1 Samuel 16
Notes
Transcript
Good morning Oakwood. My name is Caleb Garnett. I am the youth pastor here at Oakwood, and I am grateful for the opportunity to bring the word to you this morning.
If you know me, you probably know that I am a big fan of the TV show “The Office.” In case you have never watched it, the show follows a branch of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company that is led by their boss, Michael Scott. As you watch, you begin to wonder why this man is in charge. He often slacks off, jokes around, and generally does anything except work. So how did someone like that end up leading an entire branch?
As the show goes on, you start to see that he actually has some redeeming qualities. He is portrayed as an excellent salesman, the best one at his branch, and that is why he was promoted. Under his leadership, his branch becomes the most profitable in the company. Even though the show often highlights his flaws, there are subtle reminders that he has characteristics that make him capable of doing the job. From the outside you might assume he should never be in charge, but his qualifications run deeper.
While that is only a TV show, situations like this happen frequently in our world. Many jobs require a list of qualifications. Maybe you have been in a position where you were interviewing someone and wanted to find the most qualified candidate.
While it is important to make sure someone can do the job, sometimes you have to take a chance on someone who may be unconventional or less qualified on paper. Maybe they have a strong work ethic, a teachable spirit, or potential that you can develop. Someone who might not have been your first choice.
As we continue through our series in 1 Samuel, the prophet Samuel finds himself in a similar place. Saul had sinned by offering the sacrifice instead of waiting for Samuel. God says that was the final straw. Saul had rejected God, and now God had rejected Saul as king. Samuel is now sent to find the man who will replace him. We read this in 1 Samuel 16:1–3:
“The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.’ And Samuel said, ‘How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me.’ And the Lord said, ‘Take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do. You shall anoint for me the one I declare to you.’”
Samuel is still grieving Saul’s failure and his removal from the throne when God tells him to go to Bethlehem and meet a man named Jesse in order to anoint the next king.
Samuel understands how weighty this responsibility is. Choosing a king is no small task. He had anointed the last king and then watched him fall into pride and disobedience, and that burden still weighs heavily on him. He is still mourning what happened when God calls him to anoint someone new.
On top of that, Samuel knows that what God is asking him to do will look like treason in Saul’s eyes. If Saul discovers what he is doing, Samuel knows his life could be in danger. Even though God has rejected Saul and Saul knows it, he will not take kindly to someone being chosen as his replacement.
But here is the beauty of this moment. Samuel does not have to choose the king, because God is the one who chooses.
That’s the first thing I want us to see in this text today:
God chooses this king
God chooses this king
God tells Samuel, “I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have selected a king for myself among his sons.” I love the fact that God is the one who selects the king for his people. I love this because it reminds us that God is ultimately in control of his people, not human kings. A commentary I read in my Bible while preparing said this about the subject:
“In acceding to the people’s demand for a king, Yahweh did not relinquish his rights as great king over his inheritance to the human monarch. Rather, the human king was to be Yahweh’s vice regent and was to subordinate himself within an authority structure that Yahweh himself would stipulate.”
This is exactly where Saul fell short during his reign as king. He refused to truly serve as God’s vice regent. He did not submit to God’s commands wholeheartedly. Instead, he allowed pride, ego, and disobedience to take precedence over obedience to God. God never relinquished his rights as king, yet Saul acted as though he had, and this ultimately led to God rejecting him.
Perhaps you are thinking, did God make a mistake in allowing Saul to become king? Did God have to course correct after his plan failed? Not at all. According to The Bible Knowledge Commentary:
The Bible Knowledge Commentary 16:1–13
The Bible Knowledge Commentary 16:1–13
“The rejection of Saul did not force the Lord to a new course of action. Rather, God’s action followed His omniscient plan in such a way as to use Saul’s disobedience as the human occasion for implementing His higher plan.”
This was another reason it was so important that God choose the next king. God allowed the people to have what they wanted when he gave them Saul as their human king. We are told that Saul stood a head taller than everyone else. He was a popular choice among the people. They wanted a king, and by all outward appearances, Saul fit the role. But this human plan fell short because no matter how impressive a king may look on the outside, it is what is underneath that truly matters.
Now God was going to show them the superiority of his plan. He did this first by sending Samuel to a man named Jesse. Jesse was the grandson of Ruth and Boaz, if you remember that biblical account. If you trace that family line back even further, you see that Jesse and his sons were direct descendants of Abraham. In choosing a king from this line, God was fulfilling his promises.
In the book of Genesis, God comes to Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, and changes his name to Israel. He then tells him this in Genesis 35:11:
“And God said to him, ‘I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body.’”
This is something I absolutely love about God. None of his plans are haphazard. Nothing catches him off guard. As I said before, Saul’s sin did not cause God to change his plans. Choosing a king from the line of Abraham was always God’s plan, and now we are seeing that plan finally play out.
Samuel did what the Lord commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling and said, “Do you come peaceably?” And he said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
So Samuel comes to Bethlehem and the first reaction he gets from the people of the city is fear. They probably are thinking that Samuel has come to give a message of judgment or correction of sin. Samuel quickly calms their fears and invites Jesse and his sons to the sacrifice.
When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before him.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his 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.”
This is where we see
God Looks at the Heart
God Looks at the Heart
Samuel takes a look at Eliab, Jesse’s first bon son, and thinks that surely this must be the one that God has chosen as king. Eliab is the first born son, and he must have been pretty impressive physically, because God reminds Samuel of what he’s truly looking for in a king.
This shouldn’t have shocked Samuel, as this was very similar to something he had previously told Saul. Back when God had rejected Saul, Samuel had said this to him.
And Samuel said,
“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to listen than the fat of rams.
He rejected Saul because he cared more about his outward appearance than the condition of his heart.
To understand what God really means here, we have to understand how the Jewish people would have understood the word heart. We think of the heart and we often associate with emotion. Like a sad movie tugs at your heart strings, or loving someone with all your heart. That’s absolutely a part of it, but in ancient Israel, they would have understood the heart as much more than that. The Hebrew word used here is the word Lay-bawb (lay vov). Which means the Mind, the will, the heart and the soul. In that culture, heart would have encapsulated every part of your inward being. Your heart was your knowledge, it was your memory, it was your mind.
I came across an article while I was researching this that I thought said it well, they said:
In our Western worldview, we look at it this way: thoughts occur in the mind, and the mind is in the brain (head). But Hebraically, things are not so simple. Rather, the thoughts occur in the heart. To the Hebrew worldview, the heart is the seat of the mind, not the brain. The "mind" if you will, is in the heart.
Your thoughts, your actions, everything you do starts here in the heart, not your mind. Your morality starts here. So when God tells Samuel that he looks at the heart, he would have been instantly reminded of Saul. As I’ve said, Saul looked the part of the king, but all of his disobedience and failures started in his heart. His decision to make the sacrifice without Samuel didn’t start in his head, it started in his heart. So while he may have outwardly looked good to his kingdom, he couldn’t fool God.
That’s so true in our world today. Nowadays it’s easier than ever to look really good on the outside. We live in a world of social medias and filters where it’s easier than ever to make people see only the best parts of you. It’s easy to go to church and outwardly look the part of the dutiful Christian, but for how many of us in this room is that where it ends? How many of us have the outward appearance of the “perfect Christian” while we actually only have a Sunday morning faith? I would argue that in churches in general, that would be true of way more people than it should be. If you don’t believe me, here are some stats complied from Barna, Christianity Today, PBS and more...
45% of Christians in the U.S. rarely or never read the Bible
About 60% of pastors say their congregation does not read the Bible daily
The average American owns 4.4 Bibles, but only 15-20% read it regularly
Less than 25% of American adults read Scripture outside weekly church attendance
While Bible reading isn’t the end all, be all of your spiritual state, I think these statistics show us that there is a disconnect between people who look outwardly spiritually impressive and the kind of people who God truly is looking for to follow him. God wants our whole heart. That’s why Jesus says Matthew 22:37
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
You can go to church every single week and even have the head knowledge of who God is and how to live a “moral” life, but that isn’t what God seeks. God looks so much deeper into who we really are, especially when others aren’t looking.
But maybe you fall on the other end of that spectrum. Maybe you’re someone who does all of the right things, you’re in your bible every day, you’re practicing spiritual disciplines such as fasting and prayer. Don’t get me wrong, these are good things, but you can still do them for the wrong reason. I love what Jonathan K. Dodson says about this in his book “Gospel Centered Discipleship.” He talks about what he calls “vertical discipleship” which is based on our piety. He says that this view aims to close the gap between us and God through our personal holiness. If we can just read the Bible more, if we can just pray more, if we can just do more confession of sin, we can be closer to God.
He says “The implication here is that you are up on yourself if you do read the Bible more and have a strong prayer life. Piety centered discipleship says : be this kind of person so you can feel good about yourself. The gospel however says: Give up on yourself and become the person you already are in Christ.”
The danger in this approach is that you think you are pleasing God through your works. What God really desires from you is a heart that wants to serve him because he first loved you, and you love him now.
That is what Saul was lacking. When he sinned against God, he justified it by saying that he did what he did because he wanted to be able to sacrifice to God and please him through his works. This is why God needed a king after his own heart. That’s what we see in the next portion of this text:
God’s Unconventional Choice
God’s Unconventional Choice
While God didn’t choose Jesse’s first son, thankfully he had more.
Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen these.” Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here.” And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
Samuel sees seven sons, but God doesn’t choose any of them. Instead, God makes an unconventional choice for king. He chooses the youngest son, the one with the lowly job of caring for the sheep. Even his own father wouldn’t have picked him, as evidenced by the fact that he didn’t even think to call him in to be seen. Jesse was probably thinking that with seven other sons, there was no way they were getting all the way to David.
But here’s the thing, Jesse didn’t have the full picture, neither did Samuel, but God did. David was pointing to someone greater who was to come, and that is Jesus. David started out as a shepherd. Jesus would call himself the good shepherd. David was the king of Israel. Jesus is the king of kings. David was a warrior who delivered his people from their enemies. Jesus was a deliverer who would save his people from their greatest enemy, Satan and the power of sin. After Jesus suffered, died and ascended into heaven, Peter points out a major difference between the two of them in Acts 2:29-33
“Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.
David pointed to Jesus, but David in the end was just a man, Jesus is God himself, our savior who died and rose to defeat sin and death forever. Now anyone who believes in his atoning death and resurrection can be saved from an eternity of separation from God.
As if being saved from the punishment of sin was not enough, as Peter points out, we also have received the promise of the Holy Spirit. God himself living within us, guiding us into right living, convicting us of sin. What a gift that is, and one that should not be taken for granted. Now, because of Jesus, everyone who believes at the moment of salvation, is filled with the Holy Spirit. That wasn’t always the case though. In the Old Testament, the Sprit would come upon someone who God had appointed for a certain task, and would leave them once that task was complete. It wasn’t a constant indwelling but a temporary one. We see that very thing happen at the end of chapter 16 with Saul and David.
A Spiritual Shift
A Spiritual Shift
” Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the Lord tormented him. And Saul’s servants said to him, “Behold now, a harmful spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man who is skillful in playing the lyre, and when the harmful spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will be well.” So Saul said to his servants, “Provide for me a man who can play well and bring him to me.” One of the young men answered, “Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the Lord is with him.” Therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, “Send me David your son, who is with the sheep.” And Jesse took a donkey laden with bread and a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them by David his son to Saul. And David came to Saul and entered his service. And Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, “Let David remain in my service, for he has found favor in my sight.” And whenever the harmful spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand. So Saul was refreshed and was well, and the harmful spirit departed from him.
At the moment of his anointing, David receives the Spirit, and Saul loses the Spirit. This is a real and tangible sign of God’s approval of David. He has chosen him to be his new co-regent over Israel. In the same way, he is done using Saul in that way. The removal of the Spirit signifies that while Saul is technically still king over Israel, he is no longer king in the eyes of God.
The removal of the Spirit from Saul also allows a new spirit to come upon him. Only, this spirit is one that torments Saul. Most scholars would agree that this is a spirit that the Lord allowed to torment him. This whole event led Saul to need something to soothe his soul. In this case it was music. Saul’s servants say that he should send them to find someone who could play music, and someone says “hey, what about Jesse’s son David?
Little does Saul know that David is the one who Samuel has anointed to replace him one day. Again, this is an incredible reminder that God is in control of the story, because otherwise there would have been no way that David, youngest son, lowly shepherd David would end up in the kings palace. Not only does he end up in the palace, but Saul loves David and says that he has found favor in his sight. That is where 1 Samuel 16 ends.
In the course of this single chapter, we see David go from being a nobody, an unassuming shepherd doing the lowest and least noticed work, to serving in the king’s court and becoming loved by the king. This is the same David who was overlooked by his own family, and yet God is now using him in remarkable ways.
That should be deeply encouraging for us today. Maybe you feel like David at the beginning of this story. You feel overlooked, unimportant, or unnoticed. You might think that if God were going to choose someone to use for his purposes and his glory, it surely would not be you. There seem to be far more qualified people. There are people who have been Christians much longer than you. There are people who know far more Scripture than you. Surely God should use them instead.
But remember what God said to Samuel. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. God is not searching for the most outwardly impressive person to use for his kingdom. God is looking for people who truly love him with every part of their being, so:
As we seek to say yes to God, we also need to take time to examine our hearts and ask ourselves an honest question. Do we have a heart that truly longs after God?
Do we love God in such a way that our actions, our thoughts, and the way we live are increasingly aligning with his Word? Would God choose us if he was looking at our heart? This does not mean perfection, but it is something we pursue because of our love for God.
Or do we have a surface level righteousness that doesn’t extend beyond Sunday mornings. Do we show up at church doing the good christian routine so everyone can see how impressive we are while not letting the things of God truly impact our heart. I would encourage you to take some time alone with God this week and ask him to examine your heart. Ask God to reveal what is in your heart, and if need be, ask him to create a clean heart in you.
You may be here today simply checking out this Jesus thing and not yet following him, and that is okay. We are genuinely glad you are here. Maybe one of the reasons you have held back from following God is because you are aware of the things you have done wrong. Perhaps you think that if God truly saw your heart, there is no way he would want anything to do with you because you feel too far gone.
If that is you today, here is the good news. God has already seen your heart, and he loves you so deeply that he came to this earth to die in your place and take the punishment you deserve. When you turn from your sin and say yes to Jesus, he gives you a completely new and clean heart.
If you want to know more about what it means to follow Jesus, our prayer team will be available right up front after the service. They would love to pray with you and walk with you through how you can become part of God’s family for the very first time today.
No matter where you land today, remember this. God is not looking for the most impressive resume. He’s looking for a willing heart. God can use you if you simply say yes. Let’s pray.
