Speaking from the Heart

1 Samuel 16:1-13 
4th Sunday in Lent


As we continue in our Lenten journey, we’re going to step out of the New Testament for today.  We’re going to step away from the life of Jesus and his journey toward the Cross, and look to the life of King David.  Now I know this may seem like an odd choice, but as one of my favorite Christian authors (Eugene Peterson) has put it: “If we're going to get the most out of the Jesus story, we'll want first to soak our imaginations in the David story.”  

You see when we think about Jesus, we might know and profess that Jesus was fully God and fully human; but if we’re honest, we still have a hard time thinking of Jesus as fully human.  I mean, look at his life: we believe he never sinned, he had control over nature, he healed the sick, he cast out demons, he spoke the word of God, he befriended the outcast and the sinner, he raised people from the dead, and in fact he was raised from the dead.  We may believe and profess that he was fully human, but that’s not the stuff we’re the most interested in.  

But it’s not the same way with David.  Although he was a king, he was clearly more like one of us.  He had good days and bad days.  He was persecuted and he had victories.  He was a sinner, and yet he wrote psalms that reached out to the very heart of God.  And indeed as we remember today, although he was called by God to be the king of Israel, he was first called to be a shepherd.  

In other words, as followers of Jesus we strive to be like him: we aim to be as obedient, faithful, compassionate, and self-giving as our Savior; we aim for that same intimacy with God.  We aim to be like Jesus, but even at our best, we're probably more like David.  And this is not at all a bad thing!  David does more than just remind us of ourselves, he reminds us of that earthy humanness that came with the one who was God-with-us.  He reminds us of a part of Jesus we sometimes have a hard time understanding.  

Our story today takes place in Bethlehem.  Bethlehem was, and in some ways still is, a small town.  Today it's got a little over 25,000 people living there; not huge by some standards, but certainly bigger than it was when David grew up there or even when Jesus was born there.  I mention this mainly because I think I’ve learned a bit about living in a small town.  And I can just imagine the kind of craziness that came when Samuel visited your town.  

You know that everybody knew about it, right?  I’m sure they were talking about it in the Bethlehem equivalent of Brenda’s for months after!  That's why Samuel had to come up with that cover story: “Oh, just coming to make a sacrifice.”  A visit like this from the king's prophet would have been a big deal.  Not only would people tend to freak out (as if they were in trouble with God) but a random visit to some out of the way village would probably get back to the king as well.  It was a big deal.  

One time, when I was a pastor over in Del Norte, Oprah Winfrey visited a local Dairy Queen.  Everybody knew about it; the Dairy Queen had “Oprah ate here” on their marquee for months.  It was huge.  I got calls from people in other states about it.  I knew about her visit and I don't care about Oprah in the least!  It was a big deal.

When I picture Samuel's visit to Bethlehem, that's what I imagine it was like: I imagine helicopters flying overhead; an entourage; I imagine a film crew following him around.  I bet someone even put up a “Samuel ate here” sign.  

But this was no mere silly road trip for Samuel, was it?  For the second time in Samuel's career as a prophet, God had called him to anoint a king.  God had rejected Saul for reasons that are, as they say, another story.  So Samuel came here looking for a king and what happens next is more like a livestock show than a sacrifice, right?  They trot out Jesse's sons and parade them around the arena for Samuel to judge.  

And Samuel's first reaction is, “Wow that was easy,” because the first son they trot out is Eliab.  We don't really know exactly what it was that impressed Samuel so much about Eliab, but he must have been something; king material if ever Samuel had seen it!  But before Samuel could anoint him God says, “Slow down Sam; it's that kind of thinking that got you into trouble with Saul, remember?  You don't see what I see.  You see an impressive young man who can get what he wants with the flash of his smile, but I can see his heart.”  God tells Samuel, “I can see past what you can see and I can see that this one won't work out.”  

Jesse has eight sons all together and the pattern continues: we look at Abinidab then Shamah... then we stop naming them because it starts to get a little tedious.  I imagine this was kind of a humbling experience for Samuel; maybe the great prophet was getting rusty.  Son after son after son was trotted out and son after son after son was rejected by God as king.  Finally, Samuel asks, “Are these all the sons you've got?”  But maybe he was thinking, “Am I at the right address?”  

But then they trot out David: as the youngest of Jesse's sons, he misses all the excitement because he’s had to be out with the sheep.  But as soon as David walks in the room, Samuel is told that this is Israel's next king.  And the ironic part is that, when he shows up, he is actually good looking.  Samuel's first instinct to anoint the good-looking son was, in a way right on.  He just didn't have every good-looking son of Jesse in front of him at the time.  

But then again, David isn't just handsome is he?  There is something more about him that only God can see.  But what was it that made God choose this boy to be Israel's king?  We know by his life's story that he wasn't exactly perfect, so that wasn't it.  He certainly wasn't very kingly at the time, right?  He was just a little shepherd boy; not even his father thought to bring him in from the field to meet the great prophet.  What did God see?

Well, of course we can't see specifically what God saw, but Scripture tells us that what God saw was his heart; a heart that we learn elsewhere in the Bible, “Sought after God's own heart.”  What I take that to mean is simply that he wanted to please God.  They knew each other already.  It tells me that he didn't just seek to obey God; he didn't just seek to keep out of trouble; but he wanted to make God happy.  This tells me that he had a relationship with God; perhaps he had already begun writing songs for God while he was out there in the fields.  But at any rate, you can't seek after God's heart unless you know something of that heart in the first place.  What I think God saw in David was, in a sense, familiarity.  

In short, I think that the thing God saw in David was much the same thing that God sought for us in Jesus.  God wants to be known by us in the same way that God knows us.  In Jesus, we know the depth and breadth of God's love for us.  In him we know that God has done and will do whatever it takes to bring us home.  God wants to be in relationship with us so much that God would become flesh and then be broken for us.  And our knowing God’s love in this way, we are then fully known; God looks into our heart.   

Last week we heard about the woman at the well and, looking into her heart, Jesus knew everything she’d ever done.  But this week we learn of a different kind of knowing: a knowing that comes from a relationship with our Creator; a knowing that sees us for who we are and then calls us to a level of greatness far beyond what our outward appearance might suggest.  As we continue through this Lenten season, let us seek to know our loving God more and more.  Let us, like that shepherd boy hear the voice of God calling us to do our Savior’s work.  Because God sees us from the inside out, let us seek to be transformed from the inside out, as we seek that closer walk.