Unexpected mercy

This morning's scripture reading comes from 1st Samuel chapter 29.

Now the Philistines had gathered all their forces at Aphek, and the Israelites were encamped by the spring that was in Jezreel. As the lords of the Philistines were passing on by hundreds and by thousands, and David and his men were passing on the rear with Achish, the commanders of the Philistines said, "What are these Hebrews doing here?"

And Achish said to the commanders of the Philistines, "Is this not David, the servant of Saul, king of Israel, who has been with me now for days and years, and since he deserted to me I have found no fault in him to this day?"

But the commanders of the Philistines were angry with him. And the commanders of the Philistines said to him, "Send the man back, that he may return to the place which you have assigned him. He shall not go down with us into battle, lest in the battle he become an adversary for us. For how could this fellow reconcile himself to his lord? Would it not be with the heads of these men here? Is not this David of whom they sing to one another in dances, 'Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands'?"

Then Achish called David and said to him, "As the Lord lives, you have been honest, and to me it seems right that you should march out and in with me in the campaign. For I have found nothing wrong in you from the day of your coming to me to this day. Nevertheless, the lords do not approve of you. So go back now and go peaceably, that you may not displease the lords of the Philistines."

And David said to Achish, "But what have I done? What have you found in your servant from the day I entered into your service until now, that I may not go and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?"

And Achish answered David and said, "I know that you are as blameless in my sight as an angel of God. Nevertheless, the commanders of the Philistines have said, 'He shall not go up with us to the battle.' Now then, rise early in the morning with the servants of your lord who came with you, and start early in the morning, and depart as soon as you have light."

So David set out with his men early in the morning to return to the land of the Philistines. But the Philistines went up to Jezreel.

This is God's word.

Introduction

We've been walking our way through 1st Samuel, and we've been looking—it's really masterful. I love this book. One of the things that's so interesting in this text is the way that the narrator actually tells this story. If you could imagine camera scenes, he pans back and forth now between Saul and David.

Back in chapter 27, we got a glimpse into David and what's going on. Then last week we looked at chapter 28 as the camera pans to Saul and what's going on in Saul's world. Now we jump back to David, and in a couple weeks we're going to jump back to Saul. The story just continues to unfold as the author is tracking both of the lives of these men in a way that compares and contrasts. There are similarities and differences between the both of them.

What we find today is really the quiet mercy of God at work in this story. If you remember, David is really in the midst of a dilemma right now. He had fled to the land of the Philistines and was living among the Philistines at this point in time, serving the overlord Achish, the king of Gath, and giving tribute to him. We've talked about that from previous chapters about what's going on in David's life there.

Because he's in this situation, he gets invited to come into battle. All of the Philistines—the five cities and all the regions or provinces—gather together for a massive assault that they're going to make against Israel. King Achish is a leader of one of those provinces, and he invites David and says, "Come on, you're going to go with me into this battle."

Now David has a great dilemma for what he's going to do, because David is an Israelite, and the Philistines are the archenemy of the Israelites, and they're going to be fighting against the Israelites. You may think, "I know what David's going to do. He's going to flip sides." But the author doesn't give us any indication of what David intends to do or what he's going to do. In fact, it's probably very hard even for David right now. There's quite a dilemma in his life: What will he do?

If he decides to flip sides, mind you, it's not just a small skirmish. He has the entire Philistine army—tens of thousands of troops—surrounding him and his 600 men. So if he all of a sudden decides to switch in the midst of the battle, he's right on the wrong side of the battle. It would not be hard or difficult for him to get into a perilous situation where he loses his own life. So even if that plan itself has risk and danger to it, David has a dilemma.

As I read and studied this text and saw really this quiet mercy of God that is coming about, it really began to bother me. I didn't want things to turn out so easily and so well for David, because what we saw, and what we're seeing in this text, is that the Philistine lords look at this and they say, "This is a bad situation. This smells bad. We don't like it. Send him away." All of a sudden, David makes an escape. He's off the hook and his dilemma is resolved.

We know through this that God, as we've seen, is at work—that's one of the big themes in the book. God is at work sometimes directly, but also indirectly, because we know he has chosen David to be the next king of Israel, and he is working to bless and protect and position David.

David hasn't been listening to God lately. David has not been inquiring of the Lord; David's kind of off doing his own thing. These few chapters are actually darker chapters in David's life, because David is like us. These are complex characters. These are not flat individuals; like you and me, they existed in a real world. There are moments where we are capable of great good and godliness, and moments where we lose our way. David is losing his way, and there's a spiritual dryness and wandering happening in his life, which we're going to look at.

Yet we see operating within this text that God is giving mercy. It's an unexpected mercy that is coming. I think that's actually the title of the sermon today: "God's Unexpected Mercy." As I looked at this text, I really didn't think that it should come this way, or come so easily to David. Yet that's exactly how mercy works. Mercy is not getting what you deserved, and I don't think that David really deserved the mercy or to get so easily off the hook in this situation. We'll look at that in just a second.

Nevertheless, God has decided to be merciful to David and to provide deliverance and rescue from a situation that he got himself into. As we look through this, we're just going to walk through pieces of this story, and we're going to walk through some of the elements of how God's mercy comes, and why it's unexpected.

Mercy Comes to a Man Unaware of His Need

The first piece that we look at is that it comes to a man who doesn't know that he needs it. David doesn't really realize in his dilemma that he needs some help, that he probably can't resolve this situation by himself.

In verse 3, we actually see a good question here. It says that Achish and the men there—all these armies—are passing by the warlords and the commanders of the Philistines. Verse 3 says: The commanders of the Philistines said, "What are these Hebrews doing here?"

That's a good question! That's a very good question, because they recognize, "We're going to fight Israelites. We're going to kill Israelites. And we look at our army, and we see a pack of Israelites! This doesn't look right. Something looks wrong about this situation. What are they doing here?"

Yet Achish even seems a little bit blind or naive to sort of how this looks. Of course, Achish has it all worked out: "Well, these are mercenaries! Haven't you ever heard of mercenaries? They've defected. They're against Israel." Probably one of the worst things that Achish could have done in this passage is he actually points out who they really are. He says, "Is this not David?" You know—the giant killer, the guy that killed Goliath!

That turns them—they freak out even more! "Are you kidding me? Like, this guy's a champion, and you've got him in here? This just looks like a bad situation!"

It's not really their question that struck me. It's really the question that David and his men should be asking. They should be looking around right now in the midst of all of these Philistines around them and saying, "What are we doing here? Why are we here? Why have we been living in the land of the Philistines? Why are we serving the Philistines? We're helping their economy. I mean, we literally rob and pillage and plunder, we get these goods, we give some of it to Achish to serve his purposes, which probably helps them buy more weapons and builds up their people. We've been serving these people for the last year and a half, and now we've been invited into battle to fight our own people! What are we doing here?"

They've lost and not taken inventory of their geography and their position. They find themselves seeking refuge from the enemy, and now creating a system to where they are on the side of the enemy, serving the enemy's ends and purposes. Just think about that from a standpoint: Israel is the people of God. It's the chosen people of God, and God has this whole missional element of how he wants to work through the land of Israel to shape the world. Then you have the enemies of Israel—these other nations around them, one of them being the Philistines. So which side do you want to be on? Which side do David and his men find themselves on? It's the wrong side! It's against God's people and, in some ways, against God and his purposes.

As I've pointed out before, we want to have some sympathy. It's a hard situation, but David got into this situation because he didn't inquire of the Lord. He said to himself, "Eventually Saul's going to get me." That was something that we looked at a couple weeks ago in chapter 27.

David and his men have not looked at their geography. In fact, they've gone back to the land of the Philistines, which is really one of the worst and last places they should have gone. If you recount earlier in chapter 21, David's been there before. He went into the land of the Philistines, and they said the same thing: "Isn't this the guy that killed Goliath? Don't they sing songs about him?" He had to act like a crazy person and flee out of the land of the Philistines.

I have no idea why David thought, "This is a good plan. Let me go back there again. Let me return to the place that we once left that almost got me killed before." Yet, nevertheless, David does. David's cunning, as Saul has said about him. He's good—he's real good. Somehow, he convinces Achish to take him on: "I've got a good system. I'll pay you tribute." All these things that he works out, even though it was comfortable, it's gotten David into a bad place, and he's in this loop of returning to a place he should not be.

We can do that in our lives. We can forget our history and our past, and so easily we can return to places in life that we should not be—emotionally, spiritually, and in a big grand way. You can kind of think about the alcoholic that says, "I think I'll take up casual drinking. One won't hurt." It's not a good plan to go back! The Bible always warns about returning to the ways of what you've been delivered from, and yet David has decided to go back.

There's also a spiritual geography going on: David, what are you doing here? Where's God, and where are you in relationship to him? Take inventory! What are you doing here?

If David would just look and say, "I've not inquired of the Lord. I've gone my own way. I forgot some of the things that God was doing in and around my life, and how he's been protecting me, and how he's promised me the kingship, and I came up with my own plan and it's gotten me in trouble." But we don't see David reasoning that, or showing any signs of remorse, or any signs of asking God for something or looking to the Lord. David's just still in his own head trying to figure things out in the midst of this.

So he's a man who doesn't know he needs mercy. There's something where we need to be sober about the state of our life, our heart, and our position with God. We can't let our past experiences, our walk with God, and past successes make us think that we're still geographically okay with the Lord. We need to examine our hearts at times.

Years ago, I was working with a guy, and I'd worked with him for quite a while. We were talking one day and I realized that he was a believer—or that's what he claimed. He mentioned that his mom had worked at a Christian school, and so I kind of started to inquire about his past and his history. I began to learn that, yeah, he grew up in church, and he had grown up as a believer. Yet I kind of knew his life, and it sort of surprised me. I'd been working with him for a while, and there was some sort of disconnectivity going on.

So I started to press in a little bit more and just say, "Well, how's your faith? I mean, are you part of a church? How's your walk with God?"—just questions to peek beneath and see the spiritual state of things.

He kind of paused at one point in our conversation and just said, "Look, me and the Lord are good." That's all he wanted to leave it at, and I knew that he wanted to walk away from that conversation. He had looked at his past and maybe his mom's faith and all of these other things, and yet I knew what his life was and some of the things that were going on. I kind of wondered: Have you taken inventory, friend? Do you know your geography? What are you doing right now in your life? Are you and God really good? So it's important to see that.

2. Mercy Comes to a Man Who is undeserving

We also see that mercy here comes to a man who doesn't deserve it. We often think David's the good guy and Saul's the bad guy. That's just how we read; we read the text over and over with this lens, and we can discover and develop this sort of rosy way of looking at different people in the Bible. We can look at David and just never see the wrong and the things that he's done. We can see the big things he does, but this is just a subtle slide in David's life.

We looked at this a few weeks ago, but I want to review some of the events that have happened here. We see back in chapter 27 that David had gone and had this system where David would live in the land of the Philistines, and he would go and take a city and completely obliterate it, kill every single person there. He would take the animals, the livestock, and the riches—the plunder—and they would carry all that back. According to tribal systems of the ancient Near East, he would take that and give tribute to the king. So he gets his cut and gives it to the king.

That's when Achish has conversations with him: "Where did you go today? Where did you plunder today, David?" We see that the reason isn't that it's a holy war; it's not that he's trying to defend God or defend the borders of Israel or anything like that. David did this because he had created a system that he needed to continue throughout.

In 27:1 it says: 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 shall escape out of his hand."

So David flees for his life. David has looked—and let's stop for a second and think about the history. David has been running for his life, and we've seen over and over again that even though times are hard and things are difficult, God is always rescuing David. Sometimes it's close, but there are these moments when David's been promised the kingship, and he's been reminded that even Jonathan comes to him. Saul eventually even says it in one of the instances. These reminders of the promises of God are there in his face.

There's even a couple instances where David could kill Saul. He's right there, and he's got the knife—he can take him out! In these moments where he doesn't, we can see how, in essence, God is showing him: "I will always keep your enemies at bay. I will protect you, David, and I want to show you these moments how I can move your enemies around like pawns before me. I will protect you."

Somewhere in that, David looks out and he doesn't develop faith in what God has been doing in his life. He looks out and he forgets those Ebenezer moments in his life; he forgets these milestones of God meeting with him and God protecting him. He begins to look, and somehow through this he reasons: "Saul's going to catch me. I know what's going to happen." He begins to play a different narrative in his life.

He doesn't inquire of the Lord. He doesn't wrestle with the Lord. He doesn't say, "Bring me the ephod," like he has in times past. In fact, one of the commentators calls this a godless text—that there's no mention of the Lord or anything about inquiring of God or seeking God or debating about things. God is absent in these texts.

So David goes his own way, gets into the land of the Philistines, and winds up getting into this system where he kills entire tribes. It says in 27:11 that 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 the while he lived in the country of the Philistines.

David would kill everyone, and he did it so that nobody went back and told on him! He's covering himself—that's why he did it. That's why he killed everyone: he's got a system that he's working. When Achish asks about it, he lies about it.

Let's just take a quick snapshot about David:

• Liar? Yes.

• Murderer? Yes.

• Schemer? Cunning? Yes.

• Seemingly cold about it? Yes.

This is David! The man after God's own heart, maybe, but not right now, because he's lost his way. He's lost his way.

When you look at the life of David and see what he's gotten into and who he really is in this moment, you begin to ask—or I did as I looked at the text—does David deserve mercy? Should he get off so easy? He seems calloused to this way of life. It's not like he just did it once, but again and again and again. This is the custom of David all the time that he was in the land of the Philistines, and he's not trying to get out of it. He just lives in this system in such a way that he's calloused his sin.

I also want us to take a look at some of Achish's words to David, because they almost seem convicting. It almost strikes me—it doesn't tell us what David feels in this moment, but if we look at chapter 29:6, it says Achish called David and said to him, "As the Lord lives, you have been honest." That ought to just rub David wrong when he hears this being attributed to him! Or verse 9, when Achish answered David and said, "I know that you are as blameless in my sight as an angel of God." Just blush with shame! "Not honest. I'm not innocent. I'm not good. I've lost my way." You have to wonder if these words on the tongue of this guy have a way of just plunging into David's heart, or if he's just still cold about it.

David is living in a way that we have to wrestle with: Why the mercy? Why give mercy to this guy?

3. Mercy Comes to a Man Who Hasn't Asked for It

The last thing I want us to look at is that mercy was given to a man who hasn't asked for it. David is in the midst of this dilemma. He has gone his own way, he's reasoning his own way through this, and it never mentions that he's seeking God. When he's invited into the battle, there's no call for the ephod or Abiathar, no gathering of counsel. David just continues on his way.

Does he have a plan? Has he so lost his way, and has bitterness developed in his heart that he might actually attack Saul—or at least Saul's men, at least the Benjamites, because they certainly are against him? We don't know; we have no idea. But what we do know is that he has never mentioned the Lord.

What's so ironic about this is back in verse 6, it says Achish called David and said to him, "As the Lord lives..." If you look in your Bibles, you see that's in all caps. Anytime you see "LORD" capitalized all the way through, do you know what that is? It's the holy name of God: Yahweh. Achish could have used other words—he could have said El or Elohim, these different sort of generalized ideas or understandings of God. He uses the holy name: "As the Lord lives."

The only guy in this whole text that's talking about God, that mentions God in this text, that mentions the name of Yahweh isn't David—it's a pagan king! Makes me wonder what's going on in his life, or I don't know, but he's the one who uses the holy name of God. It's so ironic that that is the one who calls and uses God's name, when David himself has not called upon the Lord, has not asked for help.

It's ironic as we just studied last week where we looked at Saul. If you'll remember, Saul wanted rescue. He wanted help, and he was seeking God for the answers: "What am I going to do, and tell me what to do, and how do I get out of this situation?" Did God answer him? Didn't. Did he give him mercy? He didn't.

Here's David, who doesn't look much better than Saul right now in the way that he's living. He's not inquiring of the Lord, even though he got himself into this mess. Is he asking for mercy? Is he asking for a way out? No, he's not!

It should mess with us a little bit: Here's one who is asking for mercy, asking for a way out, asking for help, and the answer is no. Here's another who is not asking for mercy, not inquiring, gone his own way, and then he gets mercy! Why?

We have a view that others don't have, because this is scripture and we get views into the hearts and the lives and the conversations and the thoughts of each of these individuals. But there is something about life where we can look at a level and we don't get that insight, and we go, "Why the mercy here, and why not the mercy there?" There is a part of this where we have to bow before the sovereignty of God, because only God knows.

What we can see, and what we have studied throughout this text, is we begin to actually see why God is doing what he does. We see that all the way back in chapter 15, Saul's heart and Saul's life when it came to mercy... God's been merciful to Saul over and over again. He's warned Saul in many ways; he's done things around Saul's life to warn him, "I'm getting close. Judgment's coming." Yet, even when Saul gets caught, his repentance is often a false repentance.

We see even back in chapter 15, when Samuel calls him out and says, "You've sinned," he finally comes to terms with it and says, "You're right, I've sinned. Now pardon my sin and go with me and offer sacrifices, so that I may be honored before the elders of Israel." He's not really worried about his sin; he just wants mercy! "Samuel, wave your hand over me. Proclaim some repentance and mercy over my life so that I can go be honored."

For him, the mercy of God is something like a trinket: he can just sort of use God's mercy so that he can continue to live the way that he wants to live. Mercy is a means to an end for him: "God, forgive me. God, give me mercy. God, give me grace. Get me out of these different situations so that I can go about my merry way." That's the way that, over and over again, it reveals Saul's heart.

Mercy has a way ultimately as it works its way into us, and as we realize it, it either reveals the callousness of our heart and our ability to try to use God for our own means and our own ends, or it breaks us, and we respond to God in worship and in devotion and obedience. We know how David's life is going to play out, and so we do know that eventually David's going to get it. It's going to make sense. He's going to understand the mercy of God; he's going to return to the Lord; he's going to call on the name of the Lord again, and it will have its perfect work.

We see also in this moment, it could go... Saul could turn, David could turn into a Saul, but he's going to understand how mercy works.

The True Purpose of God's Mercy

The thing, maybe just as an aside, to understand about God's mercy is that mercy is designed to lead you to repentance. Romans 2:4 reminds us of that:

"Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?"

Mercy should so break us in these moments where God is so good. We don't deserve it. As I said earlier, mercy is not getting what you deserved. David doesn't deserve it, but that's exactly what's so beautiful and wonderful about God's mercy: You don't deserve it! None of us deserve it.

The goal of mercy is that we might understand, and be delighted, and yet unbelievably humbled by the offer of it, by its work in and around our lives, by God's goodness in even silent ways and quiet ways working in and around our life. These graces, this mercy, should begin to create a realization and a repentance in our heart: "God, I've lost my way." Mercy ultimately should work that way and call us to a response.

Romans 12:1 actually reminds us of a similar thing:

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice..."

In the Greek, it's an idea of offering your bodies in "work-worship"—you obey and you worship God through this way of living as a response to God's mercy in your life. That's what Saul doesn't seem to understand or respond to appropriately, and that's eventually what David will get to: that God is gracious and compassionate, rich in love, slow to anger. He doesn't desire the death of the wicked. Even though he didn't give Saul an answer last week, God had been merciful; Saul never responded appropriately.

Ironically here, David doesn't respond, but we know that it will come. Somehow I kind of wonder in his journeys back to Ziklag as he's sent away if some of Achish's words that were attributed to him bother him—something about maybe his geography and this dilemma that he was in, and seeing this undeserved mercy of God falling upon him and working even when he didn't ask for it.

This mercy is actually going to allow them to go find out that their city just got burned and everybody got kidnapped, and they never would have known, and weeks would have passed before they ever got back there! But now they are positioned to go chase down the Amalekites, seeing God operating in ways that he does not deserve. We're going to see at some moment here in David's life next week that it begins to have its work in a way that will move and return David back.

Even if we don't feel like David gets it, that's part of the point: God gives mercy as he wills. It's not random. It's not pointless. God is working. Will you trust him in his perfect way? He is working.

The mercy of God through Christ rescues people who don't know they need it, who don't deserve it, who aren't asking for it oftentimes, and yet he offers it. We should marvel before the mercy of God.

As I studied this text, I kind of went through this progression here because I didn't like it. I didn't like that David got off the hook, and I didn't think he deserved this mercy. I had to kind of remind myself of what mercy is, but even then, it still just bothered me. I began to realize it was because of the state of my own heart, because sometimes you can get to this place to where you start to think that your life is tidy and clean, and you're not in any big sin. So quickly you can forget to give mercy to other people around you! You can begin to proclaim judgment over their lives: "They don't... they're not worthy of God's mercy."

None of us is! None of us is.

When we were running and far from God, when we didn't care, when we were enemies of the cross, when you were dead in your sins and trespasses, God was merciful. As I studied this text, I just saw the judgment in my own heart. I saw the condition that forgets of how much I've been forgiven of, of how much I wasn't looking for it, I didn't deserve it, I didn't want it, I wasn't asking for it. The same is true for all of us: that God wants so much to pour mercy into our lives. He is merciful. Do we realize it? Do we recognize it? Have you forgotten your chains? Have you forgotten what God delivered you from?

When we were dead in our sins, wandering, Christ died for us. Even now, we need that mercy again and again. You're not beyond it just because your life is cleaned up or tidy; we're still fallen. We still lose our way. There's still little cracks and crevices of our heart that we've not surrendered to God. We should take moments in our own life to see moments like I did this week, of where I've become judgmental and I've forgotten sometimes the little crevices in my own heart where there can be pride, there can be arrogance, there can be greed, unthankfulness—whatever it is for you.

We need the mercy of God. His mercies are new every morning, and we are called to receive them, to recognize and to respond to the depth of his mercy. Like David, God will rescue you even from yourself, even when you don't deserve it.

Do you recognize the depth of your unworthiness and the riches of his mercy? If so, it will catalyze your life, change your priorities, and invite you into a way of life of service to the King. Our sins, they are many; his mercy is more.

Let's pray.

Lord, I as I've said earlier this week, I just pray that you would forgive my own heart—my own heart that can be so quick to not offer mercy, to posture myself in a way as judge and jury over someone even in this text, and judge their life so easily, and not recognize that I'm just like that. I can lose my way; I can be just like that. The moment that I forget that, I turn into a Pharisee.

Create in me, O God, a right heart, a new spirit. Take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try my anxious thoughts. If there be iniquity, lead me in the way everlasting.

Lord, I just pray that even this week you would search our hearts that we might open our hearts before you, realizing our need for you and for your mercy and for your grace over and over again, not to presume that we are now something that we are not.

We just commit this to you. We pray, Father, have your way in us, O God. In Jesus' name, Amen.