When I Am Afraid
Download MP3If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to 2 places, 1st Samuel 21 and also Psalm 56. Psalm 56 is there in your worship guide if you want to just keep that, but you will need to turn in your Bible or turn on your phone to first Samuel 21. We could not fit both of these in your worship guide. Sorry. It's probably a good time for me to mention that we, obviously have not been able to go through every single story in first Samuel.
Joel Brooks:We can't do that on a Sunday, but I want to encourage you to do that during the week. You don't have to only read through 1 Samuel here on Sunday mornings. There are a lot of shorter stories, some smaller little details that we've had to jump over, taking a little bit more of a bigger picture in 1 Samuel. If we didn't do that, we would literally be here for a decade studying the life of David because there was so much there. So read it on your own.
Joel Brooks:I am happy to discuss any of those things with you tonight. If you have any questions about first Samuel, I will let you buy me a drink tonight and we can just sit down and talk through those things. So first Samuel chapter 21, and we're just going to read this and then I'll save the Psalm for later. We'll begin reading in verse 10. And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish, the king of Gath.
Joel Brooks:And the servants of Achish said to him, is not this David, the king of the land? Did did they not sing to one another of him and dances? Saul has struck down his 1,000, and David his 10,000. And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish, the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gates and let his spittle run down his beard.
Joel Brooks:Then Achish said to his servants, behold, you see this man is mad. Why have you brought him to me? Do I lack mad men that you have brought this fellow to behave as madman a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house? This is the word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:If you would pray with me. Father, we pray that you'd honor the reading of your word, that even now, it begins to bear fruit in our hearts. Lord, we pray that we would come to see you as more glorious, that you are for us. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may Your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus, Amen. Okay. Spoiler alert for you, but, we're gonna finish the life of David on Easter morning. And then after that, we're going to be studying the book of Ecclesiastes together. Lord willing, we will be studying the book of Ecclesiastes together, and I can't wait.
Joel Brooks:I have already been deep diving in it. I've just finished my 5th commentary on it. My family is so annoyed with me about talking through Ecclesiastes. I mean, seriously, we'll just be going through whatever conversation and I'll say, you know what that reminds me of? And my kids will groan.
Joel Brooks:Ecclesiastes. I'm like, yes, let's talk about how everything is meaningless. You know that which is some of the theme of Ecclesiastes. It's a great book. It's gonna be full of joy.
Joel Brooks:But but actually, one of the main themes of Ecclesiastes is this. How do you make sense of a life of a world that just seems crazy? A life, in a world in which nothing seems to make sense. How do you make sense of your own life when at times it just seems cruel, even when you're trying to hold on to the promises of God? That's a lot of what the theme of Ecclesiastes is about.
Joel Brooks:Now King David's son, Solomon, would be the one who writes those words. But it's actually David who is experiencing these words at this point in his life. David's trying to make sense of his life. His life is not unfolding in the way that he thought it was going to unfold. He's trying to hold on to the promises of God, but right now, it seems like he's being dealt a cruel hand.
Joel Brooks:David, I mean, think about it. This is not at all what he thought the trajectory of his life was was, trending towards. David who was anointed by the prophet Samuel to be king of Israel, then you have the holy spirit rushing upon him, and then you have him going off to fight Goliath and he kills Goliath. Then people are lining the streets. There's parades in his honor, all singing his praises.
Joel Brooks:Then he marries into the king's court and he's there. You look at the trajectory of David's life. He is the promising rising star of Israel. I mean, you cannot have a future brighter than that. And now look where He is.
Joel Brooks:He's alone. Just like that, things turn. He's alone. His career is over. He's running for his life.
Joel Brooks:He's had to leave his family, his friends, his career behind him. Never in a 1000000 years would he have guessed that his life would have turned out like this. But life isn't predictable. And so now, here he is pathetically drooling all over himself, acting like an insane man. He has fallen far, far down from who he used to be.
Joel Brooks:Now I doubt that any of you have ever had to run for your lives, but it's likely that at least part of you has realized your life is not turning out like you had hoped. You know, you had some kind of expectation for your life and maybe it's not turning out like you hoped. You never thought you would struggle so much with anxiety. Never thought you would have so few friends. Never thought your career or your marriage could be so difficult or so mundane.
Joel Brooks:Never thought you would remain single. You never thought that your body would fail you or that your girlfriend would leave you. You never thought you would be having to go through a midlife crisis in your thirties, but here it is hitting you. Life has not been turning out the way that you hoped. Honestly, not the way that you even expected.
Joel Brooks:Somewhere along the line, that trajectory just got turned around. And here, David never expected that his life would end up like this. Not after being anointed, not after defeating Goliath, not after the parades in the songs, not after marrying into the king's court, but here he is life on the run. For a third of the book of Samuel, this is what we're gonna read about. David's life on the run.
Joel Brooks:There are no fewer than 7 psalms that David wrote during this time. There were likely a whole lot more, but we know that at least 7 were ascribed to this period of his life. We don't know the tunes of those songs. We just know the lyrics. But I would have to imagine that they were country.
Joel Brooks:And and not like, you know, that that new kind of Walker Hayes country. I mean, this is like Johnny Cash. This is Willie Nelson tears in your beer. Country. This is a man who's suffering.
Joel Brooks:Suffering produced great artistry, and these songs just come out of him during this time. It's hard to get an exact read on David's timeline, how long this period of running, continues to go, but we could best guess it's around 10 years of his life. 10 years of running. It was between 15 to 20 years from the time that he was anointed as king to the time he would be appointed as king. 15 to 20 years.
Joel Brooks:That's that's a long period of waiting between being anointed and being appointed. There seems to be a pattern with God though throughout the Bible that he makes a promise, and then he has God's people wait go through a period of trials and suffering before that promise is fulfilled. You certainly saw that with the life of Abraham and Sarah. They had to wait 25 years before they had Isaac. Now this is the low point here of David's life, but it's just the beginning of his low point.
Joel Brooks:I wonder how he'd feel if he knew that. I've got 10 more years of this. How did David get here? Well, we've been, you know, reading through the story, but let me just kinda summarize. By this point in his life, Saul has tried to spear him against the wall three times.
Joel Brooks:He, at one point, he sent a team of assassins to his house to kill him. We actually had to jump over that story. It's in 1st Kings 19. Go back and read it. It's fascinating.
Joel Brooks:Saul sends a team of assassins there. They go into his room and they see that David is sick. And so they come back and they're like, we couldn't kill him. He was sick. It's the strangest thing, but apparently there's some kind of honor code that I don't know about, but, you're not allowed to kill a person if they're in bed sick.
Joel Brooks:And Saul is like, I don't care. Bring me his entire bed with him in it. And so literally the assassins go, they pick up his bed and they take it all the way to the palace, and then they take off the sheets and it's not David, it's an idol that's there. David has snuck out through the window. It's fascinating stuff.
Joel Brooks:You need to be reading this. But the point is this, Saul, he's doing everything he can to kill David at this point. He's using all of his resources, all of his time and his energy. He wants David dead. Last week, we saw how David said goodbye to Jonathan and then he he ran and he ran.
Joel Brooks:He didn't even have time to go home and and you know, pack a lunch. He didn't have time to go home and gather his weapons. Saul was in hot pursuit. And so he ran all the way down to where the high priest lived. He first ran to the city of Nod and the high priest gave him some food.
Joel Brooks:And then the high priest gave him Goliath's sword that was apparently being kept in storage there. And so David he gets some food, he gets the sword, and then he keeps running and he goes 25 miles south to a Philistine city, the city of Gath. Now I I know, like, I I know David was a military, like, brilliant strategist. I can't understand this move. It's the dumbest move you can make.
Joel Brooks:Of all the places he would run to, he goes to a Philistine city. I mean remember, they're singing all these songs about David, how he has killed his tens of thousands. Most of those were Philistines. Remember how David, he killed 200 Philistines to take their foreskins and give it as a bridal price? David killed their champion, Goliath.
Joel Brooks:Do you know where Goliath's hometown was? Gath. David is going to Goliath's hometown. We read later in scripture that Goliath had 4 brothers. I bet they were excited David came into town.
Joel Brooks:You you can't think of a worse place for David to run. He's literally going to the one place on earth where everyone wants him dead. I I was trying to think of a modern parallel to this, but this would be like, you know, a Ukrainian general deciding he needed to flee to Russia for safety. It just would make no sense whatsoever. The only possible reason he would do this is if there's no other options.
Joel Brooks:There literally is no other place and he fears Saul more than he fears the Philistines. Well, he tries to slip into this city. I mean, he he decides to go through with this. This is his best of all, his bad ideas. And he goes into this city, and he is immediately recognized.
Joel Brooks:Probably because he's carrying Goliath's sword with him. I'm not sure. Maybe at least he, you know, had the the intelligence to hide that before he went in the city, but he is immediately recognized. And so they bring him before the king. We read in verse 12, kind of a understatement, but it just says, and David was much afraid.
Joel Brooks:Much afraid. David who has never known fear, even when facing giants, is much afraid. This is the only time you will ever read that David was afraid. But he is scared for good reason. I mean there's no way out.
Joel Brooks:He can't buy his way out. He can't run his way out. He can't fight his way out. He can't reason his way out. He is gonna die alone by the hand of his enemy.
Joel Brooks:So as he's being dragged before the king, he he does come up with this desperate, crazy idea because he has nothing else to lose. He's like, I'll just act crazy. That's literally his only plan. I'm just gonna act crazy. And he goes all out.
Joel Brooks:He begins like scratching things. I mean, you know how hard it is to scratch with your fingernails and leave marks on doors. He's scratching the doors. He's letting us drool go down his beard. He's probably barking at the moon.
Joel Brooks:I mean, he is going all out. Oscar worthy performance of being an insane man. And he's brought before the king and it's kind of lost Why in the world would you bring such a repulsive figure into my court? And so David is kicked out, Not to fight another day, but to run another day and then to keep running and running and running. Once again, David is far removed from that bold courageous man who fought Goliath.
Joel Brooks:He's far removed from the parades in his honor. He's now a drooling idiot being cast out of a king's court. Now besides us knowing that David was much afraid, we don't really know what else he was thinking except for the fact we have Psalm 56. He did write a psalm about this experience. He likely wrote this psalm while he was on the run.
Joel Brooks:And so what I thought we would do is just simply take the time to go through this Psalm line by line so we know how David was handling this low, low point in his life. It's there in your worship guide. Verse 1. We'll read verse 1 and 2. Be gracious to me, oh God, for man tramples on me.
Joel Brooks:All day long an attacker oppresses me. My enemies trample on me all day long for many attack me proudly. And so the first thing I want you to see about this is during this ordeal, David is crying out to the Lord. Yes, he's on the run. Yes, he's desperately trying to come up with plan after plan after plan to escape.
Joel Brooks:But in the midst of all of that, he is still praying to the Lord. Those things are not mutually exclusive. To be on the run while also calling out to God for help. He tells God that the men are trampling on Him. Literally, that's men pant after me.
Joel Brooks:Like they're in hot pursuit. I can hear their breath. They are so close around me. And he says that they're doing this all day long. That phrase all day long will be repeated 3 times in this psalm.
Joel Brooks:And what you see here is like it's the unrelenting pressure. That unrelenting pressure of the pursuit is the worst part of it all. I mean there's just no rest for the weary. It never lets up. He goes around this corner.
Joel Brooks:There's the enemy. He tries to hide here. There's the enemy. The enemy is everywhere. He just wants to catch his breath and he can't.
Joel Brooks:It's this unrelenting pressure on him. It's the worst part about it all. Have you ever experienced anything like this? And once again, I'm not, you know, I know you've likely not been on the run for your actual life, but you can relate to that unrelenting pressure of life. When you just can't ever seem to catch a breath, can't ever seem to get ahead or perhaps you know, you get sick, you can't get better, you fall behind at work, but your children still need you, you know, to feed them, clothe them, bathe them, drive them everywhere.
Joel Brooks:You're over a week behind on your laundry. You forgot to pay a bill. Your car needs new tires and new brakes. You have 200 unread emails. You're a month behind on your Bible reading plan.
Joel Brooks:You keep getting asked to go to a fundraiser, and you're losing excuses of how to get out of it. There's like all these things are just like that. They keep hitting you and hitting you and hit, and you, you just, you just want to catch your breath. And you know, even if you were to catch up on all those, there's a whole another pile of things waiting for you. So anxiety hits and then that anxiety turns to fear.
Joel Brooks:It's not fear that those things are gonna take your life, it's fear that that is your life. That's what your life has turned into. Endlessly being driven from one thing to another to another to another. It's like this this force just keeps pushing you along and you just want to stop and breathe. So so what do you do in circumstances like that?
Joel Brooks:Well, David here, he cries out to God in desperation. Look at verse 3. We read, when I am afraid, I put my trust in you. And God whose word I praise and God I trust, I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?
Joel Brooks:So the result of that unrelenting pressure is fear. Fear of losing control, fear that the pursuit is never ever going to end, fear of death. When that fear came crashing down on David, we read he put his trust in God. One of my favorite commentators on this passage, a man named Derek Kidner, he wrote, faith is seen as a deliberate act in defiance of one's emotional state. I love that.
Joel Brooks:Faith is our deliberate act of our emotional state. It's when you say to your own fearful heart, stop it. Stop it. You rise up and you fight against it and say, I will trust in the Lord. You fight against the emotions that are coming up in you.
Joel Brooks:And notice the progression here. David first, he declares I am afraid, but then he moves on to say, I shall not be afraid. Faith moves him from a position of fear to where he's moving to a place of security. I am afraid. I will trust.
Joel Brooks:I shall not be afraid. K. I'm gonna tell you somewhat of a embarrassing story about me. Happens most Sundays. I arrive here at the church typically around 4, 4:30 in the morning on a Sunday.
Joel Brooks:So it's really dark outside. And can I just say, like, the creepiest place you could possibly ever go is in a old old church when it's pitch black? And so, I come in these doors, and, like, it is creepy in this place, being the only person in here when it's pitch black. And, you can hear everything is still creaking. You're convinced you could hear people, like, running around, and I can't see anything.
Joel Brooks:And so I'm scared. I'm scared. And so I I walk into the door and I literally yell out Psalm 27. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear?
Joel Brooks:He is the defense of my life. Whom shall I dread? I just yell it out. And if anybody is in here, they'll run. Alright?
Joel Brooks:But I I walk in afraid and then I'm moving, I'm telling, I'm I'm in defiance of my emotional state. And I've told my kids, like if ever you're in a scary position, like you're being threatened by someone, just quote Old Testament scripture, they run. I mean, you just start. Yeah. Like quoting from Amos or something, people are gonna be like, they'll back away.
Joel Brooks:So I walk in and I yell Psalm 27, not every week, but, but a lot of weeks, in defiance of my emotional state. And I go from being afraid to I shall not be afraid. And next, we see here in verse 5. All day long, they injure my cause. All their thoughts are against me for evil.
Joel Brooks:They stir up strife. They lurk. They watch my steps as they have waited for my life. For their crime, will they escape? In wrath, cast down the peoples, oh god.
Joel Brooks:Here, basically, David says to god, have you seen what's going on? Like, have you seen all the things they're doing to me? You're not gonna let them get away with that, are you? You are going to punish them for this, aren't you? And of course, that's the hope for every Christian that someday evil will be dealt with.
Joel Brooks:That was David's hope as well. That God has noticed the evil. That God will someday, destroy that evil forever. Verse 8, you have kept count of my tossings. Put my tears in your bottle.
Joel Brooks:Are they not in your book? Last year, one time, my family, we went to go visit my brother. He lives in Atlanta. He actually lives in our the home we grew up in, our childhood home. So it's always fun to go back and see him and to to see my old stomping grounds there.
Joel Brooks:And I was helping him with a project in the backyard. We're having to dig up some things. And, and he digs and he he hits something. And he pulls it up, and it's a mason jar. And he goes, Joel, you got to come you got to see this.
Joel Brooks:And so I run over there and I look as he's wiped off the dirt from him. I was like, oh my goodness. It's like, kids, kids, you have got to see what's in this mason jar. And so they all come running. It's like, kids, remember how I told you that when I was little I had a pet parakeet?
Joel Brooks:And his name was Petey. Here's Petey. Like, here he is. Like, when when he died, I had a funeral I buried him in the backyard. Never thought I'd see Petey again.
Joel Brooks:But there was Petey perfectly preserved after 35 years in this mason jar. It was beautifully creepy. But this is what you do. You know, when you when you put something in a jar there, you're you're preserving it. You're trying to hold on to that.
Joel Brooks:God says that He preserves our tears. He puts them in a bottle and He seals it up. This teaches us a lot about how God views our sufferings. First, it says that God notices our sufferings. Don't ever think that God is not aware of all the trials you're going through, of all the pain you are experiencing.
Joel Brooks:God is acutely aware. He's like, you know that that parent of a of a young baby who's sick. You stay up all night with that child. As a parent, you're so in tune with every murmur, every little cry. That's God observing every one of our pains.
Joel Brooks:But but unlike the parent who eventually gets so fatigued they fall asleep, we know that God neither slumbers nor sleeps. He's always looking over us. He notices everything. And He carefully documents them. We we know that He counts the very hairs on our head, but he also counts our very tears.
Joel Brooks:He counts every time you toss and turn on your bed. That's what meant when we read he he counts our tossings. Every time in anxiety, you're rolling over at night, He records that. Every tear you shed is written down in His journal. It's preserved in a bottle.
Joel Brooks:It brings us to the next point, this teaches about suffering and that is that there is tremendous value to your suffering. Not a single tear that you shed is ever wasted. They're preserved. They serve a purpose. Hear this, Jesus could fix every one of your problems like that Right now, if He so chose.
Joel Brooks:He has the power to do it. But He has chosen not to fix every one of your problems like that. He has chosen to let you go through grief because there is value in it. Jesus does not give us a shortcut through grief because He wants us to have tears because those tears have tremendous value. Jesus didn't shortcut through that.
Joel Brooks:Jesus even let his friend Lazarus die so he so he could go through the whole grief process and he began to weep in that experience because tears have value. Listen, a day is coming when every tear is going to be wiped away. Tears will be no more. And in that moment, all you will be able to do is worship. How can you not worship when every tear, every sorrow is gone?
Joel Brooks:But until then, until that glorious day comes, you have actually been given a gift that is only in this life. And you need to see it as a gift. You have the gift of being able to worship Jesus through tears. That is a gift that you will not have forever. You only have it in this life.
Joel Brooks:And when you worship Jesus through tears, you're declaring to the entire world how glorious he is. He is more glorious than any trial and any struggle I am going through. Remind yourself during that time of suffering, I won't have this opportunity forever to show how much I find my joy in Him and Him alone. That brings us to the final point, is these tears will not be there forever. You don't have this opportunity forever.
Joel Brooks:God is like a museum archivist. He's preserving these tears because if He doesn't preserve them, we we wouldn't have any memory of them. Someday, 10000 years from now, 100000 years from now, these things will be pulled out and be like, do you remember that time? That time of such sorrow. So these tears, they are precious in our Father's eyes.
Joel Brooks:Okay. Let's move to verse 9, this is my favorite verse in the entire song. Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call. This I know that God is for me. This I know that God is for me.
Joel Brooks:Do you believe this? If you were to journal, this I know blank. What's that one thing that you know that you know that you know that you know above all else? This is the one thing I know. David says this I know.
Joel Brooks:God is for me. Think of the person who is saying this. He's all alone. He's a man without a country. He's exhausted from running.
Joel Brooks:He's out of all options. He's been captured. He's losing his dignity. He's drooling on his beard like a crazy man. And in the midst of all that, he says, the one thing I know in the midst of all of this is God is for me.
Joel Brooks:He's for me. And can I say Christians that in light of Jesus coming into this world, in light of Him going to the cross for us, we should never ever ever doubt that truth that God is for us? It's remarkable that David could hold on to that truth pre Jesus. David had to look forward for his security. We could look backwards at the evidence and we could say, absolutely, 100%, God is for me.
Joel Brooks:He literally went to hell and back for me. I can never doubt his goodness to me. And what this means is that every hurt I experience, every pain, every sorrow, every tear I experience in this life must be for my good because God is for me. There is no one who loves you more. There is no one who wants what is best for you more than Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Paul would later pick up on these words in Romans 8. If God is for us, who can be against us? And the answer is no one. The psalm ends with David's deliverance in verse 12. He also wrote all of Psalm 34, which we opened up our service with, which is about his deliverance.
Joel Brooks:He says, I must perform my vows to you, oh God. I will render my thank offerings to you. For you have delivered my soul from death, Yes, my feet from falling that I may walk before God in the light of life. The Lord delivers David from the hand of the Philistines, not just to run another day, but to worship another day, and to keep worshiping another day, and to keep worshiping another day. Now some of you might, you know, be listening to this and saying, I I hear this.
Joel Brooks:I hear this, but I have a really hard time believing that God is ultimately for me. You know, it's not just, you know, you talked about the enemies pursuing David, but really my enemies are my sins. I've got a past. And that past haunts me. Every every corner I go around, there's my past rearing its ugly head.
Joel Brooks:And it's not just the past because when I go around the other corner, it's the present. I keep sinning. I keep falling. How can God be for me in the midst of all this? Hear me.
Joel Brooks:God is not for your sin, but He is for you. And He is so for you, He has dealt with your sin. That's what we see at the cross. He has forever dealt with your sin so that he might forever be with you. Don't ever doubt how much Jesus is for you in light of the cross.
Joel Brooks:That's what brings us here to this table, that we're gonna come and celebrate. Jesus didn't just tell us, hey, Be sure you always remember that I'm for you. Remember the gospel. He actually gave us a tangible way that we might be reminded of the gospel often. What he did is he gave us these symbols of bread and wine.
Joel Brooks:We read that on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, and he broke it. And he said, this is my body given for you. In the same way, he took the wine and he said, this wine is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sin. The apostle Paul would later say in 1st Corinthians, as often as you eat of this bread and you drink of this cup, you proclaim the lord's death until he comes again. The lord will come again.
Joel Brooks:And so when we take of this meal, we look in the past and we see what god has done and we look to the future and we see that god what God will do, and Christ will come again, and he will redeem all things. This table is for everyone who has placed their faith and their trust in Christ as their lord and their savior. If that's you, if you know you need Jesus, this table's for you. And this is how we're gonna take. We're gonna have line down these 2 middle aisles.
Joel Brooks:We'll have 4 stations up here. And if you would just break off a little bit of the bread, you just dip it in the wine. This is, nonalcoholic wine. And you will hear the words, this is the body of Christ given to you. This is His blood shed for you.
Joel Brooks:And then you could take and you're welcome to stay up here and pray if you want to, or if you wanna return to your seat using the outer aisles, if you would do that. And just to make sure we have an an orderly flow of things, we're gonna start with those who are in the balcony, and those who are in the overflow rooms. If y'all would come first, and then the rest of you can follow after that. If you would pray with me. Father, as we take time to remember you through the bread and through the wine, As we take time to take holy communion, may we indeed commune with you.
Joel Brooks:We remember in this moment that you are for us, and you have gloriously demonstrated that on the cross. And, Lord, we wanna just boldly declare that we will not be fearful, and we put our trust in you. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
