Dumb And Dumber

By John Stallings


One of the funniest movies of the last few years was “Dumb & Dumber.”

We would expect zany Jim Carry to be able to carry off one of the leads in this movie. However, Jeff Daniels is a highly respected thespian with real acting chops, who among other serious roles recently portrayed George Washington in a made for T.V movie.

Daniels must be a more than adequate actor because in this bit of nonsense, he played dumbness to the hilt. I think the movie was hilarious.

THE LIFE OF DAVID OFFERS MANY EXCELLENT EXAMPLES OF THE DUMB THINGS PEOPLE CAN DO OUT OF FEAR AND DISCOURAGEMENT.

Discouragement remains the most destructive tool Satan has & it can make a person do crazy things. When anger can’t stop us, lust can’t reach us & envy finds no foothold, discouragement always seems to work to keep us from moving ahead. A person makes bad decisions & wrong turns when they’re discouraged.

I’d like to tell a little known episode or series of episodes in the life of David to prove the point. The story is told in 1 Samuel chapters 27-30. It begins; -- But David thought to himself, one of these days I’ll be destroyed by the hand of Saul. The best thing I can do is escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will give up searching for me anywhere in Israel.

DISCOURAGEMENT DESTROYS PERSPECTIVE.

David had been running from Saul for nearly ten years. Ten years is a big chunk out of a man’s life & David is tired & run-down. You can’t blame him for that. He felt that Saul might kill him in a year or it may happen tomorrow but sure as sunrise, it was going to happen. David was focusing on the negative & things will always look bleak when we focus on the negative.

You may recall that a few chapters before this, [I wrote a message a month or two ago about it called [“A great man’s descent into madness,] David got discouraged & afraid & went to live with Goliath’s people. He went to Ahimelech’s house & lied to get bread for his men. The episode ended with David being abjectly humiliated & slobbering all over his beard to make Achish think he’d gone nuts. His little odyssey also enraged Saul & caused him to kill a whole village of priests & their families.

This can serve as a warning for all of us. One act of spiritual compromise sets us up to easier make a compromise next time. One step in the wrong direction sets us up to take another step sooner or later.

GOD’S WORD IS CRYSTAL CLEAR

The children of Israel weren’t to mix with the surrounding nations. Over & over the warning was given & every time somebody tried it disaster resulted. David had compromised once before & gone down to live in Gath & that ended up with him looking exceedingly dumb, now he was going to do it again & look even dumber. Yes, David had a lot to discourage him but lest we forget, he also had the firm commitment from the Lord that he was going to someday be Israel’s king, so neither Saul nor anyone else was going to kill him.

DAVID’S DISCOURAGEMENT INVOLVED INNOCENT PEOPLE.

1 Samuel 27:2 says;--David & the six-hundred men with him left & went over to Achish son of Moach of Gath. Each man brought his family with him, & that means 600 men, 600 women & who knows how many children were involved? All these folk were now living with the enemy because of David’s choice.

The same thing happens to us when we compromise; we end up taking other people with us. We may not think about it at the time but at some point we discover that our impulsiveness has hurt a lot of innocent people.

So what happened? Well David’s second episode living among Israel’s enemies ushered in a surprising period of temporary peace & prosperity. Saul did stop chasing him. Also, David & his people were given their own little town to live in named Ziklag. 1 Chronicles 12 informs us that during this time a great many of Saul’s soldiers defected to David in Ziklag. Also we’re told that Achish king of Gath was very pleased with David.

On the surface it looked like David made a wise decision in going to the Philistines. I’m sure for awhile he felt vindicated. Things are good. David gets up in the morning & reads the Ziklag Gazette, goes down to the Gym & works out with the boys, in the afternoon he raids a nearby village [shame- shame] & in the evening maybe there’s a feast. Again, life is good.

DISOBEDIENCE OFTEN RESULTS IN A TEMPORARY LESSENING OF PRESSURE.

David felt better for a while. “There is pleasure in sin for a season.” Sin is fun for a while & compromise has its exciting aspects, which is exactly why so many Christians do it. But for David, compromise led him to greater sin. First there was discouragement, then desperation, then defection & now further disobedience that led to deceit & needless death.

David & his men would go on raiding parties while in Ziklag. David would take his men & raid villages to the south & southeast of Ziklag. But when king Achish would ask him, “Where did you go raiding today, David would answer, “I’ve been to the Negev of Judah,” which was south & east. The implication was that he’d been raiding his own people but the truth was he was telling the king that so he’d feel David was loyal to him.

Are you sitting down? I hope so, because…. on these raids, David didn’t leave a man or woman alive because “dead men don’t tell tales.” So- what started off as plundering parties ended up as bloody slaughter. David is now in a downward spiral & the worst is yet to come.

DAVID GOES TO HIS MAILBOX ONE DAY & FINDS A DRAFT NOTICE.

Things are going wonderful for David & his band of men. “Everything’s coming up roses.” 1 Samuel 28:1 puts it this way;-In those days the Philistines gathered their forces to fight against Israel. Achish said to David, “You must understand that you & your men will accompany me in the army.” Now David’s chickens have come home to roost. Achish welcomed David’s “defection” so many months ago because he fully expected to collect an IOU & now he calls it in. What’s worse, he names David as his personal body guard. That means that if the Philistines win the battle it will be the bodyguard’s duty to kill the defeated king; which means that David will be forced to….kill Saul!

David never intended to get into this mess. He knew he was never going to kill Saul. In his mind living among the Philistines was a temporary thing to buy a little time & space. But now he’s faced with the full results of compromise. Unless God intervenes he’ll be forced to fight against his own people. But that’s what happens when an individual lives apart from God; one little step leads to another- & before long they’re in too deep to get out. They think, “It’s O.K, I’ll make it.” But they don’t.

David is now the perfect picture of a carnal man operating on his own resources. I’ve seen young men with the call of God on their life get involved with unsaved, worldly young women. They thought they could handle the situation; at least the girl was coming to church with them. I’ve watched couples like that gradually move from the second seat in the church to the back seat, then out the door, all because the young man, not wanting to admit he was compromising thought he could follow God & still have a relationship with an nonspiritual young woman who had no intention of following God.

SO NOW THE SCENE IS SET

The Philistines gather at Aphek to war against the men of Israel. The soldiers gather in small groups, check their weapons, discuss strategy & wonder when the battle will began. Men are here from all the various Philistine cities---Gath, Ekron, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza—the total number is up in the thousands. This is no small border skirmish. David & his men are bringing up the rear.

All goes well until one of the Philistines says, “What are these Jews doing here?” Then someone else says, “Get those guys out of here.” Word shoots through the ranks & something like a small riot breaks out. The generals come to Achish & say, “What’s this man David doing here? Don’t you remember the song they used to play on the Hebrew Hit Parade ten years ago?” And they quote the little ditty that used to make Saul so mad, “Saul has slain his thousands but David his tens of thousands.” They object to David being near them because they fear he’ll turn against them in the heat of battle in order to regain Saul’s favor.

So Achish goes back to David & says, “Sorry, but you can’t fight with us. My men don’t trust you. Go back to Ziklag. We’ll let you fight in the next battle.”

THE WORLD DOESN’T TRUST A COMPROMISING CHRISTIAN.

The world doesn’t accept a compromising Christian because they’re smarter than that. They recognize true children of God & don’t respect us when we try to play on their team.

Any man who’s ever preached the gospel is forever branded as “preacher.” It doesn’t matter if he only preaches a year. He can preach a relatively short time & quit & live the rest of his life & if folk find it out, even if he goes to the penitentiary, they’ll still call him “preacher” as he walks to the death chamber.

The world respects Christians when they stand up for what they believe. They might dislike us or even persecute us but they respect us & they can’t deny the reality of our faith.

The end is almost upon David & he doesn’t even know it. As David & his men head back to Ziklag they are feeling pretty lucky. They just barley missed having to join in the attack on Israel. As they drew near home someone said, “I smell smoke.” Someone shouts, “Its Ziklag.” In a split second 600 men break ranks & run for the village but their eyes aren’t prepared for what they see. While they were gone, the Amalekites came & took their wives, took their children, took all their possessions & burned the village to the ground. Nothing is left.

The Amalekites were part of those villages David used to raid when he was playing that little game & pretending to attack Judah. Remember David not only raided the villages, he killed people to keep them from talking. Now the Amalekites have returned the favor.

David has been flirting with disaster for a long time. A simple case of discouragement has now led to something almost inconceivable. When he first came to the Philistines he only wanted to relieve the stress, he never meant for anything like this to happen. God has been trying to get David’s attention & when He finally does, David is totally unprepared.

The text says that David’s men wept until they had no more tears to cry. They were so bitter they even discussed stoning David. And why not? Ziklag is burning & it all goes back to the dumb leadership he provided & decisions he made. Discouragement, desperation, defection & disobedience have now led to disaster.

But now God is beginning to get David’s attention. Sometimes the Lord has to get rough in order to get through to us. Sometimes we have to stand in the smoking ruins of a part of our life to at last come to our senses. After 16 months of compromise & on this little “side trip,” disobedient David finally begins to look up. The tragedy is that it took so long & hurt so many people.

HOW DOES DAVID GET IT ALL TURNED AROUND?

The turn around comes so quick it’s easy to miss it. 1 Samuel says that;--David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.” David’s problem all along was the fact that he was so gifted & talented he could operate pretty successfully apart from God. After all, he was handsome & strong, we know he was a gifted musician & a mighty warrior, he was attractive to women, & he was a born leader. In later years those qualities would make him Israel’s greatest king.

God had to put David through ten years in the obscurity of the desert to teach him not to rely on his own abilities but in the Lord alone. That’s a hard lesson for all of us to learn & doubly hard to learn for those with great natural gifts. As long as David leaned on the Lord those gifts could be used to accomplish great ends. We see it already & we later see it as he leads his people in the greatest era of prosperity they will ever know. But every time David did it his way he got in trouble & a lot of people were hurt in the process.

I may have shared this story with you before but it bears repeating & certainly fits here. When I was a kid, my mother’s greatest desire for me & my older sister was for us to learn to play piano. I was born with an ear for music, certainly not “perfect pitch” but non-the-less a pretty good ear for music. When I was four or five years old I could harmonize with someone singing lead. Let me tell you what this innate ability did for me; it robbed me of ever being a good pianist & it also robbed me of ever learning to fluently read music.

Why, you ask was my ear for music detrimental to my technical development? Well, just by using the inbred ear for music, I could sit down at the piano & chord any song- that is if it was in either of my two keys. Of the two keys I could play in, one was C & the other one wasn’t. When I sat down to “practice,” instead of learning to read the music before me I would take off on my own, in my limited way, & have a ball. However what I wasn’t doing was learning to read music, & consequently learning to play the piano. This was rather dumb of me & it became a heart break for my mother.

You might also ask if I can’t read music how can I write songs. I do it the same way the other uncultured & unfinished musician/writers do it; I put the songs on tape, in one of my two keys & let someone who’s qualified do the arranging. I can look at a piece of music & tell you what the notes are & I can do the same with a piano but that’s a far cry from sitting down & playing a piece of music. My point is my natural ability effectively vaccinated me against ever developing into a finished musician, because it was too easy to do it “my way.”

I know you’re way ahead of me on the spiritual application here. Like David, anyone with natural ability has to subjugate the desire to take off on their own, thinking they can work it out themselves, when in truth without God they will miss the really great things God could have accomplished in & through them. This weakness almost became David’s downfall.

WHAT ARE THE TAKE-AWAY TRUTHS IN THIS STORY?

We can learn that when we think we are standing firm we should take heed lest we fall. 1 Corinthians 10:12.

We can learn discouragement is inevitable when we attempt to face the problems of life in our own strength.

We can learn the world offers only a temporary solution to our problems.

We can learn God’s punishment is usually to let us face the consequences of our own wrong decisions.

We can learn that discouragement isn’t meant to knock us back on our heels but to bring us to our knees.

We can learn that God never gives up on us & loves us too much to let us stay in our sins.

We can see in this story a great warning but also a great hope. A hope based on the fact that God loves us so much, even when we’re acting like we don’t have two brain cells to rub together His love keeps calling us back home.

Some of us have done exactly what David did. Some of us are still doing it. Whenever we’re ready, truly ready, we can turn things around’.

The question is, how far will we have to go before that moment comes?

Every blessing,

John