Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction*
So, as you may remember, David is hiding from Saul.
Saul, wants to kill David.
David, had depended on lies and schemes to hide from Saul and try to cover his tracks.
But God had humbled him using the Philistines, and David finally stopped depending on himself and started depending on the LORD.
We pick up after David has been rescued by the Lord from the Philistines.
V1-2
The cave of Adullam is a well known place in Judah.
It’s location is 10 miles from Gath and about 15 miles from David’s hometown of Bethlehem.
David was still hiding from Saul, but the bright side of his situation was that he was in friendly territory … no longer in danger of the Philistines.
As you may recall … David has been through a lot.
When he was younger, he had been anointed by God’s prophet Samuel as the future king of Israel.
A while later, he had come to Israel’s rescue, defeating the Philistine hero Goliath and routing the Philistine army.
He had suddenly become quite famous in Israel.
He had married into the family of the king.
But he had also become a target of envy by king Saul … Saul had tried to murder him multiple times.
Under the threat of having his life taken, he had to leave behind his best friend, Jonathan, and his wife, and everyday life as he knew it.
Now, he was living life as a fugitive, and he didn’t know how long it would last.
As things were going downhill, David had experienced a brief but intense period of backsliding.
He had taken things into his own hands … depending on lies and schemes, on people, and on himself, rather than on the LORD.
But as we saw in the last chapter, when he found himself in the hands of the Philistines, he had turned back to the Lord.
According to , David did a lot of praying while in Gath, and the Lord heard him.
David learned that the fear of the Lord conquers every other fear (vv.
9–16).
The slide that started on the road from Jonathan and continued on into Gath is now stopped.
David is trusting in the LORD once again.
This was the difference between David and Saul; both of them slipped.
But Saul kept sliding, while David turned back to the LORD.
David also said in
So, in our last chapter, David made a dramatic turn to the LORD and was delivered from the life-threatening situation he was in at the hands of the Philistines.
a dramatic turn to the LORD and deliverance from a life-threatening situation.
The Lord was merciful to David to enable him to escape back to his own land.
But where was David now to go?
He couldn't go to his house - Saul had sent men to kill him there and Saul would have people watching his house to see if he returned.
He couldn't go to the palace - For obvious reasons.
He couldn't go to Samuel - Saul had sent men there to search for him and knew that he had already been there once.
He couldn't go to Jonathan - This would put Jonathan in danger … Saul had already attempted to take Jonathan’s life a couple of times.
He couldn't go to the house of the LORD - That’s where David went in the last chapter and Saul had a spy there.
And he had learned a valuable lesson about going to the ungodly - in the last chapter, David shown up in Gath with Goliath’s sword and had immediately been taken captive.
What David could do is go to a humble cave and find refuge.
And that’s what he did.
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In the first part of chapter 22, we saw how David had made for the area he knew: Adullam (the name means ‘refuge’).
The cave was in Judah, halfway between Gath and Bethlehem.
This was a well-known place in Judah … a very familiar place to him.
So David was now in friendly territory, and the fighting men from Judah and Benjamin came to join his band.
All of David’s family joined him at the cave, which meant that his brothers deserted Saul’s army and became fugitives like David.
They had come to understand that David was God’s anointed king, so they linked up with the future of the nation.
This was a wonderful gift from God.
Before this, what David had was trouble and persecution from his family.
Now, they join him at Adullam cave.
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Many others saw in David the only hope for a successful kingdom, so they came to him as well.
Among those who came to him were those in distress because of Saul, those in debt, and those discontented because of the way Saul was ruining the nation (see ).
Even Saul’s own son had recognized the damage Saul was doing to the nation:
God called an unlikely and unique group to David in Adullam cave.
God called an unlikely and unique group to David in Adullam cave.
These were not the men that David would have chosen for himself, but they were the ones called to him.
But from a human perspective, these were not the men that David would have chosen for himself.
They were in distress:
They had problems of their own, but God called them to His man, David.
They were in debt:
That might be surprising, because so often it is implied in sermons that debt disqualifies people from being used by God.
The “You were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things” verse from often get’s used by prideful Christians to exalt themselves over those who have debt.
But that scripture doesn’t even deal with debt … in fact, in the parable, the “faithful stewards” each risked what the man had committed to them.
The one who didn’t take a risk is the one called wicked and lazy.
Yep, debt is not a good thing, as Paul says, “Owe no one anything except to love one another.”
The New King James Version.
(1982).
().
Nashville: Thomas Nelson.” verse from often get’s used by prideful Christians to exalt themselves over those who have debt.
Yep, debt is not a good thing, but sometimes it’s inevitable and it doesn’t prevent God from using a person.
God called an unlikely and unique group to David in Adullam cave.
These were not the men that David would have chosen for himself, but they were the ones called to him.”
verse from often get’s used by prideful Christians to exalt themselves over those who have debt.
Yep, debt is not a good thing, but sometimes it’s inevitable and it doesn’t prevent God from using a person.
Don’t read below:
Owe no one anything except to love one another
But sometimes debt just happens and it doesn’t mean someone is unfaithful, nor does it prevent God from using a person.
but sometimes it’s inevitable and it doesn’t prevent God from using a person.
but sometimes it’s inevitable and it doesn’t prevent God from using a person.
The greatest debts that God is concerned with is our sin debt and how we forgive others.
They were discontented:
The Hebrew for discontented is bitter of soul.
They knew the bitterness of life, and they were not satisfied with their lives or with King Saul.
They wanted something different, and something better, and God called them to David at Adullam cave.
So, David ended up with 400 high quality fighting men, and the number later increased to 600.
Saul, however, had an army of over 3,000 men.
But of course the Spirit of the Lord had deserted Saul .... and the LORD was with David.
The name Adullam means refuge, but the cave wasn't to be David's refuge.
The LORD wanted to be David's refuge in this time of discouragement.
In , David said:
Most archaeologists believe that the Cave of Adullam was not too far from the place where David defeated Goliath.
Most archaeologists believe that the Cave of Adullam was not too far from the place where David defeated Goliath, in the hills of Judah.
David couldn't help but think, "Boy, I've come a long way from the Valley of Elah!
From a great victory to running around like a criminal, hiding in a cave."
I can’t help but imagine that David, hiding in this cave, thought back to the time when he had his great victory against Goliath … and now here he is cowering in a cave.
Was he discouraged?
Well, in , which is associated with his time in this cave, he wrote:
David certainly seems down, yet he finished the Psalm with this:
Psalm 142:7
David was down, but he knew he was in the LORD’s hands, and the LORD was strengthening him.
is also associated with David’s time in the cave and from this Psalm we get an understanding of where his mind was at.
We know that he was depending on God’s mercy.
And verse 2 says that David was seeking God in prayer:
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