Cited in sermons
Robert Vannoy
6 sermons · All people cited
2 Samuel 11
2 Samuel 11 records David's descent from idleness into adultery with Bathsheba and premeditated murder of Uriah the Hittite. The narrative's deliberate pacing and ironic contrasts expose David functioning as a lawless pagan king while Uriah — a foreign-born mighty man — embodies covenantal integrity. The study traces three movements: the sin itself, the escalating cover-up, and the divine verdict, warning that sin's hardening deceitfulness compounds rather than resolves itself, and that standing against temptation depends not on willpower but solely on the grace of God.
An Enemy Worse than the Philistines
The silence of God toward King Saul in 1 Samuel 28 is a more terrifying reality than any Philistine army, and this sermon exposes why. Working through verses 3–25, the exposition traces Saul's apostasy from covenant member to enemy of Yahweh — a man who seeks a word from God through forbidden necromancy because God will no longer answer him through lawful means. The sermon draws a sharp contrast between Saul's utilitarian, self-serving religion and David's practice of strengthening himself in the Lord through the knowledge of God, the rehearsal of His promises, and the use of the means of grace. The congregation is exhorted to reckon honestly with remaining sin, to refuse the deceitfulness that masks spiritual defection, and to find in Christ's darkness on the cross the guarantee that no elect soul will ever be abandoned by God.
1 Samuel 26
1 Samuel 26 records the last encounter between David and Saul, and this exposition works through the chapter under three headings: the execution, report, and explanation of David's nighttime mission into Saul's camp. David's refusal to strike the Lord's anointed, his threefold articulation of sovereign providence in verse 10, and his longing to remain in the inheritance of the Lord together reveal a man who trusts God's governance while obeying God's word without suspension. Four concluding lessons draw out the providence of God, the progress of the Davidic kingdom, the privilege of corporate worship, and David's typological function as a forerunner of the Greater David who, when reviled, reviled not.
The Massacre at Nob
First Samuel 22:6–23 records one of the darkest episodes in Saul's reign: the massacre of 85 priests at Nob and the destruction of the entire city at the hand of Doeg the Edomite. This exposition traces Saul's paranoid pity party in Gibeah, his contempt for due process and the law of God, and the bloody consequences of political tyranny unchecked by the fear of Yahweh. Yet even in this ghastly scene the sovereignty of God is on display — the carnage at Nob fulfills the word of judgment pronounced on the house of Eli a generation earlier, Abiathar escapes to David, and the kingdom of God advances. The sermon closes by setting David's shelter of the fleeing priest against Christ's eternal high priesthood, urging sinners to flee to the one priest who ever lives to make intercession.
The Escape from Saul
God's provision for David during his flight from Saul — through bread at Nob, deliverance at Gath, fellowship at Adullam, safety for his parents in Moab, and a prophetic word at the forest of Hereth — is the controlling theological theme of 1 Samuel 21–22:5. The narrative exposes both the reality of severe trial in the life of God's people and the sovereign grace that meets them in and through their own failures. David's response of praise, crystallised in Psalms 34, 56, 57, and 142, rebukes a health-and-wealth theology and models the only fitting reply to affliction. The gathering of the distressed, indebted, and discontented to David in the cave of Adullam functions as a type of Christ, who bids weary sinners come to him as captain and lord.
1 Samuel 24
First Samuel 24 presents David at En-Gedi, poised to kill Saul but refusing to lay a hand on the Lord's anointed. The sermon traces three movements in the chapter — the confrontation in the cave, David's appeal to divine judgment, and Saul's hollow response — drawing out three controlling themes: David's patient submission to God's ordering of providence, the proper place of divine vengeance as something prayed for rather than personally executed, and the typological significance of David's restraint as a foreshadowing of Christ's refusal to take a shortcut to the throne. The congregation is pressed to interpret providence through the plain commands of Scripture rather than through circumstantial inference, and to bring the imprecatory Psalms to bear in prayer as a legitimate means of giving place to God's wrath.