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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

A Man After Gods Own Heart: King David

David Wright

01 The Nobody Nobody Noticed

02 God’s Heart, God’s Man, God’s Ways

03 Giant Lessons Worth Remembering

04 Aftermath of a Giant Killing

05 Every Crutch Removed

06 How to Lie to Your Pastor

07 I Hate To Wait

08 Is This God’s Will or Mine?

09 Living Above Retaliation

10 Lying Appearances

11 When Seeing is not Believing

12 When Your Enemy Falls

14 Pulling Down Strongholds

13 Power Grab And Civil War

16 When God Says No

17 When Grace Calls You By Name

18 A Perilous Thing to Lose Dependence On God

19 Restore To Me The Joy

15 But God Knows My Heart

You know, I couldn't help but notice when the kids were up here, what are you afraid of in the children's story?

I remember when I was maybe 5678, You always had to watch for the bad guys.

In fact, I'm thinking of 2 bad guys in particular, and these young boys, they were about our age, but they were the bad guys.

Their family life was just very different in what they watched and all these other, they were just, well, in our little sphere, they were the bad guys.

And so what do you do when there's a bad guy?

And so you have maps and you have forts and you name those forts, we're gonna be in the eagle's nest and then we're gonna go down to the cover and all the cars that start to go by, they're bad guys too, they're spies.

And so you have to make play guns and you dig ditches and you do all these things because you're always hiding from the bad guys.

You even have zip lines so when they see you, you say, oh, they're coming, down into another fort and you're gone.

You would maybe dig holes and put sticks over top and put leaves and they would break the sticks and fall like a whole foot and a half.

You know where it is because you put some secret little thing and it's this high and this high.

And so when you come, you just jump over it.

And here come the bad guys, and they trip and they fall.

And as kids, what do we say to the bad guys when they fall?

Ha ha ha, you fell, you didn't see the trip line.

How about as adults in your sphere, your world, your life, are there bad guys?

Hopefully as adults you don't say, haha you fell.

But are we immune to a response that is not what it should be?

Maybe we don't even say a word, we just kind of give a look like, serves you right.

Or maybe it's that polite giggle that we try and cover like, did you see what happened?

How do you respond when your enemy, when your antagonist falls?

Well, that's what we're gonna look at today.

We're still going through this series on David, A Man After God's Own Heart, and that's the title of this 1, part number 12, When Your Enemy Falls.

And we're going to open up our Bibles and turn to the last chapter, 1st Samuel, and You might recall when we last left Saul, he was desperate and as a result was going to the witch of Endor.

When we last left David, he was hiding with the Philistines according to his own bright idea and when they came back to ZigZag on 1 particular occasion everything was destroyed, their wives and their daughters and children I should say were taken and his own men were speaking of stoning him and so he also was in a time of desperation.

Saul went to a witch, David reached, when he reached his lowest point, looked to God for strength and for help.

Both in different places, both different responses, but that's essentially where we are when we get to today's piece in 1 Samuel 31, and I'm gonna pick it up in verse 2.

Then the Philistines followed hard after Saul and his sons, and the Philistines killed Jonathan, Abinadab, Melchishua, Saul's sons.

And the battle became fierce against Saul, and the archers hit him, and he was severely wounded by the archers.

Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, draw your sword and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised men come and thrust me through and abuse me.

But his armor-bearer would not, for he was greatly afraid.

Therefore Saul took a sword and fell on it.

And when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword and died with him.

And so in verse 6 we read, so Saul, his 3 sons, his armor bearer, and all his men died together that same day.

And the details that follow are quite grim.

The enemy removes the head from Saul, strips him of his armor, takes the armor to the temple of their false gods.

This is a way of saying our God is more powerful, some bragging rights, and then they put Saul's body on display, hanging on a fence, decapitated.

And by the end of this chapter, a group of people, Jabesh, Gilead, travel all night to steal the body of Saul and his sons that are on display and for the birds of the air and so on.

And they steal the bodies, if you will, they cremate the bodies, they bury them with respect and fast for 7 days.

Because in chapter 11 this group of people they were attacked and their enemies were going to gouge out the right eye of all and Saul heard about this and he rallied a huge force of over 300, 000 men and he comes to their rescue in a time of peril.

And so out of respect and gratitude they come at great risk to themselves to take Saul and his sons to bury their dead king.

And perhaps in that there's a lesson for us.

May our memories of kindness be long and our memory of offenses be short.

And so then we move over to 2 Samuel 1 as David receives word.

2 Samuel 1, verse 1, and we read, Now it came to pass, after the death of Saul, and when David had returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, and David had stayed 2 days in Ziglag, on the third day, behold, it happened that a man came from Saul's camp with his clothes torn and dust on his head.

So it was when he came to David that he fell to the ground and prostrated himself.

And David said to him, where have you come from?

This is a messenger, he's been roughed up.

And so he said to him, I've escaped from the camp of Israel.

Verse 4, then David said to him, how did the matter go?

And he answered, the people have fled from the battle.

Many of the people are fallen and dead, and Saul and Jonathan his son are dead also.

So David said to the young man who told him, how do you know that Saul and Jonathan his son are dead?

Verse 6, then the young man who told him said, as I happened by chance to be on Mount Gilboa, there was Saul leaning on his spear, and indeed the chariots and horsemen followed hard after him.

Now when he looked behind him, he saw me and called to me.

Here we're entering into a different account, by the way.

And he said to me again, please stand over me and kill me, for anguish has come upon me, but my life still remains in me.

So I stood over him and killed him because I was sure that he could not live after he had fallen.

And I took the crown that was on his head and the bracelet that was on his arm and I have brought them here to my Lord.

Now again, these verses are very contradictory to what we just read in the last chapter of 1 Samuel.

And so he brings to David the crown, the bracelet.

We have this idea, this hint really, that he is looking for some reward.

And he says, I'll make up a story in which I have been the 1 to take Saul's life and I will be the 1, I'm the opportunist that brings the crown and the bracelet, I'll bring it to David and this will be for me a great honor.

And so he confidently is expecting that his tidings will be hailed with joy and celebration, and there'll be a rich reward for the part that he has acted.

Patriarchs and Prophets 695 says, "'Supposing that David must cherish enmity "'toward his relentless persecutor, "'the stranger hoped to secure honor to himself as the slayer of the king.

He confidently expected that these tidings would be hailed with joy and that a rich reward would be for him on the part that he had acted.

And I imagine those that watched and waited wanted to see how their leader would respond.

It's kind of this breathtaking moment in which a lesser person probably would have rejoiced and thanked the bearer of good tidings and quickly snatched up the crown as rightly his.

I mean, after all, the cloud that had so long hung over the head of David is now finally lifted.

And the promise and expectation for years, some 11 years, was finally going to be realized.

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Series

A Man After Gods Own Heart: King David

12 When Your Enemy Falls

Transcript

Parent Series

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Recorded

Reflect and Renew March 2023

Blessings From Heaven

24m

Special Edition

Great Expectations

39m

No Trial Wasted

39m

Morning Devotional

Why God Won’t Leave

51m

Quarterly Lesson Week 6: Playing God

44m

Apologetics

If God, Why Evil?

1h 1m

Never Shaken

46m

Finding Purpose in Pain

1h 5m

The Anchor Holds

52m

The Greatest Battle Ever Fought: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

04 Why the Son Had to Die

36m

A Man After Gods Own Heart: King David

19 Restore To Me The Joy

43m

And Hope Does Not Disappoint

46m

Sound Doctrine