Wilderness (Part 1)

Sometimes life is just hard. That’s where 1 Samuel 23 has David. He’s not in an easy stage of life. He’s being chased and is frantically moving from place to place, fearing for his life and those who are with him. And yet, when you read through this chapter, you realize that none of this is wasted time and none of it is out of God’s control. God isn’t pressing pause on His plans for David’s life amidst the difficulties David is facing. God is with him through it all and is working in him through it all.

We need to learn from this, because we can often treat wilderness seasons like they’re interruptions or assume that once the hard times settle down then God will really start working. But, you know what? Scripture shows us the opposite. God does some of His deepest work in those places we would never choose. In the wilderness. In the hard times.

Faithfulness to God doesn’t wait for life to be easy. (23:1–6)

The chapter begins with David already in trouble. Saul’s chasing him, and he’s just trying to stay alive. Then word comes to him that the Philistines are attacking Keilah (keh-ee-LAH). They are robbing the threshing floors, which means that they are taking the food supply which is threatening the people’s survival.

What would you do if you were David in that situation? David could have ignored that. He had enough on his plate. He could have said that this wasn’t his responsibility. But instead, he goes to God. He prays. In verse 2, he asks God, “Shall I go and attack these Philistines?” That question alone shows you something about David. He’s living a life dependent on God. Completely. He’s not asking what makes the most sense or what feels the safest. He’s asking what God wants. And the Lord answers clearly in verse 4. ““Arise, go down to Keilah, for I will give the Philistines into your hand.”

So, think about that situation. His men are afraid. They just said this to him in verse 3: “Behold, we are afraid here in Judah; how much more then if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines?” They are already running from Saul, and now David’s asking them to willingly walk into more danger. From a human standpoint, it doesn’t add up. Why take on another battle when you are already barely holding things together yourself?

So David asks again. He goes back to the Lord, and God answers again, confirming what He wants him to do. That’s so important. Dependence on God isn’t just asking once and moving on. It’s continuing to seek Him as you move forward. And David does, and he obeys. He goes to Keilah. Fights. And rescues the people.

And the text just moves on. But we shouldn’t. We need to pause here, because that isn’t a small thing. We need to see this: David is serving while he is suffering. He is meeting other people’s needs when he himself has needs. He is fighting other people’s battles when he has his own battles to fight.

You know what we tend to do? We tend to delay obedience to God until we feel like we can manage life a little easier. We think we can be more faithful when things calm down, when we are less busy, when we have a bigger safety net, when we feel less overwhelmed.

God doesn’t wait for you to have your life all together before He calls you to follow Him. He calls you in the middle of messiness and difficulty. And if you’re waiting for the right moment, you know what you’re going to miss? You are going to miss what God is doing right now. Because God IS at work right now. Even through the difficulties.

We must depend on God in every area of our lives. (23:7–13; Psalm 142)

After David rescues Keilah, Saul hears where David is, and instead of seeing what God has done through David, he twists the situation. In verse 7, he says, “God has given him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars.” That should sober us a little. It’s possible to use the language of God—to clothe things up in the language of Christianity—while being completely out of step with God. Saul interprets the whole situation through his own agenda and assumes God is behind it. Y’all have never seen anyone in church do something like that, have you? (sarcasm)

David doesn’t make that mistake. When he hears that Saul is coming, he doesn’t assume he knows what to do. He doesn’t act like he has all the answers. Y’all, we are so often so quick to speak.[1] We are so quick to say, “This is what we should do. This is how it should be.” We add things up on paper and ask God to bless what makes sense to us. That’s not what David does. He seeks the Lord again. He wants to follow where God leads.

He calls for the priest’s ephod,[2] and he asks God two direct questions in verse 11. “Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O Lord, the God of Israel, please tell your servant.” These are the people he just rescued, by the way, Keilah. And the Lord answers him both times, “Yes.” If David would have stayed, Saul would get him, and the people would betray him. But he sought the Lord, and verse 13 shows that him and his 600 men escaped.

David doesn’t do all of this based on his own assumptions. He doesn’t trust his instincts, though we know he has good instincts. He seeks God. He listens to God. And then he acts. That kind of dependence isn’t automatic for us. It’s a learned dependance. And y’all, it’s learned in the wilderness. It’s learned in the hard times. It’s learned in those time when you realize you can’t make it out on your own, so you have to rely on God for rescue.

That’s where Psalm 142 gives us a window into David’s heart. Traditionally, Psalm 57 is used with this text, but we’re looking at that next week. This psalm fits well today and was written in the same context. I love how Eugene Peterson says, “The books of Samuel give the story of David from the outside; the Psalms—the prayers of David—give the same story from the inside.”[3] In Verses 1–2: “1 With my voice I cry out to the Lord; with my voice I plead for mercy to the Lord. 2 I pour out my complaint before him; I tell my trouble before him.” David isn’t pretending. He’s bringing his real experience before God. He feels the weight of being betrayed. He feels the worry, the fear.

And in the middle of that, in verse 3, he says, “When my spirit faints within me, you know my way.” That’s what dependence on God looks like. It’s not the absence of struggling. It’s trusting that God is with you in the middle of it. God trains His people this way. He brings us into situations where we have to seek Him, where we have to admit we don’tt know what to do.

The wilderness causes us to rely on God. (23:14–29; Psalm 142)

Back to 1 Samuel 23, beginning in verse 14, the text starts tracing David’s movement through the wilderness. He’s in the strongholds. That means fortified hiding places. These aren’t places of rest for him. They’re strictly for survival. He’s in the wilderness of Ziph, a rugged area with limited resources and he’s constantly exposed.

Then verse 15 mentions Horesh. That word means “thicket,” a dense brush, so visibility there is limited. You’re constantly aware that something could be near, and you might not see it until it’s too late. In verse 24, he moves to the wilderness of Maon, which is harsh and inhospitable. This isn’t somewhere you choose to be. Not a vacation destination. You only go there when you’re trying to get away from being found.

And then in verse 29, he eventually ends up in En-gedi. This is an oasis for them, but it’s surrounded by steep cliffs and caves. It provides hiding places, but it’s still isolated and still wilderness and still not home. Eugene Peterson gives us a very good picture of this:

“En-gedi is a small oasis alongside the Dead Sea, the large lake of salt water at the southeastern corner of Israel. Today there’s a little park for picnickers and swimmers—a cluster of palm trees, a stand where you can buy soft drinks, a bathhouse for changing and rinsing off the salt after a swim. There are usually a dozen or so swimmers—or floaters; it’s hard to swim in that dense salt water. About three hundred yards to the west there’s a precipitous rise of cliffs pushing up two thousand feet and topped by tableland. The plateau and cliffs are deeply grooved by erosion, making a tangle of canyons and caves. This is the wilderness of En-gedi, a vast expanse of badlands, country as harsh and inhospitable as any you’re likely to find on this earth. Hyenas, lizards, and vultures are your hosts.

I spent a few hours at En-gedi a few years ago. It was a spring day; I wanted to get a feel for the country in which David had survived during the years he was a fugitive from King Saul. I climbed up into the cliffs, ducked into the caves, trying to imagine the kind of life that David eked out in that harsh environment. In a very few minutes virtually everything was different, unfamiliar, alien. Austere country. But also strangely beautiful.

An hour or so into the wilderness my perceptions began to sharpen—sights, sounds, smells. This happens in the wilderness. You see more, hear more, yes, believe more, which is why it holds such a prominent place in our traditions of spirituality. No noise. Almost no people. A few animals, but they mostly stay out of sight. Yet in the solitude awareness develops of your part in this intricate and precarious web of life. A sense of holiness takes shape; the sacred surfaces.”[4]

All of that paints a picture for us. David is constantly moving and constantly aware that Saul is searching for him. Nothing around him or within him is settled. And in that environment, Psalm 142 makes more and more sense as it gives us a glimpse into his inner struggle and heart.

In verse 4 he says, “Look to the right and see: there is none who takes notice of me; no refuge remains to me; no one cares for my soul.” That’s truly how David feels. And some of you know that feeling. You are surrounded by people, but internally you feel alone. You feel like no one really sees what you’re carrying. David doesn’t hide that. He brings it directly to God.

You see, the word “refuge” started out as a very geographical and physical word.[5] It referred to a place to go to for safety. Of course David would feel like this he has no refuge if he is constantly fleeing from cave to cave and wilderness to wilderness! But the Psalms changed that physical notion and instead turned it into a choice for Yahweh over and above anything and anyone else. Referencing this, Peterson says of David, “The wilderness was the dictionary in which David looked up the word refuge. The meaning he found given indicated that refuge has to do mostly with God.”[6] He then says,

“Reflecting the history of this word, in David’s prayers refuge refers to a good experience, but what got him to refuge was a bad experience. He started out running for his life; and at some point he found the life he was running for, and the name for that life was God. “God is my refuge.”[7]

Sometimes it takes the bad times to make us realize what we truly need—God. In verse 5, David says, “I cry to you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.’” Nothing around David has changed. The wilderness hasn’t disappeared. His outside circumstances haven’t changed, but he realizes that God is his refuge in the wilderness, not his circumstances.

The wilderness exposes what we are really trusting. It removes the things we rely on. It reveals where our hope actually is. And if we let it, it teaches us to rely on God. And that’s exactly where God meets His people. In the wilderness. In the valleys. Not in the performance of spirituality. But in true, earthy spirituality, as Eugene Peterson calls it. And so, David relies on God in the wilderness. And guess what we see? We see God come through.

We can trust the sovereign hand of God. (23:19–29)

Continuing in 1 Samuel 23, the Ziphites go to Saul and offer to betray David. They give Saul the location and promise to hand David over. So, Saul comes down with his men. David is in the wilderness of Maon, and verse 26 shows just how close this is. It says, “Saul went on one side of the mountain, and David and his men on the other side of the mountain. And David was hurrying to get away from Saul. As Saul and his men were closing in on David and his men to capture them.”

Y’all, the pressure is at an all-time high. They are frantically moving, David’s men trying to escape, Saul’s men trying to close the distance. And then, suddenly, something happens. Verses 27–28 say, “‘a messenger came to Saul, saying, “Hurry and come, for the Philistines have made a raid against the land.’ So Saul returned from pursuing after David and went against the Philistines. Therefore that place was called the Rock of Escape.”

David escaped. That tells you something about how God works. God’s sovereignty isn’t always loud and dramatic in the way we expect. But it is purposeful and perfect. God governs even the timing of danger. He doesn’t just deliver David in general. He delivers him at the exact moment when there is no other way out.

That’s the kind of thing David reflects on in Psalm 142:3 when he says, “When my spirit faints within me, you know my way.” He does! God is sovereign! And He is also good. David answers with these final words in verses 6 and 7:

6 Attend to my cry,
    for I am brought very low!
Deliver me from my persecutors,
    for they are too strong for me!
7 Bring me out of prison,
    that I may give thanks to your name!
The righteous will surround me,
    for you will deal bountifully with me.

That’s where David’s confidence rests. Not in his ability to outmaneuver Saul. Not in his surroundings. Not in his resources. In the fact that God is sovereign and good. And those two things don’t contradict each other. Then the final verse of1 Samuel chapter 23 says, “And David went up from there and lived in the strongholds of Engedi.” God brought them to a physical place of refuge in the wilderness.

Jesus is our refuge in the wilderness. (23:29)

David’s life isn’t the end of the story. It’s always points forward to Jesus. Before Jesus began His public ministry, He was led into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. He faced temptation. He faced the enemy directly. And where David struggled, Jesus stood firm. Where we so often fall, Jesus obeyed fully. He was without sin so He could die as the perfect sacrifice in our place, for our sins. And He rose from the dead, victoriously to give us life.

When David says, “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living,” that finds its fullest meaning in Jesus Christ. He’s not just a picture of refuge. He is the reality of it. Through His life, His death, and His resurrection, He has secured a place of refuge that can never be taken away. So when you’re in the wilderness, you you’re not alone. Christ has been there. He’s with you in it. And He’s calling for you to come to Him.

He's wanting to teach you to seek Him in ways you wouldn’t if life was easy. So, let the wilderness do its work. Go to the only one who can rescue you. And find refuge in Jesus.

[1] James 1:19 – Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger

[2] https://biblehub.com/q/how_does_1_sam_23's_ephod_use_differ.htm; see Leviticus 8:8; Numbers 27:21

[3] Eugene H. Peterson, Leap Over a Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 78.

[4] Peterson, 71-72.

[5] https://biblehub.com/hebrew/4498.htm

[6] Peterson, 78.

[7] Peterson, 79.