A Man After God's Own Heart | Life of David: Shepherd Warrior King Part 2

Music.

Are. And if you got here early enough, you might have gotten a chance to taste some of the barbecue.

And if you didn't, think about what a testimony that is for punctuality in the

future. Am I right? That's an opportunity.

So we're in a little bit of a movie lull, or at least, I don't know,

my family feels like we are.

And so I've reached back to, of course, the greatest era of culture,

which is when I grew up, the 90s and 80s, right? That's obviously the best.

And so I got the chance to, yes, that's right.

I got the chance to show them Short Circuit. You remember Short Circuit? it.

I mean, what a classic, right? And as you're watching it, it's fun.

They liked it. And you're looking at the technology going, wow,

we have really come a long way.

Like, I don't even know you can sell that as a Toys R Us at this point.

Like, wow, we've really developed a lot.

But in that same era of 90s and 80s, the action movies were huge.

And unlike now with Marvel, our action heroes did not need superpowers.

They just needed a chisel set of abs and a defiance of authority.

That was the real key ingredient with Die Hard, Lethal Weapon,

various Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, one man versus the machine to rescue the entire world.

And I just wonder, though, as we look around, like there does seem to be kind

of a longing right now for a generation of men to step up in a way that is that

is healthy, that has a lot of discipline and heart behind it.

And I think we can feel that this David series is a timely series, right?

Because it seems like a time when our leaders are disappointing in various ways.

We need to set a different standard.

And I know many of the guys in here have been very intentional with how they

are raising their children and their sons are making resolutions to continue

to push back against culture and to keep instilling character and godliness

in a generation that doesn't seem to value either.

But I can't shake the feeling that part of my perception of what it means to

be a successful dad may be a tad bit too much influenced by Bruce Willis and

Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Like the idea that, you know, you're making it when, you know,

you're physically able to stand up to any foe.

And you could see how for a lot of us, when we think about David.

That we would imagine that that first story would be just like it, right?

With David versus Goliath, Small man, giant, a small weapon,

he comes down and takes rid of an opposing foe.

Like, it's got everything about it that lends itself to a movie,

or at least, I guess, an Amazon series, after all.

Like, it's just got all the right markers that we like, except for the fact

that that isn't where the story began, was it?

That as Mark talked about last week, that it was really important for the people

who were telling us this story.

They could have started in a lot of places, but they're going to tell the story

of David, which will span two books of the Bible. Like that's how important this is.

But we didn't start with David. Who did we start with?

Saul. So you've got these, we got all these panels up here because 10 weeks

is a long time. And so it can be hard to remember. What do we cover already?

This is going to kind of help us remember where we are in this story,

but it starts with Saul. And the reason for that is that Saul in many ways represents

what happens over and over again in the Bible.

That as God is lifting and empowering somebody up, Saul was a good guy.

But when he gets more power under his belt, gets a little success under his

belt, and as that power grows, it does start to bend him inwards.

And it starts off with a small infraction, it would seem to us.

He offered a sacrifice, a bit rushed, that he shouldn't have.

But God said, this is a sign that Saul's heart is turning away.

And that's exactly what happens.

He starts building monuments to himself. He wants to assassinate David later, which is not a good sign.

Like there's lots, he gets paranoid and angry and he's becoming very,

very insensitive if people sing the wrong songs about him.

We can see what happens to people like Saul when power comes along.

And if you think that the story of Saul means, well, you just can't elect imperfect

people. Like that's the problem is, is that Saul was okay until power came.

And then that ability and that influence allowed him to drift farther and farther from God.

And so one of the lines that we're going to deal with today is when Samuel is

confronting Saul, he says, I'm taking, God is going to take the kingdom away from you.

And instead I'm going to give it to somebody, right?

He said, I'm going to pick a king who is a man after my own heart.

And of all the things for God to emphasize, the reason the story begins there

is because this is a cycle we see repeated in our own culture.

It's a cycle we see repeated in history that power takes somebody,

even with a noble cause, and eventually often leads to them becoming a tool

that causes all kinds of heartache.

And so what God needs to find, he needs to find a king, a leader,

a kind of people who said, this is what I want a leader to be like.

This is what I designed humans to be like. And he says, I need someone who's after my own heart.

So here's the story. We're going to basically be in 1 Samuel 16,

the book of 1 Samuel chapter 16. Here's verse one. Here's what it said.

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

The Lord said to Samuel, how long will you mourn for Saul?

Since I have rejected him as king over Israel, fill your horn with oil and be

on your way for I'm sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem.

I have chosen one of his sons to be king.

You know, that opening line might just be worth the price of admission right

here to church, right there.

Like how many of us have things that we've kind of known for a while that God wants us to change.

We've been feeling that nudge of the spirit or a physical nudge of somebody

that we stay with at our house.

Who's been saying, you know, enough's enough. It's about time.

I can just hear God's word saying, so how long are you going to do this?

I mean, how long are we going to do this forever?

It's time to move on now. I don't know. So just that alone is a great nudge

from God to even somebody like Samuel, because I'm sure Samuel is going over as Saul fell.

Oh, I should have done it different. You know, if I'd have taught him different,

you know, if I'd have just shown up a little earlier, you know,

maybe if I really focused on this early on, you know what that's like.

You're in a past season and the best thing we can do, obviously,

is going to help you is just keep replaying this script over and over and over

again until someone comes along and says, God's like, look, are we done with that now?

Can we move on? Because we're going to pick a different king at this point.

So he takes up this horn and he's going to take off to Bethlehem.

Now, Saul, though, even though God has removed the longevity of his kingdom,

he's still king right now.

And so Samuel, a well-known figure, he's not a young guy anymore in the temple.

He's old. He has led military campaigns.

A chapter earlier, it says he hacked the Amalekite king to pieces,

which is a wild thing for a prophet to be doing.

I mean, he's got a wild story and he's well known in Israel's history.

And as he's traveling, he's worried people are going to hear.

Saul's going to hear that I'm going, and Saul's getting a little more paranoid.

Like when the spirit of God leaves Saul and then a bad spirit comes,

we don't know what that means entirely, but we know what it looks like on the outside.

It looks on the outside like somebody who's sitting there every night saying,

I'm going to go to sleep like it all depends on me.

I'm going to wake up like it all depends on me, and I'm going to take down anybody

that might threaten what I'm trying to build here for me and my family.

Not that we would ever have those struggles ourselves.

But we can see how Saul begins to feel this idea that if I don't fight harder

and if I don't push more, I'm going to lose it all. And so Samuel is worried.

And so God tells him to say, well, take a cow and go take it to Bethlehem and

you sacrifice and do a worship service with his family.

So in a scene that is not unlike Mission Impossible, Samuel goes on a covert operation.

I'm just taking a cow around, I guess. I like to take them on walks.

And he goes out to do this worship service. Why are you going to Bethlehem again?

You know, worship service. They're known for their worship there in Bethlehem with the bread.

They do a lot of worshiping. So he goes out and the first guy he sees is Eliab. Here's what it says.

When they arrived, Samuel sees the oldest son, Eliab. And he thoughts,

whew, it's easy to be a prophet.

Surely the Lord's anointing stands here before me, right?

But the Lord said, do not consider his height or appearance for I have rejected him.

The Lord does not look at things people look at, for people look at outward

appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

So he shows up and he sees Eliab and this is the eldest son,

probably physically taller, but also that confidence that comes with being a firstborn.

And I, as a forgotten middle child, can say this, right?

Like, oh my goodness, like that firstborn confidence. I always wish that I had more of that in life.

So he comes out and Samuel's like, that's what we need.

Some leadership potential right there. The whole family practically follows him right now.

And God says, no, I'm not looking at the outside. I'm looking at the heart.

It's a daunting thing to say, but we do this.

If you look at when the guys joined the military, so I've been told no matter

the branch, they send you through your basic training because no matter what

piece of fancy equipment you're gonna use, you need to have run a whole bunch

of miles at like six in the morning, apparently, in order to defend freedom.

But part of the things they do is not just to test your physical capacity,

is that you could pass all of those tests.

And we know of people who this happens to. And they go to do a physical exam.

And the doctor says, I have terrible news. I know you're running fine now,

but you have a defect in your heart. You have this metabolic problem.

You have this condition. And I'm afraid that as much as you seem like you could

do it now, that we cannot put you in a multimillion dollar aircraft.

We cannot put you in a situation where everyone would be depending on you because

your heart or your body might give out at precisely the wrong moment.

And it can be devastating news, but it's good to know it before the crisis comes.

Because how many leaders have we heard about in recent years?

People who are famous Christian singers or preachers or influences only to find

out that there was a series of heartbreak and sin and immorality and you thought, oh my goodness.

Wouldn't it be intimidating though if the army said, I got some great news.

Sanford has finished up some research. We've got a new blood test that we can

do as a part of this that will test your character.

It will tell you if you're a man of integrity, if you've ever cheated on your

girlfriend or your spouse.

She's going to tell us that up front. Like who would get in the military at

that point? Would you make it in? Don't answer that question.

But wouldn't that be intimidating if we could do something to just check to

know somebody's character?

And yet we all realize the heartache that would happen if a person who is not

ready for that kind of leadership and influence is put into a position,

and suddenly the consequences aren't just one career that goes south,

but all the people that are counting on them.

And God says what we need is someone who can have the strength to face off Goliath,

but still maintains a man after my own heart.

David is not a perfect king. And God has said in this first movement of our

message here that God is going to look at heart over height, right?

He's going to be more concerned with character than resume virtues because God

specializes in taking people who seem vastly unqualified and saying, perfect situation.

Moses, you will be my spokesman, which is great, except for the one thing Moses

isn't very good at is talking, which seems like God should have taken that into account.

And yet God picks Moses, right? that God picks Paul.

You're going to go plant a bunch of churches with the small problem that you

used to kill them, and many of them are terrified about you.

Other than that, he's a perfect choice.

That God seems to intentionally pick people, not because they are qualified,

but because they have the right heart to follow and obey him.

And then he says, now we're going to prepare those that he has called.

And so the scene comes about, and he starts to pick out, go through the sons

one by one, one by one, and finally it goes. And I love the next verse.

And because as someone who comes from a slightly larger than normal family,

I can sympathize with this next question that Jesse gets.

Because Samuel asked Jesse, are these all the sons you have? Did you miss any?

And he doesn't say this in the text, but I just wonder if Samuel doesn't go,

wait a minute, we are short one.

Ah, yeah, there's the one out in the field. I forgot about him. He's the small one.

Now, I've only forgotten my kids on half a dozen occasions, one left behind,

which isn't too bad when you consider how many times I've been to church.

I mean, I think I'm batting pretty good. If this was a batting average,

I would be in Major League Baseball.

But I have gotten awkward calls from preachers saying, you know,

I appreciate your word today.

Are you planning on coming and picking up your kid right away or are you just

leaving him here to do prayer and reflection?

Oops. Yeah, there's a good parenting moment right there. And so they go and

says, oh, our smallest one's out in the field. The text says youngest,

but the Hebrew is more ambiguous.

Smallest, least significant, least important. Because why in our culture,

the youngest, we can make jokes about being the baby of the family,

the one who get to experience our parents when they are at a different income

level and thus have an entirely different childhood than we grew up in.

Now everything's nice. Not like when I was there. This is different in the ancient world.

In a society where your birth order affects how much property you inherit and

how important you are, as you go farther down the list, your significance does get less and less.

Well, there is David. He's out watching the sheep, the smallest,

least important, doing the least important job.

And sure enough, he comes in and God says to Samuel, that is the one.

So Samuel takes this horn of oil that he brought just for this occasion.

He anoints him, meaning he pours it on the head, so it's running down his clothes.

You know what oil's like? It doesn't wash off that easy.

And it's got all over him now in the presence of his brothers.

And from that day on, the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David,

and Samuel left. So picture the scene.

David, who's never been a significant player in his family up to this point,

called in, yeah, what do you want?

They got Samuel here. Ooh, the Samuel, like the one they talk about? Yeah, yeah, the Samuel.

And then he comes and he pours this oil on you and you feel the power of God

coming on you in some way.

You can feel that God is now speaking into your heart. Small footnote here.

There is a difference between the Holy Spirit and the Old Testament and the New.

You see, in the Old Testament, God's Holy Spirit comes and goes and it changes

depending on who God is working with and how. But in the New Testament,

all those who have been buried with Christ and call on his name have been promised

that God offers the gift of his spirit.

We did a whole series at the beginning of this year called Hearing from God,

that it is the normal part of the Christian life to be able to hear and listen

and follow after God like we're going to see David do in his life.

So David's in this moment. The oil's still dripping on him. His brothers are

all staring at him like, oh man, like, oof, I feel kind of special out here. This is awesome.

And I got this and then I got the spirit of the Lord. and it's like,

now what is he gonna go do? He's gonna go and he's still watching sheep.

Nothing happens after the service. Now you can take your Holy Spirit power and

clean up sheep poop like never before.

I'm like, congratulations, you've been promoted to the same job you were doing.

Get back out there. And he goes and just keeps being a shepherd.

Now it's a little hard to tell because there are gaps in scripture.

The time between the commission and the actual event.

When God says to Noah, build an ark, And then a hundred years go by.

It takes us one verse to read that. And you might allow your eyes to gloss over

the gap, but it's a long time. And it often is.

Jesus's ministry at 12, he's in the temple.

Of course I'm here doing my father's business. And then his ministry starts

and he's in his thirties.

So like the 18 year part, what was he doing?

The same thing a lot of people are doing in the Bible, waiting and preparing.

I don't want you to miss this gap. It's vital to David's story,

but it's also vital for ours.

As God is telling the story of David, he does not delete these moments where

Israel wanders in the desert for 40 years, where Moses is an 80-year-old man

before the conviction that he felt as a young man to set Israelites free from

slavery actually comes about.

There is often periods of waiting between the anointing and the appointment.

So he's anointed the next movement of our message, but waiting, waiting and waiting.

Waiting is hard. We grow impatient. We want to see it happen.

In fact, if you're like most of us, sometimes we interpret the waiting to maybe

question the conviction.

Was 22 years old, graduate of Bible college, got fire in my bones and the wisdom

of God in my head, or at least I thought so at the time.

And I felt a strong calling when I was 17, like a very, very divine moment where

God's like, I'm commissioning you and I'm like, good.

And then I went and prepared and then I'm ready for it because I'm 22.

And you go out and you apply to all these churches. I'm going to help lead God's people.

I don't know if you know this. There's not a huge selection of churches that

want to be led by a 22-year-old out there.

Now that I'm interviewing 22-year-olds, like I get it. Like I get why that is

the case. But like at the time, I didn't.

I'm getting told, no, no, no, no. You're hearing all this and you start to think,

well, maybe, maybe I was wrong.

Maybe I'm not gifted enough.

Maybe, you know, how much did I really feel that when I was at CIY? Like, was that real?

Maybe that was just me getting worked up. You know what? I don't even know if

that was actually God speaking to me.

Isn't it funny how you can take that waiting, even though God has said over

and over and over again, this is part of what it means to follow God.

He tells you early so that while you're preparing, your heart can already be

looking for opportunities.

But sometimes we take the waiting as a sign of punishment, of rejection,

of God looking down and saying, well, he closed that door. I guess you're not it.

Instead of looking over and over again in the Bible, people like David, who simply have to wait.

David won't become king until 2 Samuel chapter 5. You don't have to be a Bible

2 Samuel 5 · chapter mention

scholar to know that's a long way from now. We got a lot of stories between now and then.

And there is something about David which is okay with that.

And perhaps if some of us here have struggled with that idea that sometimes

waiting can feel like rejection.

Waiting can feel like God is passing over us. Waiting can feel like we're missing

out on it. And yet waiting is often exactly what God needs us to do.

Tim Keller is a pastor at 72 years old. When he was 30, he went to write a book

because many large influential pastors were writing books. And he went to a

guy and said, I need to publish a book.

You know, what are some good topics?

And the guy says, his friend gave him some of the best advice ever.

Don't write a book in your 30s. What do you mean don't write a book?

Everyone's writing a book. He goes, you shouldn't though, you're not, no.

It hurt his feelings a lot to

say the least. And he doesn't publish a book until he turns 50 years old.

And he said, it's the best no I've ever been given in my life.

Because when I'm writing in my 50s, I'm not building an audience.

I'm not developing a following.

I'm sharing my conviction and my identity, which now is rock solid.

He wrote dozens of books in just 20 years. More than a book a year. But he waited.

Do you realize how long 20 years is? that's a long time to watch this guy get

a deal and that get a deal.

And you feel like God's closed the door and it says, well, I guess you're not it.

But that is not what the Bible teaches about waiting.

David has to wait.

I know we got some youth going to CIY or Romania, camps, trips,

experiences, and other parts of the world.

And you are going to go on there. And I promise you, if your heart is open to

it, God's spirit is going to talk to them or you this summer,

where you're going to be in that worship service and you're going to feel a

pull and a conviction. You know, maybe I should start this study or maybe I

wonder if I should do this.

And you're going to feel that conviction and you're going to come back and on

fire for Jesus and for God to make a difference in the world.

And then you're going to do, I don't know if it'll be the first load of laundry or the fifth one.

I don't know if it's going to be the first homework assignment or the English

test as things fall back into being normal.

Then you begin to say, I wonder if that conviction was real after all.

What is it that David knows that many of us miss?

You see, don't let the silence in the interim make you doubt what you definitely

heard God's Spirit say to you.

There's something David learns in this early chapter that before we got to Goliath,

he's already been waiting as long as it takes out there in the pasture watching sheep.

Waiting is hard. And yet that's what David seems to do. But he's not wasting time.

You see, I've got to kind of deal with this next aspect, but it's a little bit difficult in the text.

But we do know at least one thing is that David was working on his music in the interim.

I could tell you that David plays the harp, but someone might stand up and shout,

liar! That's a Bible joke.

Thank you. And the reason it is better to call it a liar than a harp is whatever

you're thinking of when you think of a harp.

Not that. It sounds much closer to a Middle Eastern lyre. It sounds much closer

to a guitar if you're looking for a modern sound.

But he's out there becoming good at playing it. This text today in verse 14

is going to say he's so good, he has a reputation.

We didn't need him to tell us that, though. He writes a lot of psalms of worship

to God. Well, where was he learning that? The same way anyone has ever learned music.

Out there, one note at a time, but playing for an audience of just one.

Not in a temple, not going forward, just him and the sheep and the God who watched

over him, playing note after note.

I wonder how many songs he sang out there. Could you even count them?

I wonder how many prayers later become the things that we call the Psalms because

of things that he thought about while he slept at night under the stars to wake

up the next morning and pick up the lyre and said, I had this tune on the back of my head.

Don't miss it. Do you know how many of the Psalms, they don't say,

say this in a serious tone.

Most of the Psalms say, when you play the music, play it like this.

We don't even know what it means, but we do know it's all music.

And that's because David's heart is constantly pouring out in worship to God.

I don't know all that he was doing while he was waiting.

We know he fights a bear. We know he fights a lion.

And we know he plays an awful lot of worship music.

So when the next moment comes, it strikes us a little bit.

Because the next thing is that you need to recognize in this Samuel story about

David is that God is going to preface theme over timeline.

And I'm talking about the text of Samuel itself is not always going to preserve

the timeline in the Bible as much as we'd want.

Because here's what's going to happen. Pull up the next verse.

It says this in 1 Samuel 16, verse 18.

1 Samuel 16:18

Saul is troubled because God's spirit has left him and he's becoming more and more worried.

And they say, I need someone that can play music. And one of their servants

raises the hand and says this.

I have seen the son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the liar.

He's brave and he's a warrior and he speaks well and he's fine looking.

I'm starting to feel that Mark was right, man. Some of these descriptions are

a little over the top in this Old Testament. Like who wouldn't want that on a resume?

And the Lord, it says, is with him.

And that's going to be a key verse for what follows. So Saul sent messengers

to Jesse and said, send me your son, David, who is with the sheep.

And sure enough, David comes and he plays. And man, he must have brought the

house down because Saul says, you're hired. And he becomes part of Saul's court

and he becomes Saul's armor bearer.

And he becomes like in part full time working for him, which is amazing.

Except for the small little problem that in chapter 17, which if you're not

a Bible scholar, That's after 16.

When the story of David and Goliath is told here in this book,

if you've read through it, Saul has no idea who David is.

He says three times in the same chapter, who's that?

He's like, oh, that's Jesse's son. That's David. What? Let me go talk to him.

See if my armor fits. It's like, if he was the armor bearer,

wouldn't you know if the armor fits? Like, he's like, Saul, where you been,

man? Are you taking something? Now, here's the thing.

That's because chapter 17 happened before chapter 16.

Because the Bible sometimes moves things around because they're more concerned

with what does this story mean than just what's the order that it occurred.

And don't be the people who say, they're not as smart as us modern audiences.

They probably didn't detect it.

Like, I don't know what hill you're leaning on, but like they're smart enough

to recognize that Saul forgot who David was in the next chapter.

They're so brilliant that they can edit an entire book to have the same vocabulary

style and literary themes, but they can't figure out that Saul forgot who David

was in the next chapter. No, they do it on purpose.

There's something they want to emphasize about this story that needs to go before

we talk about David and Goliath.

This will happen in other places you read the Bible. I'm just alerting you to it.

When they put together the minor prophets, which in the Old Testament always

are included on a single scroll, the 12 minor prophets at the end of your Old Testament.

I'll just go with me on a limb here for just a second if you're not super Bible

fluent. But the oldest one, according to the text itself, is Amos.

Amos is the oldest of the prophets. He's from the 800s, but his book,

his letter, his prophecies,

thundering down judgment. Righteousness is going to flow like a river, like a nonstop string.

You're selling, your priests are getting fat on sin. God's bringing judgment.

And even if you say, sorry, probably won't even make a difference.

I mean, it's coming down heavy and hard and he lays it on.

And when they were putting together the 12 minor prophets, Amos is the oldest,

but they said, we got to put Hosea first, even though it's definitely not the

oldest. It's from the 500s. It's 300 years later.

But see, the story of Hosea is about a prophet who God tells to go and marry

a prostitute, and then to buy her back again and again, and says,

this is what faithfulness looks like.

This is what my love looks like. And it's almost like when they were putting

it together, they didn't want to give you chronology.

They said, I don't want to give you Amos, because if you haven't read Hosea,

you will not understand Amos.

Now, you can't read this talk about justice if you don't understand what kind

of God we're talking about.

Love and compassion and faithfulness when we're not faithful.

You need Amos. Amos is true. But I want you to read this one first.

And in the story of David and Goliath, which is chapter 17, it says,

Isaiah 17 · chapter mention

like, before we tell that story where David broke on the scene,

let me tell you another thing that was going on in David's life that contributed

to his rise to fame and influence.

And this is his story of coming into Saul's court. And what he is famous for

in this court is not the battles that he fought, but it's the fact that the Lord is with him.

It's like the person who's writing 1 Samuel and teaching us about this great

king said, I'm just worried if I tell you the Goliath story first,

you're going to imagine that the best way to become a great man and a great

leader and a great influencer for God,

a man or woman of faith, is you need to go out there. You need to find the biggest bad guy you can.

You need to walk out, confront him face to face, take him down.

And that's how you show that you're a man after God's own heart.

He says, look, I need to explain to you, though, that it wasn't just that.

There was something that happened before that. The word David was worshiping

and trusting in God over and over again.

It's the fact that the God was with him while he sang and played the lyre.

That's why he won the battle with Goliath. They say this story has to be told first.

It's not perfect chronology, but we do this in movies all the time.

For storytelling, we want to help you understand what is happening.

And sometimes you'll notice if you read Kings and Chronicles,

people will make a big deal about the fact that there are sometimes chronological

discrepancies. but they were well known to every ancient commentator.

Nobody missed it in the ancient world, but they're often to emphasize something

that God wanted us to understand about what was going on.

And for David, it's this theme of worship of a heart poured out to God and that God was with him.

God says, if you're only going to do one thing, if you're going to start with

a note, it has to be this one because that one is a result of this one.

So I guess that means for those of you who are in a period of waiting,

it means that you don't necessarily need to train with the sling right now,

what you need to do is learn how to worship when no one else is watching.

Learn how to play when it is for an audience of just one that will say at the end.

I guess that would mean that when God was writing this story and explaining

what it is that David was going to do that is contrasted with Saul,

the big difference isn't going to be just victory on the battlefield.

David is going to have success, but Saul had success.

The difference is when they They were in the room, the courtroom,

and all the fanfare has left.

And there's going to be a sound of worship only coming from one of two kings.

And one of those people are going to continuously call out to God.

There's something about David's life which seems to have an assurance of his

calling that is immune from any kind of anxiety.

When he finds himself in a later story in a cave with Saul and he has the opportunity

to kill Saul so he can speed up his kingdom, David says, look,

I'm not the one running the show here.

God's going to do it in his own good timing. This is decades in. Who can do that?

Can you imagine some guy, I mean, just for those of you who are older,

you've got a new guy working at your company, right?

You're working at some company or bank or something. You're working there and

you've got like a 22-year-old.

And then somebody comes up and

says, you know, I think you should try to become CEO of this whole place.

Can you imagine like a 22, 25-year-old saying, in humility, I don't think I

should be able to do that. Of course not. There's that overconfidence.

It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, there's my chance. I'm going to prove it all.

But what would it look like if you were more like David, where we didn't have anything to prove.

There's just a calmness in him. There's a peace with the fact that if he has

to stay out in that pasture for who knows how long, that that would be enough.

That if you were convinced that you already had the approval of the most important

person, you would have a lot less to prove when you went out onto the battlefield.

I just wonder how many of us have the kind of confidence to know that God is

with us and speaking to us and guiding us so we have nothing left to prove.

We have to remember that before David ever shows up on the battlefield,

he sought out God in the pasture when no one else was watching.

And this is why he is described as a man who is after God's own heart.

He's not perfect by any means. We'll describe a number of the difficulties we're

going to run into, not just the famous ones, but some others along the way.

But what makes him different is this is how it starts.

And so I guess if you're waiting, if you find yourself, you're in college right

now and you're working on a degree, you're in a career that you're not happy

with, you're trying to move forward, I guess it would mean that this may be

the most important time of your life, not what's coming, because that will just

be a finishing of what you're starting now.

A recent college student asked me, what is it, what advice would you give to

an incoming college student about their experience in college?

And I would, I only have one thing that I would, actually, come on,

I'm a preacher. I have lots of things.

But one of the things I said to them would be, whatever habits you're going

to do now will follow you forever in your career, which means if you wait to

do your assignments in the last minute,

that's going to continue in your job forever.

That if whatever you're doing now, you are a full grown person.

And so the habits you put in place are going to follow you into the job.

So if you think that matters, then it matters now. If you think that calling

will matter, then it matters what you do now.

And I just wonder, as we think about the story of David, if we look at a culture

that looks at results and deadlines and speed and filters and makes everything

look better than it should.

If we shouldn't perhaps take a summer where we said, this could be for you the summer of waiting.

I was saying it will be a summer of personal worship for me.

It'll be the summer where no matter where I am, I am going to find a way to

draw closer to God so that when my opportunity comes, I can fight for God with

an honest heart of integrity.

Because the next thing we see about David is that he's willing to fight for the right reasons.

As we think about Father's Day, for me, there are, I think, two extremes that

we see in our culture a lot right now.

Some, as we see people who are growing up and have simply lost passion.

They've become so passive in their consumption of entertainment that their drive

to do anything, even waking up, seems to require a huge amount of effort.

Life has become gray. And even though that God put in each of your minds capacity

that is far beyond artificial intelligence and what it's capable of,

It is often squandered on passive entertainment because there is no passion and drive left.

It's spent on a couch. But equally dangerous are people who start to discover

passion and drive and discipline. And they begin to flex that power that they

accumulate that comes when you have passion and drive and you're moving forward.

But you have passion without purpose is dangerous because you'll hurt the people

in the company that you work for.

Because you'll speak words that may advance a purpose that you have without

regard for consequence. that passion without purpose, strength without caution

is a dangerous weapon to yield.

People that learn how they can say certain words and get a reaction,

get a following and get a crowd.

And they don't always count the cost. There's something about David who chooses

his fights carefully, that there's not gonna be a perfect display in throughout

his career, but it is markedly different than Saul that seems all too willing

to do what is necessary to increase his own glory.

David doesn't seem to go and to seek it out.

That when the echoing chorus comes back after that battle with David and Goliath,

where it says, Saul has killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.

Oh, the allure of the crowd he seems to be immune from.

And Saul has begun to say, how many more battles do I have to win before I get that kind of respect?

I wonder what it would look like if we began to say we need to have a generation

that not only is developing passion in the next generation,

drive and discipline to make a difference in the world, but can do so with a

kind of purpose that recognizes the need to sometimes go slow,

to praise, to worship, and to be gentle.

We want to have just one more movement as we look at this, and that is for an audience of one.

That if I wanted you to have a phrase that you walked out of here with into

your summer, it would be, what is it that you would do if no one else was watching?

If you were to come to church and by some weird circumstance,

you're the only one that got the card and you show up here and you're like,

oh my gosh, no one else came today. It's just me.

What am I supposed to do? I guess we're going to go home. What would you do

though, if you found yourself as the only one.

Because so often in out your summer, this is exactly gonna be the case.

You're gonna be the one in the car. You're gonna be the one in the new city.

You're gonna be the one in the hotel room in the evening of the conference, far from your family.

That's gonna happen over and over again this summer. And the question is,

before we talk about David and Goliath, what are you gonna do when you have an audience of just one?

My challenge would be for you this summer, wherever you are,

to begin to say, I will find space to worship.

And I don't care if you're on a vacation to see family, if it's a professional

retreat, if you find yourself in cities that are perhaps not known for their

righteous vigor, yet even there you will say, but as far as I'm concerned,

me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

We're gonna try to help some this summer. We have a podcast that you can follow

along if you wanna have it dropped right in your phone.

But honestly, the one thing that you would need that would be more important

than even following the sermon series is to say,

in the quiet in the morning, in the last moments in the evening,

when I travel and vacation, when I'm enjoying myself at a restaurant and I come

back at the day, what is it that I would have to do to be a man after his heart?

Because if you wanna have success this fall in the battles that you're facing,

how you prepare will make all the difference.

So we're gonna gather around our communion table in just a moment.

It's a great reminder that the story that God began with David,

here is a man after my own heart, that a thousand years later,

God would say from that line, and I will bring the king that will redeem the world.

And I'm gonna raise up for myself a whole nation of priests.

And they're all gonna be holy. They're all gonna know me and listen to my voice.

And when he did that, he said, I had people like you.

Music.