It really was a marriage of inconvenience. Who would want the marriage that David had to deal with? Talk about in-law interference. What a story! And as I was reading this story, I was reflecting on trouble in the life of a believer. How do you make sense out of the trouble that enters your life? It's probably not good to offend you at the beginning of this sermon, but I'll take a chance. If our common conversation were recorded, what would be the theme? Could it be that it would be a whine, a complaint, grumbling?
We Complain About Everything
I mean, think about this, we complain when it's hot; we complain when it's cold; we complain when it's wet; we complain when it's dry; we complain when we don't have enough to eat; we complain when we've had too much to eat. We have straight hair--we complain that we don't have curly hair. If we have curly hair, we wish that we had straight hair. Tall people want to be shorter, short people want to be taller. We talk about good days and bad days. Traffic can draw rage out of you. How are you dealing with your trouble?
How do you make sense out of the things that come into your life that you would not have planned to have in your life? What do you do with God and difficulty? Turn to I Samuel 18; you can turn there in your 'Order of Worship' or on page 241 in your church Bible. It's probably better to turn there since there's more extended passage. We find ourselves in this moment in David's life where there's still this juxtaposition between David and Saul, two men who are going in completely different directions.
Saul has been rejected by God--his life is in a downward path. And David's life has been blessed by God, and he's successful in all he does; the hearts of Israel are with him, celebrating the victories that God is giving him. Saul is angry; he's discouraged, and he's more and more obsessed with what is going on in David's life. Look at verse 12 of chapter 18--"Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul." There it is. Look at verse 16,"But all Israel and Judah loved David, for he went out and came in before him."
That's the context. Well, Saul first promises his daughter Merab to David. And David has a very humble response to that. He says, "Who am I, and what family am I from that I should be a son- in-law to the King?" But just at the point when David is to take this lady as his wife, Saul withdrawals her and gives her to somebody else, messing with the heart of this future King. Saul realizes that Michal, another daughter, loves David, and Saul thinks, "This is my opportunity, this is my opportunity to lay a snare, a trap for David and to finally get rid of him."
And Saul, if you follow in chapter 18, Saul requires a price for Michal. It is the foreskin of one-hundred Philistines. That's a very specific request. He wanted to make sure that these men who were killed were uncircumcised. That's how evil and doubtful Saul was. He thought that maybe David would cheat. And God is giving this man great victory, and he not only kills onehundred, he kills two-hundred. And the result is that David even becomes more of the enemy of Saul. Saul is more obsessed with this man, more desirous to end his life, and end this comparison between the success of David and the defeat of Saul, this success, this comparison that is alive in Israel.
If you look on to chapter 19, it's very sad; finally David has to leave his young bride and flee into exile. What a sad story! What a horrible thing! How evil could it get? Imagine if you could for a moment, you've married somebody that you love. Her father is out to kill you, and before you're marriage has had any time to develop, you have to flee for your life and leave your young bride. The story is almost unthinkable. Now think about this, this is the anointed King of Israel. This is a man who's being blessed by God.
This is a man who is being given great success. How do we make sense out of this story? Why would God allow, why would God bring such trouble into the life of this good man? Why did he have to deal with this? Why would he have to leave his bride? Why would he have his heart played with in this way? Why would a good God bring this thing into the life of this good man? Well, I want to do something a bit different with you this evening. There are times, when to understand the passage of Scripture, you need to work your way through the particular words of the passage in order to draw out their sense.
Bringing the Larger Teaching of Scripture to Bear
But there are other times, where the only way to make sense out of a passage of Scripture is to look at the larger teaching of Scripture and bring it to bear on the account that you're now looking at. And this is one of those passages where we really need to ask questions about what the Scripture has to say about trouble in the life of a believer, in the life of one of God's children. Why would God allow bad things to enter the life of one of His children? Isn't He a God of love? Isn't He God of grace?
Doesn't He promise us blessing--what in the world is going on? Think where you would be if you were David--running for your life, having left your new bride? Or maybe I should ask you, "Think right now how you are presently dealing with your trouble?" Is it a whine? Is it a complaint? Is it grumbling? Or do you greet those things with rest that only biblical faith can bring? Well, I want this evening, very quickly, to give you seven perspectives on times of trouble that are very, very important for you responding in God's way to these moments that enter all of our lives.
As we consider this marriage of inconvenience, here's the first one: In times of trouble, God always welcomes you to run to Him. This is a God who presents Himself as a refuge in times of trouble. This is a God who presents Himself as one who will never turn a deaf ear to the cries of His people. This is a God who says that His grace is most powerful in our moments of weakness. And when you're facing trouble, there's a great temptation to run from God and not to Him. There's a great temptation to bring God into the court of your wisdom, and there's a big temptation to perhaps judge Him as being unfaithful, or unloving, or unwise.
And Scripture says just the opposite, "Come to me; run to me; find rest in me. I am your refuge; I am your help. I weep over the suffering of my people. My ear will never grow deaf to their cry. I say, "Come, come, come, to me." And I would ask you this evening, when you're facing things you didn't want to face, when you are disappointed, and discouraged, and blindsided, and confused, where do you run? Do you run to the television, I'm serious, numbing your brain so you don't think about what you're facing?
Do you run into your own mind, asking a myriad of questions that only leave you further confused? Do you run to complaint, splashing your trouble on anyone who is near, not really asking for help, just complaining about your plot? Where do you run? God welcomes you to run to Him. Second biblical truth: The Bible presents that God is absolutely sovereign over all things. I would like you to turn in your Bibles with me to Daniel 4. This is the confession of Nebuchadnezzar who challenged the sovereignty of God, and paid the price, and had been restored.
Daniel 4:34: At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?' (ESV)
No One Can Stop His Hand
What a powerful passage. God does whatever pleases Him with the host of heaven and the inhabitants of earth, and no one can stop His hand or say to Him, "What have you done?" Now you know, if you're at all honest, you are not in control of your own life. You have not been successful in writing your own story. And the more you look at it, the more you examine it, the more you critique it, the fewer things you'll actually believe are under your control. But we don't live in a world that's out of control; we don't live in a world of luck, or fate, or chance.
We live in a world that's under the careful control of the Lord Almighty. Everything that exists, everything that happens is under His careful, sovereign plan. It's the inescapable truth of the Word of God. God rules all that is. Back to our principles, third one: God has a zeal for His own glory. Whenever you ask the question, "Why does God do what He does?" the most obvious biblical answer is, "...for His own glory!" You will never understand the plan of God. You will never understand your own life.
You will never understand your identity as a creature unless you understand you were never created to be in the center of the universe. God sits in the center of the universe. God sits there unchallenged. It's the place for Him and for Him alone. Life is not for your glory. Life is for His glory. I was given breath; I was given life; I was given mentality; I was given gifts and graces; I was given relationships; I was given a certain situation and location; I had a story written for me-- all for one purpose--that everything I am, and everything I do, and every situation, every location, would resound to the glory of God.
That's your sole purpose for existence--the glory of God. Again, I want you to turn with me, this time to Isaiah 48. God is explaining in this passage why He's responding to Israel the way He is, and this is one of those passages that God repeats the theme over and over again. Yes, even six times, verse nine: For my name's sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. (ESV) "For my name's sake...for the sake of my praise...for my own sake, for my own sake...for my name that it would not be profaned for my glory." Six times God says it. Now I want you to hear this: God's zeal for His own glory is, in fact, the hope of the universe, because it is in the accomplishment of His glory that the people of God are most richly blessed. Everything God does is done in a zeal for His glory.
Fourth principle: The God who rules all things is the definition of wisdom, goodness, and love. This is a God of magnificent grace. This is a God, whose wisdom cannot properly be characterized by human words, it's so expansive. This is a God, who is good in everything that He does. This is a God of boundless, transforming love. I'm afraid sometimes in our minds we build this contradiction, this opposition between the sovereignty of God, and the love of God. And I would like to take you to a passage that actually brings those two together, look with me at Acts 17.
Paul has been in Athens; he's waiting for a connection there to move on in his missionary journey, and there are philosophers in the Areopagus who are talking about this statue to this unknown God. And Paul wants to proclaim this God who actually can be known to them, verse 24: The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
Determined Periods and Boundaries
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, (Now listen to this.) having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps (in the hope that they may) feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us. (ESV) Now this is a beautiful approach to the sovereignty of God in this passage. It is actually the theology of eminent sovereignty--that God rules His world in such a way that He is intimately involved with the details of our life, the exact period where we would live, the exact length of our lives, the exact place where we would live.
God is Lord over your very address. And then it says that He does this so that perhaps we could reach out and touch Him because He's not far from each one of us. What amazing love! God desires to be near. He rules His world in such a way that in every moment of your difficulty, you are never alone because that moment is inhabited by the God who brought that moment to you. How amazing is that!? You will never enter a situation; you will never enter a location; you will never enter a circumstance first, because He's there, and He is ruling, and His desire, His plan is to be near so that, in your moment of need, you can reach out and touch Him.
This sovereign God is the definition of love, of grace, of goodness, of tenderness, and of kindness. The Bible doesn't present the Lord, the King, as the ultimate, impersonal chess player moving the pieces around from some distance. His sovereignty and His love are not a contradiction; they're intertwined. He's near; He's near; He's near. Why? Because He knows how deep your need of His grace actually is. But we continue, fifth principle: Although the Bible declares the absolute sovereignty of God, the Bible is quick to name evil as evil.
The sovereignty of God does not dispense with morality. A belief in the sovereignty of God doesn't make everything okay. And you really get that in Peter's brilliant sermon in Acts 2; again, I'm going to ask you to turn there as we continue this tour. 'Men of Israel, (This is verse 22 as Peter is preaching.) hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know--this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.' (ESV)
How interesting! Peter doesn't say, "Because Jesus was delivered up by the foreordained plan of God, that the injustice was okay, that the torture was okay, that this evil that was done against the one purely righteous man that ever lived, was okay." It was not okay. It was an act of horrific evil. And the Bible doesn't push us into an either/or; it brings us to a both/and. We must believe that God rules over all things. But we must also believe in His law that lays out for us what is right and what is wrong.
Now this can be confusing, but here it is: God accomplishes His sovereign plan through the true validity of the choices of the secondary agent. God is sovereign, but in case you hadn't realized it, you're not a robot. Some of us do have robotic tendencies, but we're not robots. You didn't feel your hand move toward a shirt or a blouse today that you didn't actually want to wear. If God has sovereignly chosen a different blouse than you had in your mind and you. . .it's not the way it works. And at some level, we can't explain this mix, but we have to hold on to them both.
Sovereignty Through Human Choices
God is absolutely sovereign, but He accomplishes sovereignty through the choices of the people that He is sovereign over. And so, these men were making responsible choices. They chose to participate in the injustice that they meted out against Christ, and that injustice was evil. A belief in the sovereignty of God never makes wrong right. And that balance is critically important. Sixth thing: The Bible very plainly and repeatedly declares that you live in a dramatically broken world. Your relationship with God has not given you, at this moment, a ticket out of the fallen world.
And you and I, like everyone else will be touched by the brokenness of our world; we'll be touched by injustice; we'll be touched by racism, we will be touched by political and economic corruption. Look at the amounts of people over the last several months who have lost billions of dollars as a result of greed and immoral business practices, choices they didn't make-- fallen world. You'll be touched by disease; mechanical things will not work as well as you'd like them to work; you'll be sinned against, and you'll sin against others.
God has chosen, for the purpose of His glory and for the purpose of His plan, to leave us for this moment in this broken world, and all of us, somehow, some way, will be touched by its brokenness. Many of you already have that in your story. Many of you have weeping in your heart because, in some way, that brokenness of the world has altered your life, and in some instances, forever. And again, God would welcome you to bring those cries to Him. There's a day when this 'shalom' that God created, where everything is working as is intended, will be restored.
But now it's like a crystal glass that's been thrown down and broken; shalom is broken, and we all live in its brokenness. Seventh and final principle: Rest is found not in your understanding; rest is found in trusting a Person, and His name is the Lord. Tim Keller, who is the senior pastor at Redeemer Church in New York City, makes a great analysis. He says that we need to understand and trust the sovereignty of God, not because the minute you trust that doctrine everything will make sense to you, but we need to trust the sovereignty of God precisely because life won't make sense to us.
I remember when my children were young and remember one particular talk with one of my sons. He was just a little guy, and he wanted to do something, and I was saying, "No," to him, and he didn't understand why I would say, "No." And he didn't have the capacity to understand why I would say, "No." And he was saying, "Daddy, I want to do it, I want to do it." And I was saying, "No, you must not do that." And I remember finally getting down on my knees, and saying, "Daddy loves you. Everything daddy does, he does because he loves you; daddy cannot explain to you why he must say, 'No!' You're not capable of understanding it.
But look at me; trust daddy; you can go down the hallway and say, 'I have a bad daddy because my daddy won't let me do what I want to do', or you can say, 'My daddy loves me. I don't know why my daddy said, 'No,' to me, but my daddy loves me.'" We will never fully understand the mind of God. Rest is found, not in trying to figure out His will; rest is found in entrusting yourself to Him, in resting in His character, and basking in His love and saying, "I don't understand everything my father brings my way, but I know my Father loves me.
I know He's wise; I know He's good, and I will rest." May God help you to take these perspectives and to find rest in your time of trouble, in those moments where what God brings into your life makes no sense at all. Let's Pray: Thank you, Lord, for the truths of Your Word. Thank you for the fact that they not only help us to understand confusing moments in the history of Your Word, but they help us to understand Your will and work in our own lives. May we use those truths as our means of understanding and rest. In Jesus's name, Amen.
