Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Good evening everyone and welcome back to another Thursday Gathering.

If you’re new with us, I wanted to let you know that if you have any questions or need to talk about anything just find one of us wearing a nametag and we would be glad to help you in anyway that we can.

Also, if you’d like to talk about anything after the message I’ll be up here for a few minutes if you wanna come up.

That aside, let’s go ahead and dive into tonight’s message.

Go ahead and turn in your bibles to 1 Samuel 16. Tonight we are covering...

The Anointing of David

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about things that have led up to King David…and now it’s time to actually meet him.

Last week if you recall, we spent our night traveling through the first fifteen chapters of 1 Samuel, talking about King Saul and the traits he had that caused him to be rejected by God as king.

Don’t worry, we haven’t seen the last of Saul…he shows up a lot in King David’s story…which is why we spent so much time talking about him last week.

But for now, let’s be glad to spend the night in just a few verses and get to meet the main character of our series this spring.

Follow along as I read 1 Samuel 16. I’m going to start on the last verse of 15 and I’ll stop as I go, rather than reading the full passage and then giving the points... so just keep your finger on the text.

We are dropping into the story right after Saul was rejected by God as King.

So here we see that Samuel is grieving, which means he truly cared about Saul and was concerned for his Godliness…this just goes to show that Israel had a great Judge over them in Samuel…and yet still wanted a King and rejected God by it…just like we talked last week.

So Samuel grieved Saul and it says the LORD regretted making Saul king.

I wanted to cover this verse because I know it can cause quite a bit of confusion…the idea of God regretting something.

But, it’s actually not as complicated as we make it.

What you need to remember is that when God feels something…love, mercy, justice, grace, and even regret.

He feels it perfectly....in a way that we can’t fully understand because we are not set apart and Holy like God is.

So when scripture says he feels regret, we need to understand that this is a pure and holy regret...

And what we also need to understand is that the Hebrew word for regret has a few nuances…sometimes meaning to change one’s mind…other times to feel genuine sorrow…this regret here is clearly a genuine sorrow...

And that leads us to our first point tonight.

Our points tonight center around some of the things we learn about God through this part of the story and the first is that..

God cares...

I make this point because as we read the OT, it’s so easy to see the sovereign God who commands all of history and works in it to complete his purpose and will…it’s easy to see the God of the plagues, and judgement, and war on his enemies...and yet we far too often overlook the compassion, and mercy, and love that he has in the OT.

I also give this point because it continues to show us that the God in the NT is exactly the same as the God in the OT and they are not different Gods who act differently…but rather it is one God, one creator, who is yes sovereign, and just…but also cares.

So before we move one…you need to understand, that even in the consequences that your sin has…as we talked about last week, your sin is forgiven and the wage of death is paid by Christ…but there is still discipline and consequence…and what we see here…in the middle of Saul’s consequence and punishment for his sin…God still cares.

He still feels regret/sorrow...

As it says in Romans..we are not separated from the love of God found in Christ...

So that’s the first point…that God cares.

Here’s the second point.

God works...

Look back at the passage with me.

So like I said…what we see here is that God works.

As in, he works in man and through man to accomplish his will.

He’s not a passive God, he’s not some far away deity…but he is a God who is actively working in human history.

Did you see what he says to Samuel?

He says in verse one… “I have provided for myself a king among the sons of Jesse”...

Think about the implications there.

What does it look like for God to provide for himself a king among somebody’s sons?

Well…it means that he was intentional in who was born when....he was intentional in what marriages occured…I mean…think about all the work that one would have to do in order to guarantee that a certain person, would be born at a certain time, in a certain place, with the right giftings and personality to be the King of Israel?

Like…are you beginning to see just how crazy of a statement it truly is for God to say that he has raised up for himself somebody who is able to be King of his people.

It IS sorta crazy…but it shows us that

God works.

He works in our lives.

He’s intentional with every detail and life experience that we have.

It’s just like it says in...

You hear that?

He WORKS in us…for his good pleasure.

Meaning…it pleases God to work in our lives and accomplish his means.

So putting these first two points together…what do we learn about God in the anointing of David?

We learn that he is a God who sincerely and authentically feels for and with us....and we learn that he is a God who finds pleasure in working among his people to accomplish his will.

Let’s keep reading.

So in this passage we’ve seen that God cares…that he works…and now we see

God sees.

We learn this by what God says to Samuel about identifying the next king of Israel.

Samuel sees one of David’s brothers, right?

A brother names Eliab…and it doesn’t say what Eliab looked like, but whatever it was it made Samuel think… “oh yeah…this is the guy”.

Maybe it was because Saul was a tall and handsome guy, and so something about Eliab reminded Samuel of Saul…but either way....Samuel is reminded of something in this moment.

He’s not reprimanded, but he is taught something by God and that is...

That God does not see like man sees.

Rather, God sees like God sees.

Man is captured by the outward appearance, while God is interested in the condition of man’s heart…meaning, his character…emotions, will…his soul.

The center of his being.

This should remind us of some of the things that Jesus says in his time with us during his earthly ministry.

Jesus, as God in flesh, also reveals that instead of seeing the outward appearance of the Pharisees…God sees their hearts…and their hearts are no better than the dead rotting corpses contained within the tombs.

But I want to take this a little deeper tonight, I want to increase our understanding of what exactly God sees within us…because sometimes we can walk away with some misconceptions.

Here’s what I mean.

Many of us, will walk away from this text with a notion that when we say “God sees the heart of man”…that what he means is that he sees his inward actions...

For example…it would be easy to think, that as Samuel is going through and finding the king to annoint…that God is looking at the heart of each man…and he can see what they are going to do…who they are going to be…what kind of King they will become...

We, alongside many others....presume (without even noticing it)…that when God looks at the heart of man…he sees their potential.

In fact…that’s what we assume he sees about us.

We assume that when God loves us, and chooses us, and redeems us, or any time honestly we feel him working in our lives....we assume it’s because he sees some kind of future us that acts better, does better, loves better, studies better.....is more Godly…is more righteous....is more sanctified.

We immediately apply our future worth and contribution to the kingdom of God as a factor in his choosing or loving us…whether we realize it or not.

But what does the scripture say he looks at?

It says he looks at the heart.

Not the potential, not the future…but the heart.

As in…the sincerity of man.

Think of it this way...

Samuel told Saul...

So it says in scripture that God was searching for a man after his own heart…and then it goes on to say that God was looking at the heart of David when he was anointed…so what does that mean?

It means that David’s heart was God’s heart....it means that David desired the things that God desired, loved the things God loved, glorified God the way he desires to be glorified...

Now let’s keep thinking about this…we just said that David had a heart after God…and God chose him because of his heart for him…but wait a minute.

Didn’t David have some rough stuff in his heart?

Wasn’t he going to murder a man?

Wasn’t he going to sleep with a woman that wasn’t his wife?

Wasn’t he going to passively let his son murder a man?

Yes…and that’s my point guys.

My point is that we are naturally inclined to think God views us for what we are doing and what we shall do....but if anything, this anointing of David proves to us that God doesn’t look into what man will do…but rather God looks into who man is.

We know that David is going to do all those sinful things…and all Saul did was not kill some animals and decide to give them in worship to God.

Why does David get to be king and not Saul?

Because of the heart.

Because as we will see time and time again…David will respond to the law of God with a sincere heart of love, and honor, and repentance.

And Saul was flippant with the word of God.

This is all because...

God sees.

He truly sees…not in part, but in whole.

So the anointing of David teaches us a few things about God...

That he cares for his chosen.

That he works in them and through them.