Peter Barnes | 1 Samuel 27-28:2
SERMON NOTES
David, the Philistines, and the Mix of Life
1 Samuel 27:1-28:2
David here has what the older evangelical writers used to call a ‘fainting fit’. We are pmeant to see how mixed life is, and to treat David both critically and sympathetically.
1. David leans on his own understanding.
– 27:1-3. Each victory will help you/ Some other to win. That can be true, but often it can go the other way.
– Prov.3:5-6. The trouble with these sorts of things is that they can appear to work for a time – 1 Sam.27:4.
– David ends out in Ziklag, in southern Judah – 27:5-7.
2. David leads a brutal double life.
– 27:8-9. The Amalekites were under the ban (1 Samuel 15 & Deut.20:16-18). David carries out God’s will, but that does not seem to have been his primary motive – 27:11.
– hence 1 Chron.22:7-8. Yet again, in the short term, it might be seen to have worked – 27:12.
3. David resorts to lies and ambiguity.
– 27:10; 28:1-2. See Gen.20:1-5, 9-12; John 4:16-18. Deception and sin so easily and invariably entangles us – Heb.12:1.
– Bonhoeffer in 1942: ‘We have become cunning and learned the arts of obfuscation and equivocal speech.’