Choosing Our King

Opening illustration: An Oriental king once summoned into his presence his three sons and set before them three sealed urns - one of gold, the other of amber, and the third of clay. The king bade his eldest son to choose among these three urns that which appeared to him to contain the greatest treasures. The eldest son chose the vessel of gold, on which was written the word "Empire." He opened it and found it full of blood. The second chose the vase of amber, whereon was written the word "Glory"; and when he opened it he found it full of the ashes of men who had made a great name in the world. The third son chose the vessel of clay and on the bottom of this vessel was inscribed the name of God. The wise men at the king’s court voted that the third vessel weighed the most, because a single letter of the name of God weighed more than all the rest of the universe.

Introduction: As a nation we have a Judaic-Christian background and foundation, Biblically the church and state was never segregated. It was never God’s intension but man’s divisive doing. It was God and His prophet that ran the nation of Israel. Even though Israel had rejected Yahweh as their King as stated in 1 Samuel 8:6 and wanted to lead lives just like other pagan nations, God did not leave them but helped them to choose their earthly king. In this passage the life of King Saul could be summed up in a modern cliché: It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish. Saul started out very well only to see his subsequent disobedient actions derail what could have been a stellar, God-honoring rule over the nation of Israel. How could someone so close to God at the start spiral out of control and out of favor with God? To understand how things in Saul’s life got so mixed up, we need to know something about the man himself. Who was King Saul, and what should we learn from his life? Saul’s disobedience to God paved the road for his own rejection and God choosing David above him because he was repentant and obedient to God’s commands.

Proverbs 29: 2 tells us that “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan.” We are at that stage where we need to understand God’s heart and walk likewise otherwise face the same consequences which Israel had to undergo and still does.

1. How does God CHOOSE a king?

(a) Man after God’s own heart (v. 14a)

• First, his repentance. This we naturally look for after his fall with Bathsheba, and the attendant conspiracy against her husband’s life. Immersed for a time in guilty indulgence, David seems to have been in that common state which sensuality produces, literally unaware of the extent of his crime. Suddenly, and in the midst of this fancied security, the Prophet Nathan stood before him, and, by a parable almost, unequalled for its truth and tenderness, recalled the king to his senses. Now, if any one of you wishes to express his own repentance, or to test its reality, let him use such language as this, and try how far his feelings accord with it. If you can repent in this spirit, you know indeed what repentance is.

• Now, with regard to David’s unwavering faith in God, I may say at once that it was the ruling principle of his life. Everything he deliberately undertook was in simple reliance upon Divine support. Faith with David really was "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen:" it supported him through all the vicissitudes of a strangely chequered life, and spread a halo of hope around his departing spirit. After making allowance for the minute record of his human failings — a publicity which most men happily escape — and for the partial revelations which visited the times in which he lived, we find no character in Scripture so full, perhaps, of unwavering faith in the goodness and promises of God as David!

• Why David was the favorite of God rather than any of us, is, therefore, very clear: we partake in the condemning sinfulness of his fallen nature; but we do not join him in penitence, in humility, and in faith. Our repentance is commonly mere shame and worldly discomfiture; no real change of mind, and therefore requiring to be repented of, our trust we give to the world and its trifles rather than to God. In business we are lively, earnest, and active; but in prayer we are cold and doubting. As to this matter there is but one rule — "Be ye perfect as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect," and for this every one of you must strive. The standard for all men is the highest possible. This is what David continued to pursue.