I invite you to turn in the scriptures to 1 Samuel, chapter 22. This is page 289 in the Church Bible. And we're going to look at the first five verses of this chapter. 1 Samuel 22, verses one to five. Hear now the holy, inspired, and inerrant word of God. David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was bitter in soul gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about 400 men. David went from there to Mizpah of Moab, and he said to the king of Moab, please let my father and my mother stay with you till I know what God will do for me. And he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold. Then the prophet Gad said to David, do not remain in the stronghold, depart and go into the land of Judah. So David departed and went into the forest of Hareth. Jesus said, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. The invitation is to come to God through the Lord Jesus Christ because there is rest for our souls there. Jesus came for all kinds of people. No one kind of people is exempt from the message But it is especially those who are downcast in some way that Jesus extends that particular invitation to. And in 1 Corinthians chapter one, we find these words from Paul. For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are. So that no human might boast in the presence of God. That really could be a commentary, couldn't it, on our passage here tonight. God has a way of upending the world's standards and expectations. Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but David doesn't have a place to lay his head. Like the greater David, King David was a wanderer in this time period. It meant he was an outcast. He had few prospects in the world and lots of enemies. He was hunted like an animal. He was in nearly constant distress. And this is undoubtedly what attracted the lowly and the downtrodden to him. Those who were in distress, those in debt, those who were bitter in soul, came to him until he had a whole army of dissidents. Humanly speaking, one could look at this situation and think David was probably better off before all these people came to him. They wouldn't be the type of people he really needed, were they? Yet among these 400 men might have been some of the great warriors David later had. Men like Yoshev Bashevet, who once killed 800 men with a single spear. or Eliezer who killed countless Philistines, or Shammah who defended a lentil plot against a whole army of Philistines, and held it by himself. Prophet Zechariah says, it warns us, do not despise the day of small things. People who look unprepossessing, or small at first, might become great prayer warriors, great evangelists, or some other great thing that we don't even know what it is. Are we willing to invest in such people? Or will we write them off because they don't look like us? Out of these 400 outcasts came David's kingdom, no less. It was Saul who had all the power at this time, of course. It was Saul who looked impressive by any worldly standard. God chose the lowly David to shame the wise Saul. He chose the weak David to shame the strong Saul. He chose the currently non-existent kingship of David to overturn the existing kingship of Saul. Do we remember back from Hannah's song in chapter two that our God is a God of reversals? And the greatest reversal of the book has begun. The fates of David and Saul will soon begin to cross and go in the opposite directions. David going up, Saul going down. And by the end of the book, this book, 1 Samuel, that crossing will be complete. We saw last week there were several Psalms that were written in the course of this whole incident, his fleeing to Gath. There are also two Psalms written commemorating his stay in this cave at Adulam. And they also, just like last time, help us understand our passage because they're directly interpreting David's situation. Psalm 57 has this preface, a miktam of David when he fled from Saul in the cave. The term miktam is probably a musical form of some sort, describing the form of the psalm and what kind of tune it was supposed to go with. The Psalm 57 shows David understood his own position rather well. There was destruction all around him. He was in constant danger. He also knew there was only one source of help, and that was God Almighty. His soul takes refuge in God, like a young chick taking refuge under the wings of its mother. So also David took refuge under the shadow of the wings of the Almighty. Maybe the refuge of the cave suggested the refuge of God's wings. Well, David says in verse six that his enemies have dug a pit for him. This is Psalm 57. But David knows they will eventually fall into it themselves. And that's cause of great praise from David to God. So he knows what the situation is, but he also knows where his help is found. The second psalm that describes this situation is Psalm 142. The preface to that psalm reads like this, a maskill of David when he was in the cave, a prayer. And in Psalm 142, he cries out to God for deliverance. He describes himself as having been brought very low in verse six, that his enemies are very much too strong for him to overcome by himself on his own strength. He knows God can do that, but he himself cannot. And in that Psalm, which might very well have been written sometime after Psalm 57, he's starting to think about the cave as a prison instead of a refuge. He says in verse seven, of Psalm 142, bring me out of prison. Any space can seem like a refuge for some time until it gets old and then it starts to feel like a prison. And these two Psalms show us David understood his low position and that only God could rescue him from it. Possibly, The last three verses of our passage in 1 Samuel show us exactly how God is going to do that, how he's going to begin to rescue him. David wants his father and mother out of harm's way, so he takes them to Moab. Now, this is a fairly logical move for David, because remember that Jesse, David's father, was the grandson of Ruth the Moabitess. So the family connection makes it logical for David to make this request. And it worked out well for the family. The King of Moab was agreeable to David's proposal. He did as David requested. But then the cave, which is the stronghold mentioned in verses four and five, that's not the place where David actually needs to be. He needs to go back to Judah according to Gad, the prophet, as it says in verse five. And it takes an act of faith then for David to go back to Judah, the place where he's being hunted and persecuted. He goes back knowing that Saul will start hunting him again, but he follows the word of God. And the word of God tells him something that he might find strange. if he hadn't already prayed for God to deliver him. Oh God, deliver me, David says, and God says, fine, go back to the place where you're in danger. Makes sense, doesn't it? But he followed the word of God that Gad revealed to him. David went to the forest of Herod. We don't know exactly where it is, but it certainly offered some cover. And we can ask the question, though, what was God doing in bringing David back to Judah? That question is actually fairly easy to answer because all of the incidents that happened between this point in the story and the death of Saul required David to be nearby. And the inexcusable nature of Saul's actions were going to be shown in a very clear light because David is so clear and he's so near. The multiple times David will have Saul in his power only to let him go and not harm him will make Saul's continued efforts to kill David seem incredibly paranoid, not to mention weak. comes from a person who might even be deranged. So we can see God's providence at work, how God is using the lowly to bring to naught the plans of the powerful. And just as David gathered outcasts around him, so also Jesus did the same, didn't he? He didn't gather the powerful around him. He gathered normal, ordinary people. None of the disciples were somebodies before Jesus called them to be his disciples. Of course, being a somebody isn't all it's cracked up to be. Emily Dickinson, ironically, a somebody, had this to say about the subject. I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? Well, then there's a pair of us. Don't tell, they'd advertise, you know. How dreary to be somebody, how public, like a frog, to tell one's name to live long June to an admiring bog. The disciples of Jesus were just ordinary people. Some were ordinary, and some others were extraordinarily bad, like Matthew the tax collector. Other followers were shady characters. And Jesus had a lot to say about that subject in the Gospels. When he was reprimanded for eating with tax collectors and sinners, why are you eating with IRS agents, Jesus? He said, it's not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. I didn't come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners to repentance. And the teachings of Jesus, they're hidden, aren't they, from the wise, those called wise by the world. They were revealed to mere babes. Jesus tells that too. Even in the beginning of 1 Samuel, the first sermon I preached on chapter one was called Nobody from Nowheresville. Elkanah and Hannah were unimpressive to say the least. And yet from them would come Samuel, the mighty prophet of God. Jesse wasn't particularly impressive, neither was David for that matter. He didn't have the impressiveness of Saul. Now this feature of Jesus calling his disciples, it should both humble us and encourage us. It's humbling because if God called us, We can be absolutely certain of one thing. It was not because of some inherent quality in us. In fact, God usually calls people in spite of what they are, not because of it. God keeps all that glory for himself, and for what happens in the church, he's going to get all the glory for it. He gets it all. He will not share that with anyone. And that's the primary reason God doesn't as often, we can't say never, God doesn't as often call the powerful, the wealthy, the noble in the world's eyes. He likes to show the world just how much he can do with a nobody. So it's humbling, but it's also encouraging for us, isn't it? Because as soon as God calls to these nobodies, they, because of God's action, become a somebody. We're called to be royalty in God's kingdom. That's definitely a somebody. We become a somebody, though, not because of what we already own, but because of what God bestows. And this point is often lost in the conversation, but it's essential that we remember this because both encouragement and humility need to come out of this truth. Our value comes from God. It's a gift. We have value as creatures of God. He made us in his image. And that imprints great value on every human, make no mistake, but that does not prevent us from being sent to hell just because we are made in the image of God. Because we marred that image. That righteousness part of the image was marred. Our identity. is in Christ. That's not how the world defines value or identity. In today's world, identity is in the mind of the declarer. It's a psychological thing, a psychological self-definition. I am who I declare myself to be. We think our value is defined in this culture by what we do or to whom are we related or who are our friends. That doesn't define value or identity. The world in the transgender movement wants to define value and identity only in the soul. The body means nothing, although ironically, they can't sustain that. They think the body can be mismatched to the soul, which effectively calls God a liar. But if this were the case, then why does it matter to change the body? See, this is what's so incoherent about it. It's like, oh, I don't have, I'm a man in a woman's body. then why does it matter that you change the body to the other gender? If I am who I declare myself to be, the psychology, the soul is the only part that is the identity in the transgender movement. In contrast to that, the Bible tells us our identity is in Christ. That is who we are. not anybody else, not who we think we are. As we saw this morning, God is the source of truth. What he declares is truth. So what matters is whether what we think aligns with that truth. Our identity, as Paul would say, is hidden with Christ in God in the heavenly realms. That's who we are. That's where our anchor is. It's up and it's in the future. That's our identity. The future defines us, who we will be, just like it defines the church. The church isn't fundamentally defined by what it is now, but by what it will be. That's the point of the vision that John has in the end of Revelation, where the bride comes down as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. That's what the church will be. If our identity is up and forward, then we should also seek the things that match that identity. That's what Paul says. If you are identified in Christ, if that's where you are, then seek the things above. Or you could paraphrase it, be what you already are. We should seek what is above where identity resides so that we can match on the outside what we have been called to be on the inside.