Mike Bickle emphasizes David's profound revelation of God's heart, particularly through the pivotal moment when God corrects Samuel's perception of worthiness. This revelation, found in 1 Samuel 16:7, teaches that God evaluates individuals based on their hearts rather than outward appearances or accomplishments. David's understanding of this truth shaped his identity and ministry, allowing him to see himself as beloved by God despite being overlooked by his family. Bickle highlights that this paradigm shift not only transformed David's self-view but also how he perceived others, encouraging believers to embrace their identity as God's beloved and to measure success by the condition of their hearts.

Father, we come to you and we ask you to inspire our hearts. Lord, on this incredible record of your heart that you gave us in the life of David and your communication with him, the things that you told him to tell your people. Lord, we drink from that well and we thank you for it in the name of Jesus. Amen. This is session six on the life of David. We're talking about David's revelation of God's heart. Of course, you could almost name any session that, but here in 1 Samuel chapter 16, verse seven, particularly, we're going to look at particular focus on that verse. I believe this was a very formative revelation that the prophet Samuel would give young David. And it was very personal to David because this is the revelation that God corrected Samuel with. Here's this aged prophet who knows God, second to no man on the earth at that time. And Samuel is in the most important task in his judgeship or his time as a prophet. It's near the end of his life and this is the most important task, but I don't know that Samuel knew that, but he was anointing the man that would set the stage for the Messiah to come to the planet. He was anointing this king, King David. Now Samuel in the hour can't grasp the fullness of who it is he's picking and what's being set into motion, but it's a very important time in redemptive history and salvation history. And when it's this occasion that Samuel as the great prophet, a man of great understanding, misses it and God corrects him. And it's in that correction that David is chosen. And I have no doubt that Samuel many times said, David, let me tell you about the time when God told me about you. God told Samuel about David in 1st Samuel 13, 1st Samuel 15, and now here the third time that we have in the scripture. And I've mentioned this several times that I can picture David this young, 15 years old, probably 17 years old by now at this time in 1st Samuel 16 approximately. We can't know for sure, but as he became well acquainted with the prophet Samuel, he probably said, I love it. I love it. Samuel, tell me that story about when God told you about me. Well, which one in chapter 13, David six, 15 or 16. Tell me the one when you got corrected, when you picked my brother Eliab and he put his chest out and my dad was happy and God thundered from heaven and your spirit said, no, I don't see like man sees. I see different. Tell me about that one again, because it was this experience that formed David's life. It's like, I think of, uh, even like our young interns in terms of our young adult interns that are, that are here, some of them 18, 19, 20 years old, the cement is still dry. They're still deciding what paradigm of God they're going to have. And David's in this same timeframe and Samuel, the prophet lays the cement and it dries away. That was entirely different than anybody before David's time. David has this paradigm of God completely unheard of. Even Moses could not have given David this kind of beginning. And it's from this foundation that David grows far beyond anything Samuel would know. David receives revelation about God in the kingdom that far surpasses Moses and Samuel and, and everyone else. And I believe that it was this formative experience. Again, it's a critical time in salvation history because the Davidic dynasty is about to be set up for the Messiah to come. Samuel doesn't know all that. And certainly young David doesn't get it, but God knew it when he gave this revelation, this was the revelation that, that initiates, in terms of David's personal, hands-on experience, it initiates his ministry right here. God says, in essence, through all of the circumstances, David, I set it up this way because this is the ministry, this is the truth. Your ministry is going to be built on. And it was very dear to David because when the family is gathered around the table and the famous prophet Samuel is there and the seven brothers are there and David is, is within, within view. I mean, he's right out of the way. They can see him work, uh, laboring with the sheep. David's neglected. He's left out this most important hour. And yet God won't leave David out for this reason, because God looks at humans different than man looks at humans. And David, again, his whole ministry, the book of Psalms would come out of this root system of chapter 16, verse seven. It's, it's, uh, importance is beyond, uh, anything that I can really lay out clearly. I could exaggerate it and not, uh, really reach the importance of this revelation that Samuel is jarred with, arrested by, surprised by, that would lay the foundation of David's understanding, not just about God. Well, obviously about God, but it was so personal to David because it's how it's what God was thinking when God chose him. And so it was really personal to him and he really got ahold of it. Let's read it. Verse seven, 16, verse seven, the Lord said to Samuel, correcting him, do not look at his appearance, talking about David's older brother, Eliab. Don't look at his appearance. Don't look at externals. Don't look at his performance because he was a, a warrior. He was in the army. Don't look at his accomplishments. He might be trained in this or that he might have a degree. He might have a big ministry. He might have a big business. He might have a big family name. He might be well known. He may be, uh, noised abroad. Don't look, even look at his skills. Don't look at his position before man at all. Don't look how much he's trained, how much money he has, how famous. Don't look at the opportunities he has. Don't even look at his failures. Don't look at anything that you can see with your eyes because you're going to miss it if you do that. When I established this, this Davidic dynasty, this dynasty, this family line that would come from this young man called David, he goes, don't look at his appearance because I have refused him. Now it hasn't refused him in terms of his salvation, but he says, I'm not chosen him to be the foundation, the, uh, the lineage of which the Messiah would come to the earth. No, I want a man that's going to have a heart like my son, Jesus. He's going to have, he's going to be a man that has a heart for him and a heart like him to begin that line that would reach the Messiah. And here's the great statement, the great one sentence of beloved. So many Psalms flow out of this root system. This one sentence, if you get ahold of it will change your life. It has so many implications. It looks like it does it. It looks like it's kind of casual. There's layers and layers of meaning to this one sentence. I've spent years staring at this sentence, finding new, uh, angles to this diamond, new, brilliant light, splendor that shines off of this one sentence. Here it is. God does not see as a man sees that's it right there. God does not evaluate like a man evaluates. God doesn't measure the way a man measures for man looks at the outward man measures by outward things man measures by how much performance, how much skill, how much money, how good looking, how big a network, how, how much, how many doors can they open for you? Man looks or measures by outward things, but God looks at the heart. God measures a man and a woman. He evaluates us. His heart has even moved towards us in some ways in response to what's in our heart. God moves towards us first, and then we respond back to him. And then God moves in a different way towards us the next, the next round. God doesn't see as man sees for man looks or evaluates from outward things. But God looks at the heart. Now David's going to understand how God views him through this lens, how God turned down his good looking warrior, tall, dark and handsome brother and chose the little guy left out in the field that the family had no regard for. When you see all the verses, those, uh, taking the class on the last page, I, and there's more besides, I give a whole lot, a list of verses where David's family really had contempt for him. It's a point that's not often brought out. We'll look at it later, but, uh, I'm just saying, making the point David wasn't just neglected. He, his family had contempt for him again. Uh, the great prophet Samuel, we're talking about this, the greatest day in Jesse, that's the father in his whole history, his whole life. And he has David doing a menial task, like mowing the lawn. And he's within the view of the whole, uh, dinner party. Because when Samuel said to him in verse 11, he said, don't you have another son? Is there anyone else? He goes, yeah, there he is. They could all see him. Samuel said, what's he doing there? And this isn't one of your boys. I mean, you know, I am Samuel. I mean, but it's not just that David viewed God differently through this David viewed himself differently, but not just the David view, his value to God, David even viewed his assignment on the earth through this lens. And it seems a little, uh, uh, it can, you can lose, you can lose the value of what David saw. You can lose the power of what David saw, even about his tasks. We think that what David was excited about was being King. That was a small thing to David. We look at David's life and go, wow, he was even King. David says, no, I look at my kingship as a very small thing compared to my major calling before God that would go far beyond my 40 year kingship in Jerusalem. I mean, in Israel, David saw his life and his assignment and his mission far beyond his 40 years in Israel as King. So don't even get lost by the grandeur of David. A lot of people that study David's life are awed by the fact he was King. That is not what awed David. Yes, it awed David, God did, but David was touched by what he would be after the Lord returns as well on the earth, not just beforehand. David was really a clear about that. David was the first millennial theologian in the Bible. And David understood his role after the Lord returns for a thousand years on the earth, not just 40 years in Israel. And David was captured by that because David wasn't seeing just as man sees. He looked beyond the grave and it meant a lot to him. And until you understand the life of David or even the revelation of the earthly kingdom of Jesus after his return, the fullness of it, you just miss all those verses. They're just, there's a, there's a scores of them, all kinds of insights. Once you begin to see in the way that God sees different than man sees in the temporal external outward way. But David looked at people different through this lens too. He looked at his own, he looked at God different. He looked at his heart different. He looked at his 40 years of being King different. He looked at his training a time and the, the, the Adolamere is different. He looked at his enemies different. He looked at his friends different. So many things changed by this one arrow of revelation that struck his heart on the day when God called him. I mean, it's almost like the Lord says, I'm going to save a real big one. When I call David, I'm going to say one of the biggest truths I have in the old Testament. Here it is. The way God evaluates David's weakness. David's confidence in God was built on the fact he knew God did not see like man sees because if God was like man, David would have been written off long ago, but because God isn't David has confidence. It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. Let's read number, uh, paragraph eight, God corrected the way Samuel viewed or evaluated people at the time when he was choosing the most important King in the old Testament, King David, God was revealing how he views and how he chooses people. Beloved. This is how he chooses people different than man chooses people. We put so much energy for a man to choose us or to notice us. And God says, I choose on a totally different level than the energy you're putting in to get some group of leaders to choose you for, whether it's the political arena, the economic arena, the ministry arena, whatever arena it is. God's major revelation to Samuel's God is as simple as it is. It is profound. I've chewed on this for years and I feel like I'm at the very beginning of the beginning. This one colossal statement with so many implications, man does not see like man sees he doesn't evaluate or measure like man does man. God sees the movements of the heart. God steers of the heart. And even when the outward performance is failure in the eyes of man, God sees the movement of the heart and still see success in the hour of which men see failure. Men look at a 10 year period of their life and they blew it and they cried out to God and God saw the crying out. God saw the movement of their heart. All man can see is his failure even at the heart level. And God sees the struggle and the crying out and he sees goodness even in the struggle. All we see is how we measured up in the failure department. We write ourself off. God says, I saw the cry of your heart. I didn't write you off at all. Maybe it's in the ministry level. Maybe it's in the business, whatever. We think it's going one way and God says, the only reason you have this horrible depressing view is because you measure just like man does. You don't measure like I measure. I measure very differently than you do. I just I don't measure how big God doesn't measure me by how big my ministry is. God measures me by the movement of my heart when I'm in the ministry. Not how many people gather, but what happens in me in the assignment of doing my ministry. That's what God measures in me and remembers. When I meet the Lord face to face one day, he's not going to talk to me about how big or little meetings were. He's going to talk about how what happened in my heart when the meetings were big and what happened in my heart when they were little. That's what he's measuring in me and you. And the more I tap into that, I just, I could just live in a whole different world, no matter what's happening on a different world on the inside, regardless of what's happening big or little on the outside. Once we tap into this Davidic revelation. And the reason I call it a Davidic revelation, it's a, it's the revelation that formed the life of David. It formed his, his paradigm of God himself in the future. It formed his paradigm of his success of his labors. Again, he was so captured by this paradigm. He wasn't even excited about, he wasn't impressed by even his kingship. And that's what most people are impressed by when they read the life of David. That's not even what moved David. David knew he had an assignment in Jerusalem far beyond his first assignment. And that's after the Lord returns. I realized that I lost somebody on that one, but that's okay. That's tomorrow night. Now people I have in the, in the paragraph, a people most often measure themselves by positive externals. They is by the positive things by a performance and accomplishments and skills. And, and, uh, they don't know God's measuring them by internals. They're measuring theirself. If they do real good, if they preach the sermon real good, they're just excited. If the crowd clapped and everybody bought their tape, they're just like over the moon. And God says, that's not how I measured that night. I didn't measure the night. If they all cried, I measured it by something very different than what you're measuring about. Yeah. But if everybody's excited, that means I might have a, another opportunity and Lord probably well, but, uh, that's not really why you and me are connected. There's something way heavier going on than you getting a bigger meeting to preach at or sing at or lead at, or a bigger, uh, crowd to be awed by your prophesying. He goes, I'm measuring what's going on inside of you. And I'm, and I'm letting you have big crowds and little crowds and no crowds and left out and fully paid attention to and fully ignored. So I can watch the movements of your heart because that's what you're going to take with you to the next leg of the race. David tapped into this, but sometimes it's not, uh, the externals. That's normally what we measure ourself. And, and the point that God's telling David in essence, the externals are not mostly what's going to translate past the grave. It's the internals that translate past the grave. Some externals do, but mostly they don't see because, uh, Ephesians 4, 18, Paul, the apostle said, our minds are darkened. Our understanding is darkened. That's why this is hard to grasp. It takes revelation because our understanding by nature is darkened. And we can only see, uh, we most see the applause and the immediate impact in front of us and in the external. And again, if the crowd's big and they're excited, no matter what, what arena of life it is, whether it's ministry or business or scoring the football or in a game or whatever it is, if the crowd's big enthusiasm, the money's coming, it is happening. And David would understand that it's what he can take past the grave that matters. But a lot of folks measure themselves, not by the positive externals, but by their negative ones, by their lack of gifting, by their lack of opportunity, the lack of people opening doors for them. That's the pain of their heart by their lack of victory. Even in spiritual things, they look at that and they go, I'm finished. There's nothing. And the Lord says, no cry out in your heart, press against this failure in your spiritual life. And even in the pressing against, there is the light of victory already burning in you. So we don't have to measure ourselves by the externals, whether the positive ones are the negatives, our smallest things, our smallest achievements and the movements of our heart that are not esteemed by men, they seem small, are most important to God. B, the leadership lesson we have here, don't determine, we must not determine our purpose in God by the same externals that other, by comparing ourselves to the externals of others. Singers don't see who sings better or worse and figure out what your purpose in God is. Preachers, business leaders, leaders in any arena. Don't look at someone else and figure out what your destiny is. If somebody is better or worse, well, I preach better than them. I'll probably get more opportunities. That's not what your purpose is about ultimately at all. Not even a little bit. The problem with comparison is if we do well, we're proud. And if we do bad work, we'll reject it. Both sides are the spirits quenched. It's really true. The spirit gets quenched in our heart and our spirit gets defiled either direction. And we don't want to, we don't want to measure ourselves. We don't want to determine our purpose in God related to the externals of other people. And we don't want to give up on ourselves and our purpose in God because we lack opportunity. Maybe no doors are opening now, but it was the Lord who said. He goes, he says, and we'll look at it in a minute, but he says in Luke chapter 19, he says to the one that was faithful in very little, he will say 10 cities is yours. And they're going to be shocked because they are faithful in very little and now they're ruling 10 cities. Don't overly be stressed by the opportunities now. God is measuring everything. He's the, he's the ultimate and final accountant of the universe. He is the great accountant. So everybody, nobody opens the right door. You're left out again and again. The Lord says, I'm watching. If you're faithful in very little, I will give you 10 cities in that day. I'm watching every movement of your heart. I'm watching every cup of cold water you get. And I am determining and accounting for everything. I'm determining your future by accounting how you're responding to me. Don't even give up because you lack victory in an area. I remember the days when, I mean, it's not like I'm the, uh, you know, the ultimate prayer guy, but I, I'm using my prayer failure here. And, uh, I guess to do that, I should have a great breakthrough. I have a little breakthrough, but I want a lot bigger one, but I was so bad at the prayer and the word. I was, the word was so boring to me. It was so boring. And I said, God, I love you. I just don't like prayer. I hate fasting. I hate reading the Bible and I'll do evangelism if I have to. The evangelism was like the easiest of the bad things I had to do, because at least I got to talk to people and, you know, and crack jokes with them and stuff, you know, and it still seemed to count. And I said, God, I'll never make it. If the Lord would have whispered in my heart back then and said, Hey, little guy, you're going to lead a prayer movement. And I go, what? No, no, I can't do this. I have no power in this arena. Zero. I don't even have interest in it. I mean, I didn't have interest in it. I did it just because I read books and books said you had to all these books, these guys. And they said, if you don't pray, you're, you're finished. And I just said, Oh man, I liked the thing I liked was meetings. I love meetings. I did. I could go to meetings every night, but don't make, get me alone with God and give me a Bible. I just, no way. It was so confusing. I said, God, if you want me to read your word, make it easy or something. It's so confusing. I had no idea. I was, uh, I was about ready to just write off my future because I couldn't get ahold of a number of issues in my life, but I cried out. I said, Oh God, I don't want this way. I can put 10 issues there. And I didn't know the crying out was the beginning of genuine victory. I couldn't measure it. And if the Lord would have stood in front of me right there, he would have said, all you can see is what you're not doing. I see the cry of your heart. And that is the massive assurance mixed in the grace of God of where you're going in your future. And I didn't have any idea of what I will be doing after this life. After my first assignment on the earth here, when the Lord returns, you know, we got billions of years to go plus some, don't give up on yourself. Don't write yourself off. Get the revelation of David, that God's evaluating at a very different level and a very different timeframe than we are. David's foundation to see David's foundational understanding about God's heart was formed by this encounter with Samuel. Samuel comes and tells David, he says, David, God evaluates you totally different than your brothers do than your father does. God evaluates you different than everybody different than you do. David's like, really tell me about it. God sees what you most dream about David. He sees the dream of your heart and that's what he evaluates you for. And the dream of your heart, David, isn't to be over your brothers or over the nations. The dream in your heart is to be lost in God and lost in love. And that's what God loves most about you. And that's why he chose you. You know, I could give you a bunch on the notes. I have them for the, for the students, but in Psalm 69 and a handful of other places, David was written off by his brothers. Psalm 31, Psalm 69, about six or seven places. He was written off because of his zeal for God. They said that he was delusional in essence. They just said, you're, you know, you're just a kid guitar player who doesn't really make sense when you sit around the table and we just, you're just out of touch and you just haven't got anything going for you. And David was a dreamer. And what he dreamed most about was loving God. He just didn't have anything going for him. And that's what Samuel came to tell him. He goes, God sees so different than your brothers see. Don't worry. God's remembering it all. He's remembering every bit of it. Now, this was just the very beginning for David's life. Again, this is where the cement dried. This is again, the image I think of with the interns, you know, 18, 19, 20, some of the young ones in our midst, 14, 15, and they are believing things about how God views them. And when the cement dries that way, they're going to have such a foundation to build on rather than the rejection, condemnation view that's so common in the lives of many people. David was the first man in the scripture to have such a measure of revelation of the beauty of God. And when I mean the beauty of God, not just how beautiful God is in his, you know, external glory, so to speak, the radiance of his splendor. I'm talking about the beauty of God's heart, the beauty of God's emotional makeup. David saw it beyond any other man in scripture. David brought the redemptive community, the people of God to a whole new level of understanding. And it started with this one sentence from God's heart through Samuel, God views everything different than man does. And you just go down the list and beloved, when you start going down that list, there are so many religious dominoes that all go down one after the other. Once you begin to move in that direction in Psalm 60, I'm given some of David's unusual revelation of being delighted in by God. Psalm 60 verse five on the notes here is the time when David was praying and he said, oh, that your beloved would be delivered, that you would hear me. And he, he got lost in her spirit of prayer and he called himself God's beloved. He didn't say, oh Lord, your servant. He did. He used that phrase sometimes, but in Psalm 60 verse five, he goes, oh God, he said that your delay, that you would deliver me, that your beloved would be delivered. And I can imagine his brother overheard and says, who's going to be delivered. He says, oh, oh yeah. He goes, I am God. Truly. I am God's favorite. But the truth is because God's heart so big, every single believer is God's favorite. David bought into it. He said, I'm not just a servant. I am the beloved of God's heart. I am the dear one of God's heart. I I've just used this little sentence many, many times before the Lord. I like to use it most when I blow it. When I do something that I know is grieve the Holy spirit, I talk in a way or go somewhere in my spirit in a way that's not right. I like to repent and just throw this thing right at the devil. And I stand before God and I've used the same sentence for maybe 20 years now and say, Lord, I go behold your servant, your beloved, your favorite one. Here I am. And I stand before the Lord to receive cleansing and I am not going to let the devil have one ounce of condemnation. When I repent, the gift of righteousness is so mighty and God's so esteems our repentance. I'm not going to take, I'm not going to take 30 minutes of probation to go out there and like kind of beat on myself for a while. I like to stand before the Lord and say, Lord, here's behold, I come before you. You brought your beloved one, your favored one, Lord, your favorite one. Here I am standing before you, your beloved. And I love to say that sentence and begin to break off the, that, that defiled spirit that I'm familiar with when I've grieved the Holy Spirit. I like to answer right from David's revelation straight back. And the devil hates that kind of answer because the devil wants us to run from God instead of to him and retreat and lick our wounds and figure out some kind of, uh, appropriate, uh, probation sentence before we have confidence, maybe an hour, maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a year. And then we come back with confidence in God. No beloved, let's push delete and come right back at the, at the beloved status. But the repentance needs to be sincere. And I don't mean that you spend three, you know, three weeks figuring out if you're sincere or not, you know, the sincere don't get real philosophical about it. If you're planning a way to do that sin again, you're not sincere. If you're planning ways to not do it again, you are sincere. It's just that simple. Well, somebody may say, well, I'm planning not to, but I think I probably will, but I'll hate it though. I know that I know that one. That's still sincere. It's just that simple. If you're planning on a way to go do it again, you're not sincere. If you're really planning on not doing it again, though, in your heart, you go, Oh, my track record just screams at me there. It's still, you were sincere before God. It's just that simple. You can stand before God as the beloved. Now, David was the, was despised. There was contempt in his family towards him. That's not something he got from his family experiences. It's not something he received from his national experience. 3000 of the choice warriors of Israel were trying to kill it. The government was, he was literally most wanted criminal in the land. His family wrote him off. The nation wrote him off. His friends betrayed him. This beloved revelation was not something he received just out of his natural affinity towards other people. And, you know, he just kind of had such a good upbringing. He just shifted it over and saw God that way. No, it wasn't like that at all. This was a radical new way of viewing how God saw him and then viewing himself. He viewed himself as the beloved of God. He meant it. Psalm 60, verse five, Psalm 17, verse eight. He said, Lord, keep me as the apple of your eye is the one dear to you. Precious. I am the apple of your eye. I know that I am. I'm the dear one to your heart and beloved every single believer through Jesus Christ. And by virtue of the fact, it's recorded in the word of God by a sinful man under the grace of God. Every one of us have access to this confidence and this confession. I've said that to the Lord thousand times over the years. I am the apple of your eye. It is me, Lord. It's me again. Your beloved, the apple of your eye. And I can just imagine the Lord smiling going. You're getting it. I like it when you get it. I don't like it when you run away and concoct some way to get back to my favor that you don't know me. If that's what you're doing. Psalm 18, verse 19, another one of my favorites, I guess tells you where I've been living. If all these repentance verses are my favorites, just dawned on me. I just kind of confess I'm there. Okay. Uh, Psalm 18, verse 19. This is after David's been in Ziklag and we'll get to the Ziklag story. We will, we really will get there. It's in chapter, uh, 27 to 30. First Samuel 27 to 30. We're a few chapters away, but it's after, uh, his compromise in this for 16 months in the city of Ziklag. And on the day that he is, uh, uh, delivered by the Lord, he's been in compromise 16 months, but it's compromised because of fear, which is different than compromise where he's just defiant against God. He's truly afraid, but he's not obeying the Lord and he's troubled. And he's in Ziklag crying every day. And there's the, the Psalm, like Psalm 56, he goes, he's in Ziklag going, Oh God, my tears are in your bottle, please. Oh God help me. And it's the story of David and Ziklag because he, he had fear in his heart. There wasn't a, he hadn't conquered yet, but on the day he was delivered, I mean the day, and when we get there, you'll figure out the day he was delivered, he was no star on that day. He truly wasn't. But on the day he was delivered, he said this, God delivered me because he delighted in me. I mean, 16 months, his friends could have said what? No, David, God delivered you because I don't know why he delivered you, but not because he delighted in you. I mean, it was the audacity of David to claim that of all, you know, he could have come up with 10 different reasons why God delivered him. God delivered me because one day the Messiah would come through my family line. You know, God delivered me because he won. He was at war against the ones that were troubling me. Those are both true statements. God delivered me because any number of things. But David said, I'll tell you why he delivered me. Bottom line, he likes me. He likes me. This is after 16 months, not of, it's not rebellion at all. It's weakness. But he is stuck in Ziklag. I mean, stuck as hard as stuck. And it's not good. He's weeping daily over it. He's lying and he's living in compromise. He told many lies in Ziklag and they were catching up with him. So it's a very dramatic story. But what rocks me is the answer he gives for God's deliverance. He says in the same Psalm, Psalm 18, verse 35, he says, God, he says, God, your right hand upheld me. He says, I should have died. I should have died by the Philistines. I should have died by Saul, which is different. I should have died when my men turned on me as 400 men in Ziklag all turned on him and decided to stone him in first Samuel 30, verse four, they took up stones to stone him. His own, his own team was going to kill him. The Philistines wanted to kill him. Saul wanted to kill him. He goes, I should have, I should have died so many ways, but your right hand held me up and your gentleness has made me great. Your gentleness, God, with my weakness is why I will go on to be great in love. That's what he's talking about. David's not great, uh, in the eyes of men at this point in time. So the day's delivered, the things aren't, the kingdom's not even his yet. He says, I will be great in love. And he gives a, uh, an addition to this, one of the great ones in Psalm chapter 30, Psalm, I mean, Psalm chapter 130, Psalm chapter 130, David says, if you should mark iniquities, if you should count a man or a woman's sin, he goes, who could stand. But because you forgive me, I grow up and go on to fear you in the days ahead. He goes, you could cut me off right now. And I would just die. But because you forgive me, I live another day and I recover and I become a man who fears you. He says, but if you marked my sins, I would never have a chance to grow past this stage. But because you don't mark them, meaning you forgive me, you forgive when I repent, he's not talking about just an automatic cleaning of the slate. David was a, a ferocious, a ferocious repenter. He meant that he fumbled, he fumbled and stumbled again, but he meant it. And he planned to be free though. He stumbled yet again in the very thing he repented of. We're talking about God looking at the cry of his heart during the struggle and esteeming it as glorious. He wanted David to break through at the behavior level, but the cry, the struggle, the fasting, the yearning, the, oh God, I got to get free. God saw that as substantial part of the victory that was underneath the surface that nobody else could esteem. Even David didn't esteem it probably until he got understanding of how God measures a man's heart or a woman's heart. Look at this in verse Psalm 18, verse 35, he says, your greatness. I mean, your gentleness, because you were gentle, you could wipe me out. Psalm 130, you could wipe me out and mark my iniquities, but because you're gentle with me, I'm actually going to be great in my spirit. I'm going to be, I'm going to achieve my purpose because you're gentle with me, beloved God's gentleness with us is the reason we have a tomorrow. The reason Paul, the apostle feared God and wrote the scriptures because God was gentle with them early on because Moses, because Peter, James, and John, because the great revivalist of history, the great prophets through church history, the reason they went on to fear the Lord and to be mighty in their spirit. I'm not even talking about what they did in the natural because being, because what a man or woman does in this side of the natural is so small compared to what's going to happen afterwards that I don't want to get overly into figuring it out how big or how little it was on this side, but if our spirit is mighty on this side, we're great in our spirit. Oh, the wisdom of what we'll see for that when we, when the Lord returns and we see the fullness of how he measures that and rewards that and honors that. But my point is, is that if God is gentle with us now, then we grow to have a mighty spirit tomorrow and the Lord knows that. Psalm 16 verse 3 here in the notes, David experiences this from God and here's what happens when you experience this kind of delight and this kind of embrace from God. You, what happens? I mean, literally it's a very, I was going to say automatic. I don't want to say automatic, but near automatic. It's the most natural thing to do is to then to, to esteem others through that same lens. The reason people are tough on people is because they're tough on themselves. So the example I use all the time, the lady said, Lord, I want to love my neighbor as I love myself. And the Lord says, you do. That's the problem. You hate yourself. That's why you hate your neighbor. You love your neighbor just exactly like you love yourself, which is zero. Psalm 16 verse 3, David says, as for the saints, they are the excellent ones. Now, how could David look at this group of people around him? Because I've studied the life of David some years now, and man, I'm trying to find out where they were. We got Asaph, you know, he was the choir guy. I know I believe in him and a few of the other guys, Nathan and Gad, but who are these excellent ones? I've been looking for them in the pages of first and second Samuel. And the answer is the guys you're reading about, but it was David's view of them. And how could David see them as the excellent ones of the earth? Because he had, he saw himself in God is one of the excellent ones of the earth. It's not an elite spirit. It's a paradigm of grace. D David's confidence in love before God, the fact that he had confidence that God loved him, enjoying intimacy with God requires living in the reality of our belovedness before God. When we can say, even in our weakness, we are beloved. We are one of the excellent ones because there's a sincerity in the grace of God in our spirits. I'm telling you, our view of the future, our view of our hearts, our view of others is dynamically changed. Let's go to the top of page two. One of the statements you cannot say too many times, one of the great Davidic revelations, although there's David never says it in this language, but the principle is clear. Rebellion is not the same thing as immaturity. That is one of the most important statements in the grace of God. David is the graphic picture of spiritual immaturity, yet sincere intention to obey and love God. And David in his weakness, God viewed his love as beautiful and lovely, excellent, not because it was immature. God did not view it as hypocritical. So we have this idea that the only kind of love that is genuine is love that is mature, that as long as our love is immature, it must be false. And the Lord doesn't count right off all of our growing years in our stages as false until we show up mature one day. He sees our love is real even when it's weak. Weak love is still genuine love towards the Lord. And David understood that God delighted in him even in his weakness. One of the phrases I like to say a lot is that when David stumbled in sin, he rose up in sincere repentance. He didn't camp out in his sin. And that's the difference. See, one guy falls in his sin and decides he's going to go six months or a year and just camp out there, not war against it, not declare war on it. Just gives in and they make peace with their sin. So you know what? I'm not going to try no more. I'm just going to give in and just let go and go with the current of of defilement. And David wouldn't do that. He wouldn't camp out. He wouldn't make peace with that sin. He wouldn't receive it as a part of his lifestyle saying that's just it. And when it showed up in his life, he warred against it and he warred against it. And the Lord saw the cry and the struggle in his heart. God saw the yes in David's spirit even before he was free on the outside. Rebellion and immaturity may look outwardly the same, but the heart is very, very different. It's very destructive deception to write yourself off as a rebel when in fact the chances are you're just immature, very different. And the analogy that I, I, I, I've, I always use, I've used it for years is the two, uh, animals, the, the pig and the sheep, they both get stuck in the mud, but the sheep, they're kicking to get out of the mud. Have you ever seen a, uh, a little lamb stuck in mother's like kicking, struggling to get out and the shepherd comes and gets them out and they, ah, they run away and they'll fall in the mud again, but they're, they hate it. You get that little pig out of the mud, you know, you get him out, you turn around, he just snorts. It comes right back to the mud hole. He's just, it goes straight to it. I mean, the minute the shepherd looks that way, that pig is straight back. I mean, it's, it's hoping the shepherd will move out of the way, or I guess in this case would be the farmer, but move out of the way. I want the mud hole. Hurry up and quit for get on, get down with forgiving me, God. I want to go back to it quick. Hurry up. Let's, let's get this thing over so I can go back to it. That's the swine. That's the unclean animal. The sheep get back in the mud again, but they're kicking all the time. Their feet are in it. I haven't see that struggling and weakness is not the same thing as being a hopeless hypocrite. A hypocrite is not somebody who says something and does another. That's not what a hypocrite is. A hypocrite is somebody who says something, but doesn't pursue it. So you can say something. I want to love God and not fully attain to the fullness of it. And you're not a hypocrite as long as you're pursuing it. As long as in your heart, you're struggling to be a red hot lover. You're trying to sort this thing out. You're trying to make this thing work in your life. You're here. You're, you are genuine. If you're pursuing it, if you give up the pursuit of it, that's when you're a hypocrite. If you keep claiming it. So one guy says, yeah, I'm not going to say it until I get there. I go, no, no, you have a total liberty to say it. As long as you pursue it with your heart, you're genuine, you're real. D our spiritual identity, our core identity as born again, believers, we are core identity as genuine believers. We are genuine lovers of God. Here's the question. Are you a slave of sin who struggles to love God? Or are you a lover of God who struggles with sin? I know that might take you back for a moment. Let me say it again. Are you, is your core identity? Is it a or B? The answer is B. So don't shout out the wrong one because you may be esteemed by man in a wrong way if you do it. Okay. Uh, meaning somebody about judges, what I'm saying. Okay. Uh, here's the question. Hey, the first one's the wrong one. Are you a slave of sin who struggles to love God? Are you at the core of your being? Are you a slave of sin and you're struggling to love or the option B which is the right one? Are you a lover of God who still struggles with sin? The core of your being, you're a lover who struggles with sin. That's the core of who you are. That's how God views you. We do not define ourselves by our struggle. We define ourselves in the grace of God by the cry of our spirit in the grace of God. Beloved, this is critical. This is how David did it. The Psalms are full of this. You don't define yourself by your struggle and your failure. Define yourself in the grace of God through the grid of God's heart and the grace of Jesus by the cry of your spirit of what you want to be in God. That's real. I was wanting to be an intercessor. I mean, for years, the Lord told me to be an intercessor. I didn't want to be one. I truly did not want to be one. I decided that obedience was smart. So I said, I'm going for it. And I got a bunch of books, started reading on it, but I wasn't, you know, I thought it was a, you know, I just got a bad deal in this life, a bad assignment, an intercessor. But I said yes to it. I said, I'm going for it. It's just, you know, one day it'll be over and it'll all make sense. And the Lord will honor me for it when I stand before him. Then I switched into the next gear. I loved, I really wanted to be an intercessor, but I had no grace to actually walk it out and I was failing. And, and there was, I just couldn't, uh, uh, live it out in the way that I wanted to, but the dream of my heart was to do this. And I would, uh, have so much despair over my failure in it. And the Lord, I didn't even know that that's the whole time was saying the cry of your spirit is what's defining you, not what you're coming up short in. It's what you're crying out for. That's how I define you. You are an intercessor. I just wish I could have figured this out back then. I'd enjoyed the journey a whole lot less bumps. I have E here, a last somebody, uh, uh, take advantage of this teaching, which you don't, you don't want to do it because all you do is get yourself thrown into the spirit of death and darkness to take advantage of grace teaching. But I have a sincere spirit of repentance is critical. And I define what a spirit, a sincere spirit of repentance is for, uh, on the notes. I don't want to go through all of this, but I, for those in this, in the class, read that, I'll just say it real quick without going through it one by one, we have to admit our sin, admit it. Don't rationalize it. Call it sin. Don't say, well, you know, it's not really, it wasn't really sin. It was kind of no call it sin. Number two, take responsibility. Don't blame shifted. It's the woman you gave me is that one guy said it wasn't just Adam Adams had a whole bunch of guys quoting him since then take responsibility. I did it. It is sin. And I did it. Not that person helped. I did it. Don't worry about what they did. And then take it serious, deal with it strong, go after it hard, admit it, take responsibility for it, and then take it serious. Don't be casual about it. And then if you fail, I have done that many times and then still did that, which was displeasing in my heart and God's heart again. And I admit it, I take responsibility for it. And I set a plan, an action plan to get free of it. And I have the confidence between now and freedom that God is pleased with me and defines me by the cry in my spirit. Okay. Gee, I talk about rebellion, rebellion's real. And I talk about, uh, uh, define rebellion. I don't want to see because some people like this kind of, uh, some of the things I'm saying, but they do it with a lack of repentance because they have no grid there. The reason they're not worried about rebellion is because they don't think rebellion's a real problem. No rebellion is everywhere. It's just all around rebellion. Sin's a big problem. What was it? And Saul was a rebellious man is what first Samuel 15, 22 says. God called him rebellious. He says, you're rebellious. You're not immature. You're rebellious. Saul. And he called rebellion, the sin of witchcraft because it operates in the same spirit. Why is it H why did God treat David so differently than Saul? I mean, David, in some ways, some of David's sins seemed to the natural eye again, the way man's views to be worse than Saul's, but it wasn't because of the hearts were very, very different. And God views very different than man and measured because see David sinned and his heart was wounded because he grieved God's heart and Saul sand and was only troubled because he was caught. He had no intention of stopping what he was doing. He was hemmed in and then he made excuses. David sand and was grieved and wounded because he grieved God. And that's all that. I mean, David did some really severe things, but when he, his heart was grieved because he, I mean, his heart was wounded because he grieved God. That's what made David a delight in God's heart. However, no, this, I, the next sentence, David sin because of his weakness still brought divine discipline because God loves us. Does it mean he won't discipline us because God's, but here's the deal. God's correction is not rejection. And I have quoted here, Proverbs chapter three, verse 12, Proverbs three, 12. God loves whom God loves. He corrects as a father in the son and whom he delights. So don't think that because God delights in you, he will not discipline you. He disciplines those. He delights. And David had some severe disciplines. I mean, some heavy ones where his life would have been much better if he would not have got into that thing and to, into that area of disobedience. So don't think because God delights in you, it's, it's, it's not, it's not kind of a, everything's going to be fine. The Lord is still going to address some of the issues that give rise to that dark spirit in us, that dark way of thinking, because the Lord likes us and not because he's written us off. It's the opposite because he does like us. He does like us. Well, let me see. I'm, I'm out of time. I'm just going to look at another page or two, see what I go. Hmm. If you don't mind, I hope this isn't too proud. I'm like, I like these verses. Okay. We're going to go to a page four right at the end here, but I just got a F and those of you that don't have the notes turned to first Corinthians chapter four, just for a quick verse F we're looking at principle F David saw himself and therefore others by this new paradigm of grace, David interpreted weakness and those who were God's beloved it. That's the verse where he's calling them to saints. And here's why here's the Paul, the apostle adds such an excellent view of how God views man different than man does. It's the first Corinthians chapter four, verse five, Paul, the apostle tells him, he goes, judge nothing before the time. In other words, don't measure, don't evaluate, don't measure anything. You think you got the most stunning set up. And then we stand before God. None of it stands. Or you think you got the worst set up. You stand before God and God saw the movements of your heart and he gives you 10 cities to rule. And you go, well, go figure. How did you know that? Paul said, don't judge anything. Don't measure anything. You will miss it again. The Ephesians 4, 18, our hearts are darkened. Our understanding is darkened. Paul says, you'll never get it right. You'll never really get it right. When you think you're, you're, you're finished. The Lord sees the movements of your heart and there's this condemnation blinding you. Or you think you're awesome because it's all big and all the crowds are clapping and applauding and buying all your product, your ministry product. The Lord says, don't judge that as if I don't, I won't remember any of that on the last day. If it's all about the movements of the heart, he says, judge nothing until the Lord comes judge, nothing until the second coming happens. And when the Lord comes at the second coming, here's what God will do. First Corinthians four, verse five, he will bring to light the hidden things. Oh no. He'll bring to light the hidden things, which is the councils, the movements of the heart, the way the heart dreams when it's alone. Again, the, the thing that moved God about David is that God, when Samuel said, God sees different than man does. And God sees, he sees your dream, David, and your, your biggest dream is for him. And he sees it, even though your family's written you off. And I, again, on the last page, I got a whole bunch of verses where his family wrote him off. It was, there's a lot of them. David went, I mean, it, it deserves a, a whole, a session in itself, David's domestic life and the amount of rejection he had on every single angle. We have this idea that David had this, this kind of, you know, he's King and all the girls sang about him and he must've, it must've been cool. Oh man. I don't, you think about the man and whom God picks as the line from which the Messiah is going to come, all the powers of hell are against this man. And you read, you read this, the, the David statements about how many people were against him at, in his court, outside of his court, in his family, outside of his family, his friends, his acquaintances, because of his zeal for God, and because of the favor of God on him, and because of the task he was doing. It's, it's quite remarkable, but anyway, it says first Corinthians four, it says, God's going to bring to light the secret councils, the movements, the dream of your heart, instead of the secret, the council of the heart, but the movements are the dream of your heart. The thing, that's what God's going to bring to light. Now here's the shock. Then, then God, each one's praise will come from God. You go praise. Wait, you just got through saying God's going to reveal the dark things of the things of darkness. That means the hidden things of the heart. I thought the hidden things of the heart were all evil. The Lord says you do have hidden things in your heart that are evil. You've repented of them, right? Yeah, I did. Remember that night you were on your bed crying out to get free from that area. Yes. And how nobody believes you're sincere with God, right? Well, I heard you crying out. I, I can vouch the Lord says you were sincere with me. I heard the cry of your heart and I'm going to praise you because I saw the councils of your heart when nobody else could read them. I read them and it's not going to result in condemnation. It's going to result in praise on that day. This is a shocking statement. This is two sincere believers. Beloved, we get so captivated by how many cities we have now. We need to be more interested in being faithful in almost, almost everybody. I, I really mean this. It's like 99.9% of the body of Christ. It is a gigantic number has been given an assignment to be faithful in very little. We got a few Billy Graham's that have multitudes and the Billy Graham's like one millionth of 1%. And yet that is the image of which people view their lives. There's only a couple of Billy Graham's in history. There's Billy Graham, there's Reinhardt Bonnke. And I don't know who else, a couple others, maybe got these. And they're, they are the, the, the, the less than 1%, you know, 0.000001% of the body of Christ in history has any profile like that. The assignment of God. Settle it. I've settled this in my life. I trust. I mean, as much as a man's heart knows that most of ours, most everybody, 99.9999% of the whole body of Christ has been assigned to very little. And then it turned, there's a great turnaround when the Lord returns, he said, he measures the heart and he measures our faithfulness in very little, very small. And very little. I have the verses on the notes in Luke 19 and Matthew 25 or 21 says very little and very small. Then I'll give you five cities and give you much, but we are just captivated by our Western culture to get much. And 99% are called the very little their entire life, but the Lord measures it and returns much for it. If there's faithfulness and we lose so much ground, we have, that's what I call helium highs. They people lose 10, 20 years on, on helium. They just, they have this, it's all fake, this image about how grand they're supposed to be on this side. And they spend years pursuing a helium dream. It's, it's, it's hype and they lose all of that, all this anguish and pain and this image of how beat up and in the wilderness. And most of it was because they were so, they were so seduced and addicted to establishing honor for themselves in this age. And that's what so much of their pain was about. It was all wasted. They won't even get honor for it when the Lord comes because it was all wasted. It was about the council of their heart being set on something other than their assignment on the earth. Cause I read it from some charismatic book that they are supposed to be big and awesome. And you are on the other side when the meek inherit the earth, very, very few people ever in history ever have any kind of big impact. And probably the vast majority of them on the other side, it says, Jesus says, many who are first in this life will be last. He goes, many, we might be shocked. It might be the total reversal the other way. Anyway, God measures us by the councils of our heart, by the dream of our heart. And so much pain is because we're striving so much. Our pain is because people won't let us get that big platform, whatever it looks like. And that pain is, that's not righteousness. That's not pain because of darkness in our heart. And I want all of that distraction out of my spirit. I want to be faithful with little in love with God. I want the council of my heart to be like David, to be lost in God and then to let God take care of me on the other side because I believe that he measures different than man does. Amen.