The danger of following your heart

Scripture reading comes from 1st Samuel chapter 27. 1st Samuel chapter 27. Then David said in his heart, "Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel. and I I shall escape out of his hand. So David arose and went over and about 600 men were with him to Aish the son of Mok, king of Gath. And David lived with Aish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezrael, and Abigail of Carmel, Nibal's widow. And when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him. Then David said to Akish, "If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns that I may dwell there. For why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?" So that day, Akish gave him Ziglag. Therefore, Ziglag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day. And the number of days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months. Now David and his men went up and made raids against the Gisherites and the Gearsites and the Amalachites. For these were the inhabitants of the land from of old, as far as shore, to the land of Egypt. And David would strike the land, and would leave neither man nor woman alive, but would take away the sheep, the oxen, the donkeys, the camels, and the garments, and come back to Akish. When Akish asked, "Where have you made a raid today?" David would say, "Against the NGAV of Judah, or against the Ngev of the Jeherelites, or against the nav of the Kennites?" And David would leave neither man nor woman alive to bring news to Gath, thinking, lest they should tell about us, and say, "So David has done." Such was his custom all while he lived in the country of the Philistines. And Akish trusted David, thinking, "He has made himself an utter stench to his people Israel. Therefore, he shall be my servant." We've been studying before our Christmas season uh the life uh well 1st Samuel and we've recently been looking at the life of David in this second half of the book. And so now as we are leaving Christmas and that Christmas series, we are now turning back to the book of 1st Samuel. And uh we find ourselves today in 1st Samuel 27. And maybe just to sort of reorient us again because it's been a while since we've been in the book. Uh David, as you remember, David was anointed to be the king of Israel. As as probably a young boy, he was anointed to be the king of Israel. And uh and yet Saul is king, but Saul has been wicked and has not listened to the Lord. And God is raising up another servant in place of that. And uh and David all of a sudden, God begins to move powerfully and mightily in David's life. You know, in fact, you know, David goes out and he kills this warrior named Goliath. you know, this giant who everyone else was afraid. And then then he goes out and he kind of takes charge of these bands that that he's assigned to these armies. And he goes out and he's victorious. And they start to sing songs about him. And he's so good at this. He's so effective at this. And the blessing of God is so much on him that that that people begin to sing songs and honor him. But it also draws the envy of King Saul. Saul begins to suspect what is going on and he begins to to be suspicious that maybe David could be trying to take the throne from him. And all of a sudden, David goes from becoming, you know, the great general and commander here in Israel to becoming public enemy number one. And David is running for his life. And David, as we saw, had to run over to Moab and drop his family off, his father and mother and all of them to kind of make sure they got out so that they didn't try to get to him through his family. And David lives in strongholds and in caves and the next several years of his life are are on the run. David is a fugitive and it's hard and there are always times when Saul is right at his heels just about to catch him. But we see constantly as we have in this book that even in the hard places in the hard spaces of life, God is working. God is protecting David. God is moving in David's life. And and even to the point that there are times when when God puts Saul right in David's reach where David could so easily kill Saul, so easily take him out. And yet David says, "I will not become the man I'm accused of being. I won't be it. I won't embrace that or take that. And David takes the high road allowing the Lord to fulfill his plan in his own timing and his own way. And so David doesn't embrace it. But as we begin to see here is that David all of a sudden begins to reason things differently. He doesn't look out into the world around him and see the protection of God and the sovereignty of God and the ways that God has been working even in the hard, even in the scary that God has been working to protect him and to preserve him. David sees something different all of a sudden and he begins to reason things. And I don't I don't want us to kick David. I want us to understand that this is hard. David's life has been hard. It's hard to live on the run. It's hard to live in the wilderness day after day, time after time, where things aren't going the way that you thought they should go, the way that you want them to go. It's hard. I've had friends have chronic pain and they will tell you it messes with you. It messes with your head and your mind to always be dealing. questions and things will play. And that's the beginning of this today because we're going to be looking at the danger of following your own heart of listening to that voice in your head because that's how the story begins for David. It says right there in verse one that David said in his heart, in his heart, now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. And and we all know this this conversation, this heart talk, this head talk, this thing that can kind of play out in our lives where that voice because we all have that voice is speaking to us and it's saying things and and and and to a degree that that can be okay. Sometimes it's telling us good things. But if that is the voice alone that is driving your life, if that is the voice that is going to give you the direction and the wisdom for your life, that's dangerous. That's not a good plan. Because David listens to that voice and it begins to re reorient and reinterpret the reality around him in a way that is not what we can see through scripture. He he thinks, for example, that Saul is eventually going to catch me. God has constantly delivered David throughout this this text. Time after time, Saul even one time is closing in both sides of David. It's over. It's done. Somebody runs up at the last minute, says, "The Philistines are on us. We got to do something." And they run at the last minute. And once again, God secures. David should be able to look out time and time and time again and see the provision and the protection of God, the blessing of God operating in his life. But David starts listening to that voice in his heart. He's going to catch you. He's going to get you. David, aren't you tired of this? Are you sure Samuel was right in anointing you to be the next king? It's not going to happen. And whatever that voice is in David's head that begins to play, it begins to move David into a dangerous place. And we can see constantly throughout scripture where people do that. In fact, I I listed some passages here where people either within their head or their heart, which by the way in the Hebrew is is the same word, lav, but in their lav, people would constantly sort of speak to themselves. And you can speak in a way in your own heart that allows you to become puffed up. You can speak like in Genesis, Esau and his heart plotting and scheming to take his brother out when his parents are dead. and all that hate and that vengeance, just that voice alone is becoming the direction for his life. And this one is one that I think about that's so so striking. Jeroboam. If you if you don't know the story of Jeroboam, God raised Jeroboam up to be the king of all the tribes of Israel except Judah. So all the northern tribes, which we call Israel, was delivered after Solomon's death to Jeroboam. God called it. He said, "I'm going to make you the king." And he gets all of these tribes. And Jeroboam receives that from God just as he said. And then Jeroboam starts talking in his heart. He starts reasoning. And he starts saying, "Well, everybody has to go worship in Jerusalem, which is in Judah to the south. And eventually all my people are going to go down there every year for these pilgrimages and their hearts are going to be reunited and I'm going to lose everything and it's going to cost me everything. And through that paranoia and through that head and heart talk, he reinterprets the world around him. He doesn't listen to what God has said about his life. He doesn't look and say, "Hasn't God given me all this?" and he will preserve and protect and establish these things and I should look to him for these things and even carry my fears and my frustrations and my doubts to him or maybe I'll just listen to myself and that's self-t talk and there's a danger in life of listening to that recording in our head alone and letting that be the guiding voice in our life and we see here that David begins to do that and he and he comes up with a plan to go to one of the last places I would think he would go. He decides to go to the land of the Philistines, the enemies of Israel. A place where the last time he went, they said, "Hey, [clears throat] isn't this the guy that killed a bunch of us?" And he had to act crazy so that he could kind of sneak out of there. But for some reason, David's a schemer. David's good. David has a plan. And so, he makes that plan in his own heart, and his own life, and he begins to to enact upon that. But there is a danger as I've said about interpreting reality and and maybe one illustration about that is um because we can all get lost [clears throat] listening to that voice in our head. We need some sort of feedback, some sort of other voice to help us remember and interpret the world around us to remind us who God is and how he is working in our world and in our lives. who he is that reminds him reminds us of of his grace of his deep love because if you don't have that voice or those instruments or those things feeding that into your life you are going to be lost in your own head uh years ago and I thought about this as an illustration 1999 you some of you might remember this story JFK Jr. hops in a a single engine plane and he's going to fly to Martha's Vineyard kind of along the coast over the ocean. He's flying at night, right? And uh and you know, so one of the things is is as he's on his journey uh in in the dark in the plane, he winds up crashing before he gets there and and it kills him and the two people on board with him in this little single engine plane. And what they found in in the midst of that was that ultimately they believe that he thought he had been driving level, but his plane had actually been slowly making a descent. Because the thing is is at night time when you're flying what feels like level and straight cannot be straight and you could actually be slowly going on a downward trajectory. So, how do pilots we got a couple pilots in the room, but so what pilots do in the midst of this is they they look at the instruments. It's another rating after your private pilot's license that you have to get. You have to learn to read all of these gadgets on the dashboard of the plane that help you orient and know whether you're going up or down or straight and level so that at the dark of night, you don't know if you're just crashing towards the ocean and have no idea. Because you can develop this thing called [snorts] spatial help pilot. Spatial disorientation. Yes. Spatial disorientation is something that you can develop where you believe that you're flying level but you're because you don't know how to use the instruments around you to inform you of reality. And you know what? We have an instrument that informs us. It tells us about God. Tells about us about who he is. that reveals him and who we are in light of that. And this word constantly reminds us of the truth of God. It can become the voice that guides us so that we're not just guided by the own voice in our own head because that's a dangerous place to be. There's a danger in following your heart because it can deceive you. As Jeremiah 17 uh says and reminds us, is [snorts] it not there? The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Our heart can lead us astray. And that idea in our culture, follow your heart can be dangerous. Well, David makes his plan does make some sense. I mean, if you really think about it, David, David has said it right here. He says, you know, Saul will despair of seeking me. There's a I can't Philistine is more powerful than Israel in many ways. Just archaeologically, historically, they were more powerful. They were more advanced in their warfare and they were a bitter rival and they were always pressing up against Israel and it's he is safe within the if Philistine will take him he's safe within the borders of the Philistines and so he comes up with this plan and he develops it and we see how it how it plays out here. David goes to Akish and he says hey can can we live here amongst you? Can we flee and be refugees in his land? and Akish takes him in which is puzzling because this is the guy that has killed tons of Philistines and the only thing that I can sort of make of it is that he maybe this is a Makavelian move where he's like you know keep your friends close and your enemies closer that he looks and sees David and says this is the guy that killed the giant and if he's on our side man that's good and David sort of becomes this uh this servant of a kiche and you know there's probably watchful eyes as he's in the town and in the city. But think about this. All of a sudden, David's men come in and where are they dwelling? In houses. And Saul's not around them chasing them. They no longer have to look at every shepherd on the hill and wonder, "Are they going to tell Saul? Is our cover blown? Are we found out?" They don't have the paranoia. They don't have the guard. They can sleep easy and deeply at night and not in caves, not in the wilderness, in homes. They're safe and life all of a sudden they can breathe and it feels good and easy and comfortable and and pretty soon they begin to ask, you know, hey, let let's can we move out and can we like kind of get our own little place to spread out maybe some for our herds and things like that. and they they get the city of Ziglag to the country to the south of Gath and life gets even better. It's comfortable and it's good for them. And the plan of David seems like it's beginning to work that maybe what David had plotted and maybe this is the best path for them that this is what they this is what they should do and David's plan is brilliant. But we have to be careful in life of thinking that the easy and the comfortable is the best plan or is the will of God. Sometimes we can live in life and think this is the best path for me when I've got everything going my way. And we know constantly that's not the best. You know, we don't want to eat vegetables all the time even though we know they're good for us. Some of us don't want to exercise even though we know it's healthy for us. Sometimes the hard and the difficult things in life are the things that shape us and that form us but also enrich us in life. Case in point, one thing that I always love is um uh the story of the hobbit. You got Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo lives in a little comfortable hobbit home in a hillside. Smokes his pipes, you know, drinks his beer, lives this good life. Really enjoys it. doesn't want people to disturb him and his peace and all that he has in his life. And one day that gets interrupted and an old wizard named Gandalf comes to him and he brings these dwarves and he invites him on this great journey with peril and danger and hardship but the potential for fortune. And Bilbo thinks the idea is terrible. He hates the idea. And yet, you know, he starts to kind of get wooed and talked into this thing. And what we find over the course of Bilbo's life is that Bilbo goes out on this journey and he experiences all the hardships and all the peril and all the difficult things, almost loses his life several times, but he plays this great role along with these this pack of dwarves and they experience and see all sorts of things along the way. And he develops these deep friendships. His life when he came back was completely different. And even though it was hard, Bilbo would say it was better. And I love I love one of the questions that he asked of Gandalf before he went out. He said, "If I go, can you guarantee my safety that I will return safely?" And Gandalf says, "No, but if you do return, you will not be the same." And sometimes when we walk through the hard things in life, that's actually the Lord is using it and he's working in it. And even though it's hard and difficult and scary, you come back, then you're not the same, but not in a bad way, in a good way. Because God has used it in so many ways, not just to shape you, but to position you. Sometimes when you're in the wilderness of life, you're there so that God can use you to minister to other people in the wilderness. Sometimes it's the effective places where he puts you. You know, you think about Corey Tinboom sent to these prison camps in Nazi Germany. That wasn't fun. That was awful and hard. And yet she instead of embracing bitterness or taking some sort of easy path of just like shunning it or whatever she wanted to do, she embraced it and said, "I'm just going to walk this path and trust the Lord through the process." And think about how even today we look back at the ways that she was a witness to the German guards and to the Jewish people and the people suffering in that camp. She was a light. She was God's light in those dark places. And somehow even for David's life, God's plan for David through the wilderness and through all this hardship is shaping David's life. God doesn't desire his demise. He desires his formation. that his life would be deeply formed and into what God wants him to be and shaped and the the the grid of life, the sandpaper against us doesn't feel good. But sometimes that's the thing that helps smooth us out and craft and mold us into God's perfect design. And we learn to embrace these things. And we begin to see that we can make plans in our heart. Proverbs 14:12 reminds us, it says there is a way that seems right in one's heart, but in the end it leads to death. And so often if we reinterpret and listen to our own voice and we think, well, everything's going good, this must be the will of God. But we have not listened to God, then that's dangerous. It doesn't mean that when life is okay and things are well, that that's not the will of God. That life should always just be hard. But there is something about this life that is the surrendered life. And it is the life of where we are called to lay down our life for God and for our brother and for our sister. And there is a part of that that is always dying to oneself so that we might be obedient to God in his plan. Well, the problems do begin to emerge in David's life. And we begin to see that play out here. Uh we see here that David goes and he makes raids. Says verse 8, "Now David and his men went up and made raids against the Gerites, the Gerzites, the Amalachites. For these were the inhabitants of the land from of old as far as shore to the land of Egypt. And David would strike the land and would leave neither man nor woman alive, but would take away the sheep and the oxen and the donkeys and the camels and the garments and come back to Akish. So what's beginning to play out in this passage, if you just understand, Akish is the overlord. He's the king. He's over everybody. David as a privilege gets to live in Zlag. But David makes tribute to the overlord. David goes out and he makes raids and he kills everyone and he takes everything and the riches of it all and he gathers it and he gains from that but he also makes tribute to the overlord to Akish. And so there's this system playing out in David's life and in the life of his men. Yes, it's comfortable, but now you're caught into a system and a game, one that he's created so that he can give that tribute to that king. And some of these were the enemies of God. We know specifically the Amalachites, you know, that they were the old enemies that were supposed to be destroyed by Israel. Saul didn't destroy them. And so we could in some ways begin to reason, well maybe this is a little bit of a holy war. Maybe these are the kinds of people we should kill. We don't have any list in the Old Testament of these others, the Gisherites or the Gerszites being those people. The text is mostly silent in the way that it wants should should we condemn David? Are David's actions okay? But I think there's a hint for us in whether this is okay because we have to be careful about interpreting scripture with modern eyes. We don't understand the times and the ways it was to live in old and understand that David might be caught in a difficult situation. But maybe the difficult is the revelation of this plan and how it's coming out. But we begin to see in David's life says when Akish asked him, "Where have you made raids today?" David would say against the Ngev of Judah, against the Ngev of the Jeerammites, against the Ngev of the Kennites. He's lying. He's deceiving. So, David has become deceitful. And what's David really doing? He's going out and he kills everyone. And it's not a holy war. Why does he do it? And the author gives us sort of a clue or a hint. David in verse 11 would leave neither man nor woman alive to bring news to Gath, thinking, "Lest they should tell about us and say, so David has done." He kills not out of holiness, not out of honor of the Lord, not a holy war. He kills to cover his scheme. He kills to keep up this way of life. And David is David is losing his way here because he formulated this plan that put him into the land of the Philistines. a plan that seemed so good and was working out so well and was so comfortable and so easy and yet all of a sudden we begin to see that it has led him down a path that's changing him that's shaping him and this will not be the last time that David operates with deceit and with murder in his life and some of the things that we do in life can plant seeds in us in our heart. I don't know if David fully realizes or reconciles this in his life, but we begin to see the danger of his plan playing out. And there's not a way to really justify that. There's a way that seems right and yet in a way it can lead to death and to destruction in our lives. In 1st Samuel 13, we go back and we remember Saul didn't obey the Lord. Saul listened to his own voice. And God promised, he said when he, the prophet Samuel told Saul, "The Lord's rejected you and he has sought out a man after his own heart." And all of a sudden, the camera view of the of the text begins to pan to David. the man after God's own heart. But today, David is not that man. He's not that man. And it's so [clears throat] easy in life when we listen to our own plan and we go our own way and we find that that we lose something about who God wants us to be. We don't become the people that have a heart after God, that love him, that follow him, but a people that turn to our own way. And you begin that habit and that practice, and it becomes easier and easier in your life. You learn to listen to this voice, this voice over God's voice, and pretty soon it just becomes easier. We don't even realize it. We don't even realize how we don't listen to the truth of God and begin to listen only to our own heart and let that become the dominant voice in our own head until one day a mirror is held up in our life and we look and we don't even recognize the man or the woman in the mirror anymore. Who has David become? Is this who God has called him to be? Is this really the one who will lead Israel? who will reflect the heart of God to a people. But you know, one of the great things in scripture is that David isn't fully that man. We see time and time again the people who have a heart of God, they aren't the champions that we want them to be. They do fall short and their lives become only milestones pointing to something and someone greater than themselves. And David's life in that way points to one beyond himself who has a heart after God. And God raises up his servant, his branch, the son of David, God's own son. And he sends him to be the true champion. His own heart did not lead him astray. And where David and where you and where I fall short in our own lives, where we have listened and reasoned to that voice, this Christ becomes the true voice, the true life that we look to and see. This is what it is to obey the will of God. This is what it looks like not to fall short. And he lived that out so perfectly in his life. The life that we should have lived, he lived for us in our place. So that we when we fall short might look to him and say, "He did it for me." Where I couldn't finish the race, where I couldn't have the heart perfectly after God. Where I couldn't reflect and be even a witness to those around me, but I brought shame and scorn by the ways that I lived. I can look to him and receive what he did and his grace. And I can take that upon in my own life and follow after him. And somehow my life becomes more and more morphed into his life, walking and journeying with him. And time and time again when I've not listened to the voice of God, when I've not reflected the the voice and the heart of God in my own life, I can say, "But he did for me." And some of that is shared and imputed to me, transferred to me in my life. And so David isn't the man, but he points to one beyond him who will come and who will perfectly run that race. And it will perfectly have the heart after God that we all long for. The great champion who we look to [clears throat] so that when we fail, we might trust in him and turn to him and follow him because his voice is the one that leads us back when we lose our way. So David uh begins to see that this this plan is not working. And we see as we move into chapter 28 that though this looked like a good plan, all of a sudden he's called to fight against Israel. And this is going to become a problem because if he's called to be king of Israel and he goes into battle and he's killing Israelites, that's not going to go well. And David's on the verge of losing everything that God has called him to through this plan. People say, "Well, maybe he was going to switch sides." Maybe David would lose his life because remember whose side he's on? Surrounded by Philistines in the middle of a battle and it may not have gone well and David's going to need some help. He's going to need some rescue from this plan. So, so, so what do we do with this? Maybe maybe one thing is the point the point of all of this is if you process life without God in your life, if you process and begin to listen to the voice of reasoning in your own heart and that becomes the dominant voice, you will send your life in all sorts of directions. And you may wind up choosing a life of ease and comfort instead of the things that God has called you to in this life. You may begin to pursue different paths in life and thinking this is the will of God and miss out on the very things that God has called you to. The very hard path sometimes that shapes you. The very hard path in the wilderness where God says, "I want you here so you can be a light to these people around you." The people that go into the broken places because you have to be there. Somebody's got to be there to reach those people. And if we've listened to only what's in our own head, we'll miss out sometimes on God's greatest callings in our life. [clears throat] or will endanger that calling as David is just about to do in his own life. So, how do we find our way back? Well, one, as I just said, we we look to our true champion, Christ, who had the heart after God, who will be the true king of all the ages. We place our faith and we trust in him. We we turn to him because he ran the race that we could not. He lived the life that we could not. And then we begin to not listen to our own voice, but to listen to the voice of God. We repent. We turn. We admit that this plan might not be the best plan for our life. And we begin to listen through through scripture. We begin to listen through prayer. and we begin to constantly commit our way to the Lord because that's where your plans begin to prosper. So whose voice will we listen to in this life is so crucial. We need to be mindful, be sober, and be aware. Otherwise, we might endanger so much of what God's called us to and miss that. Let's pray.