The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
“The High Road”
1 Samuel 24:8-10

How did David – who had been so cheated, hurt, and betrayed – choose to take the high road? I want to suggest that the low roads of life are what crafted him into a high road person.

David did not choose to enter the wilderness. He was chased there. David was in the wilderness because he was a fugitive running for his life. But it’s these very moments that defined who he would be!

There are 3 types of people…
1.	People entering a wilderness.
2.	People in the wilderness currently.
3.	People who just got out of a wilderness.

There’s something frightening about the wilderness, isn’t there? 
We are tested in the wilderness. Do we deal with God during these moments or not? We are tested in the wilderness to become more or less. We grow up or we regress. 

The wilderness teaches us 2 things….
1.	It teaches us about holiness.

Through wilderness testing, David learned to see God in places and things he never thought to look previously. The holiness of the wilderness experience taught David to look for the holy everywhere he can.

2.	It teaches us to find refuge.

We can read the books of Samuel and get a glimpse of the life of David from the outside, but when we read the Psalms we get the same stories from the inside. David uses the word “refuge” 37 times!

“…But what joy for all who take refuge in Him” - Psalm 2:12
“God is our refuge and strength” - Psalm 46:1
“He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me” - Psalm 62:7

As he was running for his life, He found his life in God. “God is my refuge.”

In our wilderness, we can obsess over what got us there or we can obsess over what God is doing in us while we’re there.

In almost a repeat of chapter 24, David has another chance to kill Saul by sneaking into his camp while Saul and his men are sleeping.

1 Samuel 26:21-24

This starts with Saul finally recognizing the role he has played for his entire life – the fool! But even with the foolishness of Saul, we still see David taking the high road.

There are 3 different roads we can choose to take…
The low road - where we treat people worse than they treat us
The middle road - where we treat people the same as they treat us
The high road - where we treat people better than they treat us

A person who has taken the high road has most likely spent some time in the wilderness.