We are continuing on with The Story. The Story of God as found in the Bible. Last week we looked at the story of a guy named Samuel. Samuel was a guy who was a priest, a prophet, and also technically known as the last judge of Israel. He was faced with the difficult assignment of transferring the nation of Israel from a nation of judges to a nation of kings. You may recall he wasn’t too excited about that because it really wasn’t his idea. It was the people’s idea. They decided they wanted a king because they wanted to be like all the other nations. Samuel heard this and went to God and complained about it because he felt like the people were rejecting Samuel as a judge. God said it is not about you. They are not rejecting you. They are really rejecting me. God decided to give the people a king and give them what they wanted or at least what they think they wanted rather than what they really needed. So God anointed a king named King Saul. As we know, King Saul started out pretty good and was filled with the spirit of God. He had a lot of the character traits you would look for in a king. As time went on, the whole idea of being a king went to his head. He got a big head about it. He decided to make his own decisions without consulting Samuel or God. You may recall the story last week was that God had told Saul to go out and destroy the Amalekites and instead of wiping them out completely, he decided to take the king of the Amalekites as a prisoner and keep some of the good stuff to himself. When Samuel called him on it, Saul tried to backpedal and make excuses. He said I kept some of the good stuff, but I offered that stuff up as a sacrifice to God. We know that Samuel didn’t buy into that. He said to Saul that when it comes to God, obedience is better than sacrifice. In other words, I don’t really care about your sacrifices. What I do care about is obedience.
Following that event, pretty much it was all downhill for Saul. He was about to lose his kingdom at some point. He didn’t know when. At some point, God said to Saul through Samuel “But now your kingdom will not endure. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people because you have not kept the Lord’s command.” So he sought out another king. That king’s name would be David. At this particular time in the story, little is known about David. In fact, Samuel had never even heard of David. What God does is tell Samuel to go to the town of Bethlehem, which we know as the place where Jesus was to be born several thousand years later, and look for a man named Jesse and invite Jesse to a sacrifice. Invite his sons to the sacrifice also. That is what he did. He went to Bethlehem, found this guy named Jesse, invited him to the sacrifice and told him to bring his sons. When his sons showed up, Samuel makes an assumption. He sees the oldest son named Eliab. He assumes he is going to be the king because he is the tallest, oldest, carries himself well. At about that time, God speaks to Samuel and says “Do not consider his appearance or his height for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance but the Lord God looks at the heart.” Right now it is the second indication that God’s criteria for choosing a leader is different than man’s criteria. Often in the world we look at a whole list of criteria when we are trying to choose a leader in the business world or in the church. A lot of times we look at the outward appearance. How does that person carry themselves? How do they speak? How tall are they? What kind of clothes do they wear? Those are all outward things. We know from this passage that God does not look at the outward things. God looks at the things on the inside and specifically the heart. Samuel should know based on Saul’s experience that looking at things from the outside is not that good. We know that Saul had all the outward qualifications to be king, but we know that inside his heart was really quite corrupt. In this case, God began to look at David differently. He looked in the heart and saw that he had a better heart than Saul. In fact, he had a heart that would chase after God.
As the story continues, Jesse is there and parading all of his sons through the line in front of Samuel. Samuel says no, no, no, no. He gets to the seventh one and still he has not selected a king. That is all the sons we think. Basically, Samuel says to Jesse do you have any more sons around? He says I have this one young son, but he is out in the field taking care of sheep. He says go get him and bring him in. Right away God said he is the one. “So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.” A little side note. When we think about anointing with oil, we don’t do a lot of that in the modern church. In biblical times, anointed oil symbolized a lot of different things. In this particular case, it symbolized that God was setting David apart for the task to be king. It would be a number of years before he would be king, but by this anointing with oil on his head it was symbolizing that he is setting him apart for a special task. It also symbolizes that God has put the spirit on David so that he can accomplish that particular task. It says “He anointed him the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.” In other words, David had everything he needed to do the job.
As a side note, we think about the Holy Spirit and how it operated in the New Testament versus the New Testament. In the Old Testament, you would see the spirit of God moving but a lot of the times it was just for certain people, for a certain event, or for a certain period. We know that from the day of Pentecost, God’s spirit came down upon his whole church and every believer in Christ has the spirit of God living inside of him or her and that is the difference. A temporary thing in the Old Testament. A permanent dwelling now.
So the good news is that David receives the spirit of God. The bad news is the spirit of God is taken away from Saul. The passage goes on to say “The spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.” I don’t know about you, but this passage gives me trouble. I don’t know what to do with this thing about “an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.” I don’t bring an answer today. I don’t know. There are a lot of different suggestions out there that I don’t have time to get into. If you want to do a little research and let me know that would be fine, but I didn’t have time to dig into it. I am not exactly sure why God chose to give Saul an evil spirit. What I do know is immediately after that you begin to see a contrast between David and Saul. You see David who went from being a quiet little boy tending sheep to be this confident, bold person. You see Saul who was the one-time confident king slowly becoming very fearful, insecure, and paranoid. We see this contrast most manifested in the story of David and Goliath. I think most of you are familiar with this story even if you haven’t been attending church for quite some time. I don’t have time to go into a lot of detail, but we learn that the Philistines were harassing the Israelite people. They were coming up against them to fight them. They were really being quite mean and cruel to them. Apparently, the Philistines had this huge guy named Goliath who was between 7 and 9 feet tall. He would come out for 40 days and just harass the poor Israelites just yelling at them and mocking them and that sort of thing. The people were fearful of what was going on. They were fearful of Goliath. Even Saul was cowering away because of fear of Goliath. David shows up and is bringing some food to the men. He asks what is going on and the brothers inform him. He says “Let no one lose heart because of this Philistine. Your servant will come out to fight him.” David was saying I am going to fight him. The brothers are just laughing. I began to think about this and thought about the imagery that comes to mind. I thought the imagery for me that comes to mind is Rocky IV. The Russian Ivan was the villain. A guy you just love to hate. He towers over Rocky. You just want Rocky to beat the whatever out of him and by the end of the film he does. That is what happens with David and Goliath. David takes a slingshot and some stones and he swirls it around. Goliath says “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” David says “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord almighty, the God of the armies of Israel.” You could feel that boldness. He takes that sling and stone and hits Goliath right in the forehead. He falls and drops dead. David goes over and lifts up Goliath’s head and chops it off and then goes running and chasing after the Philistines with it and slaughters all of them. He comes back and lays the head of Goliath right on the floor in front of Saul and says here is your man Goliath.
Everybody was impressed with the whole thing including Saul but that didn’t last for long. As the men began to return home from war and all the women came out and began to celebrate, sing, and dance, it got a little bit tense. As they danced, they sang “Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands.” I don’t know about you, but as a man that hits right at the heart. They are saying this little guy David he slew tens of thousands. Saul only slew a thousand or so. You know that is going to bother Saul. It is especially going to bother Saul because Saul is at this time in his life where he realizes that his throne is being taken away from him. He is getting fearful, anxious, and paranoid. You catch that in his very words where he says “‘They have credited David with tens of thousands but me only with thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?’ And from that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David.” We know from the story that he went after David quite a bit. In the next couple days when David was playing the harp in the palace trying to calm Saul down. For no reason, Saul takes a javelin and slings it at David. David ducks and it misses him. He does that several times. David gets the hint he doesn’t like me. I am out of here. In the remaining chapters of 1 Samuel you see Saul pursuing David all over the place. David escapes from him. You actually see a couple places where David looks like he has Saul cornered so much so that he could have killed him, but he didn’t. He didn’t because he knew that Saul was also anointed by God. It wasn’t David’s business to kill Saul. So he just kept running from him. But Saul would get his due because we know towards the end of the last chapter of 1 Samuel, Saul went up again against the Philistines and this time the Philistines won. In fact, they slaughtered all of Saul’s army and severely harmed Saul. So much so that he was almost dead. When the Philistines showed up, he took a sword and killed himself. The Philistines showed up and chopped off Saul’s head and took his body and nailed it to a wall for all the Philistines to see and mock. It is just a tragic ending to what amounts to a tragic life and a lot of it had to do with having a bad heart. That is what it boiled down to. Following that situation, we see the crown going away from Saul and going on David in 2 Samuel.
Today, we don’t want to explore the kingship of David so much as we are interested in exploring the heart of David. Although there is a lot of good information in the narratives in 1 Samuel that reveals things about the heart of David that he had this brave heart, and had this compassionate heart, the best place to find out about the heart of David is in the songs that he wrote. The songs that are known as the Psalms. Some of you are familiar with the Psalms. The Psalms are basically a whole bunch of songs or poems that were written over several thousands of years with several authors including David. Some suspect David wrote as many as 73 of the Psalms. All these Psalms over the year would be compiled together to be turned into what we would consider little worship books for the Jewish people. The book that we collectively call Psalms is actually five of those worship books put together to make one book. What we see in the Psalms is a portrait of God. A lot of good information about God. A lot of good information about ourselves. But again what we really see in the Psalms is a window into the heart of the person who wrote the particular psalm. In this case, we see into the heart of David. What I would like to do for the remaining minutes is do just a little exercise with you guys. I want you to read through snippets of the Psalms of David. Just about a half dozen or so. I want you to see if you can climb into the heart of David and begin to imagine what he may be experiencing as he wrote the psalm. What I would really like you to do is, as you hear the psalm, think of one word that might describe the condition of David’s heart when he wrote it. What is that thing that he is trying to express through his heart? If you are comfortable doing this, as I read through them, close your eyes. I don’t want anybody to feel uncomfortable, so if you don’t want to that is fine. I think by closing your eyes you are going to have less distractions. I am just going to read through it. As I read through it, try to imagine what David might have been experiencing. When I get to the end of the psalm, I am going to ask you to give me a word or two that expresses what is going on inside of David’s heart.
I want to start with one of the most familiar Psalms, Psalm 23. Just close your eyes and listen up. (Psalm 23 read here.) What is a word that comes to mind that describes the condition of his heart when he wrote that? Safety. Peace. Love. (Psalm 8 read here.) What word? Worship. Awe. Praise. Joy. (Psalm 103 read here.) What is the word? Grateful. Gratitude. Worship. (Psalm 40 read here.) What do you see? Trust. Strength. Redemption. Faithfulness. (Psalm 63 read here.) What expresses his heart? Desire. Thirst. Longing. (Psalm 139 read here.) What word? Omniscience. Companionship. Closeness. (Psalm 91 read here.) What word? Protection. Security. Trust. (Psalm 42 read here.) What word? Longing. Desire.
What you just experienced is you were able to go into the heart of a man who has been dead for 3,000 years. Think about that. By just listening to those Psalms, you were able to go into David’s heart and begin to experience what he was feeling. Basically, you were able to experience what it is like to have a heart of a man who chases after God. I suspect that if David was here today, David would say you didn’t quite nail it, but you came close. These things were written 3,000 years ago. I bet you did a pretty good job of identifying what he was feeling in his heart. If David was here today, he might say something to you like these psalms give a pretty good window into my heart, but really what they are designed to do is be a window into your heart. There is a saying that says when we go in to read the Bible, what often happens is God reads us. When we sit down and open the Bible and submit ourselves to the spirit of God and the word of God, we are reading about David and the spirit of God is hovering over there saying how is your heart. You read this passage, what is going on in your heart? You are about to face some surgery. You are about to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Do you feel that peace? Do you feel that comfort like David felt? The passage that talks about the glory of the heavens in the night sky. When you see the heavens and the night sky and the sun in the day, does it make your heart just want to shout out majesty! Or do you just say ho hum, another day. When you hear the passage about as the deer pants for water, so my soul pants after you, do you say that is true of me that I am thirsty for God? If you can’t agree with David, then maybe you have something going on in your heart that just isn’t right. That is why you have to allow yourself to go before God and allow God to do a heart check on you. Not only to identify those things that are covered in those Psalms but to really identify what is going on inside of your heart that is a blockage to experiencing that peace, comfort, joy, majesty of God. What is bothering you? Maybe it is an issue that you have an attitude towards somebody. Maybe it is somebody in your home. Maybe it is somebody in the church. Maybe you have a little blockage going on there. God needs to occasionally do a heart checkup on you and sometimes what he finds are heart defects. If we don’t take care of a heart defect, you die. We are not talking about physical death here. We are talking about spiritual death. There are a lot of dead Christians walking around. You have people walking around and going through the motions, doing what they are supposed to do, going to church, but they are just the walking dead. The problem is they haven’t submitted themselves to have a heart checkup. And there is nobody honest enough in their life to tell them that they might have a heart ailment. We have this thing in the church that we don’t want to say anything about anybody else because it might appear like we are judging them so we just assume not say anything and allow the person to be the walking dead. If people aren’t going to say it to you, you need to make sure that you are placing yourself in a position to hear from God. You need to do that. It is not that complicated. It is about as complicated as what we just did. Instead of me reading the scripture, you sit quietly in your quiet place and read the passage. You think about it. You meditate on it. Memorize it. What is David feeling here? What am I feeling here? What is going on in my heart? If God prompts you to do something about it as he often does, you do something about it. Obedience is better than sacrifice.
Don’t get me wrong. The Christian life is not simply about obedience. Yes God wants your obedience, but he really wants to give you something. He wants to give you keys to the kingdom of God. Jesus talks about the kingdom of God a lot. He talks about it in a very interesting way. You may recall that somebody came up to Jesus one day and they had heard about the kingdom of God. They are thinking it is something way down yonder. They say when will we know that the kingdom is here. How will we see it? What will it look like? Jesus’ answer was the kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation; nor will people say here it is or there it is because the kingdom of God is within you. What does that mean? It means what it says. The kingdom of God is within you. What does that mean? It means the kingdom of God is within you. Jesus said it. It doesn’t matter if we believe it or not. Jesus said that. What he is saying is everything you need to live the life that you are intended to live is right inside of you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you don’t believe Jesus, look to Paul. Paul basically said the same thing. People were talking about eating and drinking and whether it was right to eat this food. He said the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. He was saying the same thing. All your longings are right inside of you. I would suggest that in addition to peace and joy and righteousness, these are the basic needs of people, you can add on love and hope and sense of significance. These are the common needs of everybody in the world and everybody in this room. You think you need all this other stuff out there, but what you need is peace, joy, righteousness in the Holy Spirit, cap on love, a little bit of hope, and a sense of significance and what more are you looking for. That is what the whole world is looking for. That is why it is so easy to preach. Everybody in this room and all your different backgrounds and ages and political affiliations, ethnicities, if you knock that stuff out of the way and you all have the same basic needs. You all want to feel love. Who doesn’t want to feel love? Who doesn’t want to feel a sense of significance? Who doesn’t want to feel value? Who doesn’t want to have hope? Who doesn’t want to have joy? God says it is right here. It is inside. It is ready for you to go get. What are you waiting for? Some of you are saying yeah right. I think you are telling me I need to spend more time with God, but frankly I just don’t have the time. My response is King David didn’t either. I suspect King David was busier than probably everybody in this room. There are about 20-30 chapters written about King David in addition to the all the psalms the guy wrote and the wars that he fought and the kingdom that he ran and you don’t have time. You are too busy in your life to spend beyond seven minutes with God in the morning and some of you not even that. I am the messenger. I am speaking to myself too. When it all boils down, how badly to you want God? That is the question we all have to ask ourselves. How badly do you want God?
There is a story told about I think St. Augustine or one of these guys and a long time ago he was sitting by a lake. He is next to his mentor. The mentor is talking away and listening to Augustine and he is trying to think these high theological thoughts. He says I really want God. The mentor says you do, do you? What does he do? The mentor takes Augustine’s head and shoves it under the water for about a minute. He is trying to get out and finally gets out and catches his breath. The mentor says to him “When you want God as badly as you want that next breath, you will find him.” The question is do you want God? If you want God, you have to be a God chaser. It doesn’t involve just getting more information, taking more classes, getting in more small groups, and studying more books. Those are all good things, but those just go into the head. Those are about information. What God is concerned about is transformation and transformation only happens at the heart level. That is where it happens. Somehow you have to get God to get down to the heart level and begin to look in your heart and begin to reveal some of the things you don’t even want to know about or see. When you begin to allow God to come in and he shows you something and you begin to act on it, you begin to experience those very things that he promises to people who enter into the kingdom. The love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. All the kingdom values you begin to experience.
In closing, I would say how badly do you want God? Do you want him badly enough to carve a little bit more time out of your day? We have 24 hours people. You have enough time. I don’t want to hear any excuses about that. There is enough time. You just have to decide what are your priorities. Do you want to spend time with God or not? Are you hungry for God? When you submit to God and you begin to allow God to do that heart surgery on you, over time your heart begins to reflect a person after God’s own heart. More than that, your heart begins to look like the very heart of God. When that happens, you begin to experience the kingdom of God both now and forever. Let us pray.
