to the beginning of the monarchy, it can be argued, was a premature beginning that God did as a concession to the children of God on earth, the Jews, and that transition was associated with many interesting and instructive things. I would like to continue with the book of 1 Samuel. I think that it is good to have topics, to think of things that people need encouragement and in connection with our circumstances and our just general need of encouragement. I need encouragement, everyone needs encouragement, and to be reminded to pray and not give up as the Lord taught his disciples.
But it is also good, I think, to somewhat systematically go through the word and to continue with a book and to try to be the way that you should be in your own reading, not just picking up the Bible randomly and opening it and said, oh, well, I read a page today, that will do, and to do that randomly, but to actually be in the word and to progress through the word, it is all there for you, for a reason, from Genesis to Revelation. It all has its purpose, its teaching, and its instruction for our hearts. So it is good to be also from the pulpit, to be systematic to some extent. So I would like to continue, and now we are in another transition, and that transition is from, you might say, man's choice, to God's choice, that is, from the transition we are looking at this morning, the transition from Saul to David, and I'm fascinated personally with those two characters in the Bible.
We'll consider first how David was chosen, you might say the mechanics of it or the events associated with that. We'll look at how Saul degenerated. He had been rejected. And then he degenerated, and it's quite instructive.
And then we'll return to considering David as the man who was God's anointed. In February of this year, I spoke about capability, profanity, and vulnerability. You may remember that I shared with you that capability as capability is not really the point. It is not primarily what God is concerned with.
I think that's good because not all of us have equal capability and equal areas. And if we focus too much on our weaknesses, and perhaps our lack of capability, well, that is not the way God looks at things. And I was sharing with you in February that what is essential, what is meaningful, what God can use is sanctified capability. That's what's important.
Raw capability is not important, in a sense. What is important is that the capability is a sanctified capability. And the word profanity pertained to Saul, the contemptuous disregard for what is holy, the lack of a heart appreciation of what is sanctified in essence the opposite. Here is a man with capability.
And he cannot see a holy thing as being holy. I had given the example of Nicole, his daughter, given to David, I would say in some sense, unfortunately, as his first wife. And when she subsequently would see David dancing to the Lord, she held him in contempt. That is a heart and a spirit of profanity.
We think of the word profanity as maybe using bad words. I'm using profanity in the sense of the heart that fails to deeply understand what is of God and what is holy and what is of him. That is a profane way of looking at everything. And it is a complete disaster.
And then the third word was vulnerability in February, thinking about a teenager standing in front of a man or running toward a man who was 9 foot 9. I have a friend who lives down the street from my old house who's 6 foot 11, chat with him from time to time. Very tall people do exist. Angus McCatskill up in Cape Breton.
I don't actually know how tall he was, but he was big. So this 9 foot 9 person was killed by a teenager. I love it. And in doing that, here's a young man who is the exact opposite.
God has his heart. And I'll talk more this morning about him. And he's fearless. And he sees what the true issue is.
And he makes himself vulnerable. And I'll talk more about that as well. These are very instructive people and events and combinations of things that are there in our Bibles for us. So I'm going to be going to, for Samuel 16 quite a bit.
So here we have the instruction of Samuel to go to Jesse's house because he's been told that it's one of his sons. And I will be sort of skipping around with regard to the verses and picking verses being rather picky and selective. What you, of course, do need to do is to read as a continuity. But given the amount of time that we have, I have been selective as I must be.
So we have here the sons coming in. And Samuel says he looked at Elias and thought, surely the Lord's anointed is standing before him. But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance or the height of his stature. Do not look at his height.
Because I have rejected him. For God does not see as man sees. Since man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. What a life principle that is.
To keep that in mind. That's a very, very important thing to keep in mind. Saul had been chosen as an outcry in which the children of God says, we want to have a king over us like the nations around us. So the looking to the culture around was what governed their thinking.
Well, that's pretty much a disaster. And then when they saw this tall man who came to them somewhat reluctantly out of the baggage at the beginning, they were quite pleased, most of them, not all of them, most of them very pleased, to see such a tall man. And here we are reminded of a timeless principle that God looks not at the outward appearance. One might say the outward appearance of things.
How things look superficially in life. He looks at the heart. He looks at your heart. He looks at my heart.
He knows what's going on in our hearts and minds. Coming down to verse 11. Then Samuel said to Jesse, are these old boys? And he said, the youngest is still up.
But behold, he is tending the sheep. So Samuel said to Jesse, send word and bring him. We will not take our places at the table until he comes here. So he sent word and brought him in.
Isn't it marvelous that the unconcedered one is the one who is not only considered but selected? I want to remind you what the Word of God says with regard to looking on the heart and into the heart. Hebrews 4, 12, and 13. For the Word of God is living inactive and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating.
As far as the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, unable to judge the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must answer, as it says in ASB. I think the King James is with whom we have to do, with whom we must have dealings. That is an inescapable reality.
All of us, whether we like it or not, will have to have dealings with God. And it is instructing us here that this is the God who sees into the recesses of our minds and hearts. That's the person with whom we have to deal and do. In another translation, or give account.
All things are open and laid bare. The Lord doesn't look on the outward superficialities. The Lord looks on the heart. So let's get the teenager in here.
That's kind of refreshing. I think teenagers get a consistently bad rap throughout society. And here we have a young man being specifically called in. Why?
Because of, we will find out, his heart. And here he is. He's got this sense of freshness and purity around him. And he stands out.
The average semi-t is rather olive skinned and dark haired. The average Jew. Some scholars believe that this is, although the word eda means red. And it goes back to Esau, the redness there.
Some feel that it's just a relative thing. But we see here this young man. He's a standout in a different way. He's actually quite different in many ways.
Now he was reddish with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance. And the Lord said, arise and noint him. For this is he. So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers.
And the spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel set out and went back to his home in Rama. Many years later, David would instruct his son. In 1 Chronicles 28, 9, as for you, my son Solomon, no God, your father, and serve him wholeheartedly.
And with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek him, he will let you find him. We can see here that this young man, who is a shepherd, not a very high station in his family or in society, has a humble heart. When the Davidic covenant is proclaimed by the prophet Nathan later in 2 Samuel 7, this is what Nathan has instructed to say to David.
This is what the Lord of armies says, I myself took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be leader over my people Israel. And I have been with you wherever you have gone and have eliminated your enemies from you. God is reminding David as the future transition takes place, where he came from, the humble circumstances that he came from. That's a good thing for all of us to do.
To remember the beginnings of our spiritual life, our walk with Christ in all humility. We see a man who is a young man who has carried out this responsibility under his father, Jesse. And you might say that it's a simple responsibility. But it's not always simple.
We know that there would be moments of peace in the pasture and it would be easy to let down your guard. It might be even easy to complain and say, why is it me out here doing this simple thing? And then that actually contributes to a failure to pay attention. David was not like that.
I believe he was a young man who paid attention and made a good job of the job that he had been given under his father's authority. There's an element of contentness, of awareness, of intelligence in doing a simple thing. We know that when we come to Goliath, David remembers how God enabled him to deal with dangerous animals while taking care of the sheep. His brothers held him in disregard.
They didn't bother to bring him in. At this point, they didn't bother to bring him in at the future point when Goliath was blaspheming God. They didn't seem to have much of a regard for him. But he was out there doing what he had been given to do.
What have you been given to do? Well, do it. Do it well. Do it with attention and encourage and do it toward God.
We know that he was able by God's empowerment in that simple task to do it properly, to deal with the bear. I wonder whether he came home sometimes and said, he alive a bear came today. But I, by the grace of God, struck it down. And not one of fathers, lambs are missing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. One time my son Eric was out in the country on the ATV with a friend and he came upon a bear that reared up as they were approaching. And he came back and he told us about it. At the time, Eric was perhaps 15, 14.
And even to this day, sorry, Eric, even to this day, you sort of go, really? You know, that happened? I'll take it at face value. When you come to the story of David, which is a historical record, and you hear of a young man who's been given a simple task and occasionally comes home describing how dangerous it sometimes is doing a simple task.
You wonder whether these brothers were quite dismissive of him. But he didn't let it get to him. We shouldn't let such things get to us. He had been diligent and faithful in this task, even though unappreciated by some.
This is the person who would write in looking over his life. The Lord is my shepherd. I will not be in need. He lets me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for the sake of his name. David had felt the protection of God as his shepherd.
And that's a wonderful thing to know personally and to have experienced personally. What else can we know or read about this one who has just been selected? Sam will appreciate some of these things. If we fast forward ahead and this is actually near the end of his life, we see that God selected a man with gifts.
He's quite an amazing man, an amazing king in the diversity of his gifts. And one of the gifts is interesting, the gift of music. This man selected by God had amongst his gifts, the gift of music. Second Samuel 23, one tells us, now these are the last words of David.
David, the son of Jesse declares, the man who was raised on high the anointed of God of Jacob and the sweet psalmist of Israel. He declares and it goes on and you can read that in second Samuel 23. And that's one of the things that is an epithet that is connected to David. The other one is he's a man after God's own heart.
And this one is he's the sweet psalmist of Israel. Isn't that wonderful? And in taking that picture as a whole, we see that this man would use this gift toward God. A psalm is a song toward God about God.
That's a wonderful thing. People can use their gifts in all kinds of ways. But David was a psalmist and played two instruments. One was called the canoeer, which is in for Samuel 1623 as well, re-chordly and it is sometimes translated harp and it is sometimes translated leer.
But there is another instrument that is mentioned in many of the psalms called the sabbakah. And that is apparently more like a leer and more guitar like and maybe with more than one set of strings on that sabbakah. It then puts you in mind of a young man. Now where is he playing?
Where is he developing his gift? Perhaps when he was quite young, he would just sing when he was with the sheep, sing toward God. And then perhaps he asked his father for an instrument and his father said, well, we could maybe, we could make one of these, we could put one together. And he was able then perhaps to bring this, to pass the time and the hours in the pasture with the sheep.
And at the beginning he wasn't very good at it, but he developed that musical skill. And it puts me in mind of a young man, a diligent young man whose eyes are watching the pasture and the sheep and sometimes singing, singing always toward God and ready to put that canore down and pick up a weapon in an instant. God says, you, perhaps we need to be more like that. We need to be more like a person who accepts the humble things that God has given us to do.
Does them well before the father, before our father? Does everything toward God sees it as an opportunity to worship God? And at the same time is ready to take up arms for God and for his duties and for his responsibilities at an instant at a moment's notice. He was selected.
He was selected. Now I'm going to backtrack to previous chapter. And some of these things that I'm going to be talking about this morning, they're not actually easy. They're not, you might say, theologically, exegetically easy, but they're there.
And we must consider their meaning as best we can. And I trust that I may have for you some insights that will help you in understanding and appreciating the book of 1 Samuel. This is the moment of rejection where Saul falls, you might say, falls from grace. It says here, Samuel is speaking to Saul, for rebellion is as reprehensible as the sin of divination and insubordination is as reprehensible as false religion and adultery.
Since you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you. Notice from being king, from being king. But Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you for you have rejected the word of the Lord. And the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel.
Saul had said, please, for the sake of appearances, come back with me. And Samuel said, no, there'll be no appearances about it. God has rejected you, rejected you, rejected you, as king. That's sad.
1314, the first Samuel 1314, the portent of this was already stated. But now your kingdom shall not endure. The Lord has sought for himself a man after his own heart. And the Lord has appointed him ruler over his people because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you, back in chapter 13, verse 14 of this book.
Rejected, rejected, rejected, as king. I might ask you, what do you think Saul should do? What would you have done? You have behaved profanly.
You have dishonored God. You have set his hierarchy in terms of sacrificial things at nothing. You have treated it with contempt. You have behaved profanly.
And God has rejected you. And I noticed that it says, we notice that it says, from being king. What would you do? What would I do?
Step down. The word for that is abdicate. But he wouldn't. He wouldn't.
16-1, now the Lord said to Samuel, how long are you going to mourn for Saul? Samuel had made quite an investment. You might say even God had made an investment in Saul. You've given him every advantage and benefit.
How long are you going to mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go. I will send you to Jesse, the Bethlehemite, because I have chosen a king for myself among his sons. Saul had rejected God in spirit.
And God could not and would not leave his spirit with Saul. God would not force himself, if you will, into Saul. Saul had rejected God. And God had rejected Saul.
In the Old Testament, the relationship between the Holy Spirit and various individuals, we can see is, in a sense, more tenuous. It is possible for God to use his spirit to guide people and to cause people to do the right thing temporarily. And it remains to be seen whether that individual is really for God and of God. In this case, there is a breakdown between Saul and God, rejected, rejected, rejected as being the king.
And I would submit to you that the thing that Saul needed to do was to repent, to abdicate, to repent, and to actually start learning from God from scratch. But what do we find is actually more important to Saul, his kingship, his status, his status? That's very sad. That's a dangerous thing for you, for I, for anybody.
Do you not want to come back to the actual realities of your relationship to God and instead cling to the superficial, the outward, the appearances, the status? Huge mistake, huge mistake. And as we see in this book, as we progress through 1316, 1718, we see a degeneration in this man because he wouldn't let go. And come back to what he needed, I would say, to come back to.
And that would be to come back to his relationship, the relationship that he needed with God as an ordinary man. He had been rejected, rejected, rejected as from being king. Do you think that God would have rejected him if he had abdicated and repented and come to God as a man as a person? I suggest not.
That's what he needed to do, and he refused. He would not. 1614, we see that the spirit of God left Saul. Saul should have realized this.
He should have realized this. And yet, he didn't, and he wouldn't repent, and he wouldn't step down. And we see three instances in our Bibles of something that makes us a bit uncomfortable. And that is that in dealing with Saul, in trying to make him change, and trying to deal with him, shall I say, wake him up, God sent an evil spirit.
It does not appear to have been a demon or a personage, but something that troubled him. God troubled Saul. And it was outside of himself, this thing that was troubling him, came to him under the direction of God. And the Bible says evil spirit.
And that may trouble you. Well, it actually happens three times to this man, this man with whom the relationship with God is broken, who is clinging to this kingship, is not accepting the new reality and coming to terms with it. And God says, you will have a troubling in your life. So we see here, so it came about, whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the harp and play it with his hand.
And Saul would feel relieved and become well, and the evil spirit would leave him. I think Saul should have realized that there was something outside of himself that needed to be acknowledged, that he has to come to terms with something. He no longer has the spirit of God. I would say that it is an immersy.
It is immersy that he is being afflicted, in a sense, to make him wake up, to make him see that outside of himself. There are problems that he needs to come to terms with. Music is outside of himself. Music comforted him.
Perhaps these psalms that David sang to him should cause him to think again of God. It would have been good if they had, but it appears that they did not. I've often, not often, but I have heard of cases where a man will come into a gospel meeting and he will be moved by the hymns and he will be moved by the music. And he might even shed some tears.
And he might feel completely different. There is a gospel message and the need to respond to that gospel message. And that man sheds his couple of tears and goes out of the building and promptly forgets all about that challenge from God. He was moved for a time and did not take advantage of that.
It reminds me of Saul, someone who was affected in a positive way by David's words and singing and music. And yet, as soon as it was over, he seems to have forgotten about it. I shared with you a thought from Hebrews that everything is laid bare and open before him with whom we have to do. Shouldn't Saul have said something like that to himself.
I am forgiven an opportunity here to calm down and to look at things and to be touched and he walks away from it. Not once, but three times. And in fact, the situation degenerates. Let me give some examples of the fact that God can and does control everything.
And we have here that God sends an evil spirit to Saul to trouble him. It has a purpose. God has done similar things in the Old Testament, you might say, in terms of his sovereignty and his ability to rule in all realms of the universe. Nothing is hidden from him and his will and his purposes.
You know that's Pharaoh, for example, before God hardened his heart, which I think is around chapter six. This was a man who was capable of throwing babies in a river. This was a man who, when people cried out in suffering, he said, are you suffering? I will make it worse.
This was a very hard-hearted man. And so the Bible tells us, God tells Moses, I am going to harden his heart. I'm going to harden the heart of this hard-hearted man. Israel had been suffering for 400 years and he was able to deal with that man in that manner.
We all know that, in fact, God allowed Satan to attack Job. What are some of the things that came out of that? I would say a number of good things. Half a dozen good things came out of that unusual permission that God gave to Satan to allow his son and servant Job to be attacked.
Job was refined and enlightened. The heart of Job's wife was revealed. A number of so-called religious people were corrected. Many truths about the universe, both the living and the inanimate universe, were revealed as a result.
Satan was defeated and Job received an entire re-blessing in his life. Those are six things that happened, that were all good, that came out of God allowing evil at his child Job, which is unusual. In 586, God used an entire country to take away his wayward people into a country called Babylon. The book of Obadiah deals with God's judgment on Edom.
So God, not surprisingly, is a God who can do anything and will do as he sees fit in his sovereignty to achieve his purposes. We come to number two. This is a little bit down from the place where you may remember the Bible says, the women were singing. There was a victory, 17 is Goliath.
And then at the beginning of 18, you have the women singing. Saul is defeated thousands, but David is tens of thousands. And this really got into Saul's ego. Saul had an ego.
It was a huge problem. And he became very angry. He became angry with the words of this song that I just told you. He's worried about the amount of credit given.
He's not at all conscious of what God can and will do. So we read in 1810, now it came about on the next day that an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul. And he raved in the midst of the house while David was playing the harp with his hand as usual. And a spear was in Saul's hand.
Then Saul hurled a spear for he thought I will pin David to the wall. But David escaped from his presence twice. Now Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him, but had left Saul. So Saul removed him, David, from his presence.
Wouldn't you think that you might wake up, that you realize that you are not in your right mind and that you need to repent, that you need to step down, that jealousy is dominating your life, but he doesn't. He actually loves David, and yet there is an increasing disconnection in his life, so that the things that he does don't make sense to him. This is the progress, the progression of mental illness. This is a biblical laying out of a man who is turning from God systematically, who is troubled, who does not come to terms with these troubles, who does not come to terms with his rejection, and who descends into mental illness.
Just looking at what happens next, coming down to verse eight in the middle here, when there was war again, David went out and Father Philistines and defeated them with great slaughter so that they fled from him. Now there was an evil spirit from the Lord on Saul as he was sitting in his house with his spear in his hand, and David was playing the harque with his hand, and Saul tried to pin David to the wall with the spear, but David escaped from Saul's presence. Did you notice that in the previous instance, Saul grabbed aspier, and here we have him sitting, listening to this music, listening to this ministry, and he has his spear in his hand while that's happening. This is a man who's all clenched up with anger and jealousy and is descending further into spiritual darkness, into mental illness, and not coming to terms with what is being revealed to him.
There is a huge disconnect here. See at the top, David shall not be put to death. A short time later, he's throwing a spear at him. This is a descent into darkness and mental illness by a man who sits there with his fist clenched around his spear.
King Saul, in terms of his degeneration, he ignored all these warning signs. He ignored the first one in chapter 13. He didn't step down in chapter 16. The music and the troubling of his spirit do not cause him to relinquish, but actually cause him to be more and more angry.
The second thing that happens is, interestingly, how Samuel compared divination as a sin like this, exactly, this is where he goes. He goes to a spirit medium and consults a spirit medium. That was an extremely forbidden thing for them to do. It's exactly what he does.
It's the next step in his degeneration. You might ask, what's next? What's next? Is he actually going to be possessed by a demon as he opens himself to evil influences like the spirit medium?
It doesn't happen. He is not possessed by an evil person age such as a demon. But when you see this progression, you wonder whether that's the road on which he is walking. He's become paranoid.
He sits around with a spear in his hand. He consults mediums and is manifestly. He is making himself manifestly unfit. And it should be manifest to he himself that he is unfit.
Jezebel did witchcraft. Manasseh did divination and witchcraft. These are some of the most evil people in your Old Testament. And Saul is choosing, choosing to go in that direction.
So let's end in a more positive note. Thinking about this person, David, he astute when you read the beginning of, not really the beginning halfway through 1 Samuel 17. He is brought in in a similar way. And looking at the situation with Goliath, who is blaspheming God.
And they look at all this heavy armor. And I think that's a good comparison that Wiersby makes. Thinking about the weight of this armor that actually belonged to Saul, who should actually perhaps put it on and do something here, this armor has a weight that can be calculated. And if we're thinking about that spear and the weight of this armor, well, let's see.
Is this going to work? He says, no, I can't. Not going to work. That's a human calculation.
Wiersby said, that's really an example of walking by sight. Walking by sight. David is not going to engage in that kind of walking by sight. As a person, we find out in 1 Samuel 30 that we can well believe, number two, was that David encouraged himself in God.
Dear believer, that is something that is so profoundly important to learn. The Christians around you may or may not be able to encourage you. Fellowship is good and important and scriptural. But you won't be much good within a fellowship if you don't know how to get encouragement from God.
I like that it says, in God, of yourself and by yourself, coming from yourself by your own decision, this is what David knew how to do. He knew how to encourage himself in God. We all need to know how to do that. It's not surprising that this is a man after God's own heart.
He sought encouragement in God. And the third thing is that, unlike Saul, who is concerned with his personal status and how people look at him, the issue that is actually at stake in 1 Samuel 17, as David hears what that evil man is saying is the honor of God. That's what's important. It's not my honor.
It's God's honor. This evil man representing this evil culture and this evil army are making it a point to come out and publicly in open air blaspheme God every day. David says, we cannot let that dishonor continue. We cannot let this continue.
He understood the true stakes. That is also what we as believers need to understand. We need to understand what the true stakes are. The true stakes are not our own profile, as it were.
Obviously, the true stakes are the honor of God. And that basis, that is the basis on which David ran toward that 9 foot 9 individual spinning a stone, spinning a stone that struck that man not on a place of armor, but on his forehead. And sped along by God, that was the end of that blasphemer. Such was how David believed in God and how God empowered him.
So we can look at Saul and we can look at David. And again, I would encourage you to read these chapters in for Samuel to get the complete picture. And there's much there to learn and there's much there for our instruction. And I trust this morning as we have thought about these two individuals that there has been food for your soul and food for your mind.
That's how we pray. Father, we thank you that we can read your word and consider the examples that are there, consider the instruction that is there. Help us to be discerning Christians, knowing that our hearts are in your full view and knowing that our minds need to be attuned to your will and to be concerned with your honor. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Thank you for your attention.