1 Samuel Lesson 19
Samuel Anoints David – 16:1-12
We come to the third great section of the book and with it we are
introduced to one of the most famous men of history, David. We’re introduced to him under less than favorable
conditions and we’re introduced to him at a time in his life before his
greatness was obvious. Yet this man that
we are going to see tonight is a man who by all standards of the world was one
of the greatest generals who ever lived, he was one of the greatest kings who
ever lived. He was a great general
because he was a great killer, David slaughtered people by the thousands and he
was called to do that by God. Therefore
he was a great man in this regard; he was a great man as king of the nation
because he was a man did not allow himself to be controlled by his emotions,
except on several occasions, and furthermore he was a man who had an intense,
almost childlike faith, so much so that at least one woman almost divorced him
because she felt her husband was so stupid in his faith. That woman was Saul’s daughter so that’s
obvious why that happened. But this life
that we are about to study is one of the most exciting lives of all of
Scripture.
I don’t think that there’s one of us that can’t identify in some way
with some area of David’s life. David
was a man who habitually let it all hang out, but the good and the evil, so
that when he was operating in the power of the Holy Spirit it was very obvious
and when he was operating out of it it was also very obvious, and yet David was
able to do something that Saul had been called to do and failed, and that is
the test and that is the question that always we must ask as we study the life
of David. Oftentimes studies in the life
of David are designed to just give you a biography of the man, but the Holy
Spirit is not interested in merely giving you a biography of David. Many details of his life are missing, a
biography of his life is impossible. But
the Holy Spirit has preserved certain details of David’s life that will answer
the question, how did David differ from Saul.
David’s life cannot be studied apart from Saul’s life. These are biographies, so to speak, that fit
together; there is only one biography, it is the lifeline of Saul and David
together as a unit.
Now we come to the third and great section of this epistle. Chapters 1-7 dealt with how God prepared to
deliver
Very briefly, here’s the parallel.
Saul and Satan both were the first incumbents of a high office, so you
have a throne. The throne is set upon by
Satan to begin with; he is the highest creature of the universe, and as such
Satan was Lucifer, the son of the morning, Satan was the highest of all
creation. Satan fell and yet Satan,
although thrown and cast from heaven, was left in a position of fantastic
power. Saul was left in a position of
fantastic power. After the fall of Satan
we have the rise of a person by the name of Jesus Christ, although Jesus Christ
is God the Son plus humanity, so therefore Jesus Christ originates at a point
in time at the virgin birth. Now when
Jesus Christ originates at the virgin birth He is by birth and by nature
qualified for the throne that Satan had previously occupied. However, because Satan is left in a position
of power as Saul was left in a position of power, Satan persecutes Jesus
Christ. Satan tries to destroy Jesus
Christ and he fails; Jesus Christ retaliates by devising a system called the
Body or the Church, which will go on for many centuries. During this time, Satan, who is still left in
a position of power persecutes the Body.
Saul, who was also on the throne illegitimately persecuted David for
many years. For many, many years David
had to flee from Saul and during the years that David fled from Saul, those
were the years that David wrote many of the Psalms. It was during that era, the persecution of
David by Saul that was the situation out of which this man wrote.
And by the way, another one of his accomplishments, he was a great
musician. So all through this we see the
reason why those Psalms are so precious.
Why is it that the Psalms have been known as the greatest devotional
literature down through the centuries?
The reason is because they were written under extreme pressure, pressure
that would be faced by believers in every generation. And therefore David, writing out of those
high pressure situations, writes words that are comforting to us in our less
than high pressure situations. So this
part of the Bible is very, very intense, very interesting, and has a lot of
things for us as we begin the story of David.
Now the first part of this section that begins in chapter 16, are the
first two chapters, chapter 16 and 17.
Together these two chapters have as their objective God chooses David
the second incumbent. Saul was the first
incumbent, David is the second incumbent in the office of king. So chapters 16 and 17 are the first part of
this third section. Tonight we’re only
going to do the first 13 verses of chapter 16.
These first 13 verses have as their subtopic, God guides Samuel to
anoint David. And it goes back to the
last verse of chapter 15, verse 35. “And
Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death;” his death is the
time that God removed Saul from this earth by the physical sin unto death.
Samuel did not come to see him because Saul was no longer king; this had
nothing to do with personal friendship or personal animosity for that
matter. This had to do with an official
capacity. The prophet did not visit the
king because the king was no longer king.
The prophet would visit the king when the king was legitimately king and
not otherwise. So therefore we have here
the fall of Saul from kingship in an official sense.
Now beginning in 16:1 we come to the rise of David and it starts with
Samuel. Samuel has left Saul, Samuel was
very affectionate toward Saul. And in
verse 1 we’re introduced immediately to a very interesting principle about old
age, believers in old age. “And the LORD
said unto Samuel, How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him
from reigning over
Now the first sentence, “And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long will
you go on mourning,” “mourning” is a Hebrew participle and it’s the motion
picture tense, it means it goes on and on and on and on, a continuous type
action. And so the picture in the
original language is this old man sitting there weeping and weeping and
weeping. The word “mourn” is a word that
is used to weep at a funeral, to weep for the dead. And Samuel is weeping for the man whom he
knows to be just as good as dead, and even though Saul would go on living for
many years. This is, as it were,
Samuel’s funeral for Saul. And he goes on and on and on and on. And finally God has enough of it, and the
words are abrupt, and the words are stern, and God intends that Samuel, the old
man, stop his crying, stop it and move on.
My plan has changed and you’re just sitting there in the same old rut,
weeping and weeping and weeping.
Now we have to, in order to understand how we got Samuel into this
weeping situation, review a few facts about Samuel’s life to understand how
Samuel in his humanity must have looked at this thing. We have to come back and
really see the man as a man and go back and understand why he got into this
mental state. Let’s look at a few facts
of Samuel’s life. In 1 Samuel 1, Samuel
had been born as a result of his mother’s prayer. He had a frustrated mother, Hannah, who was
probably in an advanced state of compound carnality because of her inability to
cope with a family situation. Hannah
bawled and cried and had a great resentment, until finally she began to see
that there was no solution to her problem except going to the Lord. And when she went to the Lord she dealt with
her problem, she asked the Lord for a baby, for a hidden motive of course, and
that was to get back at this other woman whom she couldn’t stand. But the Lord answered that prayer in a very
gracious way and Hannah gave forth a descriptive psalm of praise.
If you’ll turn back, just to review something about Samuel’s character,
to 1 Samuel 3:1-3 and let’s see what he was made of. We mentioned what kind of a boy he was, one
of those very touching scenes in Scripture.
“And the child Samuel ministered unto the LORD before Eli. And the word of the LORD was rare in those
days; there was no frequent vision.”
Here God would speak to the nation at the ark; He would speak through
the high priest; occasionally He would speak out from His Shekinah glory that
existed over the ark. In verses 2-3
Samuel goes in and he sleeps there. [2]
And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was lying down in his place, and his
eyes began to grow dim, that he could not see. [3] And before the lamp of God
went out in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was, Samuel was lying
down to sleep.”
When we studied this we said that Samuel was so anxious to hear the Word
of God that he actually took his little sleeping bag and trotted out to the
tabernacle and laid down all night, dozing next to the ark. And his motive, apparently from all the
Scriptures is that he wanted to be there if God spoke. In other words, he was hungry and thirsty
after the authoritative Word of God and he was just waiting in anticipation
that God might speak. And sure enough,
God did speak, and He “called, Samuel, Samuel.”
That shows you the attitude as a young man.
You remember in
After a while it finally caught on and Samuel, in 1 Samuel 7, led a
national revival and to some degree was able to take areas back from the Philistines. He was there in 1 Samuel 8 when again he
faced a pessimistic situation, when he had to be present when the nation
committed political suicide by going over from theocracy to monarchy, not in an
absolute sense because it was still theocracy but from a position of more
freedom to a position of less freedom through centralized power; he was there
when the nation went down. So all during
this man’s life he has had a series of pessimistic situations to face. It seems always that God places Samuel there
when things fall apart. And so al during
his ministry he has either had people who did not listen to the Word of God,
who were too busy doing something, and he had other situations that arose in
the nation that gave him the evidence that as far as he was concerned there was
massive negative volition.
Now here we have Samuel mourning.
The principle in 1 Samuel 16:1 is that in old age there is a temptation
that sets in upon believers that you have to watch. This temptation is dealt with in detail in
the book of Titus, chapter 2, but is briefly this. When you have an old believer, particularly a
believer who in his day has been very active in teaching the Word, who has been
very faithful to proclaim God’s Word, who has withstood all the snotty remarks
that are usually trotted out his way, who has gone down the spiritual battle
and won victory after victory, losing here, losing there, but generally a
victorious lie, he gets in old age and he discovers something. He discovers that as long as he is alive God
does not stop the battle. The tendency
in old age is the tendency an athlete has when he’s coming up to the goal line,
it’s a tendency to slack off, a tendency to feel I’m almost at the end, it’s
almost over and now I can take it easy.
And Titus warns older believers to watch out for that mental attitude,
the mental attitude of give-up-itis, because you are old, because you may feel
that you only have a few years left of an active life, therefore the conclusion
you draw is that God has no use for you, that you can slack off, you can relax,
you can stay with apostasy, you can stay with your own organization even though
you know it’s gone down the drain and you can do all sorts of things and excuse
it, well I’m old, and my friends are here and this is the place I’ve been all
my life, etc. And the tendency in old
age is to shift your loyalty from the Word over to some sort of human
organization that you think can help you in your old age, socially, financially
or otherwise. And this is the warning that
is given in Titus 2.
But the answer from the divine viewpoint to old age is given in
Lamentations
Now Samuel here is very depressed, in 1 Samuel 16:1 he is an old man, he
has been in retirement for several years, many years in fact. He has watched the man whom at the first he
pessimistically said all right, if you want a king, let’s have him. And God said go ahead and anoint Saul and
Samuel has had to watch in the twilight of his life, he has had to watch the
very first man in the office that he created humanly speaking, the office that
Samuel himself was the instrument in creating, he has had to watch that first
incumbent phase out and be rejected. And
by the time we get to 16:1 we find Samuel in depression, mental attitude
depression. And here is one of the great
prophets of God and he is about ready to throw in the towel here at this
point. He has been going on mourning and
mourning and mourning, he is intensely depressed. He probably is wishing that God would call
him home, that he wouldn’t have to nominate another knucklehead who would do
the same thing that Saul did and have to live through and watch this whole
thing again. It’s not nice to sit around
and watch your country fall apart around you.
It’s not nice to stand in the middle of a Christian organization and
watch it fall apart. Those are very
depressing things and this is the thing that has finally got to Samuel. He has watched the nation fall, he has
watched the priesthood fall, and now he has watched the greatest man in the
nation fall.
And now God has another job for him to do. And this is why God says to Samuel, “How long
will you go on mourning?” In other
words, Samuel, haven’t you recognized something, that My mercies are renewed
every morning, that every morning you get up to breathe and you go on
belly-aching and crying all day, don’t you recognize that I have a plan for
you, that I haven’t left you. I haven’t
left you to sit here and cry Samuel, are you going to down to the grave as an
old man crying? No, you are going to go
down in service for me. So therefore,
“seeing I have rejected him from reigning over
Now the horn itself was important because the horn in the ancient world
was the symbol of power. For example
know the pictures of a crown, but how many of you really realize that the first
crowns actually were horns that were sewed to a leather belt, something like
these pictures you see of Leif Erickson or something, the reason the crown
often has this kind of an up and down motion is that later on our artists and
craftsmen simply abstracted the bumps from the horns that were sewn on a
leather strap. And the man who was the
head wore the horns, and the reason was that the horns were denoting power,
political power. And that’s how we have
the design, even in our own present day of the so-called crown. Now the horn has oil in it. The oil is the symbol of the Holy Spirit, and
so out of the horn, which speaks of power, comes the Spirit, the oil, and the
oil will be poured on the candidate for the office, noting that there’s a
transfer from oil from the horn to the head of the king, and this means that
the Holy Spirit is the one who is going to empower the candidate for
office. Now why is this important? Because of the previous sentence? “Why are you morning for Saul, seeing I have
rejected him,” past tense, I have done it even though Saul is still on the
throne.
Let’s look at Saul’s soul. Saul
was on negative volition; he had been on negative volition for an extremely
long period in his life. Early in his life he had experienced a darkening of
the soul or a blackout of the soul and this caused him to become very
spiritually dull. This led to the fact
that early in his life when he was out chasing his father’s asses all over the
field that he couldn’t find the man of God, and the little servant boy had to
say hey, you might just possibly go to the man of God, you’ve tried every other
human gimmick, how about trying it God’s way.
So Saul, we notice from the verb beginning had a dullness. So we can probably say that Saul’s soul was
under blackout conditions almost from the very first. Then the next stage, when he had begun to
absorb more and more human viewpoint, which led to a faith shutdown, that means
that he had doubt, that means that the more human viewpoint he got the less
divine viewpoint he could use. The less
divine viewpoint he could use the less he could believe, the less he could
trust. And remember his first failure,
failure number one was due to a faith shutdown in the middle of a crisis. His army was being lost, his army was running
along the road and he sat there and watched it and he panicked. And he didn’t exercise faith and so therefore
he had experienced a faith shutdown.
Then we have the fourth step and the fourth step is that he began to
develop hatred; first hatred toward God, resentment toward everyone and anyone
who to him represented the authority of God, and later on he became a victim to
pseudo authority. His second failure was
exactly that, his second failure was a failure to go along what the doctrine
dictated and go along with what emotions dictated. So he was in bondage to the pseudo authority
of his own emotional pattern. And he
gave a stupid order in the middle of a battle that lost the battle and
Now unfortunately we don’t have a kind of soul X-ray machine but imagine
if we had a machine that we could take an X-ray of our own soul and we could
get a readout of our soul and find out what it looked like. We could then, had we this information, we
could then line up perfectly with the kinds of discipline that we’re facing in
our Christian life. All of a sudden it
would mean something, why we had this trial, why we had this trial, because if
we knew what our soul looked like we could see, why of course I had that trial
because I see that little part in my soul that needs that kind of pressure to
build it. So here we have the trial, the
throwing out and removal of Saul from the office because he has reached the
point where he cannot obey the authority of God’s Word and he must obey the
authority of the mob or his own emotional pattern or something.
Now, this is why God says I have rejected him and you are now to anoint
another person. Go to “Jesse, the
Bethlehemite; for I have provided” the King James says, but the Hebrew says “I
have seen My king among his sons.” “I
have seen My king among his sons.” Now
the reason I emphasize the verb “see” is because the verb “see” in this passage
is going to be used over and over and over and over again. And every time this verb is used, something
new is going to happen. The theme of the
first 13 verses surrounds and hinges on the verb to see, the whole thesis of
these 13 verses is how do you see. God
sees one way, man sees another way. And
this is why, when he says go and fill your horn, there’s a future tense,
“send.” Now have you ever thought as you
read that what part Samuel is to do and what part God is to do. If you’ll look carefully at three verbs,
fill, go and send, you will have the principle of divine guidance in the
Christian life, because Samuel is to do two things. He is to do what God tells him to do and what
God says is after you do what I tell you to do now, then I will lead you.
Now how often as pastor I have people come in and say I want to know
God’s will for my life; now that’s a very legitimate motive, but oftentimes in
talking to these people I say what about this and this and this, you know
that’s God’s will for your life, for example, if you’re a student God’s will is
for you to develop some self-discipline so that you can train your gift,
whatever it is, whatever your gift is it requires discipline for training, and
therefore you don’t have to guess what God’s will is for you, God’s will right
now is for you to develop some discipline so you can use the gift that He’s
given you. Don’t worry about what God’s
gift is, start with what you know. What
do you know. You know that He wants discipline
developed, through the Holy Spirit, self-control. So you start moving in that direction and
when you start to move then the Holy Spirit will move into you the path and
channel, but you have to obey what you know if you expect to find out what you
don’t know. And that’s the principle
here. “Fill your horn and go” and leave
the rest to me, I’ll send you.
Verse 2, “And Samuel said,” and this is a very interesting point,
“Samuel said, How can I go? If Saul hear it, he will kill me.” Now up to this point have we any intimation
in the text that Saul is going to kill Samuel?
None whatever, except for the fact that we apparently have a time lapse
between the end of chapter 15 and the beginning of chapter 16, and therefore
during this period of time, remember what Saul’s soul looked like: negative
volition, darkness, human viewpoint and hatred.
And one of the things that hatred is that he resents anyone who reminds
of the authority of God. Who reminds
Saul of the authority of God?
Samuel. And so what apparently
has happened between the end of chapter 15 and the beginning of chapter 16 is
that Saul has instituted a reign of terror.
We know this from another verse which we’ll see; this is not just a
figment of Samuel’s imagination. If you
just had verse 2 you could argue well, Samuel is just a chicken, but that’s not
the case because we have other evidences of this. So what has happened, objectively, is that
Saul has instituted a political reign of terror against anyone, any person that
is identified with Samuel.
Now this is always the case with a believer in compound carnality. They will always try to persecute believers
who operate on grace as we have seen in Proverbs; they will always have snotty
remarks to make, they will always have some maligning, some gossip, some
criticism of believers who operate on grace, and inevitably they will institute
areas of persecution. Oh, it can be
little picky things, it can be in a certain social group, saying a few things
here and there, you know how these things get started. It doesn’t have to be a physical thing, it
can be a conversational thing. But it’s
obviously happened here and Saul has instituted a reign of terror and so the
Lord assures Samuel that by this time he will be safe. So “the LORD said, Take an heifer with thee,
and say, I am come to sacrifice to the LORD.”
This is only part of the truth but I want you to notice that God uses
deception, if you want to call this deception, and that He is giving Samuel an
order to tell only part of the truth; don’t tell him why you’re really going
down there Samuel, just tell him you’re going down to sacrifice; that’s
sufficient for him.
What is the moral justification for doing this, telling only part of the
truth. The moral justification is that
Saul knew all the truth at one time and rejected it so he’s worthy here; you
only tell the whole truth to people who are worthy of hearing the whole truth;
if people aren’t worthy of hearing the whole truth the answer is you don’t tell
them the whole truth because they don’t deserve it. And this is the moral justification that God
uses here. Pepole just don’t deserve to
know the truth so therefore they won’t.
And this is observed time and time again in the Gospels. Lord, why don’t you do this, Lord why don’t
you do that? I’m not going to do this
and I’m not going to do that because these people had a chance to hear and they
didn’t so they don’t deserve any more.
Now we come to verse 3, “And call Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will
show thee what thou shalt do; and thou shalt anoint unto me him whom I name
unto thee.” “Anoint” is Mashach, make the messiah, “the one whom
I will show.” Now notice we get into the
central theme of the passage now, is it going to be how Samuel sees it or is it
going to be how God sees it. We’re
picking a man; if you want a modern day illustration, picking a man for public
office. Who are you going to pick. The congregation faces this once a year when
you vote for members of the board. We
still have not been able to get over the popularity contest that runs in
churches. “call Jesse … I will show you
what you shall do, and you will anoint him whom I name to you,” no one
else. And when he gets there he is not
going to find Mr. Outstanding; when he gets there he is not going to find a man
who is as physically as large as Saul.
When Dr. Waltke was here and he taught from Isaiah 52-53 and he gave a
portrait of Jesus Christ. But if you
were there I’m sure you’ll never forget the tremendous plainness of Christ and
how Dr. Waltke pointed out at the latter part of chapter 52 that Jesus Christ
was a man who you’d never, if you saw him in a crowd you wouldn’t pick him out,
he was a man who was not outstanding. He
was not a man who had outstanding looks, He was not a man who had outstanding
physique. He was not a man who spoke in
an outstanding way. He was Mr. Plain and
that is the portrait given of Jesus Christ in Isaiah 52. Now the same thing holds for the man who is
going to be the type of Christ; he is going to be in one sense a very plain
individual. And so when the Lord says to
Samuel, now you go and you anoint whom I tell you, just remember Samuel, be
sure you anoint the one I tell you.
So in verse 4, “And Samuel did that which the LORD spoke, and came to
Now at this point we have a very interesting thing and some of you
raised this question when we were in Romans 13.
And we had some feedback cards on the problem of when does the Christian
owe allegiance to his government and when does that allegiance stop. For example, if you had been a Christian in
1776 and you had come to the colonies as a British citizen, Romans 13 would
tell you to be loyal to the British crown.
What do you do when
At this point we have a similar situation face the elders. The elders have, as it were, God is King;
over here we’ll put Yahweh and a big “Y” over this King, and over here we put a
little king and that’s Saul. Saul
occupies the political throne and the reigns of government. But we know from Samuel’s prophecy that it is
not a legal government. At this point
Saul’s government is illegal. And so
therefore the elders have an authority problem; do they side with God as king
and welcome the prophet into their home in defiance of Saul, or do they submit
to the existing authority and kick out Samuel.
And here these elders decide to stick it out with God as King and with
His prophet Samuel because Samuel is higher ranking than Saul as king and so
therefore by accepting Samuel, understand the political implications; by
accepting Samuel in verse 5 these elders are in essence declaring their
government illegal.
Verse 6, “And it came to pass, when they were come, that he looked on
Eliab,” now he gets the whole family of Jesse out, and Samuel begins to look
for a man who was obviously like Saul.
What was Saul, remember what Saul looked like: he was tall, he was good
looking, he had an excellent education, he was what we would call a refined
individual, he was what we would call an outstanding man. And so as Jesse lines his sons up he looks at
the first one, and it’s Eliab, “and he said, Surely the LORD’s anointed is
before him.” “Him” means Jehovah, and
what Samuel is saying is Lord, surely this is the man that you’ve picked for
the throne, look at him. Remember I said
the verb to “see” is the key to this passage, and Samuel sees Eliab, he looks
at him and he humanly sees him he says on the basis of the evidence that I can
see, I would nominate this man for office.
But he always lacked some evidence and to go merely on the basis of the
available evidence without asking the Lord for further evidence is lack of
faith.
But verse 7, the Lord abruptly calls him and stops him, “But the LORD
said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance,” now the Hebrew has two
negatives, one begins with “lo” and
the other begins with “al”; “lo” and “al”. And these prefix the
verb. When the Hebrew wanted to write
just don’t do something, like the Ten Commandments it would be “lo,” the principle, don’t ever do this,
it’s just a principle. But when they
wanted to write a negative toward somebody that was doing an action now and you
are in the middle of doing it, so stop it, they would use “al.” And that is the
particle that is prefixing the verb here in the original language. And so the idea is that Samuel in his
humanity and in his normal human way of doing things, he wants to pick out
Eliab. Why does the narrator keep these
little fine points. The narrator simply
wants us to understand that had Samuel been personally in charge, without a
miraculous intervention by the Holy Spirit, surely Eliab would have been king
of
The whole argument of these 13 verses is that Samuel, as well as all the
people of
So “The LORD said to Samuel, stop looking at his face, or on the height
of his stature,” now why do you suppose Samuel would be intrigued with Eliab
because he’s a tall man. It’s simple;
Saul was a tall man. Don’t you see
there’s a habit pattern setting in here.
We had a tall king before, it’s bad enough the guy tubed it, and now
we’ve got to replace him and we don’t want some shorty on the throne so
obviously God is going to pick a man who is reasonably tall. And so when he looks at Jesse’s sons he pick
the tall one, Eliab. So it’s only
natural that Samuel would pick the man that from his point of view would have the physical
qualifications of the office. But he’s
disappointed, God says don’t look on his face, don’t look on his height,
“because I’ve refused him; for the LORD sees not as man sees; for man looks on
the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
Now here we have the great model of David for the life of Christ. David is a man who over and over in Scripture
is said to be a man who was after God’s heart.
What does this mean? Does it mean
that God didn’t pick Saul? No, God
picked Saul. Remember we went through
chapter after chapter of 1 Samuel and I kept repeating over and over and over
and over, saying watch this because I want you to remember that Saul was
genuinely picked, and you remember how we went through the historical evidences
to prove that Saul was genuinely picked.
It was for this moment, because when we come to this passage we must
always remember that the man who fit the office previously was genuinely picked
by God and we have the empirical historical evidences that he had been
genuinely picked. But when God comes to
the second man He’s going to do something a little different.
Saul God picked for his own purposes.
Saul was a man who fit a certain profile of man. God had a profile and if you turn to 1 Samuel
8:5 you’ll see the profile He used to pick Saul. The last part of verse 5, remember what the people
asked for? They asked for “a king to
judge us like all the nations.” Now the
king that judged them like all the nations was part of the input for the
profile. So when God picked Saul He
picked a man who would fit some of the features of the people’s profile. Now when we come to 1 Samuel 16:7 God
formally rejects the people’s profile and He says this man I pick, I picked him
too, but this man whom I pick will not fit the popular profile. In other words God is saying if I left it to
you Samuel, even you Samuel who is my great prophet, even you, you would pick
the wrong boy, because you would pick it with a human profile in mind.
And so here God formally rejects all human profiles for office holders
and He says I look on the inner mental attitude and He says on that basis I
pick My man. I pick a man on the basis
of evidences, Samuel, that you cannot yet see.
So that the choice in verse 7 is a choice out of God’s omniscience, and
here is where tremendous sensitivity has to be exercised. Remember I said when we started 1 Samuel 7
that in here would have answers to great political questions. And we would have material on which it would
be possible to base a Christian philosophy of politics [can’t understand
word/s]. I think this is one of the areas
where a Christian citizen has to give careful thought, what is the profile the
Christian voter uses to decide the vote; you can, on this basis, go even if you
knew the man personally, you probably still might pick the wrong one. This is where much petition in prayer is
needed by the Christian voter before he casts his vote because we need
evidence, the media is not going to give it to you; we have to have real solid
material on which to make an intelligent choice. Have you ever thought as a Christian citizen
of making it an extended prayer petition to pick an office holder, because
ultimately it is God who can pick the best office holder. Not the voter, even the well-informed
voter. Remember who is the most
well-informed voter of the nation
And then verse 8, “Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before
Samuel. And he said, Neither has the
LORD chosen this one. [9] Then Jesse
made Shammah to pass by. And eh said,
Neither has the LORD chosen this one. [10] Again, Jesse made seven of his sons
to pass before Samuel. And Samuel said unto Jesse, the LORD has not chosen
these.” You can just see this gradually
building tension. Think of how Samuel
must have reacted; as a prophet he knows God is a rational God, he knows that
there is somebody here in the family or God’s a liar. But all the sons have passed by. He looked in the house, there’s no one in the
living room, no one in the dining room, no one in any of the other rooms,
nobody left. All the seven sons have
passed by and all failed to fit Jehovah’s profile.
So therefore in verse 11, instead of saying God’s a liar he thinks
rationally, because all revelation is rational, the obvious option is that
either they’re not all there or God is a liar; since God is not a liar it
leaves one logical possibility, all the sons aren’t there. “And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are all thy
children here? And he said, There
remains yet the youngest, and, behold, he keeps the sheep.” Now the way this reads it’s kind of humorous
in the Hebrew. It kind of reads like
Jacob with the sons back in Genesis. The
idea is yeah, there remains one, the youngest one, but you know he’s out there
keeping the sheep, and the word “keep” is a participle meaning the motion
picture tense, he is now in the process of keeping the sheep. Said another way he’s saying that this kid is
dirty, he’s the little brat of the family and he’s out there and he stinks
along with the sheep, you don’t want him in here, he doesn’t fit anybody’s
profile. So from the human point of view
David starts out behind the 8-ball. From
the human point of view he doesn’t meet anybody’s profile.
This is a formal meeting. To
catch the tremendous drama behind verse 11 you have to think first of the fact
that if you had your home opened and say the Governor or the President of the
United States walked into your house, it would be rather a formal occasion,
wouldn’t it? All right, here you have
the head prophet of the nation walking into the house; everybody is in their
best clothes. Samuel is here, this is a
highly formal occasion. We know this
because of a remark Samuel is going to make in just a minute. It’s a highly formal occasion, everything is
done, the best silverware is out, the whole room is immaculate, Jesse’s wife
has spent all day vacuum cleaning. So
everything is clean and then he wants to know where’s number 8. Well number 8, everybody else has come in off
the field, we’ve got everybody bathed and dressed except him, we left him in…
because obviously he’s not going to be chosen, so he’s dirty, stinky, not fit
for the formal occasion in any way, a complete violation of etiquette.
Now Samuel realizes this and Samuel makes a crack here that tells us
what he was thinking. And here’s the
sentence: “And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him; for we will not sit
down until he comes here.” Now this was
a violation of oriental etiquette, so what Samuel is saying is Jesse, you are
saying that you’re violating etiquette if you let that kid in here, let me tell
you something, I’m going to violate your etiquette until you bring him here,
because failure to sit down was tantamount to saying I reject your hospitality. And this in an oriental home was a tremendous
violation of etiquette on a social occasion.
He would just stand there and everybody would be embarrassed that the
prophet Samuel had come to our house, we had cleaned, we had gotten everything
ready and he stands there, he won’t even sit down. And the reason he won’t sit down is because
the little brat isn’t here.
So let’s look at this little brat and see what kind of a person he
is. Verse 12 is to my way of thinking
one of the most magnificent verses in God’s Word. It is a rare verse because very, very
infrequently in Scripture do you ever get a picture of how people look. Now we have Saul, he’s described as far as his
height is concerned, but this is one of the fullest portraits given us in all
of God’s Word as to how a man looked. It
gives enough information so a good artist could probably draw a fairly decent
picture of David, much better than Jesus Christ, we have no information how
Jesus Christ looked. Only one thing we
have, we know that He… two things we know about Christ, and both of them the
artists fail on. One is that He had
short hair, we know that from the introduction to 1 Corinthians 11 and from
church history. We have certain mosaic
portraits of Christ, how He looked, and he always had short hair. So this long haired business, Jesus the first
hippie, and all the rest of it is just some addition by Homan Hunt and other
people who have never studied Scripture.
So Jesus Christ first of all had short hair; and the second thing we
know about Jesus Christ from John 2 was that he was very old for his age; he
looked 20 years older than He was. He
was a man who tremendously aged.
In verse 12 the artist is given adequate material to build a portrait of
David. “And he sent, and brought him
in. Now he was ruddy,” the word “ruddy”
in the Hebrew means red, and it is used for Esau, and it means that David had
red hair. So the first thing we know is
that David was a redhead. David was a
redheaded Jew, and that should be a most interesting combination. And it obviously was very unusual because in
that part of the country, then as now, the norm is black hair. This is why in Song of Songs they praised the
black hair of the lover. Well, David had
red hair, and it was so unusual that it’s pointed out here in the text that
David had red hair. And it doesn’t say
“a beautiful countenance,” the next word means that he had beautiful eyes. The next part about his portrait is that the
man had beautiful eyes. And of course
the ladies would gravitate toward the eyes for the rest of his life. So David was very attractive in his
eyes. And he was “handsome” or
attractive. The third part is that he
was a handsome man.
Now why after all of verse 7 does the Holy Spirit see fit to give us a portrait
of David. Now it should be easy to guess
this. Why? Let’s take an analogy that more of you will
be familiar with. Here’s a single
person; for 9 out of every 10 hours the single person is thinking about their
right man or their right woman. And
inevitably when they think about this, if I trust the Lord he is going to come
up with some person that He’s giving ugly pills to for the last five years, and
I can’t trust the Lord for somebody because the Lord doesn’t look as man looks,
well, I like to look the way man looks, and if I’m a young man and I’m thinking
about my right woman or a young woman thinking about my right man, I look the
way men look, and I don’t know whether I can trust God with verse 7, I’m not so
sure how he looks, I know that but you can’t sit there and look at a heart all
day, I like to look on the covering a little bit too. So therefore the tendency is, and this is
where Satan trips up believers by the carload, God is going to give you Mr. or
Miss Ugly, keep on trusting Him sucker, and you’ll get Miss Ugly or Mr.
Ugly. And it’s just a satanic think it’s
just a satanic attack, it’s basically saying that God can’t provide you with
somebody that’s attractive. And so I
believe that the Holy Spirit deliberately injected verse 12, and remember I
keep saying, verse 12 is highly unusual, you can read and read and read and
read and read in God’s Word and never come to a verse like this again.
Why does the Holy Spirit take this time, the only time the Holy Spirit
gives us a portrait is after a verse like verse 7; after he’s got through
emphasizing that God looks on the heart, man looks on the outward appearance.
After all that, then he gives the portrait of David and David does turn out to
be handsome. Now why does the Holy
Spirit do this? To teach us a
lesson. If we trust Him with the right
man or the right woman don’t worry about it; that person will be attractive,
that person will be attractive at least to you, as far as you’re concerned
they’ll be attractive. But the Holy
Spirit would have us get our priorities in the right place. Verse 7 comes before verse 12 and if we
trust the Lord then the Lord takes up the slack.
Verse 12 is just put in there so after verse 7 was read somebody
couldn’t say huh, I wonder what kind of a creep David was when he crawled in
from the sheep pen. Verse 12 is put in
there to show you that God knew exactly what He was doing, and David was such a
handsome man that later on he would have problems with that.
Finally we come to verse 13, next week we’re going to deal with the
details, I just want to introduce verse 13 because of one phrase and then we’ll
conclude. “Then Samuel took the horn of
oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren; and the Spirit of the LORD
came upon David from that day onward.”
Now we’ve got to deal with the Holy Spirit because it’s a complex
ministry in the Old Testament next week.
But the phrase I want you to see before we close is how David was
anointed “in the midst of his brethren.”
Do you see that this is a type of what’s going to happen on down through
the corridors of time. When is Jesus
Christ anointed? Turn to Matthew 3. Christ’s life will fit the profile of David’s
life. In Matthew 3:3, John the Baptist,
out preaching in the wilderness, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Why is John the Baptist out in the
wilderness. Why isn’t he preaching in
the
Now to the east of the city of
Verse 5, “Then went out to him
And when he does so it is in the presence of all the brethren, because
who is it that has come out to the wilderness?
You see what God did? He put John
the Baptist miles away from an urban center and therefore through a filtering
process of teaching the Word, gradually filtered out the unbelievers, so that
when Jesus Christ would come for His anointing He would stand and the people
along the banks of the river would be born again believers.
Now an insight? Don’t you see
that the believers of this day had a special privilege that the unbelievers did
not have? The believers of that day and
that generation, because remember as we pointed out in Matthew 3, where it said
in verse 5, who was it that had come, people from all over Judea, this was a
representative sample of believers and they were there when Jesus was
anointed. In other words, the anointing
was not a public anointing, it was private and to be invited to the anointing
ceremony you had to be a believer. Jesus
had something special to show those who had trusted in Him, and so the
believers were called for and they saw something that no one else in the nation
saw. The Pharisees did not see the
anointing of Jesus. They were sent away;
the unbelievers had all been sent away because John the Baptist is such a harsh
man; he drove them away, he infuriated them and they all left. And the only people that managed to stay were
people who were strong believers, who were there not because of his personality
but because of what he taught. And those
people that stayed there were the people that had the privilege of witnessing
the anointing of Jesus Christ. Why? Because Jesus fulfills the typology of David;
He was anointed in the middle of his brethren.
One further point in this same theme is round in Revelation
What does that teach? That Jesus
Christ is now, even to this day, in the midst of His brethren. He was anointed in the midst of His brethren,
and He has been in the midst of His brethren in space time history. Jesus was present in the Roman coliseums; He
was walking there, He wasn’t seen, but He said in Matthew, I will never leave
you nor forsake you. Now what could that
mean? It wasn’t that Jesus was claiming
that He was omnipresent in that sense.
No-no. In Matthew when Jesus said I would never leave you nor forsake
you it’s more powerful than just a claim to omnipresence. It was a claim that He wouldn’t forsake the
Church, that Jesus Christ to this day walks through the communist countries,
Jesus Christ walks through the dungeons and sees the believers beaten to death,
crucified on the cross and urinated on by communist guards as it occurs in the
peace-loving communist countries. Jesus
Christ walks through that and He can smell it and He can see it. Is it any wonder then that when Jesus Christ
comes again He judges the world with such ferocity? Because He was there, He is here, walking
amongst the candlesticks, walking amongst the churches and He will never forget
what Satan has done to His body. He was
anointed in the midst of His brethren and still is in the midst of His brethren
and when He gets through He will call of His brethren home at the rapture. With our heads bowed….