David 18 | Pastor Allen Nolan Sermon

Well, most of you know we're currently in a series studying the life of David, and we've become, or we've come to a stage in David's life that's known as the fugitive years.

In other words, the years that David was on the run, trying to evade being captured and killed by Saul.

Now, the events that occur during his years as a fugitive are recorded in the book of 1 Samuel, chapters 20 to chapters 31.

In chapters 31, Saul and his son Jonathan die.

And at that point, David doesn't have to keep running.

In fact, he's going to become the king of Judah.

And when he becomes the king of two of the tribes, he rules over them for about seven years, and then he becomes the king over all of Israel.

But his fugitives last, years last, all the way until Saul's death.

Now, I've recorded all of the events that occurred during that time, and I've listed those events on a slide, and I've placed it on the back wall where you can see them.

As I said, we don't have time to go in depth to uncover all of these events in depth.

So what I'm doing is I'm skimming over them and I'm stopping from time to time either to point out some important fact or some important information that I think you should know or to make application.

Now, we've already covered the first seven events on the list.

So this morning, we're going to start with the eighth event on the list, when David rescued Keilah from the Philistines.

It's found in 1 Samuel chapter 23, verses 1 through 13.

So go ahead and turn in your Bibles with me to the book of 1 Samuel chapter 23, and we're going to read verse number 1.

Notice what it says.

When David was told, look, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah and are looting the threshing floors.

So when David returned to Judah from Moab, he heard that the Philistines were attacking and besieging the city of Keilah.

They were stealing the grain from the threshing floors because everyone had run to the inside of the city where they had walls.

So the first thing that David did was he inquired of the Lord.

Look at verse number 2.

He inquired of the Lord saying, shall I go and attack these Philistines? The Lord answered him, yes, go attack the Philistines and save Keilah.

Now, if you're curious like me, you want to know how did he inquire of the Lord and how did the Lord answer him? Did he inquire of the Lord through prayer? And did God speak to him by giving him a word of knowledge? I don't think so.

And I'll show you why I say that.

Look back to chapter 22 and let's read verses 20 through 23.