======================================================================== (1 SAMUEL) GOD'S KIND OF KING by David Guzik ======================================================================== Summary: God chooses a servant boy named David to be the next king of Israel, showing that He looks at the heart, not just outward appearance. Duration: 40:04 Topics: "Gods Sovereignty", "Faith And Trust" Scripture References: 1 Samuel 16 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In this sermon, the preacher discusses the calling and destiny of David, the shepherd boy who became a great king. The preacher highlights three evidences that God gave to David to confirm his destiny. The first evidence was the anointing with oil, symbolizing God's chosen one. The second evidence is not mentioned in the sermon transcript. The third evidence was when David actually sat on the throne, fulfilling his destiny. The preacher also emphasizes that God's choice of David as king contrasts with the previous king, Saul, who was chosen by the people based on appearance and status. The sermon emphasizes that one can be a person after God's own heart, even if they are not esteemed by the world. The preacher also mentions that David learned to trust God in the midst of danger while tending to his sheep. The sermon concludes by encouraging the listeners to move on from mourning and to trust in God's plan. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We've been having a great time going through 1 Samuel, but I just have to tell you that the best is yet to come. This morning we start with the life and the ministry and the training of a man named David. David, the son of Jesse. And this is one of the most wonderful and engaging people in all the Bible. And we start out meeting David in a wonderful way here in 1 Samuel chapter 16. Let's just jump right into the text, verse 1. Then the Lord said to Samuel, How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I've rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go. I'm sending you to Jesse, the Bethlehemite, for I have promised myself a king, or for I have provided myself a king among his sons. Samuel was an old prophet of God. And God directed him, many years before this, to step aside as the leader of the nation because God was giving the people of Israel what they wanted. They wanted a human king, a figurehead, someone to be on the cover of Royalty magazine and Israel Entertainment Tonight or whatever they had back then. Something to be famous and have the red carpets and the trumpeters and the pomp and the circumstance. It was a carnal desire that Israel had for a king. So God gave them a carnal king. King Saul, who looked good and had the image of a king, but he didn't have the heart that a king should have. And as time went on, this lack of heart towards God was revealed in Saul. Where we saw in 1 Samuel 15, the last time we were together, that God actually took the kingdom away from Saul and said, Saul, you're rejected as king and I'm going to give the king to somebody else, to someone better than you. Samuel, after that occasion, went home. He went home to Ramah and he moped. God, what are you doing? I thought Saul was going to work out. Don't you have something in mind? Where are you, God? Where's your next king? God, I think something bad. And what didn't I do right when I picked Saul? He's agonizing, he's mourning, he's depressed, he's whining, if you will, before the Lord. So one day we find out in verse 1, the Lord says, how long are you going to mourn for Saul? How long are you going to look to the past? How long are you going to sit there and say, well, it's so sad, everything's bad, where are you, God? It's time to move on, Samuel. There is a time to mourn. There is a time to look at the past and be sad about it. But then there's a time to cut that off and to move on and to do what God wants us to do. So God tells Samuel, fill your horn with oil. Now, of course, they would use a horn, an animal horn that was hollowed out in those days. This is something like a bottle, and he says, fill it with oil. And when Samuel heard that, he got excited because he knew what that oil was for. That oil was to be put upon the head of the person who would be the next king of Israel. And Samuel hears from God, I've got a new king for Israel, let's get on with it. God will never allow his work to die with the death or the failure of one man. So Saul goes by the wayside, God's got somebody else in mind. What, are God's hands tied because Saul failed? God will get somebody else. Perhaps Samuel was paralyzed with mourning because of Saul's tragic rebellion, but God in heaven wasn't paralyzed. And he said, let's go. Surely Satan wanted Samuel to remain trapped in mourning over the tragedies of the past. He wanted Samuel stuck there, unable to move on with the Lord. But there are times when God tells us simply to move on. Let's get going. It was time for Samuel to get going forward. Pick up that horn, fill it with oil and let's move on. I'm sending you, he said to Jesse, the Bethlehemite. So the new king for Israel would be found among the sons of Jesse. By the way, Jesse was the grandson of a famous couple in the Bible, Ruth and Boaz. Ruth and Boaz have long passed away, but their grandson, Jesse, has grown up and he has sons of his own. Eight sons, to be exact. And it's among those eight sons that God will show Samuel who the next king is. So he's excited about this. Let me show you something else that's very interesting about verse one. You see the very last sentence in that verse. God says, for I have provided myself a king among his sons. I think that really stands in contrast with the previous king. God essentially was saying to Israel, I gave you your chance. I let you pick your king and your kind of king was Saul. All about image, all about appearance, all about being tall and strong and handsome and all that. And God says, you know what? You've had enough of your king. I'm picking for myself a king. We should expect something. If Israel and God didn't have the same mind and heart. Of course, Israel should have had the same mind and heart as God, but they didn't. But since Israel didn't have the same mind and heart of God that God had, we should expect that the kind of king that God chooses for Israel, the kind of God, the kind of king God himself would choose, would be a different kind of king. This is not going to be Saul number two. This is going to be God's kind of king, a different kind of king, someone different from Saul. So notice here, verse two. 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've come to sacrifice to the Lord. Then invite Jesse to the sacrifice and I'll show you what you shall do. You shall anoint for me the one I named to you. In other words, this was going to be God's king. You shall anoint for me. The first king of Israel was anointed for the people. He was the king from central casting, the kind of king the people wanted. Now, even though Saul was the people's choice, he would have won that people's choice award. Yeah, he's the kind of person we want. God says, I don't care about the opinion polls. I'm going to put in there the kind of man I want in there. It's time for a king for me, the Lord says. Let's see how God reveals this king. Verse four, so Samuel did what the Lord said and went down to Bethlehem. And the elders of the town trembled at his coming and said, do you come peaceably? This is interesting. Samuel walked what in those days was the six miles between Jerusalem and Bethlehem or from Ramah, actually. But in those days, Bethlehem lay some six miles from Jerusalem. By the way, today, it's just sort of like a suburb of Jerusalem. You know, the cities expand and such. It's just almost like an outer neighborhood around Jerusalem, the city of Bethlehem. And if you go there, of course, Bethlehem is very different in some ways than it was in the time of Samuel and in the time of Jesus. But in other ways, it's not very different. The terrain is still very similar. Now, Bethlehem was an important grain growing region for Jerusalem and the surrounding area. That's where they grew a lot of their wheat for bread and such like that. And if you think of it as a grain growing region, you might think, well, it's just all flat fields. It's like Kansas or something like that. But it wasn't. Bethlehem is very hilly terrain and they would grow grain, but it was terraced out little flat patches on hills. And that's where they would grow the grain. And so Samuel comes to this hilly town. And as he comes into the place, the elders of the city come in. Do you come peaceably? You might wonder, well, why would they ask that of the prophet? I'm not certain, but I think it has something to do at the end of the last chapter. And what happened at the end of the last chapter? Samuel, the old prophet, took out the knife and hacked Agag, the king of the Amalekites, to pieces before the Lord. I bet the elders of Jerusalem, you can't keep something like that a secret, can you? I mean, that's spread about the whole city, the whole nation, I should say. The elders of Bethlehem take a look now at Samuel coming in. They're wondering, well, do you have that knife with you? I mean, what, does somebody else need some punishment here? But if you notice here, Samuel assures them. If you take a look at verse five and he said peaceably, I've come to sacrifice to the Lord, sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice. Then he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. Now, you should know something that in those days, in the Old Testament, the sacrificial system, not every sacrifice would be completely burnt up before the Lord. Any sacrifice that was atoning for sin would be completely burnt before God. The whole animal would be offered to God. But they had peace offerings and fellowship offerings and consecration offerings and sacrifices that fell into those categories. You would give some of the animal and burn it before the Lord. You'd give a portion of it to the priest. But then there would be a portion of it that you would keep. And with the meat from the portion that you would keep, you'd have a barbecue. It'd be a great sacrificial meal unto the Lord and the cause for celebration. Be like a religious feast before God. And so Samuel comes and he says, we're going to have a sacrificial feast to the Lord. I'm inviting Jesse and all of his sons. Come on out to the sacrificial feast. They consecrated the sons. They all came together. And look what happens here at verse six. So it was when they came that he looked at Eliab and said, surely the Lord's anointed is before him. You see what Samuel's thinking? This is the oldest son of Jesse, Eliab. Tall, strong, good looking. And what does he say to himself? Oh, Lord. Good choice, Lord. That's the one. Yeah, he looks like. Yes, yes. That's the one, Lord. That's it. You know, I know exactly what you're doing, God. This is the one. Yes, I like it, Lord. What does the Lord say? Look at verse seven. The Lord said to Samuel, do not look at the appearance at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Isn't it interesting that Samuel made the same mistake that the people of Israel did in regard to Saul? Samuel was judging Eliab just based on his appearance. Saul looked the part of a king, but he didn't have the heart of a king. And so it was the same way with Eliab. He looked like king material, but he wasn't. God said, I have refused him. Now, if the prophet Samuel could fall into this trap, how easy it is for us to fall in the same trap. We're all prone to it, aren't we? We judge by outward appearance and we shouldn't judge by outward appearance. We should not make up our mind about people based on their outward appearance, but we do it so easily. Somebody stands before you and, you know, they've got about ten pierced things in their earring and something pierced on their eyebrows and maybe in their nose and in their lip. And their tongue clicks when they talk because they've got something pierced through their tongue. They've got tattoos all over the place and their hair is kind of funny. You look at that person, you fold your arms and say, oh, I know all about that person. Oh, Lord, don't they need to get saved, you're thinking. Then you look at somebody else, you know, the businessman type of guy, you know, just straight arrow, you know, there in the suit, very distinguished looking man. And you think, oh, I know all about this guy. Honestly, you don't know anything about either one of those. You don't know anything about those people, do you? All you see is the outward package. You don't see the heart. Do you know why you don't see the heart? Because you can't see the heart. This is a statement of fact, my friends. Look at verse seven. For the Lord does not see as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. We can be far too confident in our ability to judge other people's hearts. You can't. Only the Lord can. The next time you're too confident about your ability to see somebody's heart, remember what it says about our hearts in the book of Jeremiah, that we can't even know our own hearts, that our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked above all things. If we can't even know our own hearts reliably sometimes, how can we know the heart of another person? And knowing that, we shouldn't be so quick to judge them by outward appearance. God knows their heart. God knows our hearts. God knows my heart better than I know it. And so we don't judge on outward appearance. But this is exactly the trap that Samuel slipped into. And if Samuel could slip into it, I suppose any one of us could. But instead, we need to seek God and God's heart and God's mind when we're looking at people. Well, Eliab wasn't the one, so it had to be one of the other sons. But look at how it progresses here in verse 8. So Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel, and he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. Then Jesse made Shammah pass by, and he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. Thus Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, the Lord has not chosen these. Well, that must have been depressing. Son number one. Oh, yeah, he looks, yeah, that's the one. Good choice, Lord. No, that's not the one. Number two. No. Three. No. Four, five, six, seven. All of them. The Lord had not chosen any one of these. Now, please don't think that these seven sons of Jesse were particularly bad men. They didn't come with beady, shifty looking eyes or, you know, trouble written all over the face. I'm sure they were fine young men. There's seven of them. Just all perfect. There they are. Just wonderful, strapping young men. Good, good, good, solid people. But they were the kind of choice that somebody would make in the flesh. God did not want to take a carnal, fleshly person and reform them into the kind of person. No, God wanted to start someone new. He wanted to take a man of God and train him and raise him up. God isn't into reforming the flesh. You know what God wants to do with our flesh? Crucify it. Nail it to the cross with Jesus. And have us die to ourselves. And have something new come. God didn't want any of the seven sons of Jesse. Even though there they stood in all their completion and all their fleshly perfection. God said, no, I'm not choosing any of these. But now Samuel's scratching his head. Lord, you told me it's one of the seven sons. It's one of the sons of Jesse. Here's seven of them. It's not any of these. And then it pops into his head. There must be another son who's not here. So he says, look at verse 11. Samuel said to Jesse, are all the young men here? Then he said, there remains yet the youngest. And there he is keeping the sheep. Now, please notice this. How does Jesse refer to this mystery son who's out keeping the sheep? Does he even have a name? No, he's the youngest. Doesn't call him by name. Well, he's out keeping the sheep. Yeah, you know, the youngest. He's out there. And then what does Samuel say? Look at verse 11. And Samuel said to Jesse, send and bring him, for we will not sit down till he comes here. This shows the low regard David had among his own family. First, his father doesn't even recognize him by name. Secondly, he wasn't even invited to the sacrificial feast. Third, he wouldn't even have been brought unless Samuel insisted on it. Samuel said, we're not sitting down to eat until you get that other son. Well, everybody wanted to eat. OK, go get him. And they finally brought in David. This is how small David was in the eyes of his own family. He didn't have respect. He didn't have honor. He didn't have privilege. He was a very small person, even in the eyes of his own family. You know, we come from all different homes and family settings. And maybe you grew up in pretty tough circumstances. Maybe you had a lot of sibling fighting or maybe you felt like you never got the love from your parents that you deserve or that you should have had. Can you identify with David right here? He's really not that well regarded by his own father, but he's well regarded by God. It doesn't have to hold you back. It doesn't have to cripple you your whole life. Even if you grew up in tough circumstances, God looks at you this morning and he says, you know what? I love you. You can be special unto me. We can have a relationship that maybe you never had in your home. But you and I can have that kind of relationship. Maybe David didn't have the best of relationships with his earthly father. But my, what a relationship he had with his heavenly father. And that made all the difference in his life. He just wasn't regarded in his family. It's not surprising. After all, David's the youngest of eight sons. I can relate to this just a little bit because I was the youngest of three sons. I have two older brothers. And I took a lot of pounding and abuse from my older brothers all my growing up. I mean, you know, you're always just the punk kid in the way, bothering your brothers, you know, being a pest to them. I mean, I deserved a lot of the punishment I got and the grief I got from my brothers. Little brothers can be really annoying. And when you've got seven older brothers in front of you, I bet they thought of David as nothing. Just put them out with the sheep, leave them alone. We don't even want them around. It doesn't matter even if that's how lowly you're regarded by others. You're precious in the eyes of God. God can do wonderful things in and through you. God can still choose you for great things. That's how God chooses. God doesn't look over the world and take people who are in the eyes of the world, the cream of the crop. He takes a shepherd boy like David out there. What was David doing? That's what it says there in verse 11. Then he said, there remains yet the youngest. And there he is keeping the sheep. Well, when David was called for this great anointing, what was he doing? He was keeping the sheep, just doing his job, being faithful in the small things and doing what his father told him to do. Now, keeping the sheep was a servant's job. The fact that David was out keeping the sheep showed that the family of Jesse was not especially wealthy, because if they were, then a servant would have been keeping the sheep. But they weren't affluent enough to have servants. So David was the servant and keeping the sheep was a servant's job. But David did it. He didn't say, well, you know, I'm not getting enough credit. I'm not, you know, have one of my older brothers do it. I'm not doing this. No, David, this is your job. Go out there and do it. God had blessing for David in the time that he was keeping the sheep. You know, keeping the sheep means you have time to think. You have time to look at the sheep and look at the great glory of God's creation. You have time to think. You know, one of the great things that we're going to find as we go through the life of David is we're going to understand David not just as a great man of God, but as a man with a great heart of God and a man full of song in his heart. That's what the Psalms are all about, revealing David's heart before the Lord. And David wrote and sang many of these songs that he sung to God before he's ever mentioned by name there. Did it when he was just out keeping the sheep before the Lord out in the shepherd. Look at the glory of God's creation. And he'd say the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork day and today at her speech and night and tonight reveals knowledge. That's from Psalm 19, which David probably wrote when he was just a shepherd boy, unnamed out as an outcast keeping the sheep. Or how about Psalm eight, which he probably wrote during the same period where he says, when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you've ordained, what is man that you're mindful of him and the son of man that you visit him? There's the shepherd boy out all alone with this flock of sheep in the night, and he looks up at the sky and he sees thousands of stars. He just doesn't see the stars, but he sees the cloudy pattern of the Milky Way and he's overwhelmed by the vastness of the heavens and he realizes how big it all is. And then he says, God is even bigger than that. God is greater than that. He created all of it. And this great God full of power who created all of this. He knows me. Who am I? Lord, that you know me, that you love me. And it's just blowing David's mind. But he's developing this deep, intimate relationship with God. It's just him and the Lord out there keeping the sheep and David's drawing close to God and spending precious time with God that nothing would ever replace in his life. That's what God was doing in David's life as he was keeping the sheep, keeping the sheep also builds a special heart in a person. Builds the heart of a shepherd. You know how the sheep need to be taken care of and you know how they need the help of a good shepherd. You mean that you will come to understand that you're a sheep and that God's your shepherd. It's during these years that David probably drafted the song and sang the song in his heart where he said, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leaves me beside the still waters. Is this what I do with the sheep? God does it with me. And his heart was made into the heart of someone who loved and had a deep relationship with God during these years of keeping the sheep. God called David a man after his own heart. Way back when Saul was beginning his rebellion, God said, I'm going to pick for myself a man after my own heart. I've got him out there somewhere. Let me ask you a question. When was David a man after God's own heart? After he was anointed? After he became king? After he became famous? He was a man after God's own heart before anybody knew him. When he was the unnamed youngest out keeping the sheep. Now, a lot of times we think that to be people after God's own heart, it takes some kind of special thing. It takes some kind of, you know, notoriety or fame or attention or acclaim or position or status. But if you can do this, you can be a nothing in the eyes of the world and be a man or a woman after God's own heart. That's where David was. And he learned it all just out keeping the sheep. Let me add another thing that keeping the sheep taught David. It taught him how to trust God in the midst of danger. I mean, I know we think of this shepherd boy walking around just singing songs to the Lord and every day is wonderful. It's all sunny and green and it's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. You know, sound of music playing in the background. When David was out keeping sheep, he had wolves and lions and bears to contend with. It wasn't all just sweet fellowship with God. There were times when literally his life was on the line and he had to put himself in grave danger to protect the sheep. There were times when David was terribly frightened, but he learned how to trust God even when you're scared, even when it's not going your way. David learned all that when he was out keeping the sheep. Maybe you feel like God has you keeping the sheep right now. You can smell the sheep. You can hear them. You don't like it. It's unpleasant. You wish you were doing something else. You're in a lowly, humble servant's place, but you feel you have a sense that maybe God has called you to something greater, that you have a destiny that goes beyond where you are right now. If you do, it's only going to be fulfilled as you're faithful in keeping the sheep right where you're at right now. You're tempted to think of the time that you're in right now as waiting time. I have to wait this time out and then God will lead me into something else. It's not waiting time. It's training time. This time keeping the sheep wasn't something that David just had to endure and then, oh, God will lead him on to bigger and better things. This was training time. David was a man who relied on God and grew in his relationship with God greatly. But friends, I wonder if he ever had sweeter fellowship with God than he had on those days and nights when he was out keeping the sheep. God used that shepherd's heart that he built in him during his whole life. So verse 12, so he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy with bright eyes and good looking. That's David's description. There he comes in, muddy, smelly from the field. There he is. You know, he's just got the all tousled hair and he's not all fixed up. You know, all his brothers were dressed up nice, right? This is a big sacrificial feast with the big prophet of God, Samuel. David comes in. He looks like a wreck, but there's something in his eyes. He has bright eyes, intelligent, alive unto God. His complexion is fair. That's what it means by ruddy. It implies a fair complexion, perhaps red hair. And there he is. He's just there, just a kid. We don't know how old he was. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus said that David was 10 years old. Some commentators say 15, maybe somewhere in there. I don't know, 10, 11, 12, 13. But who knows? Somewhere in there. But he's not very old. Samuel looks at this guy and says, what's this kid? Who is this kid? He smells like sheep. But look at what the Lord says there. It says there in verse 12. And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him, for this is the one. This is the one. Those are the words that Samuel was waiting to hear. It wasn't Eliab. It wasn't Abinadab. It wasn't any of those other ones. God took one look here when Samuel was there in front of David. And he told Samuel, this is the one. Anoint him. It seems strange. David would be the one that God would choose. Why? Because he was a shepherd? No, there were a lot of shepherds. Because he was young? There were a lot of young people. Because he was good looking? There were a lot of good looking people. What was it? Because he was a son of Jesse? There were eight sons of Jesse. What was it that made God say to Samuel, this is the one? Because David was a man after God's own heart. As I said before, you don't have to quit your job and enter into full-time ministry to be a man or a woman after God's own heart. You don't need to be famous or prominent to be a man or a woman after God's own heart. You don't need to be respected or even liked by others to be a man or a woman after God's own heart. You don't need status or influence or power or the respect or the approval of others or great responsibilities to be a man or a woman after God's own heart. You need to spend close time with the Lord and get His heart. You know, if you want to know what it means to be a man or a woman after God's own heart, let me give you a recommendation. Spend a lot of time in the Psalms. That reveals to you the kind of heart that David had. Now, not every psalm was written by David, but a lot of them were. And a lot of them just pour out his heart before God. And as you read the psalms and as God works them into your heart, you'll say, when David says something to the Lord, you'll say, Lord, that's what I mean. That's what I say. And then pray it to the Lord. Let it come from your heart to His. Let God deepen your relationship with Him through His Word, giving you that heart after His own heart. Now, where did David get this heart? Obviously, he got it from time spent with the Lord. But someone started him on that path. I find it interesting that David really doesn't talk much about his father at all. But twice in the Psalms, Psalm 86 and Psalm 116, twice in the Psalms, David mentions his mother as a maidservant of the Lord. I think that David had in his early years a precious spiritual heritage poured into his heart by his mother. She gave him a foundation that the Lord built upon. And as she poured that into his heart, David ran with it. And David spent time with the Lord. But it wouldn't have happened unless his mother first built it in him. Doesn't that excite you, moms? Who knows what David the Lord might be raising up through your influence? How God might use you to train up a child who's really a man or a woman after God's own heart. Look what happens here, verse 13. Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel arose and went to Ramah. So many interesting things happening in that verse. There, Samuel whips out the horn of oil and he pours it on David's head. Everybody's watching, but I don't think anybody knows what's going on. Nobody knows why he's being anointed as king. What do you think his brothers would have thought if they thought that that's what Samuel was doing? They would have said, nah-ah, you punky kid. You're not the king. I'm the king alive, would say. They probably thought, well, the prophet Samuel just wants to honor our little boy here. Very nice. Isn't that cute? It's probably what they thought. Only years later, it would be revealed what God would do in David's life. I don't even know if David knew what was going on. God knew. Samuel knew. But maybe nobody else knew. But that was okay. He anointed him with oil. Now, more important than him being anointed with oil, he was anointed with the Holy Spirit. Did you see that in verse 13? It says, the Spirit of the Lord came on David from that day forward. That's far more important than an outward anointing with oil. It was the inward work that was really critical before God. You could dunk your head in a gallon of oil. But if the Spirit of God isn't alive in your heart, all the oil on your head in the world isn't going to make a difference. And what did Samuel do? I find it so interesting, the last sentence in verse 13. It says, so Samuel rose and went to Ramah. Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. Samuel, what are you talking about? Didn't you begin a left-enthroned David political party? Didn't you set out to try to undermine Saul's throne? Didn't you go up to Saul and say, Your days are over. I just anointed the new king. It's a kid. Get out of here. He didn't do that. You know why? I think God was blowing Samuel's mind. I think when David appeared before Samuel, Samuel thought, What? A kid? This is the one? And I bet Samuel reacted exactly the way the Lord wanted him to react. Samuel said, Lord, I don't know why you picked this kid, but there's nothing I can do to put this kid on the throne. You're going to have to do it. God said, That's right. And God would do it. Indeed, God did. Do you realize that 1 Samuel 16, verse 13 is the first mention by name of this great man, David? He's been prophetically referred to before on several occasions. But this is the first mention of his name, which means beloved or loved one. And David would become one of the greatest men of the Bible. Mentioned more than a thousand times in the pages of the Scriptures. More times than Abraham. More times than Moses. More times than any man in the New Testament. It's no accident that Jesus was never known as the son of Abraham or the follower of Moses. But Jesus was known by this title, the son of David. Because God's going to raise this man up to be one of the greatest men who ever walked this earth. Where did it begin? Keeping the sheep. No wonder the Lord would later say of David in Psalm 78. He also chose David, his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds. From following the youth that had young, he brought him. To shepherd Jacob, his people, and Israel, his inheritance. So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands. There he is, a little shepherd boy. Having in his heart worked deeply the things that would make him a great king. David had a destiny from God. A calling. The funny thing about a destiny is you can't put your hands on it, can you? It's just kind of out there. It's inside of you, but you can't put your hands on it. This calling, this destiny that David received from God. How would he know that it was real? Well, God gave three evidences to David that this destiny, that this calling was for real. The first evidence was the anointing with oil. That was real, wasn't it? You can't deny that oil's been poured out on your head. Go wash your hair. I mean, you got all this oil in your head. I've been anointed. That's great. Then the third one, you notice I skipped down for number two, for dramatic pause. The third example, or the third evidence was when David was actually on the throne. There he is, sitting on the throne, the crown's on his head. He's fulfilled his destiny. That's evidence, isn't it? So at this side, you've got the anointing. On this side, you've got the fulfillment, having the crown on his head. And then what do you have in between that was evidence of God's plan and destiny and work of David's life? Well, you've got about 25 years of hardship and conflict where God showed himself great and faithful to David all the way along. 25 years. Aren't you glad that the Lord didn't tell that to David ahead of time? Didn't tell it to Samuel, didn't tell it to David. You see, that's what God had to do because God had a great thing to work with, with this little boy after his own heart. But now he had to make him into a man of God. And that's what we study from this point throughout the end of the book of 1 Samuel, the making of a man of God. And God took this young man from keeping the sheep. But over that time, he developed in him through the conflict, through the pain, through the time where he had to trust in God. He made him into the kind of man of God that would one day wear that crown. All right, think about your life. Have you trusted in God? Are you born again? Is Jesus real to you and in your life? Then you've received the Holy Spirit and you have that anointing, right? You're just like David, you've received that anointing. And at the end of it, there's a crown for you, right? You're going to have that crown in heaven. It's going to be real then. So you got the beginning point, you got the ending point. And what's in between? Oh, Lord, I don't know if I want to be so like David anymore. Can't we just make it just a cruise to glory? Instead of a long period of time where I'm going to have to face spiritual battle and conflict and trust in you every step of the way. That's what God's called us to. And you're going to be so excited to see your life in the life of David in the coming weeks. It just gets better and better. But don't forget where it started. Right now, maybe you can smell the sheep. That's where you're at. You're keeping the sheep. It doesn't smell so pleasant. God has something good for you right now. And the answer isn't in despising your position or where you're at with the sheep. It's looking unto the Lord, drawing close to Him, letting God build within you the kind of heart that would say, there's a man, there's a woman after my own heart. Lord, that's what we want to be. It's easy for us to just stand before you and say, Lord, we want to be people after your own heart. But we take a much bigger breath when we see that, Lord, the kind of circumstances that you've developed that in the midst of. It just makes us take a sober look, Lord God. At who you are, at what you want to do in our lives. Father, I pray that you'd bring us all to just a place of surrender before you this morning. We don't have any problem just giving up. Saying you're our God, we're your people. Wherever you put us, prominent or obscure, respected or despised, loved or rejected. We want to belong to you. We're your people and we're never going to go away from that, Lord. Father, build that deeply within our hearts. And in the coming weeks, as you show us how you made David a true man of God, we ask that you do the same work in us. That your word would not return unto you void, but would fulfill every good purpose under heaven. Most of all, Lord, we want to thank you for the great son of David, for Jesus Christ, who is our shepherd. We just want to be your sheep before you. Thank you, Lord. We pray this all in Jesus' name. ======================================================================== Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/10/SID10640.mp3 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/david-guzik/1-samuel-gods-kind-of-king/ ========================================================================