Answers in Genesis--Spring 2017--Lesson 12, God Chooses David as King

Lord, we thank you so much for your goodness to us this day, just allowing us to fellowship together here at Cornerstone, fill us with your spirit. We pray, Father, you bless all those teaching our children, bless the finance class, bless us together as we study for Samuel. we just thank you for the freedom that we enjoy in our country. We pray, Father, that You would teach us the things that you have for us this morning from Samuel, Saul, and David, and we thank you in Christ's name.

Amen. And we're gonna do a little bit of review from last week to kick things off. Let's see here. So, we're actually, we're finishing up our quarter.

On obedience and disobedience, and next week, there's a good chance that we're gonna jump right into the, to the new quarter. but today, the big idea that we're gonna be going after is the anointing of David as king. but before we do that, let's, let's review a little bit from last week. for those of you guys that were here, what stands out to you?

About last week's lesson, God rejects Saul as king. God rejects Saul as king. Yeah, I did, Joe. Right.

Yeah. Right. Yeah, in fact, there seems to be, he comes out and he doesn't want to admit any wrongdoing at first. He, he's, he's trying to pass it off as if everything's real good that's happened.

Hey, we've, we're sacrificing to the Lord. Praise the Lord, we've won the battle. And then there's just a slow decline. It takes him several steps before he comes anywhere close to admitting wrongdoing.

And then even at the end, it's like, hey, can you just worship with me? And you just get a feeling that this is just very false., that he has no, no desire to really just worship. he's just trying to cover, cover himself. Let me ask you guys this.

Would you be more inclined to obey a command of God if it were found in the Bible or if you lived in Bible times? And a prophet delivered a message directly to you. Obviously playing on the idea that Samuel had given direct divine revelation to Saul. He didn't listen to it.

So would we be more inclined to hear somebody like Samuel or more inclined to hear the Bible? What do you think, bro? He's, yeah. Yeah, clearly What about the What do you, what do you guys think people would do, typically do today?

Yeah, Robert. Totally. Yeah, no, that's a good answer. Yeah, in fact, I forget who made this statement, but I've repeated it many different times that The Bible is no less authoritative than if Jesus Christ were standing right here teaching this lesson.

And so, it's not like all of a sudden if Jesus showed up and started teaching that suddenly the authority level would go so much higher than what we have in the Bible already. that's how authoritative the scriptures are. And, and yet Saul hears the word of the Lord. And decides to do completely otherwise.

in what ways do you tend to sympathize with Saul's actions? Say it again. Because he's a man. Yeah, I can see it just because he's a human being.

Yeah, Robert. Right. Yeah. Right.

Yeah, yeah, it looks on the surface, it looks like this must be, he really cares a lot about the sacrifice, so therefore he's willing to go and sacrifice to the Lord. seems like upon further reflection, especially the way he responds to Samuel. He, he's just making excuses. There was really no direct threat of attack from the Philistines in that particular location.

And Saul would have known that it was not the prerogative of the king to offer the sacrifice. So, I'm trying to think if there'd be a modern equivalent. This, this is almost silly. But, let's say Pastor Milton is scheduled to preach this morning.

And It's, it's 11 o'clock. We've already finished singing. We're all looking around, we're not sure where Milton is and so, one of our Let's say, One of our, somebody here in the church who's not even a member, they've only really been here for a few weeks. All of a sudden, they just jump up in the pulpit and start preaching because Milton isn't, isn't here.

We'd be like, what in the world is this guy doing? That's not your prerogative. We don't even know who you are. This is the pastor's job.

Even if for some reason he got sick, we've got plenty of other people, we can say, hey, go up there and preach. And so Saul took something upon himself that was not his to take. If anything, I guess they could have gone and like fasted and cried out to the Lord, poured ashes on their head, lots of different things they could have done. For him to go and take on the role of the priest to actually conduct the sacrifice was a pretty bold move on his part.

but let's talk about another issue here. Is God a merciless monster? This really gets to the question of God commanding. The Amalekites to be annihilated.

If you guys remember from chapter 15 of last week. So, Samuel shows up, he gives direct divine revelation. This is very clearly from the Lord. This isn't something that's just coming from Samuel.

You are to go and attack the Amalekites, for they came up behind the Israelites. When the Israelites, remember, were coming out of Egypt. The Amalekites came in and plucked off the women and the children from the back of their ranks. And so now the Lord is commanding Israel to go.

And do this thing that is basically, it's, there's a technical term for it in Hebrew and I'm forgetting what it is, but it's just basic total all-out annihilation. This doesn't happen many times in scripture. It happened with Jericho. God, God does it Himself on Sodom, except we get the removal of Lot.

God does it Himself with the flood and we get the removal of Noah and his family. God commands Israel to do it on Jericho, and God's commanding Saul here to do it with Amalek. And so, But it raises the question, many people have said that Saul seems like the merciful one and God seems like the monster. He's commanding complete annihilation of a people group.

And so we read a couple of quotes last week. What I wanna share with you guys. did I send you guys, I sent you guys the article, I believe, didn't I? In the email Yeah, I did.

OK. So the So one article that I think does a really good job addressing this is by Rob Robin Shoemaker. edited by Matt Slick, and in that article, they show 6 different patterns of this type of command that you see in scripture. And the first pattern is God declares annihilation form of judgment.

And either it's something like God commands it on Nineveh, the whole world, Sodom and Gomorrah, we're gonna see this morning, Amalek, Jericho. There's a few instances where God commands. Annihilation form of judgment. The second pattern is God's judgment are for public recognition of extreme sin.

So, God doesn't just look upon a particular people group and just say, I don't like that people. I want you to wipe them out because of their race or their color of their skin or something like that. This is a group of people who for long periods of time have, have contributed to Just crazy, crazy sin. Milton, I don't know if he's gonna bring it up this morning.

but the. The, the group, why am I forgetting the name of the, the areas. Back in ancient Greece, there's this huge volcano and the lava fell upon this whole area. Pompeii.

There you go, Pompeii. Pompeii was, was wiped out in a fashion that is very similar to Sodom and Gomorrah. And what's interesting is when you look at the culture of Pompeii, they were about as immoral of a culture as you can possibly imagine. I won't even go into all of the immorality and gross sins that were being committed as just a regular part of that culture.

And so while that's not recorded anywhere in scripture, You do have examples in scripture like Sodom and Gomorrah, like what was going on at the flood, and we've looked at the word evil before. This is not just people putting bubble gum on the underside of a desk. This is people burning children. This is people that are, we're talking about child rape, molestation, we're talking about gang rape, we're talking about just, just gross violence and immorality that covers.

These people groups and so that's, that's part of the pattern of this annihilation form of judgment. A third pattern is judgment is preceded by warning or long periods of exposure to the truth and time to repent. How long did Noah preach before the flood finally came? Yeah, it's somewhere between 100 and 140 years.

you see a similar pattern. In Nineveh, right? it's, Jonah's called to go to Nineveh. He preaches and Nineveh repents, and so the judgment does not fall upon that country.

in, in 1 Samuel 15, God commands Saul to go annihilate the Amalekites, but when they show up, they actually send couriers into the area. They tell the Kinnites move out of this area because judgment is about ready to come. And so they, they send a warning to other people in the area, and a warning that no doubt many commentators would argue would have been overheard or intercepted by other Amalekites. And so the Amalekites would have even had their own pieces of information to move out of the area if they wished to, and they did not.

The Kennites got out of town. quick. the fourth discernible pattern is this, that any and all innocent adults are given a way of escape with their families, sometimes, all given a way to avoid judgment via repentance or leaving a particular region. It should be noted that expulsion from a land was the most common form of judgment, not extermination.

This pattern goes all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. So yeah, so the, the most common form of judgment. is a people group, for instance, Israel, this happens to Israel many times. Israel is, is promised to come into the land and then as they stand in obedience to the Lord, they will continue to flourish in the land, but they're warned for many hundreds of years actually, if you do not repent that God is going to bring Assyria down and they will expunge you from the land or they will expel you from the land.

722 BC. What happens? Assyria comes down and and takes the northern tribes out of the land. 586 BC.

Nebuchadnezzar comes down and takes away the southern tribes, Judah particularly out of the land. And so, most of the time it's removal from the land, although it is clearly this is warfare. And so, So you have these opportunities for people to repent, So, even in Lots of cases we're gonna see here today, God, Abraham intercedes in chapter 18, the angels come, a Lot goes around and he's trying to talk to his sons-in-law and how do they respond to him. Says in the King James, they laughed him to scorn.

I love that. not, I don't love the judgment, but that phrase laughed him to scorn. They just thought he was joking. And, and then the judgment comes down.

So the fifth discernible pattern would be, someone is almost always saved. In the case of the flood, it was whom? Noah and his family. In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his daughters.

in the case of 1 Samuel 15, it's the Kinnites are saved. in the case of Jericho, it's Rahab. And so, in, in almost every one of these annihilation warfare scenes, God actually extends his mercy and then finally judgment falls. And, So anyway, this, this is a large, this is a pretty significant question.

That gets raised by skeptics and. And so on the one hand, I think we, we need to acknowledge that yes, judgment, God is the one. Sometimes you'll hear Christians trying to skirt around the issue and say that God is not the one that is bringing these judgments. This is actually the ethnocentrism of the Israelites.

God's not to be blamed because God is a God of love. He would never do this. Israel was just very eth ethnocentric and they're the ones that did this. Well, if we're taking the Bible seriously at all, those that answer does not work.

any questions that you guys have on that question? Yeah. Yeah Almost Yup. Way of, how do we That's where I God sees light Yeah, Yeah, totally.

So, Dan's raising, the bigger question of just what about the, the children or the infants that are implicated in these judgments. And. that's part of the harder, the harder part of even just like the flood, in the flood, it wasn't just everybody 21 and older, it was everybody on the planet. And I think part of in my, in my thinking, part of the answer to that.

Is that God holds the human race accountable for the human race. He holds people accountable socially, not just individually. So, for example, there, there is a there is definitely a concept in the Bible of individual sin and we will answer for our individual sins. But there is also equally a concept of corporate sin.

And so I have a responsibility for my family and my sins can have impact on my children. if I choose to get involved in some unscrupulous behavior, let's say I go out and I start gambling and I get involved in loan sharks, and unbeknownst to me, I get involved in the mafia. I'm borrowing money from some mafia guy and I don't pay it back and, and, and they decide that they're gonna try to extract money out of me by making my family pay. I'm responsible for that sin.

But I can bring the consequences of my sin upon my family. And in God's system of justice, individuals are not just responsible for their own sins, but their sins have impact on the culture, at large, yep. Oh no, that's exactly right. Yeah, there is, there's that aspect of it.

In fact, that happens., the Amalekites were not completely wiped out. And what you have over in, The book of Esther is Haman is a descendant of the Amalekites. And what does Haman want to do? He wants to wipe Israel off the planet.

And, and so the fact that they did not take care of business ultimately leads to the situation, hundreds of years later of Haman wanting to annihilate the Israelites. And so, yeah, these, these are not easy issues. but I think there's, if you look at the article. We have, I think we need to frankly admit that sin is a much bigger deal than Then we like to, then we like to see it, that sin has an impact beyond just the individual.

It has an impact on the, on the whole culture. Also, I think sometimes in the West and we can minimize. the effect that sin can take hold upon. Young people, we have this idea that really people aren't really accountable for their actions until they're 18 years old.

And so somebody, some of these kids will go out and kill their families at 14 years old. We wanna try them differently and make them like not as responsible as an adult. That concept is just not there in the ancient world. if you've spent any time outside of the United States or even just in the United States, And been around, it's, it's very sad, but if, if you've been around young people that have been, they've grown up in just abject depravity, they take on that depravity very early.

one of the big problems with orphanages, for instance, in Romania and Russia is there's so many of these kids that are without any supervision. They're just locked in rooms by themselves. And one of the huge problems is these kids abusing each other from very young ages and nobody's teaching them to do that stuff. it's just happening.

And it happens at, at very, very, very young ages. It's, it's shocking to us, but it's just a very common problem in the orphanages in Eastern Europe. And All that to say that ultimately, we have to stand back and say that God, let God be true and every man a liar, that, that he knows what is best. And again, the annihilation form of judgment is something that was rare.

it didn't happen very often, but it did happen. And most of the time it was expulsion from the land. Uh-huh. Right.

That's a good point. So, Dan's making the point that it's not like this is God giving special divine divine revelation. It's not like we can just all on our own decide that we're gonna go carry out this type of judgment. In fact, one of the questions that comes up is, what about for the church today?

And, the big difference is, is once you get to the New Testament, the church, first of all, is not a political entity. we're not a country, we don't have a political land. And the church is never commanded to take up arms. In the Old Testament, you have Israel, that's a political unit, it's a nation, it has a land, it has an army, and God actually will use Israel at times to carry out judgment upon other peoples.

By the way, God would use pagan peoples also to carry out judgment upon Israel, which would also at times include the death of their own children. In fact, if you read some of lamentations in Jeremiah, it's pretty disturbing how, how that God, because of their sin would, would allow famine to come upon the land where people would want to eat their own young. And so some of the images there are, are very disturbing. but when you get to the New Testament, the weapons of our warfare are spiritual, right?

Not fleshly, and, and the church has a very different role. I think Jesus makes this clear to Peter when he tells Peter. go, he who did not have a sword, go get a sword. Peter and some of them come back and say, Here's 3 swords, is this enough?

He says, that's enough. Then when they get to the garden, Peter goes and uses his sword, cuts off the ear of a soldier. Jesus heals the ear, turns to Peter and says, He who lives by the sword will die by the sword. Put your sword away.

Peter's got to be thinking, why did you tell us to get swords when you're telling me not to use the sword? And it was an object lesson. He's trying to teach Peter. We, we are now moving into a different dispensation.

This is no longer Israel. I'm not raising an army at this point. You need to put the sword away. We are going out and using spiritual, weapons, not physical weapons.

And so the whole idea that the church got involved in, in the medieval period with the Crusades and stuff, that was just bad interpretation of scripture that the, that the, there was just this, the church did not separate, it was that the church was separated from the state, but then once Constantine comes to power and you have this joining of the church and the state, now all of a sudden you've got the church involved in politics in an inappropriate way and then also starting to command armies and things like that.

And so you have a lot of Stuff that's really unbiblical that's going on in the medieval period. It's a long answer, but Yeah, Joe. Yeah Oh yeah, the author of The Shack.

Oh yeah. Yeah, the author of The Shaq, like he would say that the, that the evangelical church, their doctrine would lead to God being a, a cosmic child abuser. Yeah. And his, his whole view of the Trinity is just nothing but heresy.

If you guys see the movie, I hope that you guys see the heresy in it. it's one of the few books that I've read in the last 15 years that I wanted to check out the window. Cause it was, on the one hand, he's a really good writer and he weaves this stuff in a very emotional tale, but he's he's, he's spoon feeding heresy to the church through this very emotional tale and just made me angry. Angry.

I, I, there's no other term to describe it. I was angry. Cause it's just nonsense, just very terrible teaching. and he's, and he's knowledgeable.

He knew exactly what he was teaching. It wasn't accidental, he was, he's attacking the church, attacking the doctrine of the Trinity, attacking the doctrine of hell, attacking seminary, attacking the local church. Yeah, attacking the atonement. It's just, this guy's a total heretic.

so stay away from that guy. I can give you some good materials that critique his stuff. let's, let's go ahead and, open up to 1 Samuel 16 as we'll jump into At the anointing of David here. And again, this, this whole book, I, I know there have been some OK movies made about David.

I'd love to see a really, really good movie made about Samuel and Saul. Does anybody know of a real good one? I've seen some corny ones. I saw who there was the Turner Broadcasting.

They put out a bunch of biblical movies there for a while. But their portrayal of David, I, I didn't find very satisfying. But let's, what we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and read through the text, make some comments. And then, and then we're gonna try to deal with one, at least one ethical issue today.

We might not be able to finish it till next week, but let's start. Here in verse one, I'm reading from a new King James. And now the Lord said to Samuel, how long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him. From reigning over Israel, fill your horn with oil and go, I am sending you to Jesse, the Bethlemite or the Bethlehemite, for I have provided myself a king among his sons.

So just stopping right here. Anybody know how much time has passed? Between Saul's rejection in chapter 15. And to this point where we're now starting to get to the anointing of David.

It's about a 30-year gap. So, so Samuel has been mourning for Saul and the whole situation probably for about 30 years. And so you turn the page, you feel like, OK, the next day, here's what happened. No, Saul had been reigning, he had been ruling, he'd, he, his rejection had happened 30 years previous.

And so, Samuel, at the, at the very least, he could be mourning, just the relationship that he had with Saul. It could be that he's just mourning, wondering what's gonna happen to Israel. God, I thought your promise was to Israel. Now I, the main leader has fallen.

He's, he's concerned about God's glory, concerned about how Israel is going to fare. but notice his, his concern here in, in verse two, and Samuel said, how can I go if, if Saul hears it, he will kill me. So, so, even though they haven't seen each other for a long time, there's things that have transpired. clearly, they're not best of friends anymore.

Samuel with all of his powers of being a prophet, recognizes the power that Saul has. To which the Lord responds, take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord, and then invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do. You shall anoint for me, the one I name to you. This is a very interesting response from the Lord, because the Lord is basically telling him, To To go up with a certain, I don't wanna say pretense, but with a certain purpose that is not the full purpose for which he is going up to Bethlehem, correct?

What's the full purpose? What do you think is number one on the agenda in going to Bethlehem? Yeah, to anoint this new king. Samuel's concerned about that, and so God says, we'll go up and take a heifer to sacrifice.

And so this raises the question that, some of, have, it's been raised for thousands of years actually, or a couple of 2000 years, and, and that is why is God providing this pretense. and there seems to be. In evidence here and from other parts, I think Dan covered the rehab situation a few weeks ago. That the way that we would define lying or the way that we would define truth, we need to make sure that we have a biblical definition of lying and truth-telling.

We know that God is truth. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life, that there is no evil, there is no, God, God is a God who cannot lie. And so, but yet, it seems like ethically the way God would lead his people is we're not obligated to reveal absolutely everything in every situation in order to be considered truth tellers or truthful, it seems to me, that I think Pastor Milton is the one that has said that, truth goes to the people that are worthy of it. or who are, are in need of the truth.

my wife and I. There's certain things that we do as adults and decisions that we make that we don't tell our children about. We might tell them diff small aspects of it, if Katie and I are, are trying to work through an issue and, maybe we, we get into a, a disagreement we'll say, we're in the back room trying to work through the disagreement. I don't feel obligated to tell my children the blow by blow description of everything that we discussed in the back room.

they asked me, what were you guys doing? Well, we were having a, a conversation. Right, is that lying? Or is that understanding the situation that there's certain pieces of information my children need, other pieces of information they don't need at this point in their lives.

Now, later, I might let them in a little more on, on, on things that Katie and I have had to work through so that they know that that they will probably have to work through issues in their own marriage. I don't know, any comments you guys have on that? I just think this is one of those examples ethically. That we have in the Bible where.

the definition of truth telling is not that you, that you reveal absolutely everything that's in your heart at every moment. In time. If you guys want a good section to, to look up, John Murray's book, it's called Christian Conduct. It's basically a Christian ethics book.

And he has a really good chapter in here where he surveys, Like Jacob and Rachel, their deception of Isaac. that's a very interesting situation where Jacob and Rachel are clearly lying, right? They're deceiving. They're doing something that the Bible says you should not do.

And yet we know from prophecy that it was prophesized that Jacob would get the blessing, that things would come through Jacob. And so, how is it that Jacob still gets the blessing even though that he and Rachel are conniving and clearly doing something unethical? so you have situations like that. Dan covered the whole issue with Rahab, where there's debate about that, Rahab hides the spies.

She understands that God's judgment is coming on, on Jericho, recognizing who the good guys and who the bad guys are, and at the same time, tells untruth about whether the spies had been there or not. And so there's debate about did she go about it in the right way. The New Testament, basically praises her for her faith, but is silent on exactly how she went about speaking of the spies, and so there's debate about that. And then there's situations like this where God is the one that's telling, Samuel to To not tell the entire reason why he's going up to Bethlehem.

He's going up to sacrifice. Raises ethical questions like we had in World War II where you had Christians or other people hiding Jews. If somebody stops by your house, what do you say? They say, hey, are there Jews in your home?

Do you say, well, I can't answer that question. Or do you say, no, there are no Jews in this house because these people are not worthy of the truth. so on and so forth. Let me see if I got that.

Yeah, here, I got a quote from John Murray. We know little of biblical theology if we do not recognize that God fulfills his determinative, determinate purpose of grace and promise, notwithstanding the unworthy actions of those who are beneficiaries of that grace. In this section where he's talking about what exactly is the ethical approach to truth telling and stuff, he starts off developing the idea that God is truth, God cannot lie, so on and so forth. But then comes down to the point that our, our theology is shallow if we think that God cannot accomplish His purposes through less than worthy, Characteristics of people.

So, for instance, Joseph's brothers, did they do a good thing or a bad thing in throw in selling their brother into slavery? That was bad. Was it a good thing or a bad thing that they lied to their dad about him being dead? It was a bad thing.

But then when you get to Genesis 50:20, Joseph himself says, what you meant for evil, it was clearly evil, God meant for Good. And so, God is not impugned because he can use evil for good. In fact, he should be magnified. It, it establishes the creator-c creature distinction.

Any questions on that? Maybe you guys didn't want to talk about that in this section, but I It is one of the issues that comes up when you read this particular chapter. Yup. We And Like, well, I Right Right.

Yeah, totally. so like it's You Yeah, Right, yeah, there's a lot, that's great. That's a good example. There's a lot of countries where you cannot enter the country on a religious visa, right?

You have to enter through a different visa. some, some missionaries that we used to support, the, Steve and Lynette, Quentin, they had a coffee shop where they still have a coffee shop in India, and that's the only way that they can be in India, ministering. They can't say, oh, we're here as Christian missionaries to convert Hindus and And Muslims and other religions to the Christian faith. they, they wouldn't, their visa would be rejected if that was what, what it was stated on there.

So that's, yeah, that's a great point. Excellent. so let's, let's pick it up, at Verse 4, so Samuel did what the Lord said. And went to Bethlehem and the elders of the town trembled at his coming and said, Do you come peaceably?

Why would they be trembling at his coming? Yeah, prophet's coming to town. Is he coming in to prophesy, hey, bad stuff's coming, God's judgment's coming upon your land. they no doubt know that there's this rift between him and Saul.

Or maybe they're worried that Saul will hear that he's there and what exactly, so what exactly is your purpose, so on and so forth. So anyway, He says, peaceably, I've come to sacrifice to the Lord, sanctify yourselves and come with me, to the sacrifice. So they would have gone through all the Levitical regulations to get ready for a sacrifice. Notice, by the way, that at this point in Israel's history, sacrifice can happen at different locales in Israel.

Once you get to the building of the, the temple, then the sacrifices will only happen in Jerusalem. but at this point, sacrifices can happen in different locations. So it was verse 6 when they came that he looked at Iliab and said, surely the Lord's anointed is before him. But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him, for the Lord does not see as a man sees, for the man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

So, so don't just look at his stature. We've seen that with Saul. Does this mean that God is looking for an ugly king? No, not necessarily.

He's just saying you can't just look at the outward appearance. There's things that the Lord can see, within the person. In fact, we'll, we'll find out later. Things that God Himself has put into that person and, and so just the outward appearance isn't gonna be what we're gonna look for, although we're gonna find here in a second that David's not all that bad looking himself.

verse 8, so Jesse called Abinadab, made him pass before Samuel. He said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. Then Jesse made Shamah pass by and he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. Thus, Jesse made 7 of his sons pass before Samuel and Samuel said to Jesse, the Lord has not chosen these.

Now, had up to this point, when David, when the Lord told Samuel to go to Bethlehem, did he tell him in advance who he was gonna choose? No, there's no indication of that. He just says, go and then I will tell you who I'm going to choose. So, at this point, Samuel's also in the dark.

He's watching all these guys come before him and he doesn't know what's going on. Verse 11, and Samuel said to Jesse, are these all the young men here? And then he said, there remains yet the youngest, and there he is keeping the sheep. Samuel said to Jesse, send and bring him, for we will not sit down till he comes.

So he sent and brought him in. Now he was ready with bright eyes and good looking. And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him, for this is the one. Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of the brothers, and the spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.

So Samuel arose and went to Ramah. This is just, this is great stuff. Just an amazing material. It's like the I forget how Davies describes it.

It's one of my favorite commentaries of all time, David Ralph Davies. He's got a commentary on First Samuel. But, When you get to the end of the section, it's like just the Lord. Wouldn't type of events.

How does he describe it here? He said a killer phrase. well, as, as each of the, the brothers are coming in. Here's, here's, Davy's commentary.

He says, one can understand Samuel's thinking. Iliab was doubtless an impressive hunk of a manhood, around 6'2, perhaps, around 225 pounds, met people, well, all men with, with social grace, excellent taste in aftershave lotion and so on. Perhaps he had shattered the wide receiver for Bethlehehem High School football, probably made the all Judean All-Star team. Samuel was not alone in his estimate of Iliab.

Many thought Future was Iliab's middle name. And And so all these guys. come before him. I forget, I can't find that place.

Oh, here we go. Hence, we have another Yahweh's, another one of Yahweh's, who would have thought episodes. So, just, the idea of, it's, it's just the way the Lord works, everybody's expecting this one to be the chosen one, God goes a totally different direction. Everybody's expecting something else to happen.

So God, you can just imagine David coming in, who knows how old he is. Some commentators think he's maybe 1718 years old, comes in from being out there taking care of the sheep, probably dirty, probably smells really bad. but he's ready, so he's, a nice healthy red face. the text indicates he's good looking, so, the spirit of the Lord has an opinion on who's good looking and who's not and puts that right here in the text.

And, and so it's not merely that he's got a good heart, he's also good in form and appearance. and then the spirit falls upon him as he is anointed. And so we know as the tale goes forward, he's anointed right in front of his brothers later on when we have the whole Goliath thing. He's out there with his brothers and his brothers seemed to be jealous of him.

Maybe this anointing started to rile some of that up. we don't really know. but what we do know is when you, verse 14 is just this hard left turn. But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him.

So we've got this spirit of the Lord falling upon David. And now a distressing spirit falling upon Saul. We're gonna come back to this distressing spirit here in a second, but pick it up at verse 15. And Saul's servant said to him, surely a distressing spirit from God is troubling you.

I want you to notice how many times it says from God or from the Lord in this section. let our master now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man. Who is a skillful play skillful player on the harp, and it shall be that he shall play it with his hand when the distressing spirit from God is upon you and you shall be well. So, Saul said to his servants, Provide me now a man who can play well and bring him to me.

Then one of the servants answered and said, Look, I have seen a son of Jesse, of Bethlemahiite. Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a mighty man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, a handsome person, there it is again, and the Lord is with him. Therefore, Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, send to me your son David, who is with the sheep. Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine, and a young goat and sent them by his son David to Saul.

So David came to Saul and stood before him and he loved him greatly and he became his armor bearer. Then Saul sent to Jesse saying, please let David stand before me, for he has found favor in my sight. And so it was, whenever the Spirit from God was upon Saul that David would play a harp and And play it with his hand, then Saul would become refreshed and well, and the distressing spirit would depart from him. A lot of interesting stuff here is we've got, the way this whole chapter unfolds, you've got like the anointing of David, the spirit falls upon him, then the spirit leaves.

Saul and a distressing spirit comes upon him, and then through the providence of God, wouldn't, another one of those wouldn't movements, David becomes the one that's supposed to bring the therapy for Saul. Saul is, is getting in these moods. One of the things that this teaches us is while we can't identify all the time why madness or why ill tempers come upon people, at least in Saul's case, there was a spiritual reason why he would become distressed and ill-tempered and so on.

That was because there was some distressing spirit.

That came from the Lord. We'll talk about that in a second here and that would throw him into, who knows? We know that later on he's throwing spears and, he's sensing the rejection of the Lord. And so on God's providence, it's David, the future king that comes and is actually providing the therapy.

Let me ask you guys, is there some, do you think there's some magic in the harp playing? some, is it the, the, the, the relative notes or something in the music that's driving the distressing spirit away? What's going on there? Well, it could be, it seems like Saul's servants think that the music is gonna help.

And perhaps, it seems like there may have been some instances in the past where they've brought in a, a harp player or a lyre player. There are some, superstitions in the ancient world about music, being involved with the the spiritual world and that there being something spiritual that can happen. when music is involved, yeah. if you like Right.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. So there is something in, in the superstition or in the culture of, of music having some spiritual effect. I, I wanna suggest to you guys that I think in God's providence, we've just seen in the, in the chapter that David was filled with the Spirit and God began to move through him in, in, in a way that would be becoming of a person filled with the Spirit.

And so, as David was the one that came in to play the harp, he's playing the harp as one filled with the spirit and perhaps worshiping the Lord. And just the presence of somebody who is worshiping the Lord would bring a calmness over Saul. And, and again, we're talk, if this was a distressing spirit from the Lord, this is also a distressing spirit that would be sent away by the Lord's bidding. And so, it seems to me that the key figure here is not so much the heart, but David.

That David's the one that is there in the presence of Saul, and when the one who is filled with the spirit comes into the presence of Saul, the distressing, distressing spirit leaves. And so again, that's again exalting the filling, the one who is filled with the spirit, seems to me is part of what's going on in the text here. We're gonna see a little bit later that it's not always gonna work that way. yeah, Marianne.

Yeah, so, yeah, that's good. Yeah, so the spirit recognizes the spirit and, and you have examples of this like in Where is it? Is it First Timothy? That the believing spouse will have a, a sanctifying effect on the unbelieving spouse.

we know that the church is a salt, right? There's the salt effect that we can have on the culture. and so people that are filled with the spirit can have a, a positive effect on the culture. And so, and a, and a preserving effect on the culture.

And so, Don't underestimate the power that you can have as a person who's filled with the spirit, even though that you're sinful. If you're, if you have the Holy Spirit and you're filled with the Spirit, as you're moving into your workplace and unbelieving family or whatever, that can have an effect. I remember when I first started working as a junior high school teacher out here in Grant Terrace. And I thought that when I went to teach my first assignment, I thought, wow, it's gonna be great to be around all these adults that just love kids and are very positive people.

And then I had my first few experiences in the teacher's lounge and with some of the other teachers, and I couldn't believe the foul language. I couldn't believe how, how negatively they spoke about the students, even not just negatively, but like, like inappropriately. to where, at first, I didn't want to hang out with the teachers. At, at, during lunch, I'd go play basketball with the kids because it was so negative and discouraging.

but then eventually, I started hanging around with my core and even though it was very hard at first because they would always tell these nasty jokes and I wouldn't laugh and so they would think I was the Puritan and all that stuff. And, but over time, Our the culture of our core began to change a little bit. And then one of my teachers, friends got saved and, and then another Christian came on campus and just over time, there began to be a little bit of a shift, at least in the smaller pocket of teachers at our, at our school where I really enjoyed sitting down and having lunch and we'd have great encouraging conversations and And I think the Lord just used a few believers who were full of the spirit to have an impact on at least that part of our staff.

And To where it wasn't, it wasn't as discouraging.

Yeah, Dan. Yeah, that could be. He's so stubborn, he never does. That's a sent a message to God, I'm, I'm willing to submit.

That I need Yeah. This never That God did send David. Way to That's a great point. Dan's bringing up, could that be part of God's grace to put David in Saul's presence and to try to woo Saul back to himself?

And while Saul never, really took it, I, I think that's a great point. I, that, that would be consistent with how, how many times does God, is God sending prophets who are filled with the Spirit into wicked areas and calling upon them to repent, right? And David is definitely a prophet. so that's a great point.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a tough question. I, I, there's people in different parts of the map, but the whole concept of being filled with the spirit in the Old Testament, a lot of times it's, there seems to be this idea of being filled for activity like, like, like Saul was filled with the spirit to be king for a time.

I don't know that that necessarily means that he was filled in the sense of being saved. that's an interesting question. I'm not, I, I really don't know the full answer. It does seem like By his fruit, he basically turned his back on the Lord.

that's for sure. Let me say one quick thing that we'll have to, we'll have to close this up, but I'll, I'll spend more time on this next week, but this whole idea of, is God just allowing a distressing spirit and what does that really mean? Or is he ordaining a distressing spirit? Some translations say evil spirit, there's questions of marks.

There's questions about whether that's a demon or whether it's some emotional state. But a couple of things that we do know is, for instance, from the New Testament standpoint, God is the one that's, he, God sent a messenger from Satan to buffet Paul, right? And so, Paul was being buffeted by a messenger from Satan in order to humble him, and, and Paul prayed 3 times, Lord, will you deliver me from this? And the Lord said, no.

So we do know that God is involved in sovereignly moving things around for his own purposes. In 2 Thessalonians, you can read it this week, the Bible says that because people will not love the truth, God will send A deluding influence, a spirit of deception upon people so that they would believe the lie because they would not believe the truth. And so it's, it's almost like people would not believe the truth and so God will help participate in their deception, 2 Thessalonians.

You have that whole 1 Kings 22 thing that is just, this throne room scene where God is wanting to, to orchestrate the decree of Ahab's destruction.

And then he's like, OK, what are we gonna do here? And someone says, or one of the, the spirit says, I will go and I will deceive him. What will you do? I will be a, I will be a lying deception in the mouth of the prophets, and then God says, go.

And so there's that whole scene of his decree over these spirits and However we work this, we have to understand that God is not just a God that allows, He's a God that decrees, and there's, like it says in the Westminster confession as it tries to deal with this, there's first and secondary causation that we've talked about and we've talked about this whole concept in the past of what we would describe as, as God, the creator-creature distinction. That God is a God who holds people completely responsible for their actions and that he's sovereignly in control of all things.

so, this distressing spirit from the Lord, I would argue that it is, it is from the Lord in His divine decree, but it is in response to Saul's choices of rejection, of rejecting or of disobedience. And so, some people wanna make it one or the other.

It's gotta be either or, but the doctrine of divine compatibility seems to lead towards the idea that it doesn't have to be either or, it's both and. God is in complete control and people are completely responsible for their actions. Anyway, we'll try to develop that more next week, but, we're at 10:05. If you have, if you have any other questions, you can come up and talk to me about it.

but, so next week, we'll finish this up and we may do some review or I might get, might get anxious. We might just jump straight over to the new quarter where we start talking about David and Goliath. I'm inclined to jump into David and Goliath. We'll see.

if you guys wanna vote, you can email me or text me this week and while we review next week or jump right into David and Goliath. So, let's, let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your word and, Just the human, very human tales that we see on the pages of scripture, the beauty of, of your calling of this young David, The challenge and the, the warning of seeing what's happened to Saul. we thank you for the instruction that we have through this narrative.

we ask God that you would help us. To just be both encouraged and warned, encouraged by your grace, encouraged by your power, but also warned of, of, of just the danger of persisting in sin and rebellion and disobedience. Help us to be those that would be quick to repent. And, and all we need to do is humble ourselves, call upon you and you are ever willing to, to meet us, let us not be those that would be find ourselves in opposition to you as we know your word tells us that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble, and so we ask for humility.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen.