Allen Jackson - Lessons from David - Part 1
Our reading portions these last few days have been taking us through 1 and now 2 Samuel, which is centered in many ways, in respects, with the transition from the judges to the implementation of a monarchy in Israel, which brings us inevitably to King David, the most celebrated of the Hebrew kings. And so I thought for this session, and really, it’s a doorway into what I wanna do next, we would take some lessons from David. If you’ve been doing the reading, David’s one of the most known characters in Scripture, and so there’s some familiarity with his story that makes it a bit easier to do this, but I believe there’s some life lessons that are very appropriate for us in what’s happening in the church in our culture in these days, so I’m gonna start with Acts 13.
I chose purposefully a New Testament passage even though we’re talking about an Old Testament character, because sometimes we create this artificial distinction that the Old Testament’s one thing, and it’s kind of out of date or somehow it’s no longer really central or essential, and the New Testament is more up to date, but the New Testament is completely indecipherable, it makes no sense apart from the narrative of the Old Testament. Jesus relied on the Scriptures of the prophets for the authority for the message that he delivered, and in Acts chapter 13, Paul is speaking. He said, «After removing Saul, he made David their king, and he testified concerning him: 'I’ve found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; and he will do everything I want him to do.'»
It’s one of the most remarkable statements in the Bible to me. Can you imagine God saying that about you? «I’ve found somebody that’ll do everything I want him to do». I don’t think they yet say that about me. Thank you for not saying amen. But I do have that objective, and you could say, «Well, it’s close,» or, I mean, you can…but you know, I think most of us imagine that God is a bit intrusive, a bit, you know, it’s almost like going to the principal’s office or having the teacher call on you in class, you know? You just wanna to be counted present and then overlooked, but I find that cooperating with God and participating with God are the greatest opportunities of our lives, and yet we are remarkably resistant to that.
It’s as if he wants something that we have, or you know, he’s gonna limit us and so this notion that God would say of David, «He’ll do everything I want him to do,» because in many ways, David, I mean, he’s still sketchy. We’re gonna talk about something, you didn’t want to be the one that took David bad news, because you probably wouldn’t deliver bad news to him twice. In fact, God said to him, «You can’t build my house. Too much blood». I mean, David was not a pacifist, and yet God says of him, «He’s a man after my own heart, and he’ll do everything I want him to do».
So I hope one of the things I’d like to do in this session is recalibrate a little bit your metrics on what it means to be a Christ follower. We’re kind of passive, little squeamish. The great efforts of our life go someplace else. We want Christianity to be about comfort and convenience and ease. I don’t think serving God should be comfortable or convenient. I don’t think being uncomfortable and inconvenient means it’s spiritual or godly, but I don’t want to calibrate my willingness to follow the Lord based on what’s comfortable. Then in Psalm 89, there’s another statement. Says, «I found David my servant; with my sacred oil I have anointed him. My hand will sustain him; surely my arm will strengthen him. No enemy will subject him to tribute; no wicked man will oppress him. I will crush his foes before him and strike down his adversaries».
Mic drop. So now I go back to Acts. I think, «Well, maybe I’m more interested in doing everything God wants me to do,» because I would certainly love that set of descriptors to be true in my own life. God said, «I have anointed him, I have chosen him, I have placed my Spirit upon him». So we look at David’s life, I’m looking for the patterns, the principles, the choices that can inform choices that I make. See, I don’t read my Bible. I try not to stand outside of my Bible and read it and go, «Now, what do I think»? I try to allow the Word of God to read me so that it changes me. I would invite you towards that pattern. Don’t be a collector of facts about the Scripture. Be a person who allows the Scripture to change the circumstances of how you think and behave in the world.
So with that, I’ve just got some lessons from David, and the first one there in your notes is God chose David, and the result of God choosing him was a political fight. I mean, literally a civil war. Now, it emerged over time and it continued for a lengthy period of time. Well, that’s very counter to the current conversations around church and our role in the world. The last thing we’re told the church should do would be bring division, because God’s all about love, and I agree God is about love, but God’s also about righteousness and unrighteousness and good and evil. And as much as God talks about blessing, God talks about cursing. And one of the inexcusable, one of the… not inexcusable, one of the unavoidable realities of David’s life is God chose him to be king, but in choosing him to be a king, he lit the fuse on a lengthy, lengthy conflict.
1 Samuel 16, verse 1, we read this in the last few weeks, the past few days together. «The Lord said to Samuel, 'How long will you mourn for Saul; I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I’m sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I’ve chosen one of his sons to be king». Jesse’s David’s father, if you don’t know. «But Samuel said, 'How can I go? Saul will hear about it and kill me.'» That’s a staggering statement. Samuel is the one who identified Saul as the one God had chosen to be king, and we read it in some recent sessions how Samuel used his authority to secure that place for Saul in the eyes of the people. And now Samuel himself is saying, listen, if I anoint somebody else, Saul will kill me. Imagine what he’ll do to the person I anoint.
«And the Lord said, 'Take a heifer, and say, „I have come to sacrifice to the Lord,“ and invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I’ll show you what to do. You’re to anoint the one I indicate.'» It’s a fascinating little narrative because Samuel says, «You know, I can’t do that,» and God said, «We’ll massage it». Is that a living Bible version of what we just read? Go offer a sacrifice. Now you’re going to anoint a king, but we’ll offer a sacrifice, and tell Jesse he needs to come, and then I’ll show you the… now, if I’m the one involved in that, I don’t like the instructions. Okay, I’m willing to go, I’ll climb over my fear, but could you at least tell me which of the kids before I get there, because it’s much harder to hear under the stress of threat. And maybe it’s a day when you know, there’s cloud cover, and your antenna is not tuned in just right there. The cell tower drops coverage, and I mean, could you just tell me now?
You see, I think a fundamental problem we have in following the Lord is we want all the answers to all the questions before we start the journey, and I don’t really find much biblical permission for that kind of an attitude. I think we have to be willing to be faithful with the steps God puts in front of us. And then sometimes, he doesn’t change the course. I’ve given the illustration before, but I think sometimes we want affirmation, and God hasn’t changed the assignment. Go to Bethlehem, offer a sacrifice, and tell Jesse to be there. That’s all the instruction, so you’ve done that, you’re not getting any more instruction. But you see, we want constant affirmation. I’ll give you an…Jesus said, «Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature».
Never been ascended or rescinded or amended. You don’t need any more. «I wish, if I just knew what God wanted me to do, whatever he wants me to do, I would do it». He wants to go into all the world and preach to them. «Well, I don’t know anybody in Africa». I didn’t say go to Africa, go into your world. Don’t let there be anybody in your world that doesn’t know you’re a Jesus ambassador. Don’t let anybody be there, but until you take that seriously, why should God tell you anything else?
Suppose Samuel said, «Well, you know, I don’t think I’m gonna do that, what else can I do»? You laugh, because you know the Bible well enough that God would be like, «Nothing». «You know, Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh,» and Jonah said, «No, I don’t wanna do that,» and it says after he had a little fish story, the Word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, «Go to Nineveh,» and Jonah says, «I think I will». But we have a different attitude towards God. It’s like we have him, we sense he’s inviting us to something, and some simple step, you know, that’s available and, we go, «No, I’m thinking something else».
Samuel goes to Bethlehem. But the point that I think is most relevant, at least for me and my outline, and since I built it, I get to stay there, is that God calls us to place his positions and his expressions of faith, which result in conflict. You gotta think about that a little bit. God lit the fuse on all of this. See, if I’ve been writing the narrative, I would’ve said Saul would have just collapsed. And Jesse, I mean, David, Samuel, somebody could have anointed David. David could have been anointed, and the nation wouldn’t have had to go through conflict. There would have been lives spared, a lot of confusion, a lot of turmoil would’ve been avoided, but that isn’t what God did.
And you see, we want God to move. We want God to bring sweeping changes. We want God to replace leaders who are ungodly. We want God to overturn systems that are oppressive, and we want him to do it with no conflict, or we say, «We’re not gonna use my voice, because it would bring this», we want our homes and our families to be more godly. We want the people we care about to honor the Lord with their lives, but we’re not willing to use our voices if it brings conflict. There’s a pattern here. Nehemiah, the man that rebuilt the walls around Jerusalem, remember Nehemiah?
There’s a book with his name on it too. He’s a cup bearer for the Persian king. He’s got a good job, he’s got security, he’s got all sorts of good things, but God stirs his heart to go back to Jerusalem and to rebuild the walls to provide the defenses for the city of Jerusalem, and from the moment Nehemiah accepts that assignment, for the rest of his days there’s an element of conflict. There’s opposition, there’s people mad at him, powerful people, people who are very aggressive in their hatred for him. The workers that rebuild the wall have to lay stones with one hand and hold a spear in the other. The list goes on and on, you know many of them.
Moses from the day God spoke to him in the desert in Exodus chapter 3, there’s an element of conflict in Moses’s life with Pharaoh, with the armies of Egypt, with the grumblers and the complainers, with the enemies of Israel, right? Joshua, Moses’s successor, he leads the people into the promised land, but he does it by having, I mean, they call it the conquest. He had to conquer the Canaanite cities. Do you think you and I are different? Do you think we will usher in the return of the king? You think we’ll be a part of that great prophecy in Matthew 24, that this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world, and then the end will come, and it’s gonna be like a parade?
Like we’re running a 5K, and everybody’s going, «Oh, you look awesome! Have some Gatorade! Want a banana»? No, the biblical pattern is very different. Church, we have to be different. You know why we avoid it? We’re so divided in our loyalties. We don’t honor a biblical worldview enough. We aren’t really unified behind the authority of Scripture, so we don’t want to talk about anything that’s happening in our world. We’d rather talk about cultures that are in the distant past that don’t really bring any division.
We can argue about the Pharisees and the Sadducees all day long and leave happy because we don’t know any of those, but if we talk about current policies and current decisions, we get really uncomfortable and anxious. God chose David, sent Samuel to anoint him to be king, and he ignited a conflict. I don’t think we will see Jesus returned to our schools and our college campuses, I don’t think we’ll see that happen unless we have the courage to stand up. I don’t think we’ll get the smut out of our libraries until we say, «That’s not appropriate for small children».
There’s a second lesson, I think, from David: and if God puts you in a conflict, he’ll provide what’s needed for the victory. Now, God gave David what he needed, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. See, I like easy. You know, I did a whole series, I forget how many, I did like 12 sessions on «Let’s Do Difficult,» right? But if I’d really done what’s which is my old nature, I’d have done 40 sessions on «Easy». I mean, I like easy. You know, I wish that cream they sell on television at night that you rub on your belly, and you wake up and you got a six pack, don’t you wish that worked? I’ll be invested in some cream.
My problem is I have ice cream, and then I think, well, how much cream am I gonna need to get to that six pack? I’m just waiting for the keg to be more fashionable. Not really, but we struggle with this a little bit, but if God invites you to a place, in fact, the places God invites you to will inevitably result in some conflict. There’s friction with movement. There’s an adversary to the purposes of God in the earth. It’s illustrated throughout the Scripture, and so when you respond to the Lord with a yes, whether it’s your old carnal nature, or there’s satanic resistance or resistance from people around you who don’t wanna say yes to the Lord, what we have to be mindful of is God will provide what is necessary for us to have the victory in that place.
Now, timing becomes a question, and I can give you some examples I brought you all, but David is familiar enough character to you that I don’t think we need a lot. In 1 Samuel 17, we all know the Goliath narrative. David’s a little teenager, and the whole army is afraid of Goliath. He’s a beast, and the most valued warrior, the most likely character to have faced Goliath would have been Saul. He was the most physically imposing of the Israelites, and Saul wanted nothing to do with it. You know how frightened they were? They were all willing to let a young teenage boy with a sling go face the mightiest warrior that the enemy had.
Now, how afraid does an army full of men have to be to push a boy out onto the battlefield? But this was David’s answer, 1 Samuel 17. He said, «Your servant has killed the lion and the bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them. He’s defied the armies of the living God». God had given David what he needed for that particular battle.
Wow, he didn’t give it to Saul? You’ve been reading the narrative: it said that the blessing of God came upon David and it was withdrawn from Saul. God gave him what he needed that day. It didn’t mean he didn’t face other challenges. We’re gonna look at them in the next couple of minutes. We scroll forward a few years. David’s established the kingdom, Saul died in a battle. David is king, his son leads a rebellion, Absalom, and his son is killed by the troops that had been…David had to flee Jerusalem, leave everything, and Absalom is ultimately killed, and David is mourning his son, and David’s response is not right.
In your notes, it’s 2 Samuel 19. Joab, he’s the commander of David’s armies. «Joab went into the house of the king and said, 'Today you’ve humiliated all your men, who’ve just saved your life and the lives of your sons and your daughters and the lives of your wives. You love those who hate you and you hate those who love you. You made it clear today that the commanders and their men mean nothing to you. I see that you’d be pleased if Absalom were alive today and all of us were dead.'»
I’m here to tell you it takes some significant courage to talk to David like that. He’s taking people down for a whole lot less. «'Now go out and encourage your men. I swear by the Lord that if you don’t go out, not a man will be left to you by nightfall, and then this will be worse for you than all the calamities that have come upon you from your youth until now.'»
David needed a voice, and God provided it. See, it isn’t just the ability to target a rock from a sling. There are times you’ll need a voice. Whatever you need, if you are standing in the purposes of God, I would tell you that the message of Scripture, and from my own life experience, God will provide what you need. Now, his timing and my timing: not always fully aligned. But God will provide what you need. Now, if you wait to have all the provision you need for every moment along the journey, you’ll never start. You’ll never begin. They didn’t have any manna when they were still in Egypt. They had to get into the wilderness. Moses didn’t practice parting the Red Sea on the Nile River just for chuckles and grins.
You see, you and I, we want to have such a mastery of all the things that God will do that we never face those anxious moments, that faith inevitably requires us to respond to God. What I’m inviting you is to an imagination of serving the Lord in a way where you realize if the Lord doesn’t meet you, the outcome is going to be awkward. Not foolish, we’ve had this conversation many times: folks, don’t be foolish and blame God. When you’re out of gas, don’t pray for guidance. Get a gas station and some cash. If you’re merging on the interstate, you don’t need to be led by the Holy Spirit, you need to look.
Come on, I’ve driven with some of those weird people, but only once. Okay, and I’m not doing life with people that do that stuff. That’s not faith, that’s something else. We can talk about some of that another time if you want to, but God will provide, but his provision comes in real time, and so we take measured steps seeing the Lord’s provision. God gave David what he needed, whether it was a victory over Goliath or a commander of his armies with enough courage to tell him something that nobody else would tell him. There’s a third life lesson from David, and that’s that life presents battles in each season.
You know the David and Goliath narrative. Most of us learn that in Sunday school as children. The battle with David and Saul. I mean, he comes away from the battlefield with Goliath, and they’re celebrating David. They said, «Saul has slain as thousands, but David as tens of thousands». Well, that puts him on a collision course. The egos of leadership at that level? I mean, it takes more than a decade for David to win that. He lives as a fugitive. He hides in caves. He does all sorts of stuff nobody wants to do. We’ll look at a few of them, but then there’s David and Bathsheba.
There’s a whole different kind of a battle there. David was a pretty good military tactician, his courage, but he lost that battle with Bathsheba. Cost him a great deal. And he had battles within his own family. He had a son who raped his half-sister. His one son Absalom led a revolt against him. I put some passages in your notes. 1 Samuel 19, «Saul tried to pin David to the wall with his spear, but David eluded him as Saul drove the spear into the wall». God anointed him to be king, and he left Saul in place. Does that make anybody else here uncomfortable? I have to recalibrate what it means to serve the Lord. I want you to be an influence where you work. «Well, they’ve told me I can’t mention my faith». You think God said, «Oh, well, in that case». Just…