What's in the heart

You see the reality is, sometimes we need to make quick decisions about someone or something - and that’s going to require some judgements. Do we trust this particular individual? Are they going to be good at a particular type of task?

For example, let’s say you’ve got some sort of computer problem or a problem with one of your devices. You want to ask someone for help. There’s a good chance that you’re going to make an assumption that the younger person over there is going to be able to help you.

And look, there’s probably good reason for that and you might in fact be right.

But we’ve just made a judgement based purely on looks.

That example might be justifiable, but the problem is, because of the ease of such a judgement, we start to become less discerning. The initially decision might have been needed, but do we follow up and see if our judgement was in fact justified.

But not only do we start to become less discerning about others, because we know this is the way society operates, we also start to operate in a way that acknowledges that people are going to be more interested in how we look than how we live.

How many times do you do something, not because you think it is the right thing to do, but because you worry what people will think otherwise?

It’s also not hard to take the next step and think that somehow God operates in the same way.

What I mean, is that if you can just convince enough people that you’re a good person, then God will be pleased with you. Of course, you’re probably not going to state it quite like that. In fact, when you think about it, you’d know how wrong such an idea is… but it still doesn’t stop us living that way - just like we can quote ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, and then proceed to do just that.

Link to message

Well this morning, I’m going to do a one off message looking at David. He’s a character who we will hear referred to as being a ‘man after God’s own heart’. For most of you that are familiar with the stories of David, we’ll also know that this man was far from perfect, in fact, in one very notable event (which I’ll get to soon), he was down right despicable in what he did. And yet he is up there with one of the most admired characters of the Bible.

And so as we do a very brief character study, I want to do so in a way that will help us see the world a bit closer to the way God sees it. I want to try and help our distorted view of the world where we think we can trick God with our outward appearance.

Saul

But before we look at David, let me go to the first king of Israel, because here we’ll find a counterpoint.

Saul is introduced for us in the 1 Samuel 9. He’s described as being a handsome young man and being a head taller than anyone else. He sounds pretty good so far.

In a God ordained act, Samuel, the prophet of the day, anoints him as king, before Saul is able to unite the tribes of Israel into an amazing victory over their enemies.

So far so good.

But if you read through Saul’s account, we get to 1 Samuel 13 and to be honest, we’re going to find an event which actually doesn’t sound all that bad.

The event starts with some troubles with the neighboring Philistines. Saul gathers all Israel together - a good start.

But there’s a delay. Saul recognises that he needs to call on the Lord - again, what a wonderful plan.

But Samuel isn’t there. So he waits. Unfortunately, while he waits, the people get scared. So then Saul said - right, let’s give some offering to God ourselves, we don’t need to wait for Samuel.

Now I don’t know about you, but on the scale of bad things you can do, this one doesn’t sound all that bad.

On the surface, it actually looks like Saul did a good thing. That is, he’s offering a sacrifice to God before he takes his men into battle.

However, just as he finishes the sacrifice, along comes Samuel, and he’s not happy!

He rebuke Saul for not keeping God’s command. As a result, Samuel tells Saul that his kingdom will be taken from him.

Now, why is this happening? Well, for starters, let’s just say that this is a good lesson in why we shouldn’t be too confident in our judgements of how events look on the surface.

You see, this is more than just a case of a man doing something out of order. We look at the surface events - God looks at the heart.

We see this when Samuel rebukes Saul in 1 Samuel 13:13-14. After the initial rebuke, Samuel says in verse 14: “but now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him rules of his people”.

Samuel is of course talking about David, although at this point in the narrative, we haven’t yet met David.

But the key here is this idea of being a man after God’s own heart.

The problem with Saul, was not just the various missteps that he makes. God looks through those, and what he saw was a man who cared more about himself than God.

Saul will go on to do some pretty wicked things, but it becomes clear that it is his heart which is the more important thing to look at.

David

Okay, well, let’s move to David, and in particular the passage that was read earlier.

1 Samuel 16 starts with the Lord telling Samuel to stop mourning over Saul, because God is about to reveal the next king for him to anoint.

At this point, he’s just told that he is to go to Jesse of Bethlehem, and the new king will be one of his sons.

Okay, sounds good.

So Samuel takes himself to Bethlehem and finds Jesse, and after consecrating Jesse and his sons, he invites them along to a sacrifice.

They’re now at the sacrifice and Samuel gets his first opportunity to size up these strapping men that are the children of Jesse - and what he sees excites him.

Here are some very healthy, very good looking men.

But 1 Samuel 16:7 is the key verse for us. The verse says:

1 Samuel 16:7 NIV 2011

But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’

I’ll just high those last few words - “… but the Lord looks at the heart”.

And so we get this little procession of Jesse’s sons. Based on their appearance, they look great.

But that’s not what God looks at.

Unfortunately, Samuel get through all of Jesse’s sons - and God rejects each of them.

Well, this is a little embarrassing.

Arrh, Jesse… is there anyone else?

This actually is very typical of God. The very one people least expect is usually the one that God chooses.

But it’s actually only unexpected because we’re so used to judging by appearances. For God, there’s not a direct correlation between appearance and the heart, so I’m going to suggest that from God’s perspective, it’s not unexpected - they’re actually decisions that make perfect sense.

That youngest son of course was David - the shepherd boy. The one that had seemed so insignificant to the family, that he wasn’t even invited to the sacrifice where all of Jesse’s son were meant to be invited.

There was something different about David. Not so much about him - but about his heart.

In terms of purely his own abilities, and his own good works… sure, he had some leadership skills, and perhaps some decent music skills… but in the history of humanity those skills would hardly rate a mention. Yet… David does rate a mention in human history because he had a heart bond with God, to the point that he pointed us to Jesus the Messiah.

What David did

Now, that’s all well and good to say that God looked at his heart, or that he was a man after God’s own heart. But what does that even mean?

Well, let me do a really quick sketch of the many stories we have a David and see what insights we can gain.

David and Goliath

In the very next chapter following this anointing, we have perhaps the most famous story featuring David.

The Israelites were facing the formidable opponents, the Philistines - and out the front, leading the taunt, was the even more formidable giant, Goliath.

By direct contrast, you have David. An unknown and untested young man. By strength alone he stood no chance.

We all know the ending. It’s become a catch phrase today. We often call something a David and Goliath battle. But what was the real difference. David understood power belonged to the Lord.

Battles

David quickly rose up the ranks in the army, and gained a reputation for his ability.

Now I have no doubt that David would have had some natural ability on the battle field, but so did others. What stood out with David, is this heart bond with God.

Troubles with Saul

Unfortunately, with the success also came King Saul’s jealousy. Remember, just because Samuel has given David the anointing to be the next king, Saul’s still the king.

And it is this setting that sets the context for the remainder of the book of 1 Samuel. You see, for the last 13 or so chapters of the book, we find David trying to escape Saul’s jealous rage.

Now, it’s actually during this time that we get the clearest contrast between Saul and David.

You see, I mentioned before that on the surface, it seemed that what Saul did to earn the rebuke of God and Samuel seemed to be… well… pretty minor.

But remember, they weren’t just looking at the surface, they were looking at his heart.

And when David started becoming more successful than himself, well, his true heart started to be exposed.

Now, the thing about conflict, is that generally speaking, when one person starts becoming antagonistic or aggressive towards someone, the targeted person will get very defensive.

In fact, people will often talk about the fight, flight or freeze mechanism that our bodies naturally do.

Now that’s perfectly normal, particularly in the first instance of the attack. However, what is more telling is the ongoing response, and can I suggest that this perhaps starts to expose the true heart of the person.

In the case of David, he immediately runs - and for good reason - Saul was actually literally throwing spears at him.

But the most remarkable thing, and the thing that we often so struggle to understand, David always kept in the highest respect that Saul was the Lord’s anointed.

On two very clear occasions, David had a very good opportunity to take Saul out, but he chose not to. Not because he had a problem with killing - David was after a military man - but because of his respect of the Lord.

David knew the right thing to do was to leave this in God’s hands.

And eventually, Saul did die in battle. But because of David’s heart, he allowed God to orchestrate it, not himself.

David becomes king

We then move into 2 Samuel, and the first few chapters concern David being declared king. It actually wasn’t quite as simple as a matter of turning up for a coronation - but I won’t get into all the details now.

Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem

But one of the early tasks he does as king is to set Jerusalem as the capital, and then bring the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem.

Now the story of this ark is a good one, but not one I’m going to go into now. The important part for now, is that the ark represented the presence of God. It was never that God was contained to this ark - this specially designed box carrying the ten commandments among other things - but yet there was a real connection with this box, and bringing it to the centre of Israel’s operations was very significant.

As the ark enters Jerusalem, we find David wearing a linen ephod and is described as dancing with all his might.

Now, I’m not entirely sure what it means to dance with all your might, but I don’t think it was some timid and subtle moves (like I tend to do whenever I’m meant to be dancing).

Some people, including David’s own wife, looked at David and despised him. He was obviously being undignified.

Actually, I’ll quote David here because I think it’s such a great quote: “I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes”. (2 Sam 6:22)

What’s the point of this - well, this is one of those clear indications of where David’s heart lies.

His heart is so aligned with God’s, that as God’s glory enters on this Ark, he can’t help but just throw himself with joy into the whole thing. This is not about gathering admirers - this is about being an admirer of the one that really matters.

The covenant

It is after this, in 2 Sam 7, that we God promises that someone will be on David’s throne forever. This is actually such a pivotal moment in the whole bible. It’s a passage that ultimately points us to Jesus.

It is because of David’s heart, that he becomes this person who points us to Jesus.

David and Bathsheba

Now, there is so much more we could explore in David’s life, but this sketch wouldn’t complete without mention of the biggest scandal in David’s life. I mentioned the Goliath account is perhaps the most famous of the David stories, but this one is perhaps a close second.

I’m talking about the time David looks at another woman and then uses his position to sleep with her. I’m talking of course of Bathsheba.

This might have been a story to be hidden away, except that Bathsheba becomes pregnant. David tries his best to cover it up, but has to resort to desperate measures, and has her husband, Uriah, killed on the battlefield.

Now what’s this story doing in the Bible. Before this story, David was looking pretty amazing. Sure there might have been a slight flaw in his character here and there, but this changes everything.

David has now just broken two of the commandments, that, lets be honest, even today people would find shocking. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder.

We think back to Saul’s story - perhaps he wasn’t that bad after all.

And to be honest, what David did here was inexcusable.

But there is a massive difference between how David responds to his sin, compared with how Saul responds to his.

When attention is brought to David’s sin - there is genuine remorse. There is realisation of what his done.

That realisation is that not only has he done wrong to others, he’s actually sinned against the Lord almighty.

And if you want to get a real sense of his contrition, have a read of Psalm 51 which was written as a result.

There are a lot of beautiful psalms, but there is something about this one which makes extraordinarily powerful.

The extraordinary part about it, is the way that he recognises that his heart has been sullied by his own wickedness, and he is just so sorry.

This is not the type of apology that people give when they know they’ve been caught and they want to save face - this is the sort of apology that genuinely wants that connection back with God.

Application

There’s more stories of David that we could look at, but this is perhaps a big enough sketch of his life to see why David was considered a man after God’s own heart.

And so the question for us is what does it mean for us?

You see, here’s the thing - we too, can align our heart with God’s!

But we’re not going to do it while ever our main concern is what other people think of us. We need to be more like David when he danced in front of the ark when he said, I can be more undignified then this!

Dancing might not be your thing - that’s okay - it’s not mine either! But just forget what others are thinking, and ask, how can I best serve God.

Maybe its actually in hanging out with some of what society might think of as the undesirables.

Maybe it’s forgoing spending money on yourself, and rather giving to others.

It might even be in sharing the good news with others, in when it means they will think less of you.

You see, these outward appearances can often get in the way of honouring God. We might not admit it, but we act as if we’d prefer honour from others, over having honour from God.

But we’ve also got to be careful that we don’t fool ourselves into thinking that we’re honouring God when we’re not.

We can be like the Pharisee who puts a large amount of money in the plate to be seen by others. He’s using his generosity as a social tool to impress others.

Humility

This calls for humility. There is no other way about it. With humility, it won’t matter that all those good deeds you did the other day didn’t get noticed and acknowledged.

Because humility allows us to lower ourselves sufficiently so that we can actually listen to the heart of God. And that’s what this is all about.

Humility is hard. Humility doesn’t gain you much in this world. With humility, you will often work for little reward.

Except that God sees your humility. Because humility is a matter of the heart.

And back to that verse at the start, it is not appearances that God looks at. It’s the heart.

Conclusion

I started by considering how we use that phrase - don’t judge a book by its cover.

The trick for us is to not just be able to quote this, but to recognise that there is a God who can see beyond the cover, and at the end of the day, he’s the one that we really want to be impressing.

So look at your own heart. Examine it. Don’t just think of the external things you do, but the heart behind your actions.

Do you think God would be impressed?

Let me pray...

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