Every time I read about the people coming to the cave of
Adullam I think about everything people teach you about gathering a launch team
for church planting. David's launch team
wasn't exactly the group most coaches would suggest, "And everyone who was
in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul,
gathered to him." David seeks to
provide shelter and safety for his parents outside the land, in Moab. Saul gathers a council to find what has
happened to David as he has gone missing.
He makes accusations against both David and his own son, Jonathan before
Doeg steps up and tells what he knows although he leaves out the deception
David used with the priests of Nob. The people
of Benjamin, the soldiers refuse to raise their hand against the Lord's
anointed but Doeg, an Edomite, a descendant of Esau rather than Jacob, an
outsider to the nation, is willing and wreaks havoc, killing 85 priests
although one, Abiathar, escaped to tell David.
So David gets all the people in distress, in debt and bitter
in soul and Jesus heals people and the descendants of David's people say that
he is demon-possessed and out of his mind.
Jesus tended to attract the same kind of people that David did but Jesus
healed the crowds who came to him. David
took them and the Lord turned them into an army, the mighty men of David as
they are later known. Jesus was
constantly criticized for the company he kept but why would the scribes from
Jerusalem conclude that he was possessed?
It was a safer conclusion than the other option, it was by the finger of
God, which even Pharaoh's magicians concluded during the plagues. Is it any wonder Jesus said that his real
family were not those who were related by blood but rather those who were
spiritually minded?
Paul and Barnabas get a surprisingly warm reception in the
synagogue. The people begged to hear
more next week and even many Jews and devout converts followed them that they
might know more about this Jesus. Paul's
comparison between Jesus and David is an interesting way to get at the Gospel
but it is particularly apropos with a Jewish audience that is looking for a son
of David. You have to wonder what they
thought of this message of resurrection and if they had heard the story at all
prior to hearing it from Paul. Surely the
word was out about Jesus, even in this outpost far from Jerusalem. One of the significant barriers to Jewish
evangelism, particularly in this time would have been to sort out how one who
was crucified, hung on a tree, could be the holy One of God when anyone who
hung on a tree was accursed according to Leviticus. We know that He bore our curse in order that
we might receive His blessing but it might take some convincing for some devout
Jews to associate with a criminal and call Him Messiah.
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