People tend to forget who came second.
I didn’t watch the Oscars this past week. I love movies, but I have no time for the whole media circus around the Oscars. But one thing I do know. They never tell you who came in second; only who came first.
It’s the same in history. I could have told
you that Alfred the Great was the first king of
So how come the most famous king of
I think something of the answer to that
question is found in the middle of our scripture reading this morning. 1 Sam
16:7 in the Good News Translation reads, “…the Lord said
to him, “Pay no attention to how tall and handsome he is. I have rejected him,
because I do not judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance,
but I look at the heart.”
The last few weeks
we’ve been in the book of Judges, and last week we looked at the career of
Samson, who is the last and (probably) worst of the judges in that book.
Towards the end of Judges there is one line that crops up a number of times,
“In those days there was no king in Israel…” and so in the books of Samuel we
read of the process by which Israel went from being a tribal confederacy (like
the original Six Nations) to being a monarchy ruled over by a king.
It’s not that the
people hadn’t tried to have kings earlier. At the end of the story of Gideon
they wanted him to be their king but Gideon said no. Actually he said no to the
responsibility of being king, but he was happy to take the perks; land, gold
and wives. You’d think that would set off some alarm bells about kings in
general, but apparently not, because for the next few generations the people
kept asking for a king.
Then along came
Samuel. Samuel was the last of the judges, and he was a good one, and for a
while there was no more talk of needing a king. Then Samuel got old. (It
happens to the best of us.)
8 When Samuel grew old, he appointed his
sons as judges for
4 So all the elders of
6 But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel;
so he prayed to the Lord. 7 And
the Lord told him: “Listen to all
that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they
have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I
brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other
gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them
solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.”
So he warns the people
of what a king is like. He tells them that a king will take their sons to serve
in his army or work his fields. He will take their daughters to serve in his
kitchens. He will take part of their land and its produce for his own use. This
is what kings do. It’s pretty much what every system of centralized government
does. The only reason we put up with it is that the benefits (like national
security, and roads and health systems) usually outweigh the costs.
So God gives the
people what they want and he sends Samuel off to designate someone as king.
9 There was a Benjamite, a man of standing, whose name was
Saul looked like a
king. He was a head taller than anybody else. It says he was an impressive
young man without equal. There is no question that he would have made it into
the final of Canadian Idol. He had the looks. He had the voice. He had the
charisma. People followed him.
But, like some
And that leads directly to today’s reading, where God again sends Samuel to go and anoint someone to be king in Saul’s place. But this time it’s different. When God had Samuel anoint Saul he was giving the people what they wanted, someone who looked and acted like a king. This time God is going to give them what he wants, “a man after his own heart.”
So Samuel goes down to
Then you have this scene like one of those Idol shows on TV. I don’t know if Samuel was as nasty as Simon Cowell but one after another Jesse’s sons are eliminated from the contest. After he’s gone through all of Jesse’s boys he asks, “Is this it? Are these all the sons you have?” And Jesse goes, “Well, there is one more, the youngest (or the smallest), the runt of the litter if you like, but he’s out in the fields looking after the sheep.”
Samuel announces that no-one’s going to sit
down to dinner until he sees all of Jesse’s boys. So they call for the kid
brother to be brought. As he enters God says to Samuel, “Rise
and anoint him; he is the one.” And it’s not till
the very end of the story that we get the kid brother’s name. And no, it’s not
“Neo” and he doesn’t look like Keanu Reeves. 13 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.
So much of what we do is based on
externals. There’s a movie by the name of “The American President” in which the
President’s chief of staff points out that, if there had been a TV in every
living room in 1933,
David was a different kind of man. He didn’t necessarily look like king material. He wasn’t any bigger than the average guy. When he tried to wear Saul’s armour to fight Goliath he could hardly walk in it, never mind fight. It’s possible that the family was in some way ashamed of him. It certainly seems strange that he wasn’t brought along to meet Samuel with the rest of the sons. He was a writer and a musician. Although all of the Psalms weren’t written by David there’s no doubt that many were, and his first job once he left the family farm was to play his harp for Saul when the king had his bad spells.
And yet David was a success as a king. He wasn’t an unqualified success. He didn’t do everything right. Nobody in the Bible is ever portrayed as perfect, except Jesus. But there is no question that the Bible judges Saul as a failure and David as a success, so much of a success, in fact, that David is held up as the model king, his kingdom is the paradigm for the kingdom of God, and Jesus is called, “The Son of David.”
So what made the difference? The difference is in the heart. Remember, God does not, “… judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.”
Clearly it’s not talking about the actual muscle in your chest. There are a few times in the Bible when the word means that, but they’re all pretty clear and this isn’t one of them. God wasn’t choosing David because he was a good insurance risk, unlikely to have a heart attack.
Neither does it mean that God was primarily concerned for David’s emotional life. In English we tend to use the heart as a metaphor for the emotions. That’s not usually what it means in the Bible. Actually the Bible tends to locate the emotions a little lower down, in your gut.
When the Bible talks about the heart it usually means the inner centre of a person. (We can use it that way in English too.) It has more to do with a person’s thoughts and choices than their feelings. Genesis 6:5 talks about “every inclination of the thoughts of his heart.” 1 Chron 28:9 says, “the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts.” Psalm 139:23 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.”
So when God looked at David he didn’t see what other people saw. He didn’t see the “kid brother” who was smaller than everybody else. So insignificant in fact that the rest of the men folk went off to this important meeting and left him in the fields watching the sheep. That’s not what God saw. God saw David’s heart and saw that here was a guy he could work with, someone who valued what God himself valued.
That didn’t mean that David always valued what God valued or did what God would have him do. Sometimes he did. As God began to develop David as a leader, Saul felt more and more threatened by him, until he eventually tried to kill David. So David took off and lived in the bush as an outlaw, with a bunch of pretty scary guys following him. More than once Saul went out to hunt David down and David was in a position to kill Saul and take the crown by force, but he didn’t. He was willing to leave that in God’s hands.
On the other hand, once David became king
and had stabilised the kingdom and expanded its borders he went off the rails. Proverbs
4:23 says to “guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” David didn’t always do a good job of guarding his heart. He had
what we might call a mid-life crisis. He had an adulterous relationship with
the wife of one of his army officers. She got pregnant, so he called the
officer back to
However, when a prophet called Nathan confronted David with what he had done, he repented and accepted the consequences of actions. That’s also part of being a person after God’s own heart. When you blow it, when you sin, you don’t try and justify yourself. You don’t make excuses or blame someone else. You take full responsibility for your actions, ask God to forgive you, accept any consequences that come your way as the result of your sin, and set out to follow God again.
What does God see when he looks into your heart? Does he see a David? Or does he see a Saul? Does he see that you care about the things that he cares about? Or does he see someone who can put on a good act, but deep down inside they really only cares about themselves? Or perhaps you once had a heart after God, but you’ve let other things creep in and take God’s place at the centre of your life, the way that David did in midlife.
Whatever your situation; the good news is that hearts can be changed. God chose to work with David as a young man because he saw that David’s heart was in line with his own. When David went off the rails in midlife, God didn’t dismiss him. He sent the prophet Nathan to him to tell him the truth about himself, so his heart could be turned back to the ways of God.
This morning we all have the opportunity to take a heart test. We can come before God in prayer and ask him to look into our hearts and tell us what he finds there. If he brings a word of comfort and encouragement; receive that. If he points out an area of sin; choose to turn away from whatever it is, ask for and receive his forgiveness, and commit to following him again.
It is possible to be like David, a person after God’s own heart. Being a person after God’s own heart isn’t a once and for all thing. It’s a daily thing, as we allow the Holy Spirit to shape our hearts so that we care about the things that God cares about and we live lives that bring glory to him.