1 Samuel 10

Chapter 10. The Ideal King"When one rules over men in righteousness,when he rules in the fear of God,he is like the light of morning at sunriseon a cloudless morninglike the brightness after rainthat brings the grass from the earth.“Although my house be not so with God;Has he not made with me an everlasting covenant,arranged and secured in every part?Will he not bring to fruition my salvationand grant me my every desire?But evil men are all to be cast aside like thorns,which are not gathered with the hand.Whoever touches thornsuses a tool of iron or the shaft of a spear;they are burned up where they lie.(2 Samuel 23:3-7)These are the last words of David, the backward look at the story of a life. How different life looks in the retrospect and prospect. How the exaggerating hazes and the rose tints disappear in the clear, cold light of life’s sterner reality and we see things a little as we shall see them when we look back upon the record from the heights of judgment and in the light of eternity. David had no exaggerated estimate of his own life. Whatever his failures may have been he seems to have seen them in their true light and significance. Yet he had that God-given faith, which could look over his own failures to the bright and blessed hope of that greater King, of whom he was but the type and the distant foreshadowing. And so, while in one sense it is true that this passage is the discouraging review of an imperfect reign, on the other hand it is just as true that it is the King, who would fulfill more perfectly the ideal that David saw and in whose coming glory David could forget the faults of his imperfect reign and even the sins of his oft-erring life. David’s Ideal of a True King David at least has learned this much of what a king ought to be, and he wisely describes the picture of an ideal ruler.

1. He should be just, free and right in all his relationships with his fellow-man and with his subject.
2. He should be godly, ruling “in the fear of God” (2 Samuel 23:3). He should recognize himself as the representative of the divine King and work in all things under His direction and in His stead. This is the only true impulse of righteousness. It must spring out of heaven and be inspired by the fear and love of God.
3. Beneficence must be a part of his reign. What a beautiful picture of a reign of peace, prosperity and blessedness, as the light of the morning, the rising sun, a cloudless sky and the light and warmth of the heavenly sunshine, more bright and beautiful because it comes after the storm; as the “clear shining after rain” (2 Samuel 23:4), while on the disappearing clouds the rainbow spans the heavens and every leaf and flower is flashing like crystal jewels from the myriad drops in their reflected light. David’s Failure to Fill This Ideal “Although my house be not so with God” (2 Samuel 23:5). This little sentence tells us how honestly he realizes his failure to measure up to his own conception of what a king should be. He was the best of Israel’s kings and all through the coming generations “his father, David,” is held up to each of his successors as a model of a true reign. And yet he felt how far short he had come of God’s highest purpose for his theocratic people. His life was overshadowed by many an infirmity, sin and bitter sorrow. If David was a failure, what an awful failure human government must be considered. How fearfully the kings of earth have failed to represent the beneficent government of the heavenly reign. What were the long dynasties of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, but menageries of wild beasts, whom Daniel well might represent in his prophetic vision as ferocious beasts devouring and destroying in their fierce career of selfishness and violence. How little better the governments of today are, may be witnessed by the testimony of our own times in the ferocious cruelties tolerated by civilized nations against weak and defenseless natives. What else may we look for to take the place of earthly despotisms? How much better is a republic? Shall we entrust our popular democracy with the scepter of government? Alas, the money kings of earth today are monopolizing the world’s wealth, and the masses and the classes are getting ready for a relentless war of which we constantly hear the mutterings. There is no despotism so heartless and cruel as that of avarice and gold. Or shall we enthrone culture and crown her with a scepter of government? Alas, the golden age of art and literature is often the gross age of vice and license as gross as the days of the Borgias in Italy, or the Caesars in Rome and Pompeii. Culture without Christianity gives people only greater power for wickedness. Our criminals today are no longer the unlettered classes, but the graduates of universities. Our teachers of irreligion and vice, the men that would legalize suicide, prostitution and intemperance and burn up the Bible, are among the most brilliant wits, poets and orators of our time. No, earth needs a stronger, holier king, and she must go from worse to worse until He shall “make it a ruin,” and at last shall He come “to whom it rightfully belongs” (Ezekiel 21:27). And He shall “defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor…. In his days the righteous will flourish; prosperity will abound till the moon is no more” (Psalms 72:4, Psalms 72:7). David looked forward from his failures and the failures which he foresaw in prophetic vision in the lives of his successors and in the distant future he beheld a King who “will reign in righteousness” (Isaiah 32:1) and a Man who should be “like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land” (Isaiah 32:2). Christ the True King
4. He was true to David’s ideal. He is just, and ruling in the fear of God, and all the exquisite imagery of this beautiful picture is fulfilled in Him. He is as the light of the morning. He is the Author of truth and light. He brings morning to the dark world. It is “a cloudless morning” (2 Samuel 23:4). Its sun shall no more go down. He shall be to us an everlasting light. And yet it is a light and sunrise that follow the night of darkness and sorrow. It is the “brightness after rain” (2 Samuel 23:4), and it is all the clearer and brighter because of the rain that went before. Oh, how sweet it is to have Him enter our hearts and bring the peace of his benignant sway after the long night of our despair, the “dear shining after rain”! Oh, how sweet it will be some day to receive back from the grave our lost ones and to have Him bring light out of our darkness, joy out of our sorrow and crowns out of our crosses! Heaven will be all the sweeter and the brighter because of the grave and the gloom from which we have emerged, even as the “brightness after rain.” Oh, how beautiful it will be for earth to awake to her millennial morning after the night of the tempest which will precede it and the Armageddon battle which will be just before. His coming will be as the morning after the midnight and the “brightness after rain.” The figure also speaks of fruitfulness, “that brings the grass from the earth” (2 Samuel 23:4). Oh, the fruits which His kingdom brings to us out of trial: the fir tree that comes instead of the thorn; the myrtle that grows out of the briar; the curse turned unto a blessing, “a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained” (Hebrews 12:11) by the chastening of our God.
5. This coming King is the antitype of David. David was His type, and He fulfills many characteristics of Israel’s first true king. David was born in Bethlehem. So was He. David was despised and rejected of men. So was He. David was anointed of the Lord. So is He, the anointed One. David was persecuted and pursued by his enemies, and for years a king in exile. So He was persecuted and murdered by hostile men, and even today He is still an exiled King awaiting His throne. David was surrounded by a multitude of wretched, outcast and sinful men, attracted to him by the tie of common misery, but true to him in their sorrow and afterwards honored by him as the princes of his realm. So Jesus today is gathering His princes from the ranks of sinners and outcasts. And some day they will be the nobility of heaven, washed in the blood of the Lamb, and sitting by His side upon His millennial throne. Then David received his kingdom in sections, first Hebron and then Jerusalem over all Israel. And so our coming King is first to be crowned by the little flock He shall bring with Him, and then He is to sit down upon the throne of all the world and reign from pole to pole and shore to shore.
6. He was David’s Savior. “This,” he says, “is my salvation” (2 Samuel 23:5). David understood that his Seed and his Offspring was to be his Redeemer, and from the sins of a lifetime he found peace and hope in trusting in the coming Deliverer and accepting Him as his personal Savior.
7. David had entered into a covenant with the coming King. “Has he not made with me an everlasting covenant, arranged and secured in every part” (2 Samuel 23:5). He had got the ear of his Successor and had secured in advance his place and his inheritance in the coming kingdom. It was a personal covenant. His own name was written there and all his rights and hopes secured beyond the possibility of disappointment of failure, “arranged and secured in every part.” Beloved, have we this covenant made and secured with the coming King? Have we had an audience with Him in the days of His retirement and settled all the questions of our future in advance? There is a day coming when myriads of angels will surround His throne and it will not be possible to reach His presence and bring your request to His feet, but you shall go to “where [you] belong” (Acts 1:25) and reap the results of your earthly life. Before the installment of our president, his friends visited him in his retirement, and their various requests were presented at leisure in his presence. It would be no easy task now to press through the formalities of even his modest court and claim his costly leisure for any personal need. This is the time to secure our covenant with our King. Let us not rest until our names are written down upon His hands and His heart and upon the seat prepared for us, and the high calling and an immortal service to which He bids us aspire.
8. David’s whole heart was in the coming King and kingdom. “Will he not,” David asks, “bring to fruition my salvation and grant me my every desire?” (2 Samuel 23:5). He had invested his being there, and ail his hopes were passing upward and onward to the age to come. Life for him was over now. Its praises and its penalties were past. Alas for him if this were all. But no, his fortune was laid up on high, his inheritance was insured beyond the grave. All his being was reaching forward to that glorious day when his illustrious Son should sit upon His greater throne and David should lay his crown at His feet and hail Him as “the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star” (Revelation 22:16). Beloved, is our heart in the hope of Christ’s return? Are our affections clustered there? Are our ambitions in the skies? Are our investments, our plans, our pursuits all tending to that imminent event? David looked forward to it but knew it was far in the distance. Daniel went to his grave with the words, “As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of your days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance” (Daniel 12:13). We are living on the very threshold of its dawn. Oh, how much more it should mean to us! How we should watch and pray, and work, bending every energy, concentrating every plan and making all our lives subsidiary to this one great and supreme aim, to hasten the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! David knew he had been an unfaithful and sinful man. He could honestly say, “Although my house be not so with God; Has he not made with me an everlasting covenant” (2 Samuel 23:5). He had accepted the infinite mercy and saving grace of Jesus Christ. He had come as a sinner without merit or claim, and he had generously accepted all that God’s mercy had so freely to bestow. Oh, there may be some of us today who can say, “My house is not right with God, my life has been a failure, my work has been disastrous, I am all wrong and I have nothing to bring but shame”; beloved, come all the same. It is the door of mercy that you are entering. If you deserve it you could only take an angel’s place, but because you do not deserve it you can take, through the infinite grace of God and the gift of Jesus Christ, a place as high as that of Jesus Himself. Come although you have to come, saying, The mistakes of my life have been many, The sins of my life have been more, And I scarce can see for weeping, But I’ll knock at the open door. My mistakes His free grace will cover, My sins He will wash away, And the feet that tremble and falter Shall walk through the gates of day. The Other PictureOn the other hand, how dark the picture of the wicked with which the scene closes! “But evil men are all to be cast aside like thorns, which are not gathered by the hand…. they are burned up where they lie” (2 Samuel 23:6-7). live for the world if you will, pursue its ambitions if you choose, be a thorn and bramble if you prefer, but there is a law of spiritual gravitation that leads all at last to “where [they] belong” (Acts 1:25). And if you belong to another world, there will you tend. The thorns are for flames and are useless for anything else. The soul born of God mounts to God and can be kept nowhere else. It is the law of the fitness of things, it is the law of nature, it is the law of eternity. “Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile; let him who does right continue to do right; and let him who is holy continue to be holy. Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done” (Revelation 22:11-12). “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” (Revelation 22:20). Amen.