Mike Bickle explores the life of David, emphasizing that he is a model of what God desires in His people—faithful, resilient, and obedient despite weaknesses. David's journey illustrates the importance of pursuing God's heart and the extravagant mercy available to those who seek Him. Bickle highlights that David's life serves as a standard for leadership and obedience, showing that even flawed individuals can be used powerfully by God. The sermon encourages believers to see themselves as shepherds after God's own heart, reflecting on David's commitment to God through all seasons of life.

No, the reason I say that is because you were here in the class I taught in 1994, sitting right out there, just like, so it's 20 plus years later and you're going for another round of The Life of David. I'm just surprised to see you here. Anyway, I just had to say that. Well let's begin by going before the Lord. Father, we come before you and we ask you in the name of Jesus that you would lead us, that you would mark us, that you would make us men and women after your own heart, even like the miracle work you did in that young man from Bethlehem, David. In the name of Jesus, Amen. Paragraph 1, David, the reason that we're spending 14 weeks with two sessions a week, that's 28 sessions on The Life of David. Well one thing is that there's more on The Life of David than any other person in the Bible, besides Jesus himself. But paragraph A, David is a picture of what God is looking for in the earth. He's a picture of what the Holy Spirit is going to release upon the end time church. He's a picture, he's a model of what faith and obedience looks like with weak and broken people. I mean the remarkable thing about David and the story of David in the Bible is his weaknesses are not hidden. He had profound weaknesses, but he had this resiliency to sign back up to go wholehearted for God. So The Life of David is not the story of a man who never stumbled, but it's the story of a man who never quit. It's a man who would never ever let go of what God spoke over his heart and what God spoke about God's own heart to him. Isaiah 55, God says, I'm going to make a covenant with you Israel. And here's how intense the covenant is, because as Gentile believers, most of us here, we're grafted into that covenant. It's our covenant together. It's the commonwealth of Israel. But here's the intensity of the covenant. God says, I'm going to give you the sure mercies of David. The intense, extravagant, consistent mercy that David exemplified in the word of God is receiving, needing, and receiving. It's sure, it's consistent, it's extravagant. I promise you, all of you that are in covenant with me through Jesus, that's the kind of mercy you can expect. That's amazing promise. For verse 4, I've given David as a witness, I've given him as a model of what I want my people to be like. What I want leadership to be like. He is a witness. What I did in him and through him is a model of what I want to do with others. Psalm 86, David even understood that in his own time. He said, show me as a sign, show me as a picture of how far you will go with a weak man. How good you will be to somebody who has stumbled many times. For you've helped me and show the people a picture of how good you are and how faithful and willing you are to help weak people. Paragraph B, David's obedience and his ministry is a standard in the word of God. It's not the only standard, I mean Jesus is the standard and the apostles are a standard what God did with them. But David is mentioned a number of times as a standard of what obedience looks like. Again he's not the only standard. It's a picture of what God's wanting to establish in the earth. Jeremiah 3.15 is one of my favorite verses for the generation the Lord returns for leadership. Here's what God promised. Now in context, this is for the people of God in the generation the Lord returns. He said this, I'm going to give you shepherds after my own heart. Or this translation says according to my own heart. Now there's only one man that God ever called the shepherd after his own heart and that was King David. He says, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a work globally. I'm going to raise up a large company of leaders that are after my own heart. So therefore we want to study the life of David so that we can feed the people on the understanding of God like David fed the people on understanding. I want to encourage you to determine to see yourself in this promise. Jeremiah 3.15. I mean put your name on this promise and say I will be by the grace of God a shepherd after God's own heart. That doesn't mean you're a full time preacher. That's not what that means. There are tremendous shepherds in the kingdom that are leaders in the marketplace or serving out in various ways in the community. So this isn't just about quote full time pastors. David the verses after that are more that he's a standard of what obedience looked like. There in 1 Kings 8. God promised. He says, if your sons only obey like you obeyed, then they're going to be on the throne all their days. That's the standard. They obey like you obeyed. Now that's encouraging because David stumbled a whole bunch of times. One of my messages, I'm going to mention the, I mean I gave a message about 30 years ago called the 10 sins that David stumbled in. But I've studied the word of David's life more in the last 30 years than that. And I'm up to about 15 sins I've found that are in the word of God. So you're going to be encouraged that God says, yeah even a weak person like you and David, if you obey like he obeyed, that's what I'm asking for. And then in Zechariah 12, he talks about he's going to raise up people that are going to be like David. Now he's talking about Israel in the end times when the nation's surrounding him. He says there's going to be people that have the courage and the power of the Holy Spirit that David had even in a place of battle when the nation's surround Israel. But that's a remarkable that even David is the standard in that context as well in the generation the Lord returns. Paragraph 2, how we approach this course. We're going to look at it in four different ways. Paragraph A, we want to know the biblical story. Again there's more about David than any other person in the Bible besides Jesus. So there's a lot of information because God gave us this much with the intention of encouraging us and instructing us on how to respond. My goal in this class and 28 sessions is to get you, is that you would be familiar enough with this story that you would be able to read it and understand it and move your heart move by it as you read it on your own. This is your first time through the life of David, many of the passages may be unfamiliar and you don't quite get what's going on but I believe that at the end of this course you're going to be equipped to be able to just read it in one setting. That's something I've done quite a few times over the years. I would take a, on my day off, I would take an entire day and just be alone with the Lord and read the whole life of David, 1 and 2 Samuel. And you can do that in a number of hours. I remember when I used to travel quite a bit when I was in my 30's, whenever I went on a transatlantic flight, I would always determine I'd read the whole life of David going and the whole life of David coming. Take about 10 hours and always the, you know, the attendance of the airplane, they go, what are you doing? And that always opened up great doors. But here's my point, I want to encourage you to take a day here and there once you get familiar with this and read the entire life at one time and I mean you can do it. And I tell you, when I got through doing that, the number of times over the years, my heart would just be buzzing with faith and invigorated and like my mind renewed and so I want to encourage you don't just take the course and move on. Take the course, get familiar with it so you can read the entire life of David, 1 Samuel 16 all the way through 2 Samuel and you could have that, I mean it's a tremendous way to spend a day, it really is. And I want to encourage you to do that. Paragraph B, the life of David has many pictures of Jesus' ministry. He was a type of Christ. Now not in everything He did, but in many things. And so we'll see a great, we'll get insight into Jesus' ministry through understanding different aspects of David's life. Paragraph C, there's leadership lessons. Because God didn't just raise him up as a believer, yes, but as a leader of His people. And he's to be a picture of what leadership looks like. And then paragraph D, that we want to study the life of David and we're going to make the application in the course of how to respond to God from our own hearts as individual believers in the way David did. David responded to God in his failure. He responded to God in his defeats, in his setbacks, in his victories. And there's a very clear picture on how David responded. And the Lord says, that's a picture of how I want you to respond. Not just when it goes good, but when it goes bad. Not just when it goes bad, but when it goes good. Because David responded in a remarkable way in times of blessing and promotion. In a way that is noteworthy in salvation history. One of the, of course, most compelling things about David's life is the way he diligently pursued the Lord through all the various seasons of his life. Paragraph E, above all, David was a student of the beauty of God. This passage we're familiar with here at IHOP, Psalm 27, verse 4, where he said, here's the key phrase, all the days of my life. Doesn't mean he didn't have a bad day. But he means through all the seasons. Not just when I was young in Bible school. Not just when I was old when I retired, or whatever. All of the seasons, my 20s, my 30s, my 40s, my 50s, my 60s, David could say, my teen years. All the days of my life. I was a student of God's emotions, I mean of God's beauty. And he was, he describes himself in this passage as one who gazed on the Lord and one who asked the Lord many, many questions. He inquired and asked for his input and his help on many, many different levels, I mean aspects of his life. Well as one that was a student of God's beauty. He saw God's beauty in creation. I mean he could see the handiwork of the beauty of God when he looked up at the sky. He could see the beauty of God in his leadership over his people. He could see the beauty of God in the written word of God and other ways as well. But let's look at just four simple ways where he looked at the beauty. And the reason I'm giving this is so that you would apply this in your own life. Number one, David saw the heart of God. He saw the beauty of what God's heart was like. The way God thinks, the way God responds, the way God feels, the way God acts. I love to call David the theologian of God's beauty. He was a student, but he was one of the premier theologians of the beauty of God in the Bible. But he didn't stop there. David studied the beauty of God in terms of his own life. Because the beauty that God possesses is the beauty he imparts to his people. So David saw himself through the lens of the grace of God. That is one of the great needs in the body of Christ today. To see who we are in Christ through the lens of the grace of God. And beloved when we do that and we understand even a little bit about his beauty, we see the beauty that God sees in us in redemption. Changes the way we think and feel about ourselves. Number three, David saw the beauty of God in others. I mean in weak and broken people. He could see the element of the dignity and the beauty of God in them. And the reason he could see it in others, because he saw it in himself. The reason he saw it in himself, because he saw it in God. Because he was a student of the beauty of God. And then in verse number four, he saw God's leadership in his circumstances. He saw God's beauty and his kindness and his wisdom. Those would be different dimensions of God's beauty. And the way that he responded in his circumstances. Top of page two, paragraph A. We're just going to hear some just kind of information about David. Some key pieces of information that will help the study of the life of David. David's life circumstances are found in first and second Samuel. First and second Samuel, that's where you read about the circumstances. What happened on the outside of David's life. The book of Psalms is where we understand what happened in his heart. So first and second Samuel, we see what happened in his circumstances. The book of Psalms, we see what happens in his heart. And we're going to put the book of Psalms together with the story of first and second Samuel as well. David wrote about 80 Psalms, there's 150 Psalms, so he wrote over half of them. Some say he wrote as many as a hundred, because a few of them there's not certainty. But 80 for sure and maybe as much as a hundred. Paragraph B. There were three prominent prophets in David's life. There was the Samuel, when David was a young man, a much older prophet. There was Gad, who was David's peer. He was real close to David's age. Then there's Nathan, when David is a seasoned king, an older man, a young prophet, who lives on after David dies and serves David's son Solomon for a number of years. And so he was a younger prophet. Paragraph D. I want to give you just, this is not a detailed date, but I want to give you the feel of the storyline of redemption in the Bible. It's 4,000 years B.C., 6,000 years ago-ish, not exactly. Adam and Eve, 2,000 years after that is Abraham, 1,000 years after that is David. And then you can see a couple of the other key events that happened in salvation history. And the reason so, you understand, okay, David, okay, he's four or five hundred years after Moses, okay, he's just before the Civil War happened, because there was a very significant Civil War that happened after David's generation. And anyway, I just wanted to give you a few of those dates in a very generalized way, so you can kind of fit David into the larger storyline. Roman numeral four. Well, here was the first description that God gave of David in the Bible, the very first description. We don't know exactly how long, maybe this is four or five years, I'm just guessing, because the details aren't clear. Before Samuel the prophet prophesied over young David, I'm guessing David was about seventeen, no one knows for sure, but about seventeen when the prophet Samuel came to him. So this is, I'm guessing, five, six, four, five, six, seven years before that. What had happened is that Saul had fallen into sin, and the king of Israel, and God says, Saul, I've chosen, thus says the Lord, a man different than you. There's a man that I'm going to raise up. And here's what he said about that man. This is the first description. The Lord says, verse fourteen, the Lord has sought for himself a man after his own heart. Now here's interesting, the Lord commanded him to be the leader. Now when God commands someone to be the leader, that means that leadership position is going to be really hard. That is, that's really what that means. He goes, David, this is non-negotiable. And because God commanded him, this was never an ambition David had. This was a demand and a command of God over his life, and when it got tough, he couldn't draw back and let go of it. The Lord says, no, I don't think you understand, David. This is non-negotiable. Beloved, there are assignments in the kingdom that God gives some people, I mean, all over the nations, I mean, he commands them to that role. And that's more than, well, isn't it nice, the Lord's favor on you, and you got a promotion, and you're in leadership. No, that means that assignment is going to be rigorous if it requires a command of God to go to it and to stay in it. But the other point I want to make here, David sought for himself. We see God's zeal in this appointment. God went out of His way, so to speak. He was searching for a man that would be according to his own heart. And it says that he sought for this man for himself. The Lord was saying to the prophet Samuel, Samuel, this man is for me first. And when the Lord calls you into leadership, and many of you have a leadership call, the Lord says, I want you to know, first I called you for me. I didn't call you first for them, and I didn't call you first for you, just for your ministry to get big and you get a prominent or have honor. He goes, no, I called you first for me, then I called you to be a blessing to them, and then yes, there will be blessings that will touch you along with challenges and troubles as well. Well David called, God called David a man after his own heart. David was in his teens. I mean he might have been 12 years old, I mean this is again four, five, six years before he was anointed by Samuel at age 17 or 18. He's just a boy, but God already saw in that 11, 12, 13 year old boy, he saw the seeds. I mean this is remarkable. Here's the message in this, you don't have to wait until you're fully trained or fully in this position. I mean here's a 10, 11, 12, 13 year old boy. He's already responding and God says, I see seeds there, seeds of something that are going to be dear to me, something that I want to multiply, seeds that in that heart that I can trust this young man, this boy when he matures with authority that he'll bring blessing to my people. And again, you're reading this saying, I want to be a shepherd after God's own heart, Jeremiah 3, 15. I want to be one of these. Men or women, again whether you're in the marketplace, whatever's assignment, whether you're in your home, your neighborhood, whatever assignment God has for you. Well to be a person after God's own heart, I have three short descriptions of that. David was committed to obey the commands of God's heart. David was a man, even in his youth, he said, I'm going to obey. Now he failed many times, but when David failed, he had a resolve to sign right back up to obey. Beloved God's looking for young people right now. He says, I want those values, I want that spiritual DNA, I want the cement to dry in your heart, using that analogy to where you're radical about obeying me regardless what other young people are doing. You've set your heart, you're not going the way that many others are going, even many young people in the church, many young people in the society, but you're saying no, I'm going to set my heart, I'm a man after God's own heart or a woman after God's own heart in your teens, in your twenties, in your eighties. It begins by first making a commitment to obey the commands of God's heart. Number two, it involves being a student of God's emotions of his heart. David again, I call him a theologian of the beauty of God or I call him a theologian of God's emotions. He was a student of God's emotions. He didn't just obey, he searched out what God's heart was like, of course that's the reason he was so motivated to obey. But it's more than that, David was committed to the purpose of God for his life and for his generation. You know one preacher said, find out what God's doing in your generation, then throw yourself into it with abandonment. Find out what he's doing in your generation and pay whatever price you pay, throw yourself into it. And don't worry how many people are appreciating your commitment or even recognizing it because David was in a little town in Bethlehem, I call it the back side of the hills of Bethlehem, this little village, you know, way out in nowheresville, this little town with nothing happening. I call it, you know, it's like that little, you know, I think of that, some of that little towns out in Texas somewhere, you know, where they're about an hour drive from Walmart, you know, and they feel like life has passed them by and there's only nine people in the church and they think, that's the kind of town David lived in. And God says, don't worry, my database is up to base, I mean, it's up to date, I can find you easily. So this isn't a obeying the purpose of God and searching out God because people recognize you and it looks like you're on the path to getting promoted somewhere, but the Lord says, no, no, I see you. It counts no matter who doesn't see you. My database is completely up to date, I'm watching you. Paragraph B, David's primary identity, I mean, this was the core reality of David as a man after God's own heart. He wanted to, I mean, David's primary identity was established in who he was and his relationship with God. Who he was, instead of who he was in his relationship to people, meaning what he accomplished, our natural way is to get our sense of value, our identity is our sense of value and success. The way you determine your value and your success is what it means by your identity. And by nature, we find our value, our natural way and our success determined by how people recognize and how people applaud or promote what we're doing. If people are applauding, then we're successful. If no one's applauding, we're a failure. And David was different. David found his sense of value in the fact he was relating to the God who loved him and the fact that he set his heart to love God back, therefore, he knew he was successful on that basis. Therefore, he could have the ups and downs of life and still have a remarkable consistency when you look at his entire 70 years. I mean, he had dark moments of discouragement in that when they were trying to kill him and I mean, he had 3,000 men trying to kill him. I mean, this is real. I mean, you know, if we get 3,000 blogs, if we get 3 blogs against us, we think, oh my goodness, David had 3,000 men trying to kill him for about 6, 7, 8 years. And he would, he had times of discouragement in that saying, Lord, I'm just going to die. It's going to be over. But the overall of his life, he determined he was valuable and successful based on his relationship with God. Now, he measured his life not by how many people paid attention to what he did or responded to what he did. He measured his life by how much he grew in love and meekness. That's how he measured his life. That was the key to his stability right there. If we measure our life by how much people respond to us, we're going to be in a whirlwind continually. But it takes effort. I mean, it takes a determination to realign our soul to be a man or a woman after God's own heart like David. Top of page 3. Now, I have 10 values or character traits of David's obedience, 10 truths that are emphasized in his life. Now, I'm only going to say these for a moment. The reason I wrote them down here, because throughout the 28 sessions we're going to look at, I want you to look for these. These will stick out above others. Number one, the thing we see all through David's life was this relentless desire to seek God. Number two, his resolve to obey, but to obey with love, to obey as an expression of love, to love God with obedience. Again, when he failed, he signed back up quickly. I mean, it's interesting in Psalm 18, David says, I love you, God. Some translations say, I will love you. Others say, I love you, O Lord. You know, that's the only place in the Bible, it's remarkable to me, where a man is recorded in the Bible saying, I love you, God. Now many people love God, but it's not in the lips. I mean, even our most beloved John the Apostle, there's no verse where John said to Jesus, I love you, God. It only happens one time in the life of David. I just think that's remarkable. Paragraph three, his confidence in mercy. So much so, the verse we looked at a few minutes ago in Isaiah 55, God said, I'll give you the sure mercies. The mercies were so extravagant. They were so consistent. They were so reliable. David had this, I mean, almost troubling confidence in the mercy of God. When I first started reading the life of David, I mean, really giving myself to it, I was about 18 years old. When I first heard, I went and heard like a 10 or 20 part series on the life of David, much like something like this, and I never heard much about David. This was so exciting. I decided, I'm going to read this book. I'm going to learn this guy. But I was, the thing that bugged me most about David is how much confidence he had in mercy. I mean, David would sin, and within the hour, he was, I love you, God. You love me. Here, like first-class citizen, like no spiritual probation at all. I used to read that. I remember, I'm 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, and I go, David, at least have enough decency to like suffer for a few weeks at least. He had this tremendous resiliency of confidence in the mercy of God. Now it's one of my favorite things, but when I was younger, I thought, what? He had to at least be depressed for a couple weeks over that one, you know? I mean, put yourself in a little probation, David, spiritually speaking, but David wouldn't. Another thing that strikes, sticks out is David's confidence in God as his source. When David was in need, he says, the cry of his heart was often, through the Psalms, God is going to break me. He's going to protect me. He's going to provide. He's going to direct me. The invisible God will come through for me, that I would do His will. Not just come through for David for whatever he wanted, but in as much as it related to the will of God in David's life. Number five, over and over, David's generous, a leadership style, his kindness to his friends, that's cool, his co-workers, that's good, but his enemies, he had this kindness, this genuine generosity that, you know, it's kind of sometimes hard to make sense of, but I understand where it came from. It came from the sense of God's generosity to him. But you'll see that over and over, and as a number of you that are already in some kind of leadership, or in future leadership, this generous attitude towards people that mistreat you, people that slight you, people that completely write you off, but this generous, because David saw God as his source, and David saw God as being generous to him, so he didn't see his future in the hands of that guy that mistreated him. He saw his future in God's hands. And when people don't have your destiny in their hands, but God does, you can take a step back, and then you consider how generous God has been to you, that's the whole realm of the beauty of God, seeing it, the beauty of it. David had a generosity to people, instead of this natural human tendency of bitterness when people stand in our way and take things from us, David says, you might take it from me, but you can't keep what is mine and God's from me, so I'm not that concerned about you, bless you, and let me help you get on to the next thing you're doing. And David meant it. Number six, he was a zealous warrior. He never settled down to, I mean, business as usual. He always wanted to bring the purpose of God to the next dimension in his life. There was always more enemies that he was going to expose and expel from his life for the kingdom through the grace of God. I mean, there was never a time where David says, I've accomplished enough. On his, to his dying day, he was a warrior at heart. He was a warrior as a boy. Beloved, the Lord's raising up young people that have this zeal, this tenacity, and I don't mean zeal by an extravagant, an overt, I mean, kind of an extrovert personality. That's not what I mean by zeal. I mean by zeal a tenacity not to draw back and just let go, but rather keep pressing in to the Lord. He valued the Holy Spirit's ministry all of his days. He valued the power of God in his teens and in his, to the very end, to see the supernatural dimension of God. And that takes contending for it. That takes believing for it. It's a lot of times it's easy to settle down. I'm not going to press in for that. I'm just going to kind of let business as usual. David said no. Paragraph eight, his fasted lifestyle, his commitment to prayer, the Word of God, the Scriptures, building the house of God. I mean, David went after this stuff. His meekness and integrity. When I say meekness, his servant spirit. I mean, to the end, he held his position to be a benefit to others, not just the benefit to people that liked him. Everyone's a benefit to the people that are helping them. He wanted to be a benefit to the kingdom, even if he didn't like some of the things happening in the kingdom. He wanted to be, have a servant spirit. And the integrity that, when it, the Scripture says that David had integrity of heart. When David made a commitment, whether men were watching him or not, David was faithful to the things he said he would do. He followed through when no one was looking. That is, to me, one of the premier definitions of integrity in the Sermon on the Mount. That what we say, the small things, we actually do them, even if nobody catches us and nobody holds us accountable. We said it, therefore we do it. That's one of the premier definitions of integrity in the Sermon on the Mount. His prudence in speech. He learned to speak with grace, but it doesn't mean that he just agreed with everybody. He still confronted. He still gave direction. He still contended. He exposed, he took on things, but he had a graciousness and beloved, that's learned over time. But that was a value that David really cared about. You're going to see these ten virtues or characteristics in David's life over and over as we go through this course. Let's look at a, now just for just a few moments, for just the last few minutes. The context of David's calling was a jealous, demonized king named King Saul. He wasn't always demonized, but he ended up demonized. And that doesn't mean that he was always in a kind of a out of control frenzy. That's what I mean, but that means, it means that demons were deeply motivating him and energizing him and his agenda. And it's important to understand the context that God searched for a man. He said, I found him, and it's the right time at the right place. Because this demonized king was going to be the seminary that God raised David up in. You know, a lot of people say, I want to be like David. Well, no, this, I mean, I want to be like David, but David gets trained in the seminary of Saul. I mean, it's good to go to Bible school, but your seminary training is going to have a few Saul's in it over the course of your life. I mean, where you're really mistreated, really mistreated. And God says, I raised up my Davids in that context. It was very deliberate. Now paragraph A, we're going to look at these very briefly, and then you can read them more in detail on your own. And I just want you just kind of a little bit familiar, so when you're reading the story, you go, oh yeah, yeah, I remember that story, wow, and there's lots of details we won't cover in this course, because it's only 28 sessions over 14 weeks. Well, the two principal episodes in Saul's life where his rejection, where God rejected him, and it was pronounced by Samuel the prophet. Most of you know Samuel was the aged prophet who, it says that his prophetic words were so accurate that none of his words fell to the ground. Every one of them came to pass. I mean, that's a whole other level of prophetic ministry when every single word he gave came to pass. Well, there's two different sins David had, I mean, Saul had. His sin at Gilgal, chapter 13, and his sin with the Amalekites, chapter 15, and then David comes on the scene in chapter 16. So, understanding these two negative events in Saul's life gives us insight into the kind of man God used to train David up, and it gives us insight in, because David and Saul are both prototypes of leadership. Saul's the prototype of what bad leadership is, and David's the prototype of what good leadership is, and God wants the contrast for us to see the two extremes. Well, his sin at Gilgal is in chapter 13, 1 Samuel 13, and one of the key points, and it's more than this, but, is that Samuel the prophet was also functioning as a priest in Israel, and Samuel said, Saul, there's a big battle coming up, I'm going to come down to you in seven days, and I will offer the sacrifices. Wait for me, thus says the Lord, wait for me. Obey the word of the Lord. Remember, this isn't just a normal guy giving his prophetic word, you know, you're not sure if it's true or false, this is a guy that never, ever missed it, ever, and he said, I command you by the word of the Lord, wait for me, number one, and number two, Saul, as a king, you can't function in the office of a priest. Now that's a bigger subject than we want to go into now, but kings did not function in the priestly office, those offices did not combine, they were separated, and God had his reasons, and there's quite a few examples in the Bible that God was very serious about the guidelines around the priestly ministry, because it spoke about Jesus, and God's holiness, and there's a whole lot to it. And the reason I say all of that is so that when you read this story, you think, man, he just offered a sacrifice, and God was upset at him, why? I mean, it was a sacrifice to God. But there were very clear prophetic words and very clear boundaries around the priestly ministry, and kings were not to cross those boundaries in normal situations. So 1 Samuel chapter 10, a few chapters ago, the prophet says, hey, go down before me, go to Gilgal, but wait on me, wait until I come, thus says the Lord. That's chapter 10. And a couple chapters later, chapter 13, the battle comes. Saul was being attacked by the Philistines, and the people were gathering to Saul at Gilgal, you know, Saul's the commander of the army, he goes, all of you come to Gilgal, we're going to mobilize the army, and we're going to fight the Philistines. But the Philistines, in verse 5, were gathering, and when you read the whole story, in great numbers, far bigger numbers than Saul had, so Saul was getting afraid. Verse 6, the men of Israel, they said, hey, we're outnumbered, we're in danger, we're being surrounded. So verse 8, Saul looked right, and he looked left, and he says, well, where's the prophet at? Where's the prophet at? I need the prophet to hurry up, so I can give the sacrifice, so we can get out of here. He goes, I've waited seven days, well, Samuel came at the end of the seven days, this is probably the early parts of the seven days. Saul's afraid, because what's happening is that the people are, the enemy is gathering, and his people are scattering. Beloved, when the enemy gathers, and the people scatter, your leadership is being tested. Because many times, that's the test God gives. He goes, if the people are scattering, and the enemy's gathering, will you obey me, or will you give way to what's expedient, and just cast away my commands? And that's a real issue in the church today. Are we going to stay true to God's word, even if the people scatter, and the enemy gather? Well, that's a test that David passed, but a test that Saul would not pass. Well, verse, paragraph B, as soon as he had finished offering the sacrifice, the king, he stepped over that boundary line he was not supposed to step over. He functioned as a priest. Again, this was a serious issue, and he disobeyed a direct prophetic word directly from God's voice. And Samuel came and says, verse 11, what have you done? Saul said, well, the people were scattering, and you didn't come. I mean, my assumption is that it's the early part of the day, and now it's at the end of the day, and Samuel's there. He goes, the people were scattering. I mean, my leadership, they were not appreciating my leadership, and I know I wasn't supposed to, but, I mean, the people were not happy, and I had to, you know, come on, Samuel prophet, give me some grace here. You didn't come within the appointed time. Verse 12, so I felt compelled. I felt compelled to disobey the prophetic word, and step across that boundary line, and act like a priest. I know God said not to, but hey. Verse 13, Samuel said, the prophet Samuel said, he goes, you're foolish. You disregarded the word of God. You stepped across a sacred boundary line that was sacred to God. It was clear in that day that it was sacred. You've not kept the command of God. Verse 14, your kingdom, in other words, your kingship, your position as king, it's not going to continue, because if under pressure of the people not liking what you're doing, and you see the enemy increasing, you do what you want to do instead of the word of God. You're not the kind of man, the Lord says that I want to be leader over my people. He says, you've not kept your word, so therefore, the Lord searched for a man after his own heart, and that's that verse we looked at a few minutes ago. David, you know, again, he's probably 10, 12, 13 years old over in Bethlehem. It's probably four, five, six, seven years before, I mean, nobody knows for sure, before Samuel even meets David. Let's turn the top of page four for the last two or three minutes here. Paragraph D. We'll go a couple, two chapters later. We're in chapter 13, now we're in chapter 15. David comes on the scene in chapter 16. That's next week. When David comes on the scene, he'll be on the scene next week, chapter 16. But here it is, the chapter before David's anointed. Here's the final issue in Saul's leadership. Thus says the Lord, verse 2. The Lord says, I'm going to punish Amalek, the Amalekites. And he describes why, and it's a big story. Again, I don't want to break down now just in a two-minute period here. But he says, I'm going to punish the Amalekites from something that happened with Moses back in Exodus chapter 17. God says, I promised I was going to punish them, and I'm going to punish them now in this generation. Okay, the prophet gives that to the king, and the king, Saul, goes, okay. He goes, so here's how it goes, verse 3. I want you, when you attack them, God's help is going to be with you. I want you to utterly destroy every residue of that nation. I want that completely removed, because they were a nation that was deeply involved in demonic activity and all kinds of things. And the Lord says, in the land of Israel, I want this driven out of the land. He goes, I know what I'm doing, Saul. Make sure you do that. But I want you to get rid of all the oxen, the sheep, everything. Everything is tainted. It's all, I want it all out of here. Because there was great wealth in the Philistine camp, I mean, the Amalekite camp. So verse 7, Saul attacked. And he won. He was victorious in the battle. But he took Agag the king. He took him alive. He was supposed to kill all of them, but he says, well, you know, if I keep Agag alive, I might use him to negotiate with other nations. And he has, this could be a real negotiation card in my political, you know, maneuvering with other hostile nations. Verse 9, he spared Agag and he spared the best of all the property and the animals. I mean, the stuff that was worth a lot of money. He said, you know, Saul's thinking, why should we get rid of it? I mean, there's a lot of good livestock. I mean, there's a lot of money represented here. He spared all that was good. But everything worthless, he destroyed it. Verse 10, now the prophet Samuel was somewhere else. When this battle's happening, he's not on, he's not right there on the, in the setting. The word of the Lord, verse 10, comes to the prophet Samuel, Samuel, I greatly regret making this man king. I mean, that's a big statement for God. Like you look at that and you say, what does that mean? I think it means he greatly regretted it. That's as far as I go. He goes, he's turning back from following me. I mean, this is a heavy prophetic word. Can you imagine you're going to go to the president, the king of the nation and say, guess what? The God of Israel is really disappointed and deeply regrets your position and he's removing you now, just like we said a couple of years ago back in chapter 13. I mean, that's a heavy word for a prophet to bring, a king, because the king has the army and the king could kill the prophet. But I mean, the kings did that throughout Israel's history. Verse 13, Samuel goes to Saul, the prophet Samuel goes to King Saul. King Saul goes, Samuel, bless you, praise God, the victory. He was amazing. He should have been here. Everything we did worked. God is with us. Man, thank you for coming and celebrating. I did everything, look at verse 13, that God told me to do. I did it all. Like, really? Samuel's got a real different view of it. Samuel says in verse 14, what's the bleeding of the sheep in my ears? If you killed all the animals, what's that? I think that's how they do it. What's that? I'm hearing that you spared them. God said utterly destroyed because God had reasons for that that were important to the Lord. Saul goes, well, yeah, I mean, technically we didn't kill them all. It's worth a lot of money here and we need the money, help the army, I mean, goes for the glory of God. I mean, come on. Those sheep didn't do nothing wrong. Verse 15, King Saul said, well, we brought them from the Amalekites, but we only kept the really good stuff, but we're going to sacrifice to the Lord. I mean, we're going to use it to the glory of God. And I mean, I can picture the prophet Samuel's face. I mean, he is unhappy. You're going to disobey God directly and then offer that which God had, had a pronounced judgment, offer it to him in love? Are you kidding me? Beloved, the ends don't justify the means. We know that. Verse 15, he goes, I'm going to sacrifice to the Lord. Samuel's, shut up. We said, be quiet. He's nicer than that. He goes, I'm going to tell you about the visitation I had last night about you. Dramatic pause. God talked to you about me? Wow, and I just had a great victory today. Samuel, I mean, the King Saul goes, speak on, tell me more. You got me waiting. I mean, God talked to you about me? And this thing goes, yeah. Verse 17, Samuel said, here's what he told me. When you were little in your own eyes, years ago, when you were humble, when God first called you, when you were small in your eyes, you didn't think you were a hotshot. You were humble. You were, you were, you had a servant heart. You changed over the years. Verse 18, God sent you on a mission. He told you to destroy them all. And he had his reasons. God had his good reasons. Verse 19, why didn't you obey? Why did you just blow off the word of God? And now here, now he gives the motive here. The prophet gives the motive. He says, why did you swoop down on the spoil? He goes, this was about money. This was about covetousness. He goes, you swooped down to keep the good stuff so you could cash it out later. Verse 20, Saul gets a little defensive. I obeyed. What do you, I went on the mission that God told me. I went to battle. I'm on a mission. And God says, no, this was a mission that was anchored back in Exodus 17, back with Moses, you know, 400, 500 years ago. There's, God's on a plan with the Amalekites and now he's executing it. Verse 21, that didn't work because he said, I did obey the Lord. Then he, verse 21, he, he blames it to the people. He goes, well, technically it was the people who kept the good stuff worth all the money. Paragraph E, verse 22, Samuel said to the prophet, he goes, you're telling me the people kept the good stuff, the stuff worth a lot of money to sacrifice it to God. And he goes, do you think God wants sacrifice more than obedience? You think he wants you to disobey him and then offer it to him as a gift and somehow God's going to say, oh, that's the love of God. He goes, no, he doesn't delight in your offerings. He delights in your obedience. Verse 23, he goes, your rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft because we're not talking about a casual disregarding of God. Because we saw, we see Samuel's life, I mean, King Saul's life in the next number of chapters. He's a murderous. I mean, he has a, he goes on murderous rage a number of times. He's a murderous man. He's a demonic man. He, he, he consults the dead through the witches and all that kind of thing. And God says, your rebellion, we're not talking about stumbling, it's the sin of witchcraft. You're operating in the same spirit of darkness as witchcraft. But the reason I give you caution on that verse, I've heard, watched people when somebody's stumbling or they're having a hard time, they pull this out and they put, your rebellion like witchcraft. I go, hardly this is what, the level of what King Saul was doing. I mean, that's a pretty intense verse there. Don't use that on your friend when they're having a hard month. Samuel says, the king, verse 24, the king Saul said, okay, I've sinned. I've sinned. Okay, I admit it. I feared the people. Here we go again, just like chapter 13, because I feared the people. They wanted the money. There's a lot of cash represented in all those animals and all those goods. You said just burn them all, all the clothing, all everything, all the tents, all the supply, burn it all. I feared the people. I yielded to them. I, okay, okay, I admit it. Forgive me. Return with me. In other words, return with me because if the king goes back to the camp with the anointed prophet, I mean, that gives the king stature and authority. I mean, the prophet there together, the photo op before the whole of the army. Verse 26, Samuel goes, I'm not returning with you to pretend I'm in agreement with you. Are you kidding me? He says, God's rejected you. Verse 28, he's torn the kingdom from you today and he's given it to you, given it to your neighbor. There's a young man down the road. He didn't say the young man because that's the next chapter, chapter 16, a man that's better than you. God is giving your position. Now, the strange part about this, verse 28, I have it in paragraph F, it says the kingdom has been torn from you today. But paragraph F, Saul didn't die and lose his kingship for 15 more years, his position. He kept his position for 15 more years, but he lost the anointing in the favor of God. So now he's in his position without the favor and blessing of God. So it was torn from him and the anointing of the spirit was on David, not on Saul, but Saul kept the position without the favor of God. And I mean, his life was in torment after that, those 15 years, and the nation had defeat after defeat. Beloved, to keep the position when God's not in the position and there's not favor, that is a prison. That is itself a judgment of God. Well, I'll end with this, paragraph G, so people say, well, if he repented, he said, Samuel, repent. No, no, Saul repented because he got caught. David repented when he offended God. David offended God and then repented and Saul would sin and if nobody called him on it, he never repented. He repented when he got caught. And again, the next 15 years, there were so many murderous, demonic things he did that God was proven as right, that his rebellion was entrenched at that time. Amen. Let's stand. Let's stand. We're going to take a little break. I'm going to pray over you first and we're going to come back.