Wilderness: A Survival Guide

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1 Wilderness: A Survival Guide Sermon Series: David: A Leader Elected by God Sunday, September 26, 2004 Dr. Victor D. Pentz Senior Pastor Scripture Lesson: I Samuel It s been said that in the average congregation, one-third of the people are in a crisis, one-third of the people are coming out of a crisis, and one-third of the people are about to go into a crisis. That just about covers all of us, doesn t it? No sooner do we get our financial house in order, than our youngster comes home from the dentist needing braces to the tune of a small fortune. We get our marriage back on track, but then we lose our job, the dog gets run over, our best friend gets teed off at us, or while taking a shower we find a suspicious lump under our arm. Crises are the stuff of which life is made. The Bible has a synonym for our word crisis. The word is wilderness. You can use those two words almost interchangeably. Wilderness is a place of profound helplessness. In the wilderness we are stripped of all comfort. In the Bible, no one ever goes into the wilderness and comes out unchanged. The wilderness was a low point in David s life. You ll see a piece of paper in the bulletin this morning that tracks the highs and lows of David s life. If you open it, you ll see what looks like a very erratic stock market report. The point in David s life we are looking at this morning is where we see the first downward spike. This is a time when people weren t putting much stock in David. For all he knew his freefall would continue right off the page and end in his death. These were David s wilderness years. The core of the word wilderness is the word wild. Dangerously unpredictable things happen in the wilderness. A blizzard claims the lives of eight climbers on the south face of Mt. Everest. Latino migrants die of dehydration in the vast expanse of the Arizona desert as they try to cross into the United States. Awful things happen in the wilderness. Yet, the wilderness is not just geographical. There are emotional and circumstantial wildernesses, too. There is a downsizing coming at the company. Someone in your family is ill. There s an estrangement from someone you ve been close to. Suddenly, life is wild, out of control, and you re fighting to survive. 1

2 In a very real sense, we are a congregation of wilderness wanderers this morning after the loss this week of our beloved Bill Maness, Director of Recreation Ministry. He was a titanic force for good in this church and in this community for over 28 years. I have to confess my first reaction when I heard of Bill s death on Wednesday was anger. I felt utter rage at God as I asked, What are you thinking, Lord? This has to be the crummiest personnel decision you have ever made. Peachtree needs this man now more than ever. This world needs Bill Maness. David said things like that to God all the time. David was not a stiff upper lip sort of person who bottled up his feelings. David let God have it with both barrels. He gave God an earful. If you let your Bible fall open to the middle, you ll find David s greatest legacy to us, the book of Psalms. Seventy percent of the chapters in Psalms are of lament. We learn from David that honesty with God is not something we should fear, but that it leads to a deep and authentic relationship with our heavenly Father. This morning let s look at the root experience behind those Psalms of lament: the pain and alienation of David s wilderness years. We begin with what appears to be another of God s crummy personnel decisions. Young David has just killed the giant Goliath. You might call this twenty year old with phenomenal talent the Michael Vick of Israel. Women make up songs about him, and crowds pour into the streets to welcome him home. This young man shows no fear when it comes to trusting God. So what does God do with this twenty year old? God sends him into the wilderness, which makes no sense to us. If it had been up to me, I would send David to West Point where he d be surrounded by generals and mentored by the best minds in the land. The last place I d send him would be the wilderness where he could be attacked by animals and die at any moment. According to Sandy Mason in a sermon on this theme, the wilderness adventure turns out to be God s curriculum for building people. God says, Abraham, I am going to make of you a great nation. Go outside and count the stars to see how many children you re going to have. Abraham says, Well, Lord, you d better hurry up. My wife and I are on in years, and we still haven t heard the pitter patter of little feet. What does God do? He sends Sarah and Abraham out to wander and wait in the wilderness. God says, Moses, I m calling you to be the deliverer of my people from bondage in Egypt. Moses says, Terrific, Lord. I m poised. I have the perfect pedigree since I grew up in Pharaoh s palace. God says, Oh, one more thing. First, I m sending you into the wilderness of Midian where you ll wander so long that you won t even remember this conversation. God says, Jesus, you re thirty. It s time for you to go and get baptized by your cousin John. So we have a wonderful baptism scene which we reenacted in our baptisms this morning. The Spirit descends in the form of a dove, and the voice of the Father thunders, This is my beloved son. John thinks, This is it. Bring in the kingdom. But instead we read, The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. If you are watching this service on television, this may seem very strange to you. You don t hear a lot about wilderness on television. Instead sermons address the prosperity of the gospel and how God will lift you above all difficulties. And to be sure, there are scriptures like Psalm 84 that says God s people go from strength to strength. Romans 1:17 says we go from faith to faith. Paul writes in II Corinthians 3:18, But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory. If we go from strength to 2

3 strength, from faith to faith, and from glory to glory, where s the wilderness in all that? It s very subtle. It s in the little word to. We go from strength to strength after traveling though a time of weakness. We go from faith to doubt to greater faith, and from glory to humiliation to greater glory. Just the way Jesus did going from the cross to the resurrection. It s the same way David lived his life. From strength to strength, from faith to faith, and from glory to glory, is how God leads us and grows us. If you re struggling right now, don t worry. You re just in the middle of a long to. (Joseph Garlington) I d like us to look at three wilderness scenes in David s life. They begin in I Samuel 20:41. We begin when David realizes he s got to run. The plot has thickened, and Saul is out to get him. David s headed for the wilderness to escape. We read now the wrenching scene of David secretly saying goodbye to his friend Jonathan for the last time. 41 After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together but David wept the most. [Isn t that poignant? They wept together, but David wept the most knowing the hardships he was about to endure.] Jonathan said to David, Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the LORD, saying, The LORD is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever. Then David left, and Jonathan went back to the town. Several years ago, I spent a week sleeping on the ground in the wilderness where David spent all those years wandering. I was with a group of other pastors in Israel, and we hired Bedouin guides to take us out into the wilderness. In the morning, we d wake up after spending the night on the sand, and our Bedouin guides would have coffee brewing. You thought Starbucks was strong. This stuff looked like it had been drained out of a crank case. One sip was a religious experience. David was fighting for his life for twenty years in the wilderness. My only battle was one night with a camel tick in my sleeping bag. So long Victor of Arabia, that was all I could take. Back to our story, Jonathan goes home to the palace, while David slinks into the wilderness. We might imagine David beginning to blame himself as he wanders. God must be punishing me. This must be my fault. Why would the King, anointed by God, be trying to kill me if it weren t something I did? It is often said that one of the nastiest scars from child abuse is the blame the victim has for himself. It had to be something I said or something I did. It may take years of therapy to remove the false notion of fault that the individual carries against himself. This is a very credible interpretation of how David feels because of what he does next. Continue reading at verse one of I Samuel David went to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech trembled when he met him, [After all, this was David, the celebrity warrior! David, would you mind autographing this parchment for my son?] Then Ahimelech asked, Why are you alone? Why is no one with you? [Where are your people?] 2 David answered Ahimelech the priest, The king charged me with a certain matter and said to me, No one is to know anything about your mission and your instructions. In other words, David lies through his teeth. He says, Ahimelech, if you must know, I m on this very important secret mission from the king. If I told you, I d have to kill you, if you know what I mean. You ll have to trust me on this. I am looking for some food for me and my men who are back over the hill out there. Of course there are no men. David is all alone. But he s doing everything he can to keep up a good front. Isn t that exactly what we 3

4 do in the wilderness? We come to church and say, Hey, how s it going? Fine. Never been better. A former member of our church was laid off from a management position at a major company. During that time of prolonged unemployment her accounts dwindled, and she finally exhausted all of her resources. She could no longer pay her bills. She came to the point where the utility companies turned off her utilities. In the mornings, she d come down to the church under the guise that she was using our recreation facilities, but really it was to get a hot shower and to have electricity to dry her hair. Here s the punch line. She only told me this a year after she was back on her feet. While she was enduring this trial, she walked around the church saying, How s it going? Fine, just fine. Oh, the lengths we ll go to hide our wildernesses from each other. If right now you could take an x- ray of the inner struggles of every person here in this room, it would probably bring you to tears. Ahimelech says, It s the mighty David! David says, You just keep thinking that way, Ahimelech. You ll never see me sweat. David, who could be so honest before God, would not show weakness even to a pastor, the priest Ahimelech. If you must know I m on a secret mission. If I m riding the bus, it s because my Mercedes is in the shop. I m fine, just fine. As low as David is he still has not yet hit bottom. David leaves Ahimelech and we continue reading at verse 11 of chapter 21. David crosses over into Philistine territory thinking he ll be safe there. He goes to the court of Achish, King of Gath, but the servants recognize him. 11 But the servants of Achish said to him, Isn t this David, the king of the land? Isn t he the one they sing about in their dances: Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands? 12 David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath. 13 So he pretended to be insane in their presence; and while he was in their hands he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard. 14 Achish said to his servants, Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? 15 Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house? How far can a man fall? After drooling in his beard in a foreign land, David goes out and literally crawls in a hole. Who are the people David attracts out in the wilderness? Continue down to verse 2 of chapter 22 for the answer: 2 All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him. What a fun group: all those in distress, debt, or discontent. Sounds like an old Western movie, doesn t it? All these misfits and malcontents with their scars and tattoos head out into the wilderness to be with David. One of the great gifts of the wilderness is the friends you make along the way. Friends you make who are often very unlike yourself. You look around the AA meeting, and there are friends you now love whom you never would have made if your life had stayed on track. You have friends you bonded with in the family waiting room outside the ICU that night you both kept vigil for a loved one. God gives us special friendships in the wilderness. Our fair haired young hero is now surrounded by hoodlums and ruffians. He becomes their Robin Hood living in the cave of Adullam. I was talking to a man who was experiencing a devastating financial setback. He looked at me with a sly smile and said, Vic, I m about to find out who my real friends are. Usually the friends who ride out to meet us in the wilderness are those who have been out in their own wilderness before. They know how important friends are in the wilderness. Of course, the danger in the wilderness is that we ll hook up with the wrong friends. Make sure they are friends 4

5 who will build you up and not tear you down. Because we are so vulnerable to the people around us when we re in the wilderness, it is far better to go it alone with just you and God than to surround yourself with the wrong people. Some of you know exactly what I mean. The greatest joy in the wilderness is that God walks beside us. The greatest blessing of the wilderness experience is the closeness we have with God. There s a word that appears again and again in David s writings while he s in the wilderness. The word is refuge. Lord, you are my refuge and my strength a very present help in time of trouble. In you, Lord, I have taken refuge. I find refuge in the shadow of your wings. The word refuge appears 37 times in the Psalms. Eugene Peterson says a refuge is a good experience we arrive at by way of a bad experience. You and I do not start out our life with God. We discover God when we run to him and find in him our refuge. Be careful. The world dangles before us an endless buffet of refuge options in the form of illicit sex, materialism, power, pills, and all the rest. But those will manipulate and exploit you and in the end will own you and enslave you. Only God will free you and delight over you. Only God will surround you with true friends who love you in church. Why does God send people to the wilderness? Because in the wilderness, when we are stripped of all else, we turn to him. It s out there that we learn faith in God. God loves to rescue his children and become our refuge. If you need rescuing ten thousand times God will be there, and be there, and be there. At the age of twenty three, I was the first child to leave home in Riverside, California. I d married and been away a year attending seminary on the East coast. It was summer now and I was headed home to California to do summer beach ministry in San Diego. Mom and Dad were elated. Their eldest son was driving cross-country to spend three summer months at home with his new bride. Becky and I had traveled 2700 miles of the 3000 mile journey. One night we were passing through a tiny town in Nevada. I ll never forget it s name - Oasis, Nevada. The town was so small that the entering and leaving signs hang on the opposite sides of the same post. Fifteen miles outside of Elko, we were in the wilderness. All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, my 1963 Plymouth Valiant engine blew up. There we were stranded at a gas station in the desert. No motels. No food except for one coin operated machine where you put in a couple quarters and a Frito bag drops out. I knew all I had to do was place one phone call to one person. You know who - my dad. So I called him, and it was like calling in a massive military response. He threw every tool he owned in his trunk and borrowed a tow bar complete with running lights, somehow in the middle of the night. Mom had made sandwiches, and the two of them drove 250 miles into the Nevada desert drinking coffee all the way to stay awake. I actually think it was the most fun they ever had. That s what God s love is like. God rushes to us in our wilderness. He loves to rescue his children. Call home. PRAYER: Father God, we call you from our wilderness this morning. Some of us are in the midst of great adversity, while others of us are facing a dead end at work. Some of us have been so used to winning, like David over Goliath, and now for the first time we re losing, and we can t handle it. It s awful out here in this wilderness. In these moments we run to you for refuge. We may keep up a good front for Ahimelech and other people, but down deep we know things aren t fine. Lord, rather than resenting our wilderness, we accept our wilderness as a place where you desire to make us 5

6 strong and to build our faith. Lead us down the path to your glory. Amen. Bibliography: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984. Zondervan: Grand Rapids Peterson, Eugene, Leap Over a Wall: Earth Spirituality for Everyday Christians, 1998, Harper: San Francisco 6