70 - Divine Protection for David [B]

Divine Protection for David
1 Samuel 19:1–24
Samuel Lesson #070
November 1, 2016
www.deanbibleministries.org

Opening Prayer

“Father, we are thankful we can come together this evening to stud your word, to be reminded of Your faithfulness and that You are a God Who will accomplish what You intend to accomplish in history. No matter what forces of evil are arrayed against Your plan, even though at times it looks as if things are pretty dark, we know that you will bring about that which You have planned to bring about, and that the end game is that You are victorious.

Father, we pray for our nation in this last week before the election next week. We pray that You will continue to allow information to come forth that will awaken people to the realities of the candidates, especially the criminality on one side. Father, we pray that you would expose those who would seek to do evil to this nation. By evil I mean to go against the original intent of the Constitution.

Father, we pray that You would awaken people spiritually in this country, because a return to the Constitution is only a minimal solution. The real solution is a return to the Word of God and to a focus upon biblical truth at every level of our culture. Therein lays the only real hope.

Father, as we study tonight we are reminded that no matter how difficult things look for David, no matter how dark things look, You were protecting him and providing for him. You do the same thing for each and every one of us. We can be confident that You are the One Who has secured us in our salvation. You are protecting us day to day in our spiritual lives. We pray this in Christ’s Name. Amen.”

Slide 2

Open your Bibles with me to 1 Samuel 19. Let me say by way of introduction that when we get to the end of this chapter, in my opinion, this is one of the strangest episodes in the Scripture. Some people may think that a talking serpent in Genesis 3 as pretty strange. Other people may think of Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt as pretty strange. Others may think of three Israelite young men surviving a flaming furnace as pretty strange. But the end of 1 Samuel 19 gets really strange.

We just do not know enough information, and that is true about several things that are going on in the Old Testament that told about what was happening. But some of these details are a little bit beyond our understanding, because we do not have all the facts. We are going to be looking at 1 Samuel 19. The focal point here is that David continues to come under assault by Saul either directly or indirectly.

As David lives his life he has to deal with the fact that his father-in-law has a murderous rage against him that comes on him at times. David knows that on the one hand he cannot do anything against Saul, because Saul has a unique position among all authorities in history. He is the LORD’S anointed king over His chosen people. Saul’s murderous rage seems to be only directed against David at this point.

We are going to understand some thing about how God protects David. How we can respond in circumstances when people seek to do us ill and would seek to harm us by destroying our reputation, or by personally attacking us, slandering us—people calling us names, and people doing things that seek to harm us and to hurt us. Sometimes these are people we know. We love, people in our family. We have to come to understand how we as believers are to respond to those who would seek to destroy us.

Jesus captures this in the Sermon on the Mount. We are to love our enemies. That does not mean that we become doormats, or that we walk in front of them bare-chested so they can bury the hatchet deep into our chest. That is not the picture that we see in Scripture. We are to use wisdom. We are to deal with the opposing forces in terms of grace and humility, but not in terms of stupid vulnerability.

Often what happens when you say to people that you need to respond to them in kindness, what they hear is “I need to do something really stupid and let that person do damage to me.” That is a non-sequester, but I have heard that from people. In 35 years of pastoral ministry, if you tell some people that they need to submit to authority, what they hear is, “You need to be run over by their tank.” That is not what the Scripture says. But unfortunately that is what happens.

I was thinking about this the other day. I was very fortunate to grow-up in a home that really taught authority orientation the way it should be taught. I remember when I was in high school. I got a job working for one of the food teams out at the Astrodome. I had to work for someone who was a real jerk. I would come home and say certain things. My parents and I would have a discussion about how you are to have respect for authority, even if the person in authority was not worthy of respect.

That does not mean that you have to agree with a person in authority, or that you have to put yourself in a dangerous position, but that they are a person in authority. You have to respect them. We see a picture of this in this episode in 1 Samuel 19. We have been talking in 1 Peter on Thursday nights about submitting to authority. We have talked some about civil disobedience in different areas.

We see an example of this. As I pointed out in the Peter Series, what you get when people hear “submit to the authority that is set over you.” What they hear is “I cannot question it. I cannot offer another alternative.” That is not the biblical example. The biblical example is from Daniel in Daniel 1 specifically, but also in terms of what the three young Israelite men did in Daniel 3. They recognized that there were alternatives. They tried to set up alternatives. When it came to the fiery furnace there was not an alternative. Yet Daniel showed wisdom to come up with an alternative in Daniel 1.

Slide 3

Let’s begin to look at the text. This is a reminder of the structure. It is all about how God is bringing David to the throne of Israel:

• God anoints David, 1 Samuel 16:1–13. That was a private ceremony with Samuel and the family.
• God promotes David, 1 Samuel 16:14–23. David did not seek promotion for himself. God promoted him and brought him within the circles of Saul and the royal family.
• God gives victory to David, 1 Samuel 17:1–54.
• God protects David from Saul, 1 Samuel 17:55–1 Samuel 20:42. We see how God is protecting David from Saul.
• God protects David in exile, 1 Samuel 21–31. David will go into exile from the court.

Slide 4

• In 1 Samuel 18:1–30 we saw that God is with David.
• In this 1 Samuel 19 the emphasis is on God providing protection for David through Saul’s family at the beginning and then through Divine intervention through the Holy Spirit at the end of the chapter.

Slide 5

Let’s look at the first three verses. We read:

1 Samuel 19:1–3, “Now Saul spoke to Jonathan his son and to all his servants that they should kill David; but Jonathan, Saul’s son, delighted greatly in David. So Jonathan told David, saying, ‘My father Saul seeks to kill you. Therefore please be on your guard until morning, and stay in a secret place and hide. And I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are, and I will speak with my father about you. Then what I observe, I will tell you.’ ”

There are a lot of circumstances that can be related to this. As I was reading it a circumstance came to my mind that I had not thought of earlier. That is the roll of the Gentiles, the righteous among the Gentiles, in Nazi Germany who risked their lives and their property and their families in order to hide Jews. We know the story of the Diary of Anne Frank and the Frank family.

If you have had the opportunity to read a book called The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. That is a tremendous story. It was first written and published back in the 1970s. They made a film about it. Corrie ten Boom was played by an actress, Jeannette Cliff George, from Houston. She was a founder of a Christian theatric group here that has always done an excellent job. They are called the AD Players. The Hiding Place is a tremendous film.

If you have never seen The Hiding Place I highly recommend watching it. It is a true story about a family of believers who risk everything in order to protect and hide Jews. They are in effect doing what we call civil disobedience. They were disobeying the authority because the authority was wrong. That is the kind of thing we see here with Jonathan. It is an example of disobedience to Saul’s authority.

Slide 6

Saul’s command in 1 Samuel 19 is an example of disobedience to authority where the command is a violation of divine command.

Back to Slide 5

Saul gets his family together, Jonathan his son and all of his servants. This would indicate all of his top officials. These are not household servants. These are those who are serving him in what we would call his cabinet positions. He is bringing in the Department of Defense, the military heads, the generals, and everyone. He is moving from a position of a covert attack on David to where he is coming out of the closet, as he were, and telling all of his staff that they need to do whatever it takes to kill David.

We are reminded that Saul has tried to kill David three times prior to this recorded in 1 Samuel 18. In 1 Samuel 18:11 there was a situation where David came in to play for Saul as this evil spirit was tormenting him. Twice we were told that David had to dodge a spear that Saul threw at him in order to kill him. The third attempt on David’s life was a much more covert attempt where Saul was going to betroth David to his daughter, Michal. Saul made the dowry 100 foreskins from the Philistines. This means that David had to go into battle.

Sometime later in David’s life he is going to be caught having adultery with the wife of one of his generals, Uriah the Hittite. After Bathsheba gets pregnant David comes up with a scheme. Bathsheba does not have relations with Uriah, because he is too honorable. David has to get Uriah out of the way. He tells his general, Joab, to put Uriah up in the heat of the battle. David has this idea of using a battle scenario to kill Uriah. Maybe he got that idea from Saul.

Saul has that same idea here. He is going to put David in a battle scenario and let the Philistines take care of the problem for him. That failed because God was with David. God protected David. In fact, David doubled and killed 200 Philistines and brought the dowry to Saul. In 1 Samuel 19 we are going to see the fourth attempt on David’s life when Saul pulls Jonathan together with the servants and instructs them to kill David.

It is the word here for “kill,” מוּת mûth, is your normal word for “kill” in this structure, according to several of the Hebrew dictionaries, has the nuance of “execute or assassinate.” That is the idea here. Saul wants David taken out. Saul wants his men to be his hit squad to take out David. The problem is that Jonathan, as we saw in 1 Samuel 18, has become extremely close with David. They have become BFF (Best Friends Forever). They are best friends. They think about the Lord. They think about doctrine. They are focus on God’s plan for Israel.

We are told in 1 Samuel 18 that Jonathan and David’s souls were knit together. Jonathan loved David as his own soul. The context is the context of a covenant, 1 Samuel 18:3, “Then they made a covenant” together. We might relate that to some sort of Native American Indian tribal practice of becoming “blood brothers.” The language of love there always brings liberals who come along and try to read something homosexual into the text. That is not acceptable because the language is in the context of a covenant. Even though אָהַב ’āhav is used, it means faithfulness and loyalty to this covenant to one another.

Jonathan in 1 Samuel 19:1 “… delighted greatly in David.” He liked him very much. They were very close. Jonathan takes this opportunity to protect David. One of the things that we see going on here is a preparation of the leaders and of the nation. When David finally comes to the throne, by knowing these facts, they come to understand that David was not working behind the scenes to try to defeat Saul or to overthrow Saul or to harm Saul in any way.

Even so, when we get into 2 Samuel we will see that the tribes are divided. When David first becomes king, he is only the king of Judah. He reigns from Hebron in the south. It is years before he unites all the tribes; especially the tribe of Benjamin was Saul’s tribe. Benjamin is suspicious of David. The writer is making it clear that David is not doing anything to manipulate the situation to take the throne away from Saul. In fact, David is protected by Saul’s own family—by Jonathan and David’s wife, Michal.

Saul has instructed Jonathan to kill David. Jonathan goes to David to tell him what Saul is up to. This is a situation where a legitimate authority gives an illegitimate command. By illegitimate command, as I have emphasized, when we have a direct order or command or law that tells us to do something that God tells us not to do, or tells us not to do something that God tells us to do, that is the only legitimate scenario for disobeying an authority, whether it is a parent, an employer, a president or king or someone else in authority. This fits that situation.

When Jonathan is told by Saul to do something that violates the Word of God he had to make a decision. He has a choice. He can either go along with it. The Scripture never says that you go along with it. He can either go along with it or he can somehow create a scenario where he appeals to that authority. That is the same scenario that we have in Daniel 1 when Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego want to keep kosher. They go to the chief of the eunuchs. Daniel appeals to chief eunuch. Daniel asks for a trial basis. If we eat the way the Law says to eat you can test us at the end of a period of time to see who is doing better: us, or those who are eating according to your standard diet.

That is the same scenario we have here in 1 Samuel 19. There is an appeal to authority. The authority is going to respond. In 1 Samuel 19:2 Jonathan warns David. He has a plan. He says, “My father seeks to kill you.” That is the warning. He tells David to “Please be on your guard until morning, and stay in a secret place and hide.” The authorities are looking for you, but it is legitimate to hide because you have not done anything wrong. Do not attack them. It is a passive response. Stay in a secret place and hide.

Jonathan has an additional solution. He says that he is going to “go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are.” That way David could overhear the scenario. “I will speak with my father about you. Then what I observe, I will tell you.” What I learn from that situation, I will tell you. He is going to appeal to Saul in that process.

We read in 1 Samuel 19:4, “Thus Jonathan spoke well of David to Saul his father.” Jonathan goes to his father and reminds him of everything that David has done. David has never done anything to hurt you. He has never tried to take the kingdom from you. David was a great warrior who killed Goliath and gave a tremendous victory to Israel. He makes a rational case to Saul that he should not seek David’s life. 1 Samuel 19:4, “Let not the king sin against his servant, against David, because he has not sinned against you, and because his works have been very good toward you.

1. David has not done anything against you.

2. Everything David has done has benefited you.

Jonathan gives examples are given in 1 Samuel 19:5, “For he took his life in his hands and killed the Philistine and the Lord brought about a great deliverance for all Israel. You saw it and rejoiced. Why then will you sin against innocent blood, to kill David without a cause?”

1. David took his life in his hands and killed the Philistine.

2. Because of David’s trust in the Lord the Lord brought about a great deliverance for all Israel.

3. Saul knows this from his own personal experience.

4. Jonathan asks the question: “Why do you sin against innocent blood to kill David without a cause?” Jonathan pins Saul with the issue.

The result is that Saul listens to Jonathan swears an oath, “As the Lord lives, he shall not be killed.” I think at that moment Saul was being honest. He recognized that what Jonathan had to say was true, but his character is behind this, and because he is in a carnal freefall it is not going to last very long. Too often we see this kind of thing with some of our political leaders. We have to take what they say with a grain of salt.

The result is that Jonathan called to David and “told him all these things. So Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he was in his presence as in times past.” Some time goes by now, everything is fine because of the way that Jonathan in wisdom has approached the problem of authority. But then things flared up again with the Philistines. Every time there is something going on with the Philistines and David is in a positive position it always provokes this jealous rage, this anger, on the part of Saul.

1 Samuel 19:8, “And there was war again; and David went out and fought with the Philistines, and struck them with a mighty blow, and they fled from him.” Again, David is going to be praised by the people. Saul was not present. Now the evil spirit, the same term we have seen before, that God permits to come upon Saul. Again, I want to emphasis that the term here is not to go “into Saul.” It is not demon possession. It is an external influence “to come upon Saul.” That is a phrase that we see primarily with the role of the Holy Spirit.

We are going to get into the role of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament before we finish the chapter. The “spirit” is the external influence on Saul in 1 Samuel 19:9, “Now the distressing spirit from the Lord came upon Saul as he sat in his house with his spear in his hand. And David was playing music with his hand.” David is playing the harp again to sooth Saul’s feelings. We have David with music therapy going on for Saul. But what happens is Saul picks up his spear and tries to kill David one more time. This is the fifth attack on David. David flees and escaped that night.

This was another attempt of Saul to pin David to the wall. Then in 1 Samuel 19:11 we see the sixth attempt. “Saul also sent messengers to David’s house to watch him and to kill him in the morning.” Saul sends an assassination squad to kill David at his home. David goes home. He is with his wife Michal, and she warns him. Jonathan has warned him and protected him.

Michal, Saul’s daughter, is going to warn him and protect him. She says in 1 Samuel 19:11, “If you do not save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.” Everyone understands that Saul is in this murderous rage again. David escapes that night, 1 Samuel 19:12, “So Michal let David down through a window. And he went and fled and escaped.”

The history goes on to say in 1 Samuel 19:13, “And Michal took an image….” This image is teraphim. It is an idol. It is a household idol. What we see once again is that people in the Bible are not too different from a lot of Christians today, in that they still have a lot of superstitions. They still have a lot of pagan ideas that they bring with them into their Christian life. That always compromises our spirituality.

This compromise is going to be a major problem for Michal because she continues to have these pagan ideas. She continues to trust in the pagan religion. This is going to cause a breakdown in her marriage with David and also a breakdown in her family. She is going to end up completely losing the opportunity to establish a family according to 2 Samuel 6:23.

When we read this Scripture in connection with Psalm 59, which we will look at next time, we see how David uses the faith-rest drill to trust God in the midst of this assault. Tonight we are just looking at the episode, the narrative of the situation. Next time we will look at the details of David’s thinking as it is expressed in Psalm 59:9–10 and Psalm 59:16–17.

Michal sets up this decoy by putting this image in the bed, “and laid it in the bed, put a cover of goats’ hair for his head, and covered it with clothes.” In the dark Michal is able to fool those who were looking in through the window. David escapes at night. This whole situation is somewhat reminiscent of previous situations in the history of Israel.

We are told about Jacob when he has left Laban. He snuck away and fled from Heron in northern Syria back down to the land of his father. Laban is chasing Jacob. He says that Jacob has stolen the household idols, which indicates the person who has the inheritance rights, the possession rights. It was Rachel, Jacob’s favorite wife, who had taken these teraphim. She hid them in her saddlebags under her robes and skirt. She deceived her father Laban. She lied to him about having the teraphim.

We are also told of an event later on when we come to Moses. Moses as an infant was put into the Nile in a basket of reeds by his mother. He is rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter who is a pagan, an unbeliever. We see how another scenario where God’s chosen is rescued by a woman.

• Jacob is from Laban by Rachel’s lies.
• Moses is saved from the Pharaoh by the Pharaoh’s daughter.
• The spies who go into Jericho later in the Book of Joshua are going to be saved by Rahab the harlot.

This scenario of God’s chosen people being rescued by a pagan woman is thematic through the Scriptures. When we come to the end of that particular episode Saul realizes that David has possibly gotten away from him. In 1 Samuel 19:14 we read, “So when Saul sent messengers to take David.” Saul thinks David is still there, but he is hiding. Michal is going to cover-up for him, “… she said, ‘He is sick.’” He is sick in bed. You do not want to mess with him.

1 Samuel 19:15–17, “Saul sent the messengers back to see David, saying, ‘Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him.’ And when the messengers had come in, there was the image in the bed, with a cover of goats’ hair for his head.” Saul wants David bed and all. The messengers discover that it is the idol that in the bed between the sheets. They come back and the whole plot is exposed.

Saul confronts his daughter Michal about her deception in 1 Samuel 19:17, “Then Saul said to Michal, ‘Why have you deceived me like this, and sent my enemy away, so that he has escaped?’ And Michal answered Saul, “He (David) said to me, ‘Let me go! Why should I kill you?’” The idea is that she would have to defend herself against David. All of this represents the family dynamics in showing how God is protecting David through Jonathan and Michal.

The third way in which God protects David is through the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. It is a unique situation that is occurring here in Samuel. David fled in 1 Samuel 19:18 and escaped. He went to Samuel who is back in his hometown of Ramah. David has been in Gibeah and going to Ramah. This is only about two or three miles away. David goes to Raman and tells Samuel everything that has been going on.

“And he and Samuel went and stayed in Naioth.” Naioth is not really a village. It is a term that means in the dwellings or habitations. David and Samuel are hiding out with the people who lived in the village. They are not in Samuel’s home. Eventually reports reach Saul. He identifies where David is. He sends out some of his troops to take David. There are three things that happened here:

1. 1 Samuel 19:20 when Saul’s messengers came to take David. David and Samuel are with a group of prophets. The text says, “And when they (messengers, hit team) saw the group of prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as leader over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul.” This is not indwelling. It does not go into them. It comes upon them, the same preposition. “… and they also prophesied.” What in the world is going on there?

1 Samuel 19:21, “And when Saul was told, he sent other messengers….” The second hit team gets there and the same thing happens “and they prophesied likewise.” They also were prophesying with the prophets. What in the world is happening here when it talks about this kind of prophesy? Then Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they prophesied also.” We see a third team that is sent and the same thing happens. 

1 Samuel 19:22, Then he also went to Ramah, and came to the great well that is at Sechu. So he asked, and said, “Where are Samuel and David?” And someone said, “Indeed they are at Naioth in Ramah.” 

Saul goes to Ramah and comes to the great well that is at Sechu. This locates them in a geographical location. This was a large cistern that would have supplied water for the entire area that was well known. I am pointing out that the biblical text always locates these things in specific places that are discoverable and were at least known by the people at the time of writing.

Joel Kramer, based on his background dealing as a pastor in Utah dealing with Mormons and his writings and video production on Mormonism and the Bible, points out that you can go to Israel and find the locations of almost every place mentioned in the Bible. But you cannot go anywhere and find any place that is mentioned in the Book of Mormon. The Bible is written in history and in specific geographical locations. You can go to those places. The Bible tells you exactly how to get to those places.

Saul and David go by this cistern at Sechu. Saul is asking for directions as to where Samuel and David are. In 1 Samuel 19:23–24 they tell him they are in the suburbs there at Naioth. Saul goes there and the Spirit of God is upon him and he went on and prophesied until he came to Naioth in Ramah. “Then the Spirit of God was upon him also, and he went on and prophesied until he came to Naioth in Ramah. And he also stripped off his clothes and prophesied before Samuel in like manner.”

Here is this picture of Saul, who strips down butt naked and lies down and prophesies. Does anyone know what is going on here? I told you this is an extremely strange situation. 1 Samuel 19:24, “Then the Spirit of God was upon him also, and he went on and prophesied until he came to Naioth in Ramah. And he also stripped off his clothes and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Therefore they say, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”

One of the problems that we get in here is that it is typical of liberals, who do not believe in the historical accuracy of the Scripture or that there is really divine revelation or that God is really doing anything in space-time history. When they look at this they look at it in terms of what the pagan religions are doing. They interpret this as some sort of ecstatics. This is what happens in pagan worship through the use of various things from hallucinogenic drugs to music to dancing the worshipers work themselves up into some sort of trance. They will pass out.

Sometimes these pagan religious ones would speak in glossolalia utterance, and other times they will have visions. This would happen, for example, with the American Aborigines Indian tribes. They would use various different hallucinogenic drugs in order to get into some trancelike state. They would then have their various visions. They would see their spirit guides. The spirit guides would appear to them. This was a way they would celebrate someone’s entrance into manhood or a great victory or some great event in the life of a tribe.

When I first got out of college I was teaching and running an in-school suspension class in Channelview. My boss was the counselor who oversaw the program. He was a rather rotund redheaded ruddy Irishman by the name of O’Quinn. His mother was Quanah Parker’s youngest daughter. Quanah Parker was the last war chief of the Comanche Indians, a warlike tribe. If you want to read a good book on this tribe you can read Empire of the Summer Moon. It is the story of the Comanches’ specifically that period.

Quanah Parker’s mother was a young Anglo girl who was kidnapped by the Comanches somewhere toward East Texas near Buffalo, just east of there in the area near Mexia and that area. The Parker clan moved to that area from somewhere back east and begun to settle in the 1830s and 1840s, and the Comanches attacked. They killed a number and tortured a number. They kidnapped a couple of the women including Cynthia Ann and took them back into their tribe.

Cynthia Ann Parker basically grew-up as a Comanche. She was brought back when she was an adult many, many years later. She never quite adjusted to white culture. Her son was Quanah Parker. Mr. O’Quinn told me that if you look in the history books and see pictures of Quanah Parker to look real closely. There is only one set of pictures that was ever taken of him.

As the chief Quanah Parker was the first to get the peyote button and chew it and get the richest hallucinogenic drugs out of it. In the pictures he was all glazed over and high as a kite. The next time you see something about him you will take another look at him. Every time I have seen pictures of Quanah Parker I have always stopped to take a look at him. That is a little unknown fact that only a family member would know.

This is what happened in your pagan religions. They have their pagan modus operandi for getting in touch with the gods or goddesses that the Scripture says are demons. So often what happens is that liberals go to those patterns and say, “See that is the same thing is going on here.” When you read about this particular passage it seems that they may have a case.

There is a tremendous Old Testament scholar by the name of Leon Wood. He is of a previous generation. When I was in seminary we read a number of his works. He had a commentary on Judges. He had a survey of Old Testament history. He wrote a tremendous book on the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, and a number of other books. In his book on the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament he said:

“Liberal scholars commonly view these instances as examples of ecstatic frenzy on the part of the participants. They understand the references to the Spirit to be merely indications of an emotional surge in the individuals’ own personalities as they experience these occurrences. Conservative scholars normally disagree with this explanation, but they have little to say in terms of an explanation.”

I looked at the more scholarly commentaries today and all but one of them skipped over this. The one who commented takes the ecstatic view. But ecstatics and ecstasy is the modus operandi of paganism, not the Spirit of God. What is going on here?

1. I think contextually what we are seeing is that the Spirit of God is doing something to protect David.

2. The Spirit of God is protecting David by taking these hit teams out of operation so David can survive.

The hit teams are completely distracted, then when Saul shows up he is supposed to do something that is going to takes David completely out. I do not know all the dynamics that are going on here, but I do know that there is one element to this that is little known when we talk about the Scripture and this concept of prophecy.

In 1 Chronicles 25:1–3 we have one of the most significant statements about this. In 1 Chronicles 25:1 we read: “Moreover David and the captains of the army separated for the service some of the sons of Asaph.”

Who was Asaph? Asaph was one of the Levitical priests who wrote many Psalms. He is a choir director or the music director. He is a musician who is organizing the Levitical orchestras and the Levitical priests for worship in the temple. 1 Chronicles 25:1 mentions the “sons of Asaph” that would be one group. The sons of “Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with harps, stringed instruments, and cymbals.”

We normally think of prophesy in terms of one of its nuances. That is the idea that prophecy is forth telling. The prophets were always to represent God to the people. The prophet’s role often was to serve as a type of God’s attorney general who would prosecute the nation Israel for violating the terms of the Mosaic Covenant. We think of a prophet in that sense. We think, therefore, that a prophet was involved in direct revelation from God, as they were, in order to bring this message of judgment and condemnation against the nation.

Later on you also had some that were writing prophets who wrote Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings; and we think of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. These were the writing prophets. But there is another group that was involved in music. We also see this evidence when we think about a couple of women in the Old Testament who were significant. You have Miriam, the sister of Moses, who was called the prophetess. We have Deborah who is also called a prophetess.

In both of the case of Miriam and Deborah, we have these women who wrote chapter length hymns celebrating and praising God for giving them victory. They are called prophetesses. We have no evidence whatsoever of them functioning in any other sense of a prophet, but we do have evidence in Scripture where they functioned in terms of writing music under divine inspiration.

1 Chronicles 25:1 says that these three clans of musicians, “the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with harps, stringed instruments, and cymbals. And the number of the skilled men performing their service was….” Then it lists them in the next couple of verses.

In 1 Chronicles 25:2 it identifies the sons of Asaph. After listing the sons of Asaph it says that these are those “who prophesied according to the order of the king.” That is the second time it says that these musicians prophesied. In 1 Chronicles 25:3, the sons Jeduthun, and list the sons of Jeduthun, “… six, under the direction of their father Jeduthun, who prophesied with a harp to give thanks and to praise the Lord.”

We see thee times in these three verses a statement that prophesy was done with a musical instrument. There are a lot of things that we could talk about in relation to music. I have done studies on music a couple of times back in our study of Revelation. You can go back and listen to those. It is very important.

We see prophesy with music having to do with this distinctive role of God the Holy Spirit. I thought I would remind you of a couple of things in relation to the Holy Spirit. Back around lessons #40-42 I went through a detailed study of the role of God the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. I just wanted to review that.

I want to remind you of that quote from Leon Wood again. That is the approach of liberals. I would also say this relates to neo-evangelicals and some scholars on the fringe of the conservative movement today. I really mean that “on the fringe” where they begin to take the Holy Spirit as some sort of influence, not as a Person, but as sort of an influence of God. I want to review a few things, skip through some slides, and look at the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament.

Slide 7

Usually when we think of the of the Holy Spirit we think of the Holy Spirit in a more refined ministry that is explained in the Gospels and in the Epistles. In the Gospels we hear about the promise that in the future Jesus would baptize by means of the Holy Spirit.

In John 14–16 specifically Jesus is telling the disciples that He is going another comforter who is going to guide them, direct them, and bring to their memory the events in His life so that they can write them down in Scripture.

Later on in the Epistles we are told about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the leading of the Holy Spirit. All of this is related to very distinct types of ministries in the church age. But the Holy Spirit has always been in involved in giving guidance and direction. That is through the Scripture. It is not mystical. It is objective. “God the Holy Spirit” we many not understand the process. It may be mysterious in that we cannot explain it. We do not know how it worked in detail.

Slide 8

1. All Scripture is breathed out by God through the Holy Spirit.

2 Timothy 3:16–17 says that “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” Just as you exhale. If you take a balloon and you fill your lungs with air and breathe out. That breath that comes out of your lungs goes into the balloon. That is the picture here in 2 Timothy 3:16. God exhales that information and it fills the minds of the writer of Scripture. Then he writes what God has him write. It is not dictation. It is unique.

Slide 9

The term inspiration is a misnomer. It is God breathing. The mechanics of that are described in 2 Peter 1:20–21, “… knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation.” In other words, the writers did not interpret this or invent this on their own. “… for prophecy never came by the will of man.” It was not their will that generated it. “… but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”

The verb that is used there describing movement is the same verb that describes wind blowing on the sails of the sailing ship to move it across the ocean. It is an unseen force that is felt by the sails. The writers do not see it. They cannot quantify it, but nevertheless it is that ministry of the Holy Spirit that is moving them as they write Scripture.

Slide 10

2. The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Trinity who is mentioned in Scripture from the very beginning of the Old Testament.

There are clear statements in the prophets, for example, in Isaiah and Jeremiah where there are conversations between Yahweh and His Spirit, indicating that if there is communication and conversation that He is not just talking to Himself. He is talking to a second person.

But the first time we see the Holy Spirit mentioned is in Genesis 1:2. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It starts us off there. Then the Genesis 1:2 describes the earth. I believe that something transpired between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. It is where I put the fall of Satan and a judgment upon the earth that left it formless and dark.

The Spirit of God is bringing life back to the planet, “hovering.” The picture here is of a bird hovering over the eggs, warming the eggs, incubating the eggs in the nest in preparation for life. “… the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” The Spirit of God has a specific role and ministry from the very beginning of Scripture. This is not something that gets invented by Christians in the New Testament. There are other passages in the Old Testament that talk about this creation.

Slide 11

In Psalm 104:30 the psalmist says, “You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the earth.” That is referencing or alluding to, Genesis 1:2.

Slide 12

Job mentions the Spirit a couple of times in Job 26:13, “By His Spirit He adorns the heavens; His hand pierced the fleeing serpent.” That is probably an allusion to Satan through the use of the Holy Spirit.

Job 33:4, “The Spirit of God has made me.” We see the presence and the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in creation of life, every single human life.

Slide 13

There are a number of places that talk about the identity of the Holy Spirit as a separate Person and who has all the attributes of personhood and all the attributes of deity. For example, the Holy Spirit is linked equally with the Father and the Son in the passage known as the Great Commission.

Slide 14

Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Slide 15

In 2 Corinthians 13:14 in the close of that epistle the Apostle Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (that is the Son), and the love of God (that is God the Father), and the communion of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you ….” Again, the Holy Spirit is seen as equal with the Father and the Son.

Slide 16

You see aspects of His personhood and His will in Acts 16:7, that He did not permit Paul to go to certain areas of Turkey on his second missionary journey. In 1 Corinthians 12:11 the same Spirit distributes to each one spiritual gifts individually as He wills. He has His own volition.

Slide 17

We look at John 16:14 that He has specific responsibilities in the Church Age. He will declare things to the disciples that they will write in terms of the Scripture. In John 14:26, “He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things …”

I think that is talking about the disciples. One of the great interpretative issues in going through John 14–16 is when Jesus is talking about something that is only true of the disciples, and something that is true of the disciples as they represent the entire church. But John 14:26 cannot relate to the entire church because you cannot remember something you did not initially witness or do.

When John says, “He will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all things” he is telling them that the Holy Spirit is going to remind you of everything I said, everything I taught, and everything that we did because the disciples heard it, saw it, and witnessed it, but you and I did not. He is not going to bring it to your memory, because you were not there to begin with. John 15:26, “He will testify of Me.”

Slide 18

We see passages that talk about the ministry, the personal ministry of the Holy Spirit. We are to walk by means of the Spirit in Galatians 5:16. As they are making decisions the Jerusalem counsel in Acts 15:28 they say it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to make this decision.

Slide 19

We also see passages like Romans 8:11 that ascribe the works of deity to the Holy Spirit, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead” is talking about His involvement in the resurrection of Jesus Christ in that verse.

Slide 20

3. Ruah is the term used for Spirit/spirit.

• Sometimes it refers to thinking.
• Sometimes it refers to breath.
• Sometimes refers to wind.

We see its counterpart, PNEUMA, in the New Testament. It has lots of different meanings:

• Breeze
• Breath
• Wind
• Air
• Something vain or futile
• Empty breath
• The breath of God, which supports life, Genesis 6:17.
• Sometimes it refers to the human spirit, the immaterial part of man, whether believer or unbeliever.
• Sometimes it refers to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of Yahweh.
• Some of them are also somewhat ambiguous.

Slide 21

4. God’s Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, not His influence, not His breath, but a distinct Person who is said to have had a special relationship with mankind prior to the Flood.

Genesis 6:3 is one of those verses that is often misunderstood. In most translations it reads like the verse I have on the screen, “And the LORD said, ‘My Spirit shall not strive with man forever.’ ”

This comes at the end of the dispensation of human conscience, just prior to the flood that destroys all mankind, the whole world changes. I believe that what happened is God has His garden, the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve sin, they get kicked out, and God sets up a battalion of cherubim around the garden to keep any human beings from coming in and corrupting the garden. I believe God’s presence, the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, stayed on the earth during that time, before the Flood.

This word that is translated “strive” is a word that is used only one time in all of the Old Testament. Whenever you have a word that is used only one time it is often difficult to define it and figure out what it means. The word is the Hebrew word יָד֨וֹן yādhôn. Recently I purchased a new partial set, the whole set has not been finished yet, but the first seven volumes called the Classical Dictionary of Hebrew, which is the latest greatest Hebrew lexicon. In that lexicon they define it as I have always believed it should be defined: “remain” or “abide.”

It is not My Spirit will not strive with man forever. It should be translated My Spirit will not abide with man forever. All of your related Semitic languages have that root in them. They all have the idea of “remain” and “abide.” I remember when I was taking a word study course with Allen Ross at Dallas Theological Seminary. He was on the translation team for the New International Version (NIV).

You do not know how these things work, but the translation team would have committees. The committees would be assigned a long passage. They would translate them, each individual on the committee. They would come together and debate their translations. Then they would vote on which one should be the translation. If they disagreed it was to be bumped up to a higher committee.

I remember us doing a word study on this particular word. Allen Ross said that when the team did Genesis, he wanted to put a footnote in the margin of the NIV that “strive” was the meaning by a vote of five to four. That is how it works in translation. The idea here is that God was still present. Human government and national entities had not been instituted yet.

Who is the highest court of appeal in human history?

It is the court of God going to the Garden of Eden. I believe that the Holy Spirit then functioned in ways He did later on in the theocratic kingdom, to provide guidance, leadership, and direction, just as He does in all of the different dispensations.

Slide 22

5. The next time we see the use of the word Pharaoh is talking. Pharaoh says, regarding Joseph in Genesis 41:38, “Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God?”

Some people think that Pharaoh is teaching the truth and Joseph is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. If this is so, there is only one other verse that uses the preposition “in” for the role of the Holy Spirit.

Slide 23

Dr. Walvoord, president of Dallas Theological Seminary, a theologian, wrote his book on the Holy Spirit, takes it this way. We do not have time now. I am not going to go through the whole quote. He takes it that Pharaoh is not mistaken, that the Holy Spirit indwells Joseph.

Slide 24

The problem is that when Dr. Walvoord says, “Further references to this same operation of the Spirit are not difficult to find …” The trouble is they do not use the same vocabulary. They do not say the same thing.

Slide 25

Walvoord goes to passages Ezekiel 28:3 and Numbers 11:17. These passages use different terms like the Spirit of God coming upon someone.

Slide 26

I thought it was interesting that Numbers 11:17 says, “Then I will come down and talk with you there. I will take of the Spirit that is upon you …” “Upon” is the Hebrew word אֶל el. “… and will put the same upon them.”

You have the same preposition used here in Numbers 5:14, “If the spirit of jealousy (that is a mental attitude sin) comes upon him and he becomes jealous of his wife …” This is a phenomenological language that they used in various places.

Slide 27

The only other place you have any “in” used in the Old Testament is with Joshua. I think this is a distinct situation where Moses is told to take Joshua the son of Nun, “Take Joshua the son of Nun with you, a man in whom is the Spirit ...” That is the only other time that “in” preposition is used. But this is not an indwelling like we have in the New Testament.

Usually you have language like “He is full of the spirit of wisdom.” Almost all the translations, the Tanach, the Jewish Publication Society, all look at this as an idiom for skill. It is not talking about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. What you see is this external ministry of the Holy Spirit. He is working in this situation in Naioth to protect David. It is a unique and bizarre situation. I wish I could explain it more, but we do not have enough information.

That wraps up 1 Samuel 19. Next time what I want to do is come back and look at Psalm 59 that comes out of this to understand the spiritual mechanics of how you handle a personal opposition.

Closing Prayer

“Father, thank You for this opportunity we have to study the Word this evening and be encouraged by what we have seen. As You protected David for his mission, You protect each and every one of us. We are sealed by the Spirit, so we have an eternally secure salvation. But in terms of our mission, You are watching over us and protecting us in the same way that You did David. That does not mean that there was not opposition or hostility, but that it was not successful.

Father, we pray that we can learn to trust You and trust You consistently as David did. That we might walk in a relaxed manner in this life, not worried, not panicky, not fearful, not giving into anxiety, but trusting You in all things. We pray this in Christ’s Name. Amen.”