A New King: David

[00:00:06] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the beautiful songs of your saints, the work that you are doing in our hearts, that we might not worship rocks and trees, that we might not exchange your glory for the fading glory of created things. [00:00:26] Lord, we ask that you would strengthen not only our praise of you, but our hearing of your word, strengthen our faith, that we might persevere in various trials and that we might count it all joy knowing that you are our King. We pray this morning that you would work in our hearts to allow us to see the truths that you set before us, to see our Lord and Savior with the eyes of faith more clearly, that we might love him and serve him and serve others in his name. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:01:08] You may be seated. And let's turn our attention to First Samuel, chapter 16. [00:01:18] It's. [00:01:47] You probably have watched a superhero movie or at some point or heard a story about the origin story of some character. [00:01:59] We don't just have it in fiction, but of course in historical accounts and biographies and histories like we have here in 1st Samuel of the origins of certain people, the rise to power of this prime minister, of that king. [00:02:20] Here we have the origin story of King David. [00:02:26] And there are things that we learn from the accounting that God gives here that help us to have confidence in what God is doing and what he will do through this king, which ultimately points us forward to what God is doing through David's greater son, through Jesus the Messiah, King the Anointed one. [00:02:49] So let's think about how God builds our confidence in him and in his king, his Messiah. This morning, as we hear 1 Samuel 16, verses 1 through 13, the Lord said to Samuel, how long will you grieve over 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, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons. And Samuel said, how can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me. And the Lord said, take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord and invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what to do, and you shall anoint him for me, whom I declare to you. [00:03:44] Samuel did what the Lord commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him with trembling and said, do you come peaceably? And he said, peaceably, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice. And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. [00:04:07] When they came. He looked at Eliab and thought, surely the Lord's anointed is before him. But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. [00:04:31] Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. Then Jesse made Shema pass by. And he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, the Lord has not chosen these. Then Samuel said to Jesse, are all your sons here? And he said, there remains yet the youngest. But behold, he is keeping the sheep. And Samuel said to Jesse, send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here. And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, arise, anoint him, for this is he. Then 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 rose up and went to Ramah. [00:05:33] May God bless his word to us. [00:05:41] So over the last several chapters, we've seen how Saul's kingdom is unraveling, how the Lord has taken away, promised to take away that kingdom, has removed the spirit of anointing from Saul and has promised that he would hand it over. The Lord would hand over that kingdom to another. But up until this point, unless, of course, we've read this before, we don't know who that is. It's a big mystery. [00:06:09] Samuel doesn't know who it is. Saul doesn't know who it is. The people of God in the kingdom do not know who. Who this new person will be. [00:06:20] We know that it will not be Jonathan or other of Saul's sons. It's going to be someone else, someone of God's own choosing. [00:06:31] And in the process of this choosing, we come to see several things about what God is doing. We see God's actions here as he works through his prophet in the choosing of a king for himself. And if we pay attention to the things that are going on here, if we think about the reasons that God is giving us to have confidence in him, to have confidence in his king, it does, as the Lord gives us grace, build our confidence in the king. [00:07:03] Now for Israel, I'm hearing these. Reading this would have built confidence in David, in his authority, in his ministry as king. But we're able to look with an even bigger perspective, aren't we? Because we know that 1st Samuel 16 goes to 17, 18 and all the way to the end of the Bible. And we know about Jesus, who is this greater son of David. As I mentioned before, we know about Jesus who comes, who's promised to David as one who would come and establish David's throne forever. [00:07:39] We know about Jesus, who also was born in Bethlehem, the city of David. We know about Jesus who suffered and died and went through all kinds of trials and tribulations and even death itself, but through that, conquered, through that established a kingdom which God continues to rule over and through this Son. [00:08:09] And so in this way, we don't just read about David, but we. We come to think about Jesus, the fulfillment of David and the fulfillment of the promises to David. So we'll keep both of these kings in mind as we consider this. [00:08:24] What are the things that we notice? What are some of the ways God builds our confidence in him and in his anointed king, his Messiah king, or we could say in Greek, his. His Christ, Christos, his King. [00:08:40] Well, one is that God is not stopped by obstacles. This is one of the ways God builds our confidence here. He allows Israel to choose this king. They get all excited about Saul. We've read about how that turns out. Now God chooses a king for himself, and he will not be stopped. Saul eventually will try to stop this. He will try to kill David multiple times. There will be various other things that will make life very difficult for David. Even in this next chapter, David is going to come face to face with this great giant named Goliath, one of the great warriors of the Philistines. [00:09:24] Will he die? Will he live? [00:09:27] These are the many obstacles that David comes against. But remember, it's not just David. This is God's chosen king. This is God's anointed one. If David, if David does not be established as king, then it means God will have failed to do what he intended to do. And so we see here, even at the beginning of David's ascension to the throne, that God is not stopped by obstacles. [00:10:01] The first one that he encounters is Samuel, if we can put it speaking humanly. He encounters Samuel. And he says, samuel, how long will you grieve over Saul? He wants his prophet to move into action. The time for disappointment and discouragement and frustration is over. It's time to move on. [00:10:23] And so he calls Samuel to fill his horn with oil. This would have been the horn you can imagine, the horn of an animal which Then you would fill with oil, and then that oil would be poured on. This is the anointing that happens on David, a symbol of the anointing of the Spirit of the Lord that will also come upon him. [00:10:49] So he tells Samuel, fill your hole, oil with horn, and go. I will send you to this man, to Jesse from Bethlehem, for I have provided myself a king among his sons. Well, Samuel's reaction is like other major prophets of the Lord, like Moses and others who say. [00:11:10] He says, how can I go? [00:11:14] If Saul hears it, he will kill me. [00:11:19] This is an interesting thing to think about. First, remember that Saul and Samuel don't live very far apart from one another. [00:11:26] There is a good chance maybe Saul will even see him. And of course he will hear of this. He knows what kind of king Saul is. He knows how jealous Saul is to protect and to use the power that he has to establish his kingdom. Samuel doesn't want to die. [00:11:47] And this is not an empty concern. We know later that Saul does try, as I mentioned earlier, to kill David. [00:11:55] So Samuel has some legitimate reason to be concerned here. He's afraid he will lose his life if he does as God commands him. How can I go? [00:12:06] Well, what the Lord does is he gives him kind of COVID story, we might say. He tells him to take a heifer, to sacrifice it, to tell people if he's asked that this is what he's doing and to consecrate Jesse and his sons. [00:12:23] Now, this is a way in which God doesn't provide all the details of what he's doing, but he provides enough and gives Samuel enough to say that will preserve his life. [00:12:37] So this isn't a lie. Samuel does what God tells him to do. God tells him to sacrifice, Samuel sacrifices. God tells him to consecrate Jesse and his sons. He does that. But he also has more to do. [00:12:53] God does this often in our lives as he works in his mysterious ways. He tells us to do X, but he doesn't tell us that it might also lead to Y and Z. And that's fine. I mean, he doesn't need to tell us. And it's not as though if we had all that information, suddenly we would be totally capable of using it and acting wisely. We fool ourselves when we think that if I knew all the plan and all the times, that I would then be totally fine and able to do well. [00:13:26] God reveals things as he chooses to reveal them, and that's what he's doing here, as well as protecting Samuel's life, as well as consecrating Jesse and his sons, this would have meant that they would have not come into contact with dead bodies, that they would have abstained from sexual relations and other things as they prepared to sacrifice. [00:13:50] And so that happens. They came. And then Samuel, of course, brings his sons before Samuel. And you know what happens? [00:13:59] Obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle. Right? No, no, no, no, no. Samuel gets to the end of all of Jesse's sons and is confused, right? This is another thing God has said this is supposed to happen, and yet the data doesn't seem to show that it's even possible. And so Samuel asks, is there yet another son? Is there one who's not here? And indeed there is. There. There is one who has not, who is not even seen to be worthy to come. He's just with the sheep. [00:14:35] Now, of course, if you know even a little bit about this story or you know that this is a big deal, right? To say that he's keeping the sheep is not just to identify his occupation or show why he doesn't happen to be there. This is showing in some ways that he's already fulfilling the calling that he's about to fulfill. The language and imagery of a shepherd is used throughout the Scriptures in many, many ways, including of our Lord to describe his leading his people, his protecting his people, his guarding his people. One of the most famous psalms, right? Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. [00:15:22] He is our king, he is our Savior. And here is the Lord's Messiah, his chosen, anointed king. And what's he doing? Surprise, surprise, he's keeping the sheep. Of course, the Lord knows what he's doing. He calls David and he says, or. And Samuel says to Jesse, send and get him. [00:15:45] We will not sit down until he comes here. For those of you who have standing meetings at work, perhaps this reminds you a little bit of that. He's going. There's a kind of urgency that he wants to instill in what's going on with this household. They're not going to sit down. They're not going to move. They're going to stay focused on this thing until this is done. Samuel is indicating its importance. [00:16:12] And he comes and we read that he is a handsome man, ruddy, he had beautiful eyes. Could perhaps be translated that he was beautiful. To look at this tells us that as an interesting thing, the Lord earlier says, the Lord, a very important verse, that man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. [00:16:38] This is an important reminder for Samuel and for everyone in that household, for Israel and for us. Of who the Lord is and his ability to see. He sees, he can see and he does see past the externals, past the outward appearance. But that does not mean that David's appearance disqualifies him from being king. And because he's a handsome man, does not mean that he is unable to be king or, or that God despises those who are beautiful. Indeed, God made him to be this way, but it means that it's not the most important thing. It means that God looks and sees and chooses beyond the way that we typically see and look and make our choices. [00:17:27] I'm focused right now on the way that God overcomes obstacles, but maybe we can sneak this in here. We are reminded that God sees and knows everything. [00:17:37] We can have our confidence in him because he's, if we can put it in this human, humanly speaking way, he's making decisions at a level that far surpasses our own. And it's not just quantitatively different, it's of a whole different kind. It's important to remember that all of the mysterious things that are going on here, the way that the Lord is causing this all to happen, he's causing it in a way that he knows. The Lord is not bumping into obstacles and figuring them out and getting them over them. That's Samuel's experience. The Lord is just doing his sovereign holy will. [00:18:19] And he does that with all kinds of people. [00:18:23] Tall and short, beautiful and ugly. He works with people that are rich and poor, people that are educated and uneducated. He works and uses people of all sorts, and he uses them according to his perfect will. No one of any kind or shape or size, of any background is excluded from the kingdom of God based on these natural things that God gives to us. [00:18:54] The Lord chooses as he chooses according to his own sovereign a plan. And so here we have the Lord exercising His sovereignty. He chooses David for Himself. Samuel pours the oil on him in the midst of his brothers. [00:19:10] There is a kind of a public or a semi public would maybe be a better way to put it. Anointing that happens here. And then the Spirit of the Lord rushes upon Samuel from that day forward, or I'm sorry, on David from that day forward. This is God's equipping of David. And the Spirit of God works in both saving ways, in redemptive ways, and in non redemptive ways. He is the Lord and giver of life, both in this life, in this age, in this world, and for the life to come. And we can't say, at least I Don't feel like I can say for sure that this is David's conversion or something like that, or this is his regeneration. More likely this is David's equipping as the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon David and gives him the skills and the necessary, the wisdom that is needed to fulfill this thing that he is called to. [00:20:15] Much in the same way Saul was given the spirit, but it was also taken away. A spirit of anointing for a task, not necessarily a spirit of a regeneration, although God does that regenerates us as well. [00:20:36] Next time we'll think about more about the Spirit of the Lord and a harmful spirit that the Lord sends on Saul and some interesting things there. But for now, let's continue our focus on the reasons God gives to us to have confidence in His King. So the first one, right, is that God is not stopped by obstacles. [00:20:58] He's not going to be stopped by Saul, he's not going to be stopped by Samuel, by David, by Jesse, by no one. Indeed. If you turn to Psalm 2, let's read a little bit here we have a kind of a messianic establishment song. Some people think it's an ordination psalm used for David himself as it speaks of the Lord's relationship or God's relationship with his Messiah king. [00:21:35] And let's read this Psalm 2. As we think about the Lord and his relationship to obstacles, particularly people. [00:21:45] Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed his Christ, his Messiah, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. [00:22:06] Right? So you have these people, powerful people, smoke filled room, getting together. They are going to do some work, they are going to make plans. They are taking counsel together so that they can break the God's sovereign rule over them. But not just his sovereign rule, the bonds of the Lord and his anointed. [00:22:32] Here's God's reaction to that. [00:22:34] These secret meetings. [00:22:38] He who sits in the heavens laughs. [00:22:41] The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. [00:22:53] I will tell of the decree the Lord said to me, you now see, here we have the voice, the point of view of the Messiah, of the king, the chosen king. I will tell the decree the Lord Yahweh said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage, the ends of the earth, your possession, which then of course includes all of these kings and rulers taking counsel together. [00:23:24] He goes on, you shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. [00:23:32] Now God speaks to the kings, the rulers, therefore. Now, therefore, O kings, be wise, be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve Yahweh with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the sun, lest he be angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. [00:24:02] This is an aggressive speech. [00:24:10] This is a confident speech. This is looking the enemy in the eye and saying, I don't think so. You're not going anywhere, you're not doing anything, and you're going to be smashed to pieces unless you take refuge in what I am doing. [00:24:31] This is how the Lord is speaking and warning in his grace on those who would seek to break apart of the bonds of the Lord, who would seek to go against the Lord. [00:24:44] He is saying, he is warning them to not do that, but instead to submit themselves to kiss the Son, to take refuge in the Son. [00:24:59] This is an amazing psalm. There's much to think about here, including the trinitarian implications of God and His Son and the begottenness of the Son and sort of layers and layers of meaning. But I read this psalm not only because it's so important and relates to these things, but so that hopefully you feel the emotional impact of the Lord speaking in these contexts. He will not. He will not be overcome by any obstacles. [00:25:31] And the king that he establishes on his throne, ultimately, King Jesus will not be overcome by darkness, by government, by height nor depth, nothing. Satan himself will be utterly destroyed and eventually cast into a lake of fire, perishing. [00:25:56] And for his. For his. [00:26:00] For his treason and his disobedience. So we should have confidence in God and in the king that he sends sets over us because of who God is and his actions. Here, to move a little bit faster, we can add that this is, as I've mentioned, this is God's own choosing, according to his omniscience. He sees not like men see. He's not bound like we are bound. He's not confused like we are confused. He knows and he acts according to his perfect holy will. [00:26:37] This is one reason we pray as Jesus taught us to pray. [00:26:42] Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We want God to act as he has chosen to act. [00:26:51] And the last thing I'll mention is that God has equipped his king for everything that he needs by his Holy Spirit. [00:27:00] Now, David has already been successful in life in a number of ways, which we'll see in the coming chapter. Even in the rest of this chapter, he plays instruments very well. [00:27:14] He is a man of war, of strength. Later we will hear about how he has protected his flocks from even dangerous animals like a lion and a bear. [00:27:26] We see his skill in navigating difficult situations, his wisdom. We read his poetry. He's an amazing man who's very gifted and accomplished. [00:27:37] But we see also the Scriptures are keen to remind us that what David does and who David is in all of this success is because of the Lord. [00:27:49] It's because of what the Lord has done, and it's because of how the Lord has anointed him, because of how the Lord has equipped him. [00:27:58] So as we think of these things and we turn our thoughts to the Lord Jesus, we can say much of the same thing, but again, just at a higher degree. [00:28:09] The Lord Jesus, when he came into this world, no obstacle stopped the Lord. [00:28:17] Not at that time, as Herod sought to kill all the babies, as Mary and Joseph couldn't find a place for the baby to be born, or the thousands of years that preceded that in which Satan was constantly trying, as he's pictured in Revelation, to devour the child like a dragon standing before the woman she's about to give birth, to seek to destroy that baby, that anointed son that is begotten of God. [00:28:54] A long time, Satan had been trying many, many things. You could read the whole Old Testament up to the point of the Gospels. Through this lens, Satan's attempts to destroy the kingdom of God and the chosen seed, and he failed. Satan failed over and over and over and over again. Even to that very moment, that very time, the pressure was on and it was hot and it did not stop God. [00:29:24] Through dreams and angels and miraculous moments, all kinds of things, God perfectly lays the path for our Savior to come, for his King to be established. [00:29:38] And then you follow that line. You keep going. Where do you get? You get to the cross, where it seems like Satan and the powers of this world would have won. [00:29:46] They put the king to death. They mocked him by putting a sign on the cross. King of the Jews, right? Lol. [00:29:57] But the joke's on them. [00:30:00] The joke's on them. The Lord who sits in the heavens, laughs and holds the go ahead, kill him. [00:30:09] It does not stop him. He rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven, and he now sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty and is coming again to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. [00:30:29] Our Messiah is powerful. Our King is strong. He rules in glory. And you can have every confidence in him. Not only because God worked in him and equipped him with the Holy Spirit, who descended on him like a dove as he was anointed for his public ministry. Not only all that, but he even is God. [00:30:58] He's not just another man like David, a great, great, great grandfather. [00:31:05] He is also God incarnate himself. [00:31:10] And in this way, when we think about Jesus ruling and reigning over our lives, when we think about the ways in which people and governments and all kinds of things try to push against him and the work of the Gospel, when we think about the ways in which we are lost and confused at all of these moments, know that you can look to the Lord Jesus and be saved. [00:31:35] You can look to the Lord Jesus and find refuge, protection, comfort, provision, sustenance, everything that you need in this life and the life to come. He is our Shepherd. I'm the good Shepherd. And if you hear his voice, respond to him. [00:31:59] Follow him, listen to him, trust him. [00:32:05] Let's pray. [00:32:09] Oh, Heavenly Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus, our Messiah King, who has come to fulfill all the great promises that you have made, promises to Abraham, promises to David, promises to your people Israel. And you have established him as a great king, not only as a king for this time and this place, but over a kingdom that is not of this world, a kingdom that is to be revealed and that will one day be consummated in such great glory that we will find ourselves glorified and living forever. [00:32:50] As you wipe away the tears from our eyes, as you hold us closely, and we see finally with clarity that what Paul said about the difficulties of this world not even being worth, not even worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed. [00:33:13] We ask, O Lord, that you would help us to have your eyes, that you would help us to see things as you see them from your perspective, from your will, of course, not as gods ourselves, but as your children. [00:33:30] Help us to have a perspective and a mindset about the things of this world that accord with reality, with what you've done, with what you're doing, with what you promised to do in your king, and as you give us these eyes to see, we ask that you would give us the accompanying hope, the accompanying joy, the accompanying resilience, the accompanying confidence that comes from knowing you and belonging to you. And in that Lord, we ask that many would see the things that you are doing in our church and in our lives and desire to know what that is, desire to have it for themselves and make us a people that are ready and equipped to tell them why, to share that with them. To teach them the things that we have been taught, Lord. So that we might see your shapefold grow and that we might rejoice with people from every tribe and tongue and nation as in the glory of. Of our King. We pray this all in Jesus name. Amen.