Here’s the image for us to latch onto. Do our hearts long for a present shadow or future substance? Are we hungry for the present foretaste or the future fulness? The movie’s preview trailer or the film itself? The present shadow is fading, fleeting, momentary. The future substance is everlasting, sturdy, magnificent. Long for Jesus’s eternal kingdom where the Church will live with God forever!

David’s been anointed King. But, oh how his circumstances seem to run against the very stated promises and purposes of God. And it’s in the snowstorm of his circumstances that he experiences the deliverance of the LORD. Our main idea: Look to the LORD to deliver us from every enemy. Think about your trouble this morning. There are three ways He delivers.

What motivates us to go to people unreached with the gospel? What motivates us to risk relationships, cross borders, and learn languages? And what sustains our going? What sustains our hunger to see the gospel embraced by the nations? Not guilt. Not self-glory. The proper motivation for a church’s missionary efforts is worship. We’ve been humbled by our sin. We’ve been awed by God’s mercy. We’ve tasted the goodness of God. We’ve been welcomed into fellowship with God through the gospel. We worship Him boldly and freely. We know that He desires that same worship from every nation, language, and tribe. So, we go for worship.

David is officially on the run from an unhinged King Saul, and his problem is not the running but what he does while he’s on the run—things that demonstrate his fear of man and the control that he has given to Saul in the place of dependence on God. We begin to see cracks in David’s armor—that he isn’t the perfect hero that we long to emulate. But after the events of this passage, David penned two psalms, and it’s what he learns from his own struggles with the fear of man that provides the theme of our passage: In the face of fear, depend desperately on God, our Deliverer.