scripture. He was a great poet and musician, a courageous warrior, and a national statesman.

Yet he was a man of great vulnerability, and so very much like us. He was anything but perfect, falling from the pinnacle of his kingdom into the depths of sin.

Among the events of his life that we shall examine are the following:

· His anointing: As a teenager he was anointed to be king of Israel after the failure of Saul, Israel’s first king, to remain true to God.

· His music: Chosen as the future king, he served as an attendant to Saul, offering up music to calm the soul and soften the heart. He would go on to write music that still touches hearts through the words of his psalms.

· His triumphs: Among his greatest triumphs was his victorious confrontation with the giant Goliath. He saved his nation for the first time, but it would not be his last. He shows us how to walk with God in the battles of life.

· His failures and repentance: His adultery was one of the great personal failures of history, yet he repented and found his way back to God. He shows us how to respond to our sin.

That is just a taste of his remarkable life. He also battled jealousy, revenge, conflict, sorrow, and triumph. There is something for everyone to learn from in his life.

If you want to live with a heart for God, you really need to meet this man. We need to do more than just read the stories of his life in the Old Testament. We need to see his successes and failures and ask how his experiences can help us have a heart for God like he did. So, we will examine his life this summer and learn from him how we can have hearts that remain true to God and that are on fire for God.

King David Is Coming to Westwood This Summer

 

King David will visit Westwood this summer through a new sermon series: “Living With a Heart For God.” Perhaps as much as anyone else in the Bible David teaches us how to live with a heart for God.

Chuck Swindoll says about him: “Few men in history have been so gifted and respected as the sweet singer of Israel, David, the youngest son of Jesse. His personality was a strange combination of simplicity and complexity.”

J. Oswald Sanders summed up David’s life this way: “He swung between extremes, but paradoxically evidenced an abiding stability. The oscillating needle always returned to its pole – God Himself.”

His story begins before we even meet him. When the prophet Samuel rebukes King Saul, David’s predecessor, for not obeying God, Samuel said to him, “Your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people.” David was that man, and so became known as “the man after God’s own heart.”

David always longed to serve God well, from the time he was an obscure shepherd boy in the hills of Judea to his reign as king. Yet woven in his life were moments of sin and the normal struggles with life that demonstrated flaws in his character and failure in his reign. He had great victories, such as his defeat of the giant Goliath, but also struggled with great sin, such as his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband. Yet he wrote some of the greatest songs of praise ever written, words in the Psalms that still move our hearts.

We can learn much from him about having a heart for God. Let’s share the adventure of his life together this summer.