Those Who Come to the King

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNJofqmUsnI

1 Chronicles 12:1-40

26:33

|Transcription: First Chronicles. Chapter twelve is a story, a list of those who are called David's Mighty Men. Those are the people that David gathered around himself that were notable and noteworthy for their bravery and the deeds that they have done. It's an important chapter for us because we often judge leaders by their accomplishments when we want to esteem how good of a leader is. We want to pass judgment on a leader and think this guy was a good leader or a bad leader. We usually measure that by, you know, what kind of things did they do? Did they bring peace or adversity? How did they lead the people around them in terms of the results, their victories, their vision, their charisma? Often their news coverage. But another measure of a leader is more than news coverage and more than accomplishments. It truly is the kind of people they gather around them. You can often tell how effective or good a leader is not by the things that they do, although that's certainly the fruit of it, but by the kind of people that are around them. And that's a two directional thing. It's the kind of people they attract, of course, and it's the kind of charisma and leadership they have in order to attract them. The measure of a man is often the people that he calls friends, often the people that trust him or her enough to show loyalty to them. Eventually, followers reflect something about the person they follow, and we recognize this at every level. A tyrant gathers flatterers around him, a celebrity gathers admirers, a politician gathers allies, but a shepherd gathers loyalty. And that's one of the surprises of First Chronicles chapter twelve. The chapter isn't really about the mighty men, of course. You see how this fits in. Chapter eleven gave you some of the mighty men's deeds, like the people that went and got water from behind the enemy lines and all that. But chapter twelve gives you a list of the mighty men, and as you read it, as you go through it, you come away with the overwhelming understanding. This is less about the mighty men and more about the kind of person that gathers them. This is a passage about the kind of people that gather around David, people who came when David was weak. People who came at great cost to themselves. People who came from every tribe, and people who came with joy in their hearts. Ultimately, this chapter points us beyond David. We're not studying David's leadership style and techniques so that we can terminate on David. But this chapter points us to the Son of David. As we saw the crowds in the temple this morning chanting Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David. This passage points us to the kind of people that Jesus gathers around himself. And what a contrast, isn't it? The scribes and Pharisees had gathered around themselves moneychangers, whereas Jesus replaced them with the lame and the blind and the children. This passage tonight prepares us to understand that in a greater depth. Perhaps one of the greatest testimonies to the goodness of Christ is the kind of people that Christ is able to gather around himself. So this chapter, as I mentioned, is not ultimately about the mighty men. It's about God's people who gather around, why they gather and what happens to them when they are there. It's about who they gather to and what draws them together. And so let's get into it together tonight. Those who come to the King will be our outline in first, we see those who come to the king come sacrificially. Sacrificially. Let's jump into the chapters chapter together. These are the men who came to David at Ziklag. And here's the key phrase here. Well, he could not move about freely because of Saul, the son of Kish. I'm sure most of you remember the story. Saul was anointed king. He reigned for twenty years. David was early on in that, anointed as the true king. But David did not try to overthrow Saul. He instead, um, acquiesced to leading a life inside Saul's kingdom, and he showed loyalty to Saul. He fought for Saul's side. He was one. He was Saul's best general. He wasn't trying to kill Saul, even though he knew he was the true king. He never once tried to kill him, even though he had the opportunities to. He only did what was right for Israel. Saul discovered that he was a threat to the throne because God had chosen David instead of Saul. And so Saul decided to kill David, not the other way around. And so Saul spent the better part of two decades chasing David down, trying to put him to death. And you remember that David went into hiding. He didn't stay to fight. I mean, that's so remarkable, the humility of David that, you know, I don't talk enough about it. And I'm sure we don't think about enough about it, but just the kind of humility that David had. He did not stay to fight Saul. Saul was a usurper. Saul was in the wrong. And David could have stayed to fight. David would have had more loyalty than Saul. Likely he would have won. God had promised him he would win. How tempting it would have been for him to dig his feet in and stay and fight. But he didn't do that, nor did he flee to go to his lake house down at Lake Anna either. He did not do that. You know, it'd be one thing to say, you know, David decided that he was going to, you know, acquiesce and flee and go out to, you know, Naphtali or go out to the vineyards up along the Mediterranean coast and be like, I'm just gonna wait til Saul dies because he's out in his vineyard overlooking the ocean. He did not do that. David went to Nowheresville. He went out to the wilderness, out to the desert, where he was penned in. If you've been there, you understand the geography of the place. But the. The cliffs go up on top of the cliffs. There's. There's no trees growing or anything you can see forever, and it goes down to Bethlehem and other, you know, ten or fifteen miles away, which is where David was born and from. He goes over the top of that. This is going to be the same route that Jesus flees when Herod the Butcher of Bethlehem, kills all the babies. Joseph takes Jesus across the top of those mountains all the way down to Egypt. There's basically nothing there between Bethlehem and Egypt. And that's where David goes over those rocks, down the cliff into a cave. It overlooks the Dead Sea, which is not scenic. Dead sea is a very appropriate name for it. Tourists love it. They love to get pictures there. And that lasts for about one day. And then they melt. David's hiding in the mountains up there. The verse just here says he couldn't move freely. He couldn't go anywhere. He couldn't even go visit Jericho. He couldn't go over to Jordan. He had nowhere to go. He stuck in the desert, penned in a cave. So that's remarkable enough, isn't it? But the crazy thing about this time period is that David's numbers grew. Thousands of people came out to join him. First it was just a couple dozen. Then he had his army of the thirty, and then it grew to a few hundred. And then, of course, they outgrew the whole cave thing and they had to go to a city. They move into a city that was abandoned by the Amalekites. Ziklag. They burned it down. David moves in there, moves into an abandoned city in the Amalekites were were terrible, terrible people slaughtering their victims, wearing their bones, all of that. Who knows why they abandoned Ziklag. But David moved in. His army had grown so big. And that's like moving into a ghost town in the desert. You know, they abandoned it for a reason, is the idea. It was burned to the ground. So this is the place where David goes. And imagine the thought process of people that leave Jerusalem. They leave Bethlehem, they leave Samaria, they leave. They leave the actual cities in Israel, walking away from their life to go live with David in the wilderness. That's the kind of people we're talking about here. They left everything. You know, I know people that have been transferred by the military, the FBI, to, you know, somewhere that feels God forsaken. You know, Alabama, they they they cry. Twenty nine palms. I spent I spent time as a pastor in twenty nine palms. I know what it's like. And they get to transfer there. And they, they Google and they're like the closest Walmart is in Riverside. You know, what am I going to do? You think Southern California. There's an In-N-Out. There is no In-N-Out. No. And the wailing and the how am I going to do for two years? And, you know, these people went out to nowhere to hide in a cave. And they did it for David. I say sacrificially, they left everything. They had skills. Verse two says they were bowmen. They could shoot arrows, They could sling stones with their left and right hands. The left handed people were the benjamites, their Saul's kinsmen. So that's an interesting little tidbit thrown in there. Some people that joined him in the wilderness were related to the king who was trying to kill David, but that's okay. They left them. They left everybody. You get lists of these people down all the way through verse seven, verse eight. Some of the Gadites went over to David in the stronghold of the wilderness. Stronghold is probably Masada. From Masada is only a few miles away. Masada wasn't built like a fortress then, but Masada is elevated on top of the hill. David could have had a path up there. That's likely what it's a reference to. That could have very well been the area where Saul chased him up the rock and almost had him, and got called away for a battle at the last minute. It's the same word in for Samuel. It's used for that. So the point is that David is out in isolated places, not just in the desert, but on top of hills out there. And these strong warriors are joining him. And remember, the warriors, if you go back to first Samuel, which we won't do right now, but the Warriors are kind of egging them on, saying, why don't you kill Saul, for goodness sakes? They had shields with them. Verse eight says they had spears with them. Some of them, verse eight says, had the faces of lions and were swift as gazelles on the mountains. I mean, they're climbing all over the place. These people were brave. Verse fourteen, the Gadites were officers of the army. The last was a match for a hundred men and the greatest for a thousand. So David was drawing to him the strongest people. And verse fifteen kind of stands in is the summary of this. They are men who cross the Jordan. In the first month, when it was overflowing all of its banks, they put to flight all those in the valleys to the east and to the west. They got snow up in Hermon, and the snow melts and it goes down. That's the headwaters of the Jordan River. It goes into the Sea of Galilee. There was no flood control like there is now on it. And so the river would flood. These people crossed it at the flood stage of the river in order to join David. And they weren't even from necessarily from Israel. The Gadites were on the other side of the Jordan River. They swam across a flooding river in order to join David hiding out in a cave. And who is David to them? They left everything to follow him. Why? Because they had faith that he was God's chosen king. This was not a promotion Sunday kind of thing. They didn't leave their life. Some of you might go to twenty nine palms because you'll get a promotion afterwards, so to speak. These people left thinking there's going to be no promotion. There's going to be heat and desolate desert. Oh yeah. Also, they'll be branded a criminal and sentenced to death. They had this kind of loyalty to David before he was anything, before he had won a battle. They joined him. This is the time period in David's life where he feigns madness. Remember, he gets captured and he feigns madness to get away from his enemies. They left everything, sacrificed everything to join David. Secondly, they came to him with loyalty. They claim they came loyally. They came sacrificially and they came loyally. Verse sixteen, some of the men of Benjamin and Judah came to the stronghold to David. David went out and meet them. Of course, there's no way to sneak up on this. The point of its stronghold is on top of a big hill. You can't. There's no trees on this. On the mountain of Masada. There's no trees. There's no bushes. It's so easy to see somebody climbing up. So, David, this is a testimony to his bravery, sees people climbing up to him. He goes down and meets them. He says, if you've come to me as a friend, my heart is joined to you. But if you betray me, although there's no wrong in my hands, then may the God of our fathers see and rebuke you. So I don't know exactly what kind of threat that is. If you're with me, I'm with you. And if you betray me and kill me even though I'm innocent, God will deal with you. These people respond. They respond in faith. Look at verse eighteen. We are yours, though, David. And with you, oh, son of Jesse. Peace. Peace to you. Peace to your helpers. For God, your God helps you. So David received them and made them officers. David receives them because they are loyal to him. They make a pact of loyalty. Why would somebody make a vow of loyalty to a king who is outnumbered, outmanned, hiding out in the wilderness with little to no hope at all? It is a supernatural kind of loyalty. It's a covenant loyalty that is noted in verse eighteen. The spirit clothed amici, the chief of the thirty. It was a spirit driven confession through the agency of the Holy Spirit. He confessed that David was the true king and he was loyal to him. He says, because your God is with you. That is not just a platitude like, oh, you're doing good in bold things. God must be with you. No, he is declaring, your God is with you. The spirit of your God has moved me to say, I am loyal to you. I am loyal to you. They have unity around the King. That phrase is repeated again down in verse thirty eight. You can jog your eyes down to verse thirty eight. All these men of war. This is, after all the numbers we look at in a second. We're arrayed in battle order. Came to Hebron with a whole heart to make David king over all Israel. So these people later, they didn't abandon David. David is going to, you know, rise and fall. His his ziklag is going to get burned all over again. Remember, David's going to leave Ziklag to go fight. Ziklag gets burned to the ground a second time. When he comes back, all of his families are captive. All the kids are taken, the wives are gone. All that's going to happen to him. Those people still do not abandon David. And when David finally does become king, they don't have Jerusalem yet. Nobody's conquered Jerusalem. We talked about that last week. And so they have to go to Hebron. That's where David is made king. And all those people show up. They stream into the streets to make David King. What an incredible scene that would be. People have been camped out in the wilderness fighting the Amalekites, fighting the Philistines. Remember, they were double agents against the Amalekites. They pretended like they were on the Amalekites side and they would go raid Amalekite villages when the Amalekites were out at war, and then come back and act like they had raided the Philistines. David's finally made king, and they pour into the streets of Hebron. And it says they did it because they were of a whole heart. Verse thirty eight says, and they were of a single mind to make David's king, to make David king. That's a unity. Their unity was a unity of loyalty. The unity was built around a shared love for the king and shared love for the King. I do think sometimes we can water down unity, or we can make unity superficial by saying unity means we agree on everything. Unity means we're unanimous about this. Or unanimous about that. That is not unity. Unity is what it means to be bound in a common covenant. Love for the covenant King, for Savior. Unity is the bond of peace and the bond of love, a shared faith in Christ. That's what makes unity. David's men had all that. Even if they disagreed with how he handled Ziklag, they had unity and loyalty to him. Loyalty is the fruit of unity. They were united and hence they were loyal. Third, they came broadly. They came broadly. They came from everywhere. You start to get the list here. Verse nineteen, some of the men from Manasseh deserted, left the fight with the Philistines for the battle against Saul. They didn't. Saul was taking his army out to war. This is when Saul calls his calls the witch of Endor to help him. His soldiers left him and came to join David. And remember, they did this out of great danger. They didn't know Saul was going to die in that battle. In verse nineteen. At peril to our heads, he will desert his master Saul. They knew they would be killed for what they did. When they went to Ziklag his numbers grew. The men of Manasseh begin joining him, growing even more. Verse twenty one they help David. They were mighty men of valor. Verse twenty three, you start to get the numbers. And I'm not going to go through all this. I say now, but watch me read all of it. You get men from all twelve tribes, thirteen tribes, thirteen tribes are listed here because the half tribe is listed under both names, and then the Levites are thrown in. This is the only place in the Bible where you have Levites listed as soldiers by name. Anyway, they come to David in Hebron. Verse twenty three says, according to the word of Yahweh, they did this because God told them to. Verse twenty four, you have the men of Judah. Of course, of course they would be with David six thousand eight hundred armed troops, the men of Simeon. Of course they would. The Simeon and Judah is in it together. But notice that there's more Simeon's simeonites than there are from the tribe of Judah. Simeon was much smaller. Of the Levites, four thousand six hundred soldiers signed up their Prince Yehuda to the house of Aaron was with him and three thousand seven hundred others, including Zadok. Verse twenty eight says, Zadok is going to become king. When Solomon exiles, I mean become a high priest. When Solomon exiles the high priest who betrayed him, Zadok is the one who replaces him. So this guy is moving freely between the military and the priesthood. Eventually will be high priest under King Solomon. That's a loyalty. That's a generational loyalty is what that is. The Benjamin Benjamites are there. These are the ones related to Saul three thousand of him, and it says the majority at that point, it's almost justifying their low numbers. The majority at that point had kept their allegiance to the house of Saul. And David wasn't recruiting these people. So obviously Saul's tribe was going to stay with him. But still thousands of them left twenty thousand free mites. That was the largest tribe. Many men. Mighty men of valor. The half tribe of Manasseh was out. Verse thirty two. Issachar. Remember when we went through Issachar earlier, we talked about how they were discerning. They always knew what the right thing to do was. That's what characterized their tribe. It says it here again in verse thirty two. They had the understanding of the times that chief and kinsman Zebulon is there. Naphtali in verse thirty four, the Danites in verse thirty five, verse thirty six. Asher, forty thousand troops ready for battle. Reubenites Gadites one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers. David has brought the twelve tribes together. He united them in a way Saul never did. All of true Israel is united behind him. One allegiance. Every tribe, different strengths, different gifts, one body, one king gives them unity. And finally, number four, they came joyfully to the king. They came joyfully. Verse thirty nine, they were there with David, three days eating, drinking. Their brothers had made preparations for them. This is when David becomes king in Hebron. They came and feasted for three days with him. Their relatives is far from Issachar and Zebulun and Naphtali. They bring in all their family to Hebron. They brought food on donkeys and on camels and on mules and oxen. Why do you need the list of animals they brought in? The point is like, it's a crazy bizarre. You know, Uber Eats is showing up and Grubhub and the pizza delivery guy and everybody's just pouring down to the house. That's this kind of party. Everybody's bringing food from all sorts of places from all over the country. They're loading up the donkeys and camels and mules and oxen and hauling in their food. Flour tells you cakes of figs, clusters of raisins, wine, oil, oxen, sheep. Some of them were used for transit, and some of them were were not used for transit. And there was joy in Israel. That's the point. Why do you. Why do you need the animals and the different foods they had? The point is, this is not like a small party. This is the biblical doctrine of feasting. This is. We will feast in the house of Zion. We will. We're going to gather there and we're going to celebrate. And we're going to eat and delight in joy. They're not here reluctantly. This, in the sense, is the consummation of hope. And David becomes king in Hebron. Some of these people probably had not seen their families in years, years. They left their world to go eat dirt in Ziklag, and now they're reunited with their families from all over the country with a feast. And they're looking at the last phrase of this chapter. In that day there was joy. Verse forty says, in Israel, that really captures all of it. This is not a military parade. This is not a victory march. This is covenant faithfulness. This is delight enjoy and worship in God because of the covenant King. Well, in this chapter, men gathered around David to make him king. In the New Testament, we gathered around. Obviously a greater king, the true David, not just the greater David, but the Son of David, the one that David was made king in order to bring about. And obviously, I'm going to leave this on the screen for a few minutes just for you to look at for a second. Obviously, they came to Christ or they came to David sacrificing everything. And Jesus latches on to that language, doesn't he, when he says, you have to count the cost, surrender your life. If you want to gain your life, for heaven's sake, you have to lose it. No one is worthy to follow me. Jesus says, unless they deny themselves, pick up their cross and follow me. The world is behind you and the cross is before you, so to speak. They come to Jesus with loyalty. That's the what's represented in baptism. The person goes under the water, confessing that they're dying to this life and rising in newness of life. They die to their old person, they arise part of a new body, a member of a. Of a new creation. Behold, the old has gone away, and the new has come. Loyal covenant love to Christ. They come broadly. Jesus brought. David brought the twelve tribes together. Christ, in a sense, goes to the world. The court of the Gentiles is where this takes place in the life of Christ. And then in acts two, he draws the nations to himself, and the church then goes globally. Matthew twenty eight. Every tribe, every nation, every language make disciples of all nations. Jesus says that Greek word in Matthew twenty eight is ethnos. All ethnic groups reached them all because there's union in Christ, and they came joyfully. There's no reluctant converts, you know, nobody's drug into the kingdom screaming and kicking. I mean, sometimes teenagers, their parents might drag them here. Other than that, nobody comes to Christ reluctantly. He changes hearts and brings people with joy. This is why the Christian church is so marked by joy and celebration. It's made up of people who come to Christ, not when life is stable, but when they are weak. But when Christ is King, they count the cost and they risk laying down their lives for the sake of following Christ. The table of communion is where unity is expressed. It's not manufactured here. We don't have unity because we take communion. We have communion as an expression of the unity and loyalty we already have our loyalty to Christ, our unity one to another, as all members of the body of Christ. They gathered around David in weakness. We gather around Christ in our weakness. They came at cost. We remember the cost that Christ paid. They came with one heart. It says in verse thirty eight, we come with one body. They celebrated a kingdom established. We celebrate a kingdom that's to come. Jesus says, I won't take you the table again until I take it with you in my kingdom. And they shared a three day feast. We don't have a three day feast. We have communion and a little cup and cookies afterwards. And I told Alex, I think when we take cookies on a communion Sunday, it is the most book of acts thing we do. First Chronicles twelve shows us that God's people are those who come to the King at a cost, in unity and with joy. And communion is where we do that now. Lord, we're grateful for your word. Gives us a seat at the table. It brings us together. It joins us to you. We are your body. The body of Christ is what binds us and knits us together. We're an expression of the mind of Christ, which we all have the body of Christ, which we've all been baptized into the love of Christ, which joins our hearts one to another, the works of Christ which become ours through faith. We're grateful for the promise of Christ. It's in his name we pray. Amen. And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc dot church. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to TMZ dot edu. Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C. area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now, may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly. Serve the Lord faithfully and share the gospel boldly.