Message - A Study of King David
Snapshots of King David’s character and Scenes from his life
I’ve always found King David to be one of the most fascinating guys in the Bible. There is so much about him that you wouldn’t normally expect to find written about a king.
There’s so much in there that you’d think should have been covered up or glossed over. But in the bible we get a really transparent, blunt look at David’s life.
David was a shepherd, hunter, warrior, general, king, poet, champion, outlaw, ladies man, musician, prophet, worship leader, adulterer, murderer, brother, husband, son, parent, leader, hero, builder, ancestor of Jesus Christ, a man after God’s own heart!
The Thompson Chain reference Bible, “No Bible character more fully illustrates the moral range of human nature”. That’s why I think it’s good to have a look at this fellow. Let’s look at some snapshots of David’s life.
David’s Calling
What was David up to before he knew he was to be king?
1 Samuel talks about God telling Samuel to talk to Jesse, David’s father. Samuel meets Eliab, Jesse’s oldest son, and is very impressed with the way Eliab presents himself.
But God says to Samuel: "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 looks at the heart". 1 Sam 16:7
Another 6 sons of Jesse are paraded by Samuel. But God says: 1 Sam 16:10 "The LORD has not chosen these."
Then, almost forgotten and definitely not taken very seriously, Samuel has David, the youngest, the baby of the family, busy labouring in the outback, takin’ care of a bunch of sheep...
Samuel sees David and the Lord says to Samuel: "Rise and anoint him; he is the one."
So in this snapshot of David we see him as a labourer without prestige, busy at his task at hand, humble and low down on the totem pole as the youngest brother of seven, busy with his hand to the plow, so to speak; not, as far as we can tell at this point, made from the stuff of kings.
And yet he’s proclaimed to be the future sovereign king of God’s people. Good start.
David and Goliath
Goliath had shoes the size of a motor boat. This was no slight fella. This should give you an idea of what David was up against.
Goliath was a big Philistine. Here’s how the Bible describes him: 1 Sam 17:4-7 “He was over nine feet tall. 5 He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing 126 pounds 6 on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. 7 His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed 15 pounds”.
Basically he was a big, scarey looking individual. And he broke the mold of your typical WWF-type guy, because he was pretty clever. You see the Philistine army was facing the army of Israel,about to go into a pitched battle.
Normally in this type of situation everybody on both sides just starts fighting and there’s blood and guts everywhere. Goliath suggested that instead of this type of carnage, Israel should send out one soldier to fight against him.
That way if Goliath, wins, Israel’s army gets to live, but as slaves to the Philistines. If the Israeli
fighter wins, the Philistines become slaves to Israel. But again, they live. Sounds like a plan, eh?
The problem was, of course, there were no takers on Israel’s side. There was no one brave enough or valiant enough or stupid enough (depending how you see it) to put his neck on the line for a fight to the death with this boxcar of a Philistine.
Now David was a little guy whose job it was to run rations to his brothers near the front lines. One day as he’s doing this he sees that both armies are just about ready to pummel each other because no one had taken the bait from Goliath.
David inquires and hears that the king (Saul) would give tons of money, his gorgeous daughter and his left foot to the man who would take Goliath on and defeat him. Saul, of course, knew that the defeated king in these situations is usually a bedtime snack for the victorious army.
Let’s just say he’s motivated to find someone to take Goliath on.
David puts this all together and with the combination of knowing the benefits to himself of beating this brute, and some apparent righteous indignation at the arrogance of Goliath: “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?", David agrees to fight Goliath despite serious pressure from embarrassed and jealous brothers.
David ends up going face to face with the giant Goliath, who is decked out with the latest designer soldier-wear. David is wearing nothing but a sling and a prayer. Let’s pick up here in the Scriptures:
1 Sam 17: “Then (David) took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.
41 Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David.
42 He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised
him. 43 He said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?" And the Philistine
cursed David by his gods. 44 "Come here," he said, "and I’ll give your flesh to the birds of the air
and the beasts of the field!"
45 David said to the Philistine, "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, whom you have defied. 46 This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head... and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s,
and he will give all of you into our hands."
David takes the sling and some stones and with his first try sinks a stone into Goliath’s brain. There’s some more messy stuff that happens with Goliath’s head that we won’t go into.
What does this episode tell you about David? Is he an opportunist who capitalizes on Saul’s vulnerable situation, or is he someone who really wants to assert the power and authority of the Lord?
Does he act out of love for himself or love for God? Does he have motive, or the other? Sometimes we like to think that that’s the way it works. That as we look at David we see him in stories where he’s good, and then we see him in stories where he’s bad.
We look at the good stories and we say, we’ll that’s when he was serving God fully, and we look at the bad stories that are coming up later today and we say that’s when David was completely backslidden. I don’t think David, or we, are quite that black and white.
What I’m seeing as we explore these snapshots of David is a fellow who is faced with many choices, some good, some bad, some really, really bad...and some really, really good. And these choices are always before him.
When he chooses the good, it’s not easy to do so and things don’t always go smoothly for him after doing the right thing. When he chooses the bad, as we’ll see, all is not lost, although there are some pretty serious consequences to his actions.
He’s a complicated guy who becomes a complicated king. That’s what makes him interesting. Let’s look at another picture of David:
David and Saul
This is a pretty drawn out story but in a real nutshell, David had been anointed Israel’s first king,
because Saul had shown himself unworthy of the title.
Samuel proclaims and anoints David, but in the real world at that point Saul is still functioning as
king, and he’s getting increasingly loopier as time progresses.
Despite his own rights to the thrown, despite the fact the Saul had in fact lost the anointing of God to be king (God had withdrawn his Spirit from him), David showed nothing but respect for Saul and reverence for the crown.
Despite this Saul tries to kill David several times. Although he was the hunted, David defers to Saul until the day that Saul dies.
This says to me that David at times made choices that really showed that he saw things clearly. Whatever longing David had for the crown, it seems that he understood at a pretty deep level that he being king was about God’s glory and not his own. There was in David this precious quality - humility. We will see more of that in a little while.
Before that we’ll ponder an x-rated episode in David’s life that demonstrated pretty phenomenal egotism and evil and amazing bad behaviour for a king, for a man and for one of God’s own.
David and Bathsheba
David is now king. It was spring, the time when kings go off to war. But David didn’t go off to war. David sent out his army, but he remained in Jerusalem.
2 Samuel 11:2-5 [Text beside pic] says this: “One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her.... 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant." Oops!
Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, returns from the battlefield at David’s command. David, really seriously wanting this whole affair to never have happened, tries to get Uriah to go home to his wife so that Uriah will think in the end that the child his wife bears is his own.
Uriah, in a gesture that surely must have utterly humiliated David, refuses the luxury of home and comfort and the arms of his wife while his men, the soldiers who have fought David’s battles at his side, are sleeping in the open field, risking their lives for David and for Israel.
Maybe awed and shamed by Uriah’s integrity and honour, perhaps just really in a blind, stupid panic, David sends Uriah back to the war front with a sealed letter to his commander instructing that commander to make sure Uriah goes to the front of battle.
This is the letter: “Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die." Uriah of course dies. Bathsheba, who is only a victim in this, mourns for her husband who David has murdered
Cut to one year later. Bathsheba has had David’s baby. David has an important ally in Nathan [Nathan] the prophet who had something to do with the ark of the covenant, the symbol of God’s relationship with Israel, returning to Jerusalem.
Nathan comes to David. And he tells David a story:
“ "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared
his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
4 "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had
come to him."
5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."
7 Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the LORD , the God of Israel, says: ’I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you the
house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. 9 Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? ou struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You
killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’
Let’s stop for a second. Try to forget that you know what happens next. What do you think might be going through David’s mind as Nathan begins to turn the tables in the story and identifies David as the culprit?
You know, David had a range of options. Kings did not have the type of accountability for their behaviour that Prime Ministers and Presidents have in theory today.
David could have commanded Nathan to be silent... forbidden him to speak of this again anywhere under pain of death. We might have expected him to do that.
David could have had Nathan killed right there on the spot. Hidden his sin with another deadly cover-up. He covered it up before, he could do it again.
Sin has that nasty way normally snow-balling in our lives doesn’t it? Unless...unless we make the choice to not cover it up. Unless we make the choice to confess our sin, to break it’s power of shame and humiliation in our lives.
We’ll, David could have done one of those things I just mentioned to Nathan, and then his story and a lot of what was to happen later would be very, very different. Instead, David allowed the piercing light of truth into his darkness.
He had lived with this sin for over a year. He had buried any noticeable regret about it and gotten
with his life. But...thank God for Nathan, who is worth a study in holy tact himself.
David’s response?
Psa 51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Psa 51:2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
Psa 51:3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
David confessed his desire for God’s mercy and love, because he knew that his sin had coloured his world black. His adultery had stained him. And he was guilty of the murder of another man. He didn’t block out or justify his sin or try to explain his actions. He wasn’t looking for excuses. But he was looking to be excused, to be forgiven by the only one who could forgive.
Psa 51:4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are
proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.
Psa 51:5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Psa 51:6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts ; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
David grasped the seriousness of sin. Yes, he had sinned against Bathsheba, yes he had sinned against Uriah, but compared to the standard of the holiness of God, and knowing how personally God cared about his life and his actions, David confessed that He had sinned against God and that God was right to demand better of him and to judge him for his failings.
David speaks here of the depth of sin. It’s not just actions. Stuff we do that ticks off God. It’s an
attitude, ingrained from conception...it’s an attitude of rebellion, of defiance. The book of James speaks of how sinful thoughts give birth to sinful actions which lead to death.
Yet God wants to put his truth in us. It is his truth that we cleave to that gives us power to resist our sinful desires. His Word goes inside us and teaches us wisdom. Amen?
Psa 51:7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Psa 51:8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Psa 51:9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
Psa 51:10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Psa 51:11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Psa 51:12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Psa 51:13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you.
Psa 51:14 Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of
your righteousness.
Psa 51:15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
Psa 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will
not despise.
There’s something about sin that’s chaotic, that messes us up deeply inside. There is something about confession, about lining ourselves up with the truth of God, about repenting and turning away from sinful actions and attitudes, that rearranges the furniture in this temple of flesh.
Instead of our brows heavy and covered with shame, there is a spring to our step. Instead of wasting time doing stupid stuff, there’s energy for good things. Instead of doing stuff that ends up with very negative spiritual consequences, there’s an investment in things that honour God and have life in them.
Shame, waste and death. That’s David’s experience of sin. That’s probably the human experience of sin. Creativity, life and joy is the fruit of a life lived for God and in obedience to him.
David knew that he needed God’s forgiveness. He needed to rely on God to be made clean of his sin. David also knew that he had been given a throne from which to rule. He had a calling from God that his sin, unconfessed and unforgiven, was threatening to destroy.
So he said:
Psa 51:7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than
snow.
Psa 51:9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
Psa 51:10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Many years later an angel would speak to a young girl in Israel:
Luke 1:30"Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God.
Luke 1:31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the
name Jesus.
Luke 1:32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God
will give him the throne of his father David,
Luke 1:33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never
end."
This child was to be the Christ of God, who would come to us through the line of David and who would deliver to the world the forgiveness that David sought for himself in Psalm 51.
“See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed...Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne...He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb...And they sang a new song: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your
blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation”.
I’m hoping that we all get a glimpse of God’s heart in this study of David’s life. God didn’t have in David a clean-cut, morally upright Ned Flanders type of person. God held David in His hands, and it’s fair to say that in David God had a real mess on his hands.
David was not a bad man who did some good things. He was not a good man who did some bad things. David was a real, honest to goodness human being who more often than not was a real mess.
But David loved God. David sought God. He honoured God’s Word.When confronted with his sin he did not exercise the right of kings to kill the messenger - Nathan.
Instead he heard the truth about himself and wrote a song. He let this terrible truth about himself
become a revelation of a wonderful truth about God.
God forgives. Makes us clean. Makes us whiter than snow. In Christ Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, the Lamb of God, God the Father does indeed blot out all of our iniquities, creates a pure heart where now there may be a broken, sin-stained heart.
His Spirit, which lives in those who believe, does renew us daily, making God’s mercies fresh to us, making his grace to us that gift that transform us into the people God wants us to be, who we were intended to be from the very beginning.
We may at times look frankly at our own lives and say that, you know, in us, as with David, God has a real mess on his hands. David’s life shows us that this is not a problem for God, when we make the choice to be humble about who we are, to admit who we areand when we make the choice to rely, really rely on the grace and goodness of God to see us through.
