Again, the voice in the darkness

Lord Jesus, indeed we do need you.

We need you every hour. We need you in every possible

way. Lord, thank You that we have

confidence that you meet us in our need and that we can trust

fully and completely in you, our Lord and Savior.

And He speaks to us this way. The Lord said to Samuel, how

long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from

being king over you? Fill your horn with oil and go.

For I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehem mite, for I have

provided for myself a king among his sons.

And this is the word of the Lord.

The grass Withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our Lord

it stands forever. Amen.

All right, please be seated and grab your Bibles if you would

work your way to First Samuel Chapter 16.

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

We're putting a pause on our study in the book of Acts, and

we are returning to a study in which we looked at last summer

through the book of First Samuel, in particular, First and

Second Samuel in particular. We are looking here at the story

of King David. Now when I introduce people to

my family, my extended family, I usually receive one of two

responses, one of two interactions.

One I get dawning comprehension of people that kind of go, oh,

now I get it when they meet my parents or the other one is that

they get a confused dawning look upon their face and they say,

but they're so nice, where'd you come from kind of a thing.

So usually when they meet, if you want to get to know me, if

you need to know me a little bit or you want to get to know me

well, knowing my parents, knowing my family, knowing my

extended family, the people that I love in the door, that goes a

little great way towards speaking about me.

That's certainly true of getting to know me spiritually.

If you want to know a little bit about me spiritually, if you

learn, if you read about some of the theologians and some of the

people in the past that have impacted me to identify pretty

clearly some of my own particular tendencies and

thoughts, you can see where they came from.

Well, we are doing pretty much the exact same thing by looking

at King David. When we look at King David, we

are looking at someone that Jesus intentionally self

identified with. The goal of all scripture, the

goal of the Old New Testament, the goal of the New Testament

that speaks very clearly about Jesus Christ as well as the goal

of the Old Testament, it is to highlight point, to magnify

Jesus Christ for us. The intent of this sermon

series, the intent of every sermon series, the intent of

every time you come to worship has got to be to see, to

understand, to worship Jesus more and more clearly.

And so as we look at King David, even though King David lived

1000 years before Christ, what we are doing is we are looking

at King David not to see King David, but to see Jesus Christ.

We're going to identify that fairly clearly because there are

going to be points where we look at King David and we look at him

and we go, OK, that's pretty good.

We can understand why we're looking at King David here.

He lived a good life in this way and stuff like that.

He's going to serve as a function, as a model for us.

That's going to be attractive. In some ways that's the case.

In other ways, we're going to look at King David.

We're going to say, why in the world are we reading about this

guy? He's a terrible example for us.

Indeed, King David is not an example for us, positively or

negatively. What King David does is he

highlights Jesus Christ, and that's going to be the

consistent theme of everything in which we talk about here.

As we look at King David, we are looking through King David to

see Jesus Christ and I urge you over the next 8 weeks, we're

going to be looking at King David to make sure that that's

what you hear from the pulpit. Don't allow us to get distracted

and don't you be distracted by the idea that what we're doing

is putting forward good moral example for you to follow or an

illustration of how to live your life or something along those

lines. That's not what we're doing.

What we're doing is we're highlighting the key central

biblical themes that run all the way through the Scriptures that

point to and highlight Jesus Christ.

In part, what I'm doing is trying to to demonstrate for you

how it is that we're supposed to read the Scriptures as a whole,

both the New Testament, certainly, but also the Old

Testament, how you're supposed to identify Jesus Christ as the

core focus of this material. And we're going to see that here

as we look at King David. Now I realize it meant not many

of you remember what we talked about last summer when we looked

at the first part of First Samuel and that we are in

material that is less common for people.

And so I want to give a quick background over the next couple

of weeks. I'm going to be reiterating this

so you can Orient yourself a little bit.

As I said, we're about 1000 years before Jesus Christ, the

coming of Jesus Christ. We're about 400 years or so

after the Israelites have been freed from Egypt.

Lots of people know that after 400 years of captivity in Egypt,

the Moses let out the Israelites to Mount Sinai and then

ultimately indicate Canaan land, where Joshua, the leader

captured the Canaan land and settled the tribes of Israel,

the 12 tribes of Israel. The 12 tribes of Israel for the

next couple 100 years were ruled by judges and the judges did a

adequate, at best job, largely a poor job.

Certainly towards the end of their time they were doing a

really poor job and society was reflecting their poor

leadership. There was social chaos.

There was religious chaos. There was military and political

chaos. There was financial chaos.

It was a bad time to live. And into this spiritual

darkness, God calls the prophet Samuel.

Now the prophet Samuel is somebody who we're going to be

referencing numerous times here throughout the next 8 weeks.

The prophet Samuel is called in the midst of this social

darkness or cultural darkness, but literally also in darkness

where he hears God's voice calling him and Samuel responds

to the Lord. And one of the first tasks that

Samuel is tasked with doing is to lead God's people.

And he too leads God's people in ways that are unfaithful,

unjust, unholy, and unrighteous, particularly in the way his sons

respond and treat different things.

So the people reject Samuel's leadership, and instead they say

they want a king like all the nations.

They look at the prosperity of Egypt and say, why can't we have

a king like the Egyptians? They look at the Hittite Empire,

the power of the Hittite Empire. They say, why can't we be like

the Hittite Empire? Or they look at the Venetians

when the power and the military might of the Philistines.

And they say, why can't we be like them?

We want to be like them. Give us a king just like all the

other nations, so we can be like all the other nations.

And God gives them a king that is just like all the other

nations, like all the other kings.

And in time, very quickly, King Saul, who's another prominent

figure in our story, King Saul leads the Israelites into

territory that is just like all the other nations.

Disobedience, corruption, unfaithfulness, despair.

And so we are about halfway into Saul's reign here, and God says

this is not the king for you. And God rejects Saul as king,

and Samuel is crushed. He's crushed.

So we get the first Samuel chapter 16, and the Lord said to

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

Samuel, how long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected

him from being king over Israel? Now why is he grieving over

Saul? I think he's grieving over Saul

for a couple of reasons. One is because he sees that

because of the breakdown of the leadership, the representative

of God to the people has gone off the beam.

Saul has failed tremendously in his responsibilities, and

because of that the people are suffering.

The people are suffering in their misery of unfaithfulness

and disobedience and idolatry and wickedness and poverty and

misery and oppression. God's people are suffering and

Samuel the prophet is grieving the great loss of the of the

righteousness and the moral righteousness of the nation.

Samuel desires for God to be reflected in the people in which

he dwells, in the the nation in which he lives with.

He wants God's people to be reflecting God himself, and

their failure to do so grieves Saul Samuel tremendously.

He is broken. Because of this.

We live in a time period that is very similar.

I hope when I was listing out what it was like to live in the

darkness of that time that you just weren't thinking of ancient

times and how bleak and ugly things were then.

Because we can apply all of those characteristics to our

current society right now. Which causes me to wonder, where

is the grief? Do you as a Christian, do I as a

Christian, feel grief over the society that is broken around

us, over the misery of the people that are here, over the

ungodliness and the wickedness in which I spend every day of my

life? You spend every day of your

life. Where is the physical grief,

the, the, the, the morning that the Scripture is so clearly

called for? And I worry that we don't see it

for one of two reasons. 1 is that we have isolated ourselves

from the suffering of this world.

We have our friends, we have our church, we have our safe

ministries. And sure, we're doing a lot of

stuff and we rub shoulders with the people around us, but we

haven't really engaged with them in such a way as to experience

their grief. Or worse than that, we're

standing from afar wagging our finger, saying, look at how

miserable they are because of their ungodliness and their

wickedness. And indeed, they are suffering

because of their ungodliness and their wickedness.

But that has moved Samuel to grief.

The second reason why I think Samuel is in great grief is that

Saul, King Saul, the failure was Samuel's failure.

King Saul was somebody that Samuel counseled.

Samuel nurtured him. Samuel walked with him.

Samuel gave advice to him. Saul's failure was Samuel's

failure, and he's feeling the grief of this now.

God rebukes him. But look carefully at that

verse. God is not rebuking him from

grieving his own failure or society's failure.

I think that's something that the rest of the Scripture calls

us to be people that are passionate about the world

around us in such a way that it grieves us it more.

It makes us mourn when we see those kind of things.

And if you're not doing it, you've got to check your own

heart. But God doesn't rebuke him for

grieving. What does he say here in verse

one? How long will you grieve?

The grief has made Sam Samuel inert.

The grief has robbed him of his action.

The grief has robbed him. And here's the key of his faith.

God instead calls him to act in the midst of his grief, not

denying the grief, not denying the rejection of Saul as king.

But Samuel is to act in grief, in faith, in the midst of his

grief. Fill your horn with oil and go.

One of the prime responsibilities of the prophet

of God is to anoint the king, is to anoint the new king with oil.

So fill your oil with go. I will send you to Jesse the

Bethlehem. Mike.

Why? For I have provided, for I have

worked. Samuel, in the midst of the

darkness, hear my voice. I have worked.

So get up and go. Yes, the grief is present.

Yes, the sorrow is there. But if the grief and the sorrow,

even godly grief and sorrow turns to unbelief, turns to a

faithlessness, Samuel is prompted here by God saying,

don't you? And here's the kicker.

Trust my voice. Don't you trust my voice?

I will do this. Now go and act in faith.

This is the theme that runs through all of the scriptures

that we are to trust. Not what we're experiencing, not

what we see, not with what we feel, not with what we

understand, but we are to trust God's voice and we have God's

voice. This is why we consistently urge

you to open the scriptures, to have the Scriptures before you,

to know the Scriptures, because this is what we understand is

the word of God speaking to us. This is the voice of the Lord in

the midst of our sorrow, in the midst of our brokenness, in the

midst of our sadness. This is the voice of the Lord

that pulls us through, that says yes, in the midst of everything

that's happening here, trust me. And of course, the greatest

fulfillment of that is Jesus Christ the this brutal death,

this vicious rejection, this horrific thing.

And Jesus hanging on the cross nevertheless says, trust me,

trust me. So verse 2 Samuel says, what?

How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will

kill me. Remember, Saul is king.

Saul's been king for about 20 years.

He's going to be king for about 20 more years.

And Saul says, hey, I don't want any other king, but most kings

don't treat it lightly whenever a contender comes through the

throne or or an alternative. And so Samuel says, if Saul gets

wind of this, he's going to kill me.

What am I supposed to do? And the Lord says, take with you

a heifer and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.

In other words, go and worship. Saul's not going to stop you

from worshiping. Go and worship.

So Samuel goes and he worships and God continues in verse 3 and

invite Jesse to come and sacrifice and I will show you

what you shall do. And so in other words, get Jesse

on board. Go over and find this guy Jesse

and say, Hey, look, I've come to anoint a king and bring along,

bring along your your sons. Verse 4 Samuel did what the Lord

commanded and came to Bethlehem and that is the Bethlehem that

you recognize. This is the Bethlehem where

Jesus will be born 2000 years or 1000 years later, come to

Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to

meet him trembling and said, now why are they trembling?

They're trembling because this is the prophet of God that is

coming. And the prophet of God comes

with the word of God, with the judgment of God, with the

condemnation of God, yes, with the grace of God.

And so the elders are don't know what's happening.

This is imagine this, you get a knock on the door and you open

up and it's an IRS agent. OK, what's your immediate?

OK, Immediately you're panic. No matter how faithful you are

in taxes, one of the things that immediately go through to your

head is what did I miss? Oh my gosh, what did I miss?

And you begin to travel panic. You begin to tremble.

And so trembling, the elders come to him and say, do you come

peaceably? And IRS agent, are you just

looking for a glass of water? You know, do you come

peacefully? And Samuel says, yes, I come

peacefully. I have come in verse 5 to

sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves and come

with me to the sacrifice consecrate.

By the way, it's it's a fancy term.

It means prepare yourself, prepare yourself for worship.

Now, I'm might be writing on you all sorts of evil, and I

apologize if this is the case. Please come up to me afterwards

and correct me, but I have great fear that the extent of your

preparation for worship is saying, come on honey, let's get

in the car. I have great fear that we lack

something fundamental that is spread throughout the

Scriptures. Spread throughout the scriptures

is the call that when we come into the presence of the Lord,

we consecrate ourselves. We prepare ourselves.

Now that preparation can take a bunch of different looks.

It can look differently in different ways.

I appreciate that, but consecrate yourselves.

One of the things that we we tend to do is say, OK, give it

this. That's the first song that

Brendan plays for us at this worship service.

It's supposed to be a moment for you to reorient yourself and

prepare yourself for worship. But is that really the extent of

our consecrating ourselves that we spend 3 minutes preparing to

meet with the Lord of the Universe?

I had a good friend of mine who refused to allow his kids to go

out on Saturday nights and I kind of thought, wow, why are

you doing that? And he said it is so that they

are prepared for worship. They don't do anything special

Saturday night. They just keep the kids in and

they have that time as a family. That's consecrating yourselves

for worship. So consecrate yourself for

worship. And he consecrated Jesse and his

sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

Verse 6. When they came, the sons, when

the sons came, Samuel looked at Eliab and thought, surely this

is the Lord's anointed that is before him.

Eliab is the first son, and the first son comes along and

Jesse's, Jesse's very proud to introduce his first son to him

and says, this is the Lord's anointed.

And the Lord said to Samuel verse 7, do not look on his

appearance or on his height and stature because I have rejected

him. For the Lord sees not as man

sees. Man looks on the outward

appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

All right, now here would be an easy moment to slip into a some

moralistic point about saying, look, don't judge a book by its

cover. Don't trust your first

impressions. If you want to hear a story

about the failure of first impressions, ask Kelly what she

thought about me when she first saw me.

That's a fun story. OK, First impressions, we, we

know that don't judge a book by its cover.

We know that we're supposed to look not at outward appearances,

but at the heart. We know that that's a great

little moral story. And yes, I urge you to live that

way, too. That's not what it's doing here

in Scripture. It's pointing to Jesus Christ.

How is it pointing to Jesus Christ?

Because it's highlighting a problem that that resides in all

of our hearts. We judge by the outward

appearance. We trust by the outward

appearance. Eliab here comes across the

stage and Samuel is impressed with him.

By the way, Samuel was exactly impressed with Saul.

Samuel was impressed with Saul for the exact same reasons.

Saul was tall, Saul was Hampson. Here comes Eliab.

Liab is tall. Liab is handsome.

Tall counts back then for being a king, it counts.

As being king it counts sociologically today too.

If you ever do the studies, you realize that people the taller

candidate gets elected 70% of the time.

But that's neither here nor there.

Back then, the king was leading armies and was leading army.

I see a couple small guys in the crowd smiling because they know

they're never going to get elected.

We got, we got the king is leading in, in, in battle, and

he leads from the front. And it counts to know where your

king is, where the battle is happening.

And so being a head taller than everybody else, you're always

able to see where King Saul goes because he's so tall.

And Samuel says, hey, Eliab is going to be nice and tall.

We're going to be able to follow him too.

It makes sense to trust what you see with your eyes, and God says

don't trust your eyes. It makes sense to see with our

eyes that it would be easy to live a life if you had fame or

if you had money. Life would be so much easier.

Don't trust what you see with your eyes.

It would be so easy for the government, with all of its

power and with all of its money, to solve some of the social

issues that confront us as a society.

It would make sense that it would be able to do that.

Don't trust what you see with your eyes.

What are you supposed to trust in?

God doesn't look at the outward appearance.

God looks at the heart. Now if we're really sloppy,

we'll sit here and say, well God looks at Eliab's heart and sees

that Eliab's heart's no good. He's going to look at Abinadab's

heart and say that it's no good. And Shamas heart and say it's no

good and goes down and then he sees David and David has this

nice little pure heart and we all do this.

OK, some of you laugh because you know the story of David.

He doesn't have a pure heart. David doesn't have a pure heart.

We are told in the Scriptures, and why it is that we miss this

is beyond me. We're not supposed to trust our

hearts because our hearts are deceitful above all things.

David's heart is deceitful above all things and it gets them into

a world of trouble, as we will find out here together.

So why is it that God says that He looks at the heart?

Because at the heart is what the heart is, where God is at work.

We're told that we're told that God transforms our lives from

our hearts. He takes a heart of stone and he

makes it a heart of flesh. In other words, the point of

this is that God doesn't care what a lie it brings to the

table. It only matters what God brings

to the table. And what does God bring to the

table? God brings it to the table.

The ability, the heart, the power to make a heart of stone,

a heart of flesh, that's what God can do.

And so he says to Samuel what he says to each one of us over and

over again and throughout the Scriptures.

Don't trust what you see with your eyes.

Don't trust what you feel with your feelings.

Don't trust what you sense around you.

Don't trust your own understanding.

Look to where God is doing his work.

Trust in Him, trust in his work. And so he says in verse 8.

Then Samuel then calls Abinadab the second son, and made him

pass before Samuel. And Samuel said, neither is the

Lord chosen this one. Then Jesse made Shama pass by.

And he said, neither is the Lord chosen this one.

And Jesse made the seven of his sons pass by Samuel.

And Samuel said to Jesse, the Lord has not chosen any of

these. Then Samuel said to Jesse, OK,

so Jesse, Samuel has been sent to anoint a king.

He knows what he's doing there, and he's passing by all these

guys, and God's not picking any of these.

And so he's like, God, did you want me to anoint one of these

guys from Jesse? God says yes.

And so then Samuel kind of turns to Jesse and says, are these all

of your sons? Verse 11.

And Jesse says, well, there remains yet the youngest.

And behold, he's keeping the sheep.

OK, David by name, notice what's happening here.

Samuel says, hey, I'm going to pick one of your sons to be

king. And Jesse says, oh, great.

So he brings all of his sons. Well, not all of his sons.

He leaves one of them behind. How does Jesse, how does God,

sorry, how does David feel about that?

You know, he doesn't even count worthy enough to be walked in

front of Samuel for choice. And this is something that the

Scriptures also identify fairly clearly, that God's choice is

not our choice. God's will is not our will.

And So what happens here is he's passing by.

He says, well, there is that one other guy, but he's a young.

He's a young man. Now, Samuel David is young at

this point in the game. We're not exactly told how old

he is, but he doesn't become king yet for about 15 to 20

years, and he becomes king when he's 30.

So that means that Samuel is somewhere around 10 to 15 years

old as a young boy. OK, Now, if you're like me,

there's a number of you out there that are raising kids or

grandkids and, and you know what 10 to 15 is like, I kind of

forgot what 10 to 15 is like. I'm, I don't have kids around me

that age and I have to fight to try to remember what they are.

So just as a visual image for a second, Alexander, Alexander

come running up here for a second.

Alexander Scott right here is Alexander.

How old are you? I'm 14.

Alexander's 14 years old, so he's right in that window.

Now, everybody can admit that Alexander's got a lot going for

him. We can imagine that he has

kingship potential here. But on the other hand, is he a

king right now? Is this what we want as a king?

As much as we appreciate you, man, we're not that much.

OK, Thanks. OK.

That's the applaud him. That's a that's a 10 to 15 year

old. That's how old King David is.

Sorry. That's how old David is.

When Samuel comes and says you're going to be king.

It's great reason why Jesse says, man, this isn't the right

one. Because Jesse's looking with his

eyes and trusting what's on the appearance.

He is not listening to the voice of God.

He's not trusting the way he is intended to trust.

Verse 12 and Jesse brought him sent and brought him in.

Now David was Ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome.

I was supposed to bring him up after that and say Disney

beautiful eyes and Ruddy and handsome.

I missed that. Sorry about that.

And the Lord says arise and annoyed him for this is he.

Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of

his brothers and listen to this. Is this a great message.

The great summary text of what we've been learning.

And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day

forward, and Samuel rose and went to Rama.

The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David that we're used to.

If you read the scriptures, you're used to the Spirit of the

Lord coming upon people or falling upon people.

That's the language that's normally used.

Here's the only time where's where the Spirit rushes upon

somebody and I love it because it emphasizes again what we've

been talking about. The calling of God comes first,

the equipping of God comes second.

God does not sit here and say, OK, David's got all of the right

abilities, let's pick him. Rather, God says, this is my

man, and then he gives him everything he needs to be

faithful. Because we trust David.

Not because he's got a pure heart, not because he's Ruddy

and handsome, not because he's old and mature.

We trust David because God has called him to the task.

What are we told about Jesus Christ?

That there was nothing that should cause us to desire him.

He was not beautiful of form. He was not special to look at,

and yet the Lord has anointed him and called upon him to

sacrifice his life for each and every one of us.

We look not to appearances, but we listen to the voice of God.

I pray this week that you will not be overwhelmed by what you

see. You will not be overcome by your

own wisdom and understanding, you will not live by virtue of

what you deem to be right and appropriate, but that you will

listen for the voice of God and trust in Him, Jesus Christ, our

Lord and Savior. Let's pray together.

Lord in heaven, we do thank you again for blessing us with Your

word that speaks so of the power of Your work in our lives.

Lord, as you have taken hearts of stone throughout this world

and turn them into hearts of flesh, so we pray that you would

do that, continue that transforming work in our own

lives and cause us, O Lord, to trust not in what we see, not in

what we understand, but to trust only in You and in Your word.

Make it so, Lord, we pray. Through Christ our Lord, we ask.

Amen.