Thank you for joining us for the fourth week of our summer message series, “David for King.” David is an incredibly important figure in the story of salvation history, and salvation history is just the story of God preparing to send his Son into the world so he can put the world back into right relationship with him. David's story is so important because God spent so much time, the Scripture spends so much time on his life story. There are so many awesome stories that we are skipping over, simply because we just don't have time to go into them. So I really would encourage you to read about David's life, and again, you can find it in Samuel 1, Samuel 2, as well as the first book of Chronicles.

Last weekend, I told you of how David and his men, after inquiring of the Lord, fought the Philistines who were attacking a nearby village. While it was a great victory for David, it also allowed King Saul to find out where he was, and now he is coming for David.

Picking up from last weekend, David and his 600 men fled to the caves of En Gedi, in southern Israel, while King Saul pursues them with an army of 3000 men. Not only is David outnumbered, but he is also out-gunned. His men are rather a ragtag band, where as King Saul has professional soldiers.

When Saul and the army arrive at En Gedi, they start looking for David and his men. Now there are a lot of caves there, so it is going to take some time. Scripture tells us that as Saul and the army are looking for David, “Saul went in to (one of the caves) to relieve himself. Now David and his men were sitting in the inner recesses of the cave.” Just imagine this situation; David and his men are hiding in the very back of what must be a huge cave, when King Saul comes in to take a poop. Naturally the army gave the King his privacy, so Saul is in the cave by himself; David and his men can see him, but Saul cannot see them. Basically David’s men tell him to sneak up and kill Saul as he is alone and, shall we say, indispose. He could chop off Saul’s head, like he did Goliath’s, take it outside to show the army, and they would probably accept him as the new king.

So here's David, he's been promised that he's going to be king. He's tired and he's worn out, and here is a very easy solution to his problem. In fact it is too easy of a solution, and there are some problems with it. First, what kind of story would that make when the kids and grandkids asks David how he became king, “well, old King Saul was going the bathroom when I snuck in and killed him.” I guess he could make up a more glamorous story, but every time he told it he would know that he was lying. David, the man after God’s own heart, knew that he was going to become king – God had promised it, and He is a Father who keeps His promises. The question is not “if” David will become king, but rather when and how. If there is something God wants for your life and wills for your life, and it's something you desire too and you're willing to work with God, nothing can stop it.

The second problem is pretty obvious, murder is wrong. Sure, as a soldier, David had killed before, but that was in self-defense. This would be cold blooded murder. The wrong thing done for the right reason, it's still wrong.

So what does David do? Again, from the Bible, “Then David arose and stealthily cut off the skirt of Saul's robe. And afterward David's heart struck him because he had cut off Saul's robe.” David never intended to harm Saul, just to show him that he could have, so why did David feel guilty? Because David had a well-formed conscience with a moral margin. David wasn't trying to just not break God's law. He lived way back from them. He live with a boundary. David knew that God's law taught respect for authority, so even violating them in any way, like not killing Saul, but even cutting a little bit of his robe struck him with guilt.

We tend to live quite differently. We have a tendency to want to try to live right up against the law, right? There is the line, I want to get right up to the line. But David didn't approach the law in that way. Instead, he loved it and he loved it enough to respect it by creating margin, moral margin in his life. David said, "God put Saul in charge, and God's got to take him out. I'm trusting God that he's going to do with Saul whatever he wants to do with him. I'm not going to harm his anointed.”

Last week we talked about inquiring of the Lord, asking God for His wisdom and counsel. But there are some things you don't need to ask God what his counsel is, because he's already given it to you. It's already in his word, it's already in the scriptures. 

Next verse tells us, "Afterward David also rose, and went out of the cave, and called after Saul, 'My lord the king.' And when Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the earth, and did obeisance." David continued, “See my father, see this skirt of your robe in my hand, for by the fact that I cut off your robe and did not kill you, you may know and see there is no wrong or treason in my hands. I have not sinned against you, though you may haunt my life to take it.” "So then Saul said to the David, 'You are more righteous than I, for you have repaid me good, whereas I've repaid you evil'." Then he and the army go back to Jerusalem. Sadly, Saul would become jealous of David again and try to kill him again. David flees for a second time, and again he has an opportunity to kill Saul, this time while he is sleeping, but he does not do it. The point is not that David's life gets easier because he did the right thing. But David was able to live with himself because he did what was right.

We are trying to learn from David's story about how to be like him, how to be men and women after God's heart. So, what can we learn from this story? I want to offer two brief applications. First, we need to be like David in our approach to God's word, God's law, and to have well-formed consciences and then create moral margin. He didn't approach God's Word and God's laws as trying to keep something from him but because they were for him, because God wasn't trying to keep something from him, but because God was for him. We have the Bible and we have a catechism to help inform our consciences and know that they're there to help us live better lives. As we develop a well informed consciousness, we also create moral margin, that we don't try to see what can I get away with because that's not how David lived, but we live way back from that line.

A couple of examples of this; God reveals, wait until you're married to have sex, that sex is for the confines of marriage. Well, don't live your life at the lines of, "Well, I'm going to get as close to the line as I can get." No, back way off of that. For those who are married, God clearly teaches, "You shall not commit adultery." We all know that. But we don't live at that line like flirting with people in the office or even putting ourselves in situations where we can emotionally get connected to a member of the opposite sex, no, you back way, way off of that because you want to preserve your marriage.

I don't know what that means for you. But my guess is, there's some area of your life where you would say, "You know what? Yeah, I'm trying to get away with something. I know I don't want to break the law or break God's law, but I'm right up against the line. I need to back off."

The second application is just for some of you right now. But some of you are in a situation where there's something you desire so badly — a relationship, a marriage, a career move, a promotion or something you desire so badly — or there's a problem you're trying to solve. And there is a solution for you that is so easy and you know it's too easy. And something in your conscience says, "You know what? I know it's not right. I know it's wrong." Take wisdom from the life of David and say no to that easy solution that you know is wrong. Because eventually, how you got to what you want or how you escaped that problem, eventually that's going to be a story in your life. And you want to be at the place where you can say, "You know what? I did it in God's will and God's way." That's a story worth telling.