Chapter 25
Section 25 of David and His Friends. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. David and His Friends. A Series of Revival Sermons by Lewis Albert Banks.
The sinner's empty boast. Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? The goodness of God endureth continually. Psalm 52, verse 1 Behind this psalm is the story that inspired it.
On the day when David fled from Saul to save his life, he stopped at the house of Ahimelech, the priest, to get food and weapons. David was worn and weary, and without telling the priest his business or his danger, he besought of him help. Ahimelech was a noble and generous man, and not only gave David five loaves of showbread from the house of God, but on David's inquiry about weapons reminded him
that there was kept there in the museum of relics, for this house of the Lord presided over by Ahimelech was a kind of rude Westminster Abbey for the land of Israel, the sword which David himself had taken from Goliath of Gath when he had slain that giant. I can imagine the way David's face lighted up as he responded, There is none like that. Give it me. Surely nobody had so good a right to that sword as David. And the priest could not righteously be blamed from any standpoint
for thus giving help to David, as he had no knowledge that there was any difference between him and Saul. The matter would never have come to notice, and probably have never been recorded, if it had not been that there was a certain man there that day named doeg an edomite who overheard the conversation and saw the gift of the bread and the sword david saw doeg there and was at once alarmed for he seemed to have known the fellow that he was a man who had more pleasure in doing evil than in doing good and that it would be just like him to go to saul with the story of his presence at the house of the priest not long after when saul heard that david was gathering his friends about him and preparing to resist arrest
He gathered his officers together and made them a speech in which he wanted to know if they had all conspired against him. It was a very shrewd sort of speech. He appealed to their self-love and their greed. He pointed out that David was poor and had no power to reward them.
He said, Will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards and make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds? And so he appeals to their love of spoil and then demands that they shall tell him what they know about this league against him. This was Doeg's chance, and he at once told Saul about the visit of David to the house of Ahimelech. and how the priest had prayed for David and given him food and the sword of Goliath.
Saul was filled with anger against the priest, and sent to the town of Nob, where he lived, and had not only Ahimelech, but all the other priests brought before him. On being questioned by Saul, Ahimelech with perfect frankness, for he had done nothing that any good man would want to cover up, told all he knew concerning
David's visit, of his ignorance of any trouble between Saul and David, and that he had done simply what he had considered his duty. But the old proverb is very true, that whom the gods destroy they first make mad. And Saul, believing that the priests were on the side of David, and against him, determined to at once crush their power by killing them.
So he gave orders to his guards to attack and destroy the priests. But to the honor of these officers and soldiers, they refused to stain their hands with the blood of the Lord's priests. In his wicked rage, Saul turned to Doeg, who had given him the information, and said, Turn thou and fall upon the priests.
And Doeg, who was a wicked, bloody man at his heart, saw what he thought was a great opportunity to gain the goodwill of the king. and so he killed that day 85 priests and went to Nob, the city of the priests, and put to death men and women and little children at the edge of the sword. One of the sons of Ahimelech escaped, a young man by the name of Abiathar.
This young man fled to David and told the horrible story of butchery. and David was greatly grieved that he should have been the cause unintentionally of bringing about this great sorrow and treated Abiathar with kindness. He says, I knew it that day when Doeg the Edomite was there that he would surely tell Saul, I have occasioned the death of all the persons of thy father's house.
Abide thou with me, fear not. For he that seeketh my life, seeketh thy life. But with me, thou shalt be in safeguard. Now these were the occurrences that occasioned this brief psalm. I think it will certainly be profitable for us if, with the story fresh in our minds,
we recall David's poem as a whole. Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? The mercy of God endureth continually. Thy tongue deviseth very wickedness, like a sharp razor working deceitfully.
Thou lovest evil more than good, and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue. God shall likewise destroy thee forever. He shall take thee up and pluck thee out of thy tent
and root thee out of the land of the living. The righteous also shall see it and fear and shall laugh at him saying Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength but trusted in the abundance of his riches
and strengthened himself in his wickedness. And then David, with prophetic vision, sees that the same God who will pull down this wicked man and will make even the friendship of a king of no avail to him, will, on the other hand, reward righteousness. And the young poet prince, though he is hunted like a wolf and is hiding away in caves from his enemies, suddenly is exalted in his heart
and by the eye of faith sees the day when God shall bring him out of all his troubles. And he determines to be loyal to God under all circumstances. And so this psalm,
which he opened in a burst of righteous indignation against Doeg and continued into a prophecy of his destruction. He concludes in a sublime outpouring of confidence in God and in the divine goodness to those who trust in him.
He says, But as for me, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever. I will give thee thanks forever, because thou hast done it. And I will wait on thy name, for it is good in the presence of thy saints.
The real message of our text, with all the light of the story thrown upon it, is only a picturesque putting of the same message which Paul gives us in his letter to the Galatians, when he says, Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.
But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well-doing. for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. Sometimes there is such a long time intervening between the sowing of the seed and the reaping of the harvest that men imagine that God has forgotten
and that they have successfully defied his law of cause and effect and will not be called upon to suffer for it. But in the end, the harvest must be reaped. Joseph's brethren, moved by their envy and jealousy, sold him away into Egypt, and twenty years passed before they reaped the harvest of their sin.
Then they went down into Egypt, and when ruin stared them in the face, they turned to one another with remorse and said, We are guilty of the blood of our brother. Don't think because you sinned against God five years ago, or ten, or fifteen, or twenty years ago,
and your sins have never been detected, that therefore God's laws have failed. God is in no hurry, and there is time enough. But his word will never fail. But someone says, if God forgives my sins,
then does not that do away with the teaching of the Bible that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap? How do I reap what I sow if God forgives me? That is occurring all the time. I know two men who were little twin brothers together,
and once, when they were boys, they had a quarrel, and one rose up and struck the other in anger. He hit him over the head, and forever after, That brother, who had been so bright and beautiful, became simple-minded and almost an idiot. The blow which blighted one life completely for this world laid also a burden on the other
that has been yielding its harvest for fifty years. The young fellow who struck that blow has been reaping that harvest every day since. he has made his brother his special care he has supported and cared for him all his life but none can tell the agony he has endured
that he should have taken from his brother by his own act all the joy and beauty of living he became an earnest Christian God forgave his sin
and he has the deep peace of knowing that he is forgiven, but the harvest that he sowed he has had to reap. When Jerry McCauley was dying in New York, where he had led so many hundreds of men to Christ, dying a comparatively young man, he said that he was reaping in his early death the harvest of the sins of his youth. God had forgiven his sins and had given him wonderful blessing in making him a sole winner
of marvelous power. But he had to reap in the disease of his body and in his early death the result of the seeds he had sown. Rest assured, a man cannot mock God. No man or woman could be guilty of greater folly than to go on sinning against the Lord, presuming on God's patience and forbearance, thinking that sometime forgiveness will annul the penalty of the misdeeds. Do not, I beg you, thus treat him with contempt. A young man once stood up in one of Mr. Moody's
meetings and said, If you have friends praying for you, if you have mothers praying for you, treat them kindly, for you will not always have them with you. Then he went on to tell how he had once had a father and mother who had loved him dearly and who prayed continually for him. He was an oldenade child. His father died, and after the burial his mother became more anxious for his salvation. Sometimes she would come to him and put her arms around his neck and say
with kindness, oh my boy, I would be so happy if you would only be a Christian and could pray with me. He would push her away. No mother, I'm not going to become a Christian yet. I'm going to wait a little longer and see the world. He would try to banish the subject from his mind altogether. Sometimes he would wake up at the midnight hour and would hear the voice of that mother raised in supplication for her boy.
Oh God, save my boy. Have mercy upon him. At last, this is the way he put it, it got too hot for him. He saw that he had either to become a Christian or run away. and away he ran and became a prodigal and a wanderer. He heard from his mother indirectly.
He could not let her know where he was because he knew she would go to the end of the world to find him. One day he got word that she was very sick. He began to think, suppose mother should die. I could never forgive myself.
And he said, I will go home. But then he thought, well, if I go home, she'll be praying at me again, and I can't stay under her roof and listen to her prayers. And his proud, stubborn heart would not let him go. Months went on, and again he heard indirectly that his mother was very sick. His conscience began to trouble him.
He knew he could never forgive himself if he did not go home. and he finally started. He arrived at the little town at night. The moon was shining and he could see the village. His mother's home was about a mile from where he landed and on his way he had to pass the village grocery and as he went along he thought he would pass through the graveyard and see his father's grave. What, he thought, if my mother has been laid there. When he got up to
the grave. He saw by the light of the moon a new made grave. He felt the turf, and the earth was fresh and soft. He knew who had been laid there, and for the first time in his life, the thought flashed upon him, who will pray now for my lost soul? My mother and father lie there, and they are the only ones who ever prayed for me. Young men, said he, I spent that night at my mother's grave
and before the sun rose my mother's God had become my God but I can never forgive myself for murdering my mother although Christ has forgiven me. Surely he had to reap what he had sowed. Do not, I beg you, be putting thorns in your pillow
for all the years to come. Determine here and now that not another sin, not a single other night's neglect of God shall be added to furnish its sting of sorrow and remorse.
Come to Christ now and accept salvation. End of section 25 Read by Carrie Adams Your book voice
Mesa, Arizona August 22, 2021
