The Original Robin Hood (1 Samuel 21-22)

David’s story takes a hard left when fear takes the wheel. He’s hungry, hunted, and making split-second choices that don’t look like the fearless giant-slayer we remember. We walk through 1 Samuel 21 to 22 as David lies at Nob, eats the holy bread, and then reaches for the one symbol that should have been unnecessary: Goliath’s sword. That moment becomes a mirror for the way our own “past wins” can turn into a crutch, while present-day trust quietly drains away. 

Then things get even more unsettling. David runs to Gath, enemy headquarters and Goliath’s hometown, gets recognized, and survives by pretending to be insane at the gate. It’s messy and humiliating, yet it also highlights God’s providence in the middle of bad decisions. We talk about what this reveals about anxiety, desperation, and the temptation to grab whatever feels safest when God seems silent. We also press on a crucial spiritual principle: yesterday’s faith is not enough for today, because God calls us to daily dependence, daily prayer, and daily obedience. 

The cave of Adullam shifts the entire tone. Psalm 142 gives us David’s raw words, spoken out loud, as he confesses, complains, and pleads for mercy. From that dark place, God begins rebuilding: reconciliation with family, a surprising community of people in distress and debt, and a renewed posture that defines real faith without pretending to control outcomes: “until I know what God will do for me.” If you’re between a rock and a hard place, this will give you language and direction. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with the line that hit you hardest.

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Transcript

David Under Pressure And On The Run

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Look at this band of brothers. Samuel describes them for us in verse 2: those who were in distress, that word means those who were under pressure. Everyone who was in debt, everyone who was bitter in soul gathered to him, and he became a captain over them. And there were with him about 400, and now all of a sudden that cave's crowded. David, in many ways, is the original Robin Hood. One author suggested the same. He wrote that the Judean wilderness and the mountains and caves and riverbeds would become his Sherwood Forest. I haven't heard many sermons from these two chapters. If we wrote what takes place here into a play in chapter 21 and chapter 22, it is dramatic. We would be able to divide what we're going to read and look at today in three scenes. Let me title them for you. The first one, scene number one, would be called Telling Lies on Nob's Hill. See, David is about to deceive the high priest. He's going to tell four quick lies, one after another, in his desperation to survive. Verse one of chapter 21. Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David trembling and said to him, Why are you alone and no one with you? He smells trouble. David said to Elimelech the priest, The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you and

Lies At Nob And Holy Bread

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with which I have charged you. I have made an appointment with the young men, that is, those with him, for such and such a place. In other words, dear priest, the king has sent me on a secret mission. I can't tell you anything. All of my papers are classified. By the way, I'm hungry. Do you have any food around here? The priest informs David in verse 6 that they've just replaced the bread presented before the Lord with fresh bread, so the priest gives David the old loaves. By the way, the priest didn't act out of order. Jesus will eventually use this scene as an illustration of how human need can take priority over the ceremonies of the Sabbath. Ahimelech, however, is no doubt suspicious. How is it that David is on a secret mission of the king and he didn't pack a lunchbox? How do you do that? And then to add to that suspicion, look, he asks a really strange question of the priest, verse 8. Have you not here a spear or a sword at hand? I've brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me. Well, because the king's business required haste. More lies. Now notice the irony of ironies, verse 9. The sword of Goliath is the answer, the Philistine, whom you struck down in the valley of Elah. Behold, it's here wrapped in a cloth behind the Ephid. If you will take it, then take it, for there's none but that here. Now stop for a moment. You see how far David is falling? There was a day a few years ago when Goliath's sword meant nothing to him. In fact, he charged it with a slingshot. And faith. And before he swung his sling, he shouted to Goliath, You come against me with a sword and a spear and a shield. I come to you in the name of the Lord. But now David is between a rock and a hard place, and he's on the run, and God doesn't seem to be around. Maybe a sword isn't such a bad idea. Notice the blunt demand of David at the end of verse 9: there is none like that sword. Give it to me. Past victories by faith do not automatically guarantee future victories by faith. Faith in the past doesn't mean you'll operate by faith in the future. We're not talking about saving faith. We're talking about demonstrating faith in our Savior. I've lived long enough to see the Lord do marvelous things in and through this church and this ministry. But I've got to tell you, what keeps me up at night is that our victories of faith will be all wrapped up in the past tense. And we'll just sit around and talk about those good old days. Remember those? Those days. No, no, no. I long for these days to be good old days. Right? These days. I mean, what are we attempting for God today? What are we expecting from God today, William Carey put it? Hudson Taylor wrote to his staff of the China Inland Mission on one occasion to prod them on. And he wrote, and I quote, if our mission is to be fruitful and continue amid the perils that must be faced, it can only be as each one of us contributes his daily quota of faith in the living God. Man, that's great. What a great thought. A daily quota of faith that God is alive and we are his servants. It's true not only for an organism like a living church, but it's true for every one of us. Listen, your greatest step of faith is always the next one. Well, I had faith in God, you know, his protection, his provision, his providence. Five years ago, I'll dip into that and reapply it today. No. God wants us praying for daily what? Bread. To trust Him daily. I was thinking about that as a metaphor, and I was thinking, you know, probably one of the greatest deterrence to daily faith in our lives is the invention of the refrigerator. I mean, we're stocked up for a week or more. Then we got stuff in the freezer. Unlike so many believers, I have traveled to see in third world countries where they get water for that day, and then the next day they walk two miles to get water for that day. I've stood in line with a missionary that stretched down a couple of blocks as they waited. We waited to get to the window of the bakery to get one loaf of bread that day. See, we depend on the Lord monthly, not daily. But God isn't satisfied because he wants to conform us into the image of his son and demonstrate faith. And so he has ways of developing faith in us in this culture so that we demonstrate fresh trust in him, so that we do

When Yesterday’s Faith Won’t Carry Today

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not lean on our own understanding, but we acknowledge him in all our ways every day. We give him the priority and trust him to direct our path. Listen, what in the world is David doing with Goliath's sword? The dried blood on that sword was Goliath's. And it only gets worse. Scene one could be called telling lies on Nob's Hill. He runs from there. Scene two could be called acting insane at Gath's gate. You'll see what I mean in verse 10. And David rose and fled. That is, he grabbed the sword, those loaves of bread, and ran. He's running. And he fled that day from Saul and went to Akish, the king of Gath. And the servants of Akish said, Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances? Saul is struck down as thousands, and David is ten thousands. And by the way, that's you know, ten thousand Philistines. That's us. And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of uh of Achish the king of Gath. Verse 13, so he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. This is absolutely bizarre. First of all, David is going to Gath. One author said Gath was the Washington, D.C. of the Philistines. This is the headquarters. David has killed thousands of them in battle. Not to mention their hometown champion. Gath was the hometown of Goliath. Frankly, commentators are all confused. And then frankly, there's a reason for that. We can't figure out what David's thinking process is here. Why in the world would David go to the hometown of Goliath? Why would he go to Gath? Some authors suggested that, well, Saul would never look for David in Gath. Duh! That's a Hebrew word, by the way. Means you're right, he wouldn't. No doubt Saul would never think that David would do something that strange. Some suggest that David thought Akish would love having Saul's prize lieutenant join him. Maybe. Others suggest that since David had grown and matured, now older, by a few years, made rugged by his military expeditions, that they wouldn't recognize him. Well, if that's the case, why would you come into town wearing Goliath's supersized sword if you didn't want to be recognized? You want to ask, is anybody home? We really still don't know why. Nobody can quite figure out the utter stupidity, the reckless naivety swirling around in David's mind. And let me tell you, whatever it was that seemed to make sense as he ran from Knobshill with those loaves of bread and that sword disappeared the minute he was recognized. In fact, they remembered that tune. Verse 13 says he wasn't just recognized, it says he was in their hands, captured. He didn't get past the gate. So his creative instincts kick in by the providence of God, and he begins to act like he doesn't have a brain, out of his mind. He's scratching, he's clawing at the city gates, he's drooling on his beard. Stop for a minute. This is the king elect. This is how far he's gone. He's evidently a good actor. Because Achish says in verse 15, do I lack madmen? Insight into his world. In other words, I've already got enough people like this around me. I don't want one more. Let him go. But why not kill him? Why not kill David? He's responsible for thousands of his own people, soldiers, death. One ancient Jewish tradition alleges that both the wife and daughter of King Akish were mentally insane. He had seen them suffer. He had had enough to deal with already, and perhaps enough pity in this one area to actually let David live. Ultimately was the providence of God. Let's call the third scene hiding away in Adulum's cave. Look at verse 1 of chapter 23. David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adulum. Now stop here for a moment. Let's climb into that dark cave for just a few minutes with David. David's alone. He has just narrowly escaped with his life. He's now run about two miles in sheer panic, terror, to a Canaanite village of Adulum where the hills are honeycombed

Acting Insane In Enemy Territory

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with caves. He finds a large one, a deep one. That's what he's looking for. Where he can go into the recesses and hide himself deep inside the cave, and in there he begins to cry. He's got a lot to cry about. Don't begrudge him that. The early biography of David's life. Mark this. This is where David reaches the bottom of the pit. The bottom. There's a psalm that David begins to write as he huddles there in the cave. I want you to turn there. It's Psalm 142. Hold your finger in 1 Samuel and look over at 142, that song. David just kind of falls apart. He says in verse 1, with my voice I cry out to the Lord. With my voice I plead for mercy. See, he's confessing his sin. That's a great place to begin. He's confessing his faithlessness. I cry with my voice. Notice, not with my heart or with my mind, but my voice. That's to be taken literally. His sobbing and his crying and his wailing is just echoing around the walls of that deep dark cave. Then he says, verse 2, I pour out my complaint before him. I love that. I've confessed my sins, and now I've got a list of complaints and troubles. Two hundred years ago I stumbled across this. One church leader said this. He lay on his deathbed, this great statement. He said, and I quote, isn't it a great blessing to know that there is someone in heaven to whom we can complain? That's good. By the way, this song was a song that John Bunyan would quote. He wrote Pilgrim's Progress while he's languishing in prison. David goes on in verse 4 to say, Look to the right and see there is none who takes notice of me. We would miss this, but the right side in ancient days signifies the place where one's witness or legal counsel would stand. David is effectively saying, I have no legal representative, I have no recourse, I don't have anybody defending me. I have been declared guilty, and most of it isn't true. Back in verse 2, he says, I'm going to tell all my trouble to him. The word for trouble refers to a cramped, narrow, restricted place. We would say it. I'm between a rock and a hard place. I'm squeezed in. I'm in trouble. I've got nowhere left to run. I have, I'm stuck. Verse 5, I cry to you. There's the solution. O Lord. I say, you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. And you can almost write in the margin, aren't you? Attend to my cry, for I am brought very low, God. I'm sure you've noticed. I can't get any lower. I'm at the bottom of the pit. Can you imagine David's despair in this cave? There's no escape. There is nothing left, and there's no one else. All he hears in there are his sobs and his crying echoing back to him. His despair. Bring me out of prison that I may give thanks to your name. In other words, rescue me, and I'll promise I'll never stop telling people how wonderful you are. Give me something good to hold on to. You ever prayed that way? Sure you have. Give me a reason to keep living. I I read recently of a man in England who had an interesting windfall financially. When he was 90 years old, he made

Rock Bottom Prayers From Psalm 142

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the U.S. equivalent of a $100 bet that he would live to be $100. A betting company placed his odds at $250 to 1. I'm not recommending this for your retirement, you know, fund, okay? But on his 100th birthday, he collected $25,000. I don't know how long he lived to spend it, but and I'm not recommending betting, but he was asked by one reporter how he was, how he felt while he was waiting for this day to arrive. He said, I love this, quote, well, I was very careful. I kept to a steady diet of porridge, and I frequently reminded myself to keep breathing. Have you ever been in a place, you know, challenged, pressed, I gotta just keep breathing. Just keep breathing. I love the way David says, the righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me. This is David grasping, this is David stretching, this is David reaching once again in faith and trust in the grace of God. Now we're not sure how long. It could have been a couple of days. It could have been about the time he knew he was going to starve, hidden away, nothing to hunt, nothing to eat. He hears muffled footsteps and and and voices. David, where are you? Where are you? 1 Samuel 22. David would never have imagined this would happen, verse 1. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him. Wow. Now up until this point, they're uninvolved. We have every reason to believe they're uninterested. We know that Eliab is jealous. They've shown little concern. David hasn't seen his father, his mother, his brothers for some time. And now there they are. They'd heard about it. Maybe some shepherd boy was nearby and he heard wailing in this cave. Maybe somebody had seen him slip inside. And anyhow, the word spread, and here they are. All of a sudden, his family. This is his family. What an unbelievable, incredible, encouraging reunion. And the text implies sympathy and unity. In fact, it implies that his brothers join these men. He hugs his mother, his father, evidently, no doubt, his brothers. I mean, even Eliab, bless his heart, has had pity on his little brother finally. So here in this cave, God brings about nothing short of a reconciliation with his family. Then more footsteps. Look at verse 2. And everyone who is in distress, everyone who is in debt, everyone who was bitter and Soul gathered to him and he became a captain over them. And there were with him about 400 men. Now all of a sudden that cave's crowded with people. Imagine this. This is beginning to look like a Robin Hood movie, isn't it? It doesn't sound spiritual, but I think it is. David, in many ways, is the original Robin Hood. One author suggested the same. He wrote that the Judean wilderness, the forest, the mountains and caves and riverbeds would become his Sherwood forest. Look at this band of brothers. Samuel describes them for us in verse 2. Those who were in distress. That word means those who were under pressure, stress. Everyone who was in debt. More than likely, this is a reference, Old Testament scholars believe, to unfair taxation under King Saul. Everyone, third notice, who was bitter in soul, that is, everybody who had given up. Samuel had warned the people, right? Get a king. They're going to tax you? They're going to take your children as servants of the palace. They're going to demand your produce, your best cattle. Go ahead. You see, you need to understand that these men aren't running from some bad credit rating. These men aren't running from some credit card bill. They can't pay off. They're not bitter about bad neighbors who steal their apples. No, these men are more than likely among those who have been singled out by King Saul with demands for money or land or loyalty, and they have reached their own point of desperation. They're finished with a king who was truly a madman. By the way, these four hundred men, soon to be six hundred, become David's mighty men.

A Band Of Brothers And Renewed Trust

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Chronicle later is David's heroic warriors. They're going to become members of his cabinet in his soon-coming kingdom. David's been alone in this cave. Don't miss it here. God's solution, part of it, to bring him out of despair, was to show him the desperate lives of other people, to take his eyes off himself and to focus on someone else that he could embrace and encourage and eventually lead the walk with God. And then if there's one phrase to underscore, maybe even underline in your Bibles that summarizes David's rediscovered trust, it's in verse 3. David, by the way, takes his parents to King, the king of Moab for protection. You remember David has Moabite blood running in his veins. His great-grandmother was whom? Ruth. A converted Moabite. When David gets there, by the way, to the king, he's done with lying and manipulating. He simply says this let my father and my mother stay with you. Now underscore this. Until I know what God will do for me. Wow. Until I know what God will do for me. See, David's back on his feet. His life, his path is once again entrusted in the hand of God. Now what's changed? Well, he's surrounded by other men who are as desperate as him. He was reunited with his brothers and his mother and father, but his parents are gone. He still has no security. He has no long-range plan. He doesn't know what God has in mind for tomorrow. He's still hunted. And he will be for years. He's still haunted by this king. But he's willing to wait for whatever God chooses to do. That is faith.