As we jump back into our study of 1 Samuel today, we find David still running from King Saul as well as the Philistines whom he had tried to find shelter with, in the last chapter. God’s chosen king is running for his life; he is suffering in ways that seem foreign to our modern understanding of Christianity which treats Jesus like a gene in a bottle and treats the church like a gumball machine.

The modern evangelical call of Christianity – more often than not – bids us to come to God under the promise of a better life here on earth. Your friend or your spouse or some family member has hurt you, surrender to Jesus and find a friend for life. Your health took a turn for the worst, come to Jesus and he will heal you and give you comfort. Addiction and mental illness keep getting the best of you, follow Jesus and he will set you free. Financial pressures keep getting you down, trust in Jesus and he will provide all your needs.

While there are some half-truths woven into those modern day evangelical messages, one commentator says that the problem with these half-truth-filled messages is that Jesus never promised us a better life here on this earth; he actually promised that if we follow him, then life will more than likely get worse (2 Tim. 3:12; Matt. 5:11; Luke 14:25-33; John 16:1-4).2

That same commentator notes that if we listened to and applied Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1:26 – 29, which basically says that you should “Consider your calling” and remember that God chooses “what is weak in the world… the low and despised in the world…to shame the strong… so that no human might boast in” their status or their abilities in God’s presence; if we truly listened to the biblical teaching on what it means to come, to follow, and to trust in Jesus, then we would change our evangelical message to something of the effect of: Come to Jesus and learn to share in a community of suffering.3

That invitation, to come to Jesus as a broken and sinful and rebellious person, to find salvation from the presence, power, and penalty of our sins, and to become children of God who follow a suffering Savior in the context of a suffering community, that invitation does not fit the modern sensibilities of a western culture that is so enamored with self-help, self-fulfillment, and self-advancement.

The story of David’s rise to the throne of Israel should shock us with the reality of God’s purpose in suffering as his chosen people; it should wake us up from our sleepy, self-focused, consumeristic, mindset. Our Savior did not rise to the throne at the right hand of God through a popular voting system, or a campaign strategy, or a slick thirty minute sales pitch wrapped up in the language of religion and sold as a Sunday morning sermon entitled “How to fix all that is wrong with you and find your happiest life now”. 

Jesus rose to the throne in a similar fashion to David and his kingdom has always been about finding the lost, rescuing the misfits of this world, and assembling them into the most bizarre community of sufferers who kick down the gates of hell. Take a look at the first portion of our passage as God assembles a community of sufferers around David, his chosen king.

1David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. 2And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about four hundred men. 

3And David went from there to Mizpeh of Moab. And he said to the king of Moab, “Please let my father and my mother stay with you, till I know what God will do for me.” 4And he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold. 

5Then the prophet Gad said to David, “Do not remain in the stronghold; depart, and go into the land of Judah.” So David departed and went into the forest of Hereth.

#1: DAVID… ESCAPED TO THE CAVE OF ADULLAM (VV. 1 – 2)

In verses 1 – 2, we read that “David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about four hundred men”. Can you see how God is assembling a community of sufferers around David, his suffering servant?

I highly doubt that David sent some emails to all the people of Israel calling them to join him in making Israel great again. It does not even seem like David hit the campaign trail to assemble the best team of warriors he could find. David obviously did not employ the mechanisms of modern-day leadership or team development to build a thriving community that would answer all the problems in the world.

David simply ran to a cave and hid from his enemies and God did the rest. God brought his family around; we do well to remember that at least one of his brothers rejected him earlier in the story but presumably is now in the cave with him. God also brought a whole mess of misfits from throughout the kingdom to join him the cave; those who were distressed, in debt, and bitter in soul – fellow sufferers assembled with their suffering king.

I would challenge anyone to read the Scriptures and find God doing anything different when he assembles a community of believers. Do your best to find the community in the Bible (Old and New Testaments) where the central figure is promising a better group of friends, an easier life, less stress, more ministry opportunities, less offensive sermons, or better programs for the whole family. 

You will not find it. You will not find communities full of self-serving vision and mission statements. You will find communities of sufferers who are following a suffering Savior all throughout the Bible. God is not a genie in a bottle, and the church is not a gumball machine for believers to sooth their appetites. 

God is far more concerned with creating communities that are built around generations of fellow sufferers who have suffered well and continue to walk in faithful holiness while trusting God to redeem them. Suffering is not just about you. I am convinced that we do not have a good theology of the blessedness of suffering in our lives and in our families. Suffering is one of the main tools of God’s work in sanctification (not to mention discipleship) and he has been using that tool for generation after generation after generation. This principle is not immediately visible in our next portion of the text, but trust me, it is there!

#2: DAVID WENT… TO THE KING OF MOAB (VV. 3 – 4)

In verses 3 – 4, we read that “David went from there to Mizpeh of Moab. And he said to the king of Moab, ‘Please let my father and my mother stay with you, till I know what God will do for me.’ And he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold.” Again, it is not immediately obvious what is going on here – other than the fact that David is finding safety for his family – but rest assured, God is providing that refuge because of a faithful lineage that God had put in place through suffering many years earlier.

You may be wondering how I got here; wondering how I can propose that God provides shelter for David’s family through a lineage (a family tree) of suffering. The answer can be found in doing a study of the significance of the Moabite King who sheltered David’s family. What does this Moabite King have to do with a lineage of suffering in David’s family tree?

One commentator helped me to see the significance of this Moabite King when he said that while “Moab might have been Saul’s enemies… David had family connections there”because “his great grandmother was Ruth, the Moabite (Ruth 4:13, 18 – 22)” and that “Ruth’s faithfulness” was now bearing fruit “more than a century later” as David got his family “out of harm’s way until the shape of the future became clear”.4

If you are unfamiliar with the story of Ruth, it is important to understand that her story is set during the time of the Judges where everyone did whatever they wanted to do to satisfy whatever sinful desire their bellies came up with. It was a tumultuous time. Reminds me of the modern church!

But the story of Ruth – when you read it – feels like a soft romance story until you realize that Ruth’s husband suddenly dies leaving her to become the maid servant of her mother-in-law, who not only lost her son but also lost another son as well as her own husband. It is a tragic story with a redemptive end. Ruth’s husband was an Israelite, but Ruth was a Moabite; Moabites were seen by the Israelites as filthy outcasts; so, Ruth is the filthy outcast whose Israelite husband has just died, and she decides to become her mother in law’s maid servant.5

This is a kind of suffering that most of us are unfamiliar with. But as the story goes, God provides a new husband for Ruth – known as Boaz the Redeemer – and the two of them produce Jesse who later produces David, and we should remember that Jesus comes out of David’s family tree many years later as well.6 Can you see how God has utilized suffering as his agent to bring about the redemption of the world? 

God literally provides physical shelter through a faithful connection in David’s family tree just as he provides spiritual refuge for all sufferers who come to Jesus. God never promised to remove suffering from our lives. On the contrary, suffering is one of his main tools for shaping and molding us into the image of his Suffering Son.

It is this one principle that has kept me pastoring this church, parenting my children, loving my wife, and laboring to give my life away to people who oftentimes turn out to be users and abusers.

Trust me, I do none of this perfectly and sometimes I want to bail out of some of these roles. But I believe that God will do more through a person who learns how to stick and to stay and to endure the suffering of this life (albeit imperfectly) than he will ever do through people who jump from one new thing to the next when suffering comes knocking on their door.

I have always held onto a statement from another pastor who said, “When suffering comes knocking on the doorway of my soul, I open the door and I say, ‘welcome my slave, come and do what you were designed to do.’” This is such a powerful reminder of the necessity of suffering in a world where we are conditioned to run from suffering, to search for happiness, and to find comfort at the cost of sacrificing our calling to suffer well like our suffering Savior.

Now, do not hear me wrong, I do not seek out suffering but it seems as though, just when I think a heavy season of suffering is over, just when I think there might be blue skies ahead, just when I think that the waves and the wind have died down, it seems like God leads me back into more suffering. This is pretty much what God does with David in the last verse of our text.

#3: DAVID… WENT INTO THE FOREST OF HERETH (V. 5)

In verse 5 we read that, “the prophet Gad said to David, ‘Do not remain in the stronghold; depart, and go into the land of Judah.’ So, David departed and went into the forest of Hereth.” Once again, the principle, of God leading David into further suffering, may not be immediately obvious. But that is exactly what God is doing here.

One commentator clarifies this when he says, that it seems like the prophet may be trying to help David remain safe, but the reality is that “God was fulfilling his purpose for David, and for whatever reason that involved David’s returning now to the land of Judah, the land he would one day rule” but going to Judah was not the safest thing to do because “it would have been safer to go east, into the land of Moab” since “In Judah David would encounter Saul’s power again” and in Judah David “would suffer” even more as the story unfolds.7

Refuge and rescue in this life do not necessarily mean escaping from suffering. In fact, the more I read the Bible, the more I am convinced that God’s primary tool of discipleship and transformation is the tool of suffering. God seems more concerned about empowering his people to endure suffering in the character of Christ rather than relieving suffering so that we can cuddle up with the idol of comfort. The greatest comfort a believer can hold onto is the character of Jesus, our suffering Savior.

CONCLUSION…

In conclusion, James tells us to “count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2 – 4). When James says this, he is simply kicking the stool out from underneath our hot pursuit of momentary comfort; he is summarizing the Bible’s teaching on the topic of suffering.

A community of sufferers is far better than a family of pretenders. A lineage of sufferers is far better than a tree full of faithless comfort hogs. A life of suffering is far better than a life of ease. How can I say these things? I say these things because I see a suffering Savior who did not call his followers to build the church for comfort seekers, program builders, or self-help Ted-Talks.

My suffering Savior came into this world as the King of the universe who would ascend to his throne through the suffering of the cross as he calls his followers to suffer with their crosses over their shoulders. 

Being the church today is all about being in a community of sufferers who follow their suffering Savior into more suffering as they become more and more like the Savior they claim to know; that Savior who gave his life in a horrendous fashion at the cross of Calvary to gain nothing more than the salvation of the elect.

When I read that all who were distressed, in debt, and bitter in soul, gathered around David to suffer with him, to build a lineage of sufferers that would last for generations to come, and to follow him into more suffering, it gives my heart courage to stay the course no matter how bad things look in the near future. God is on his throne and Jesus is seated right next to him because he left that tomb empty on the third day. 

One day in the not-to-far-distant-future, King Jesus will return in glory on a war horse with his clothes drenched in the blood of all who have suffered for his name, and he will vanquish Satan, Sin, and Death once and for all. On that day we will be clothed once and for all in the righteous white robes of Christ’s perfection and we will go home to be with him forever in a place where suffering has prepared us for. Until that day, suffer well my friends! – Amen!

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 John, Woodhouse, 1 Samuel: Looking for a Leader, Preaching the Word Commentary, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2008), 425.

3 Ibid., 425 – 431 (this is my summary of this commentator’s chapter on this passage).

4 Ibid., 429.

5 Victor, P., Hamilton, Handbook on the Historical Books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2001), 190 – 204.

6 Ibid.

7 John, Woodhouse, 1 Samuel: Looking for a Leader, Preaching the Word Commentary, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2008), 430.