Clough Manhood Series Lesson 30

David: Development and Promotion – 1 Samuel 16-18

We finished with Saul; we found several things to observe with reference to Saul, lessons that every Christian man can take to heart because Saul represents the non-Christian man or the carnal Christian, trying to subdue the earth with the energy of the flesh. We saw these characteristics about Saul, characteristics that have been repeated again and again and again and again in history. First we saw that Saul’s summum bonum, his overall ethical end, his ultimate goal in life, was basically no higher than man. Saul lived in a world that had a cast iron ceiling; there was nothing outside of the room. And so therefore Saul, grasping around for an ideal found his ideal in (quote) “service to his community,” (end quote), a laudable goal but not the summum bonum; it’s a good but not the highest good. The highest good is not that good; Judas Iscariot could encourage men on his principle that we give to the poor. But the summum bonum is for the glory of God and when the glory of God is made as the summum bonum in one’s life then all the other things follow.

We saw the second thing about Saul was that he always made God’s commands relative to his own wishes; if Samuel didn’t show up at precisely the hour that Saul thought he should show up, then Saul went ahead and took unauthorized action, in particular, intrusion into the religious office, which was forbidden by the Word of God. We saw too how Saul, as a result of this, expressed anger but in a fleshly way, and so when he did battle, it was his vengeance against his enemy for his glory, rather than as we shall see tonight, David’s vengeance against the enemy for God’s glory against God’s enemy for God’s purposes. We saw too the heart of Saul’s problem; we saw it in 1 Samuel 15:22-23, when it’s outlined extremely clearly, and we’d better turn there because this is a key verse; this was the anchor, we said, as to why Saul cracked up. It’s still the anchor of why men crack up on the job and in other places today. They make the same mistake as Saul.

In 1 Samuel 15:22-23, “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 hearken than the fat of rams. [23] For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.” The point is that negative volition can never be fig leafed over with human good and the sacrifices that are mentioned here, and the offerings are Saul’s attempt to cloak his disobedience by saying something like this: well, Lord, I know disobeyed You here but You ought to give me eight brownie points for at least doing this for you. God does not give brownie points, and therefore Saul is condemned. His key sin, the sin of stubbornness and the sin of rebellion. It takes many, many different forms; different forms with different kinds of men, but the sin is always the same.

And then we saw the result of this, the result of the rebellion was a crazy behavior pattern. We saw first it was a periodic craziness; we saw the feature of this craziness was that there be genuine tears and pseudo confession and pseudo repentance but there would be no true enduring repentance. And then we saw the progressively widening circle of animosity, as Saul gradually grew to hate not just David, he grew to hate his own son, Jonathan. And then he grew to hate his whole household and his army and the people. And so his downhill behavior was a direct product of his stubbornness.

Now in 1 Samuel 16 we come to the model of David, and again this is not an exegesis of the book of Samuel; we’ve already done that. This is simply a character study of some of the men of the Bible, in particular here David, and some of the principles we can observe just by way of application to men’s lives.

The life of David can be divided into certain sections; 1 Samuel 16-2 Samuel 1 is a period that can be characterized as the increase of David and the decrease of Saul. It’s a relatively homogeneous section of the Bible, for all of the stories between 1 Samuel 16 and 2 Samuel 1, though they’re different stories, all have the same theme, basically the same theme. The theme is the replacement of Saul’s dynasty by David’s dynasty, a dynastic shift. And that’s the whole theme of that section.

Now we can divide that section into smaller parts and for the purposes of tonight we’re going to divide this section down into 1 Samuel 16-18; this first section of David’s life. And in that section we are looking at how God promotes this man. We’re going to look what is the initial phase of a man’s career and we want to watch how David begins his career. What things does he have to start with and in particular we want to notice what things does he have at the end of the period that he didn’t have when he started. So as a young man beginning in God’s will, we look at David now.

1 Samuel 16:7, and in this section in verse 7 you will notice how the anointing takes place. “But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature,” the countenance and the stature have particular reference to Saul; Saul was very great of stature and so this was impressive. Saul had a sort of physical charisma about him, and Samuel was a very good friend, personally Samuel liked Saul. And so the Lord just warned Samuel; Samuel when you go again and you pick the new king of Israel, just forget everything you know about Saul; don’t look at his height, and don’t look at what a handsome man he is; follow My directions, “ because I have refused him; for the LORD sees not as man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” And then he goes on to describe the situation, which we’ve already dealt with.

Now when the Spirit comes upon David, notice in 1 Samuel 16:13, Samuel took the horn of oil and he anointed him,” the word “anoint,” mashach in the Hebrew is the word from which get the Messiah, which becomes, in Greek, Christos, so there’s the origin of Jesus Chris’s title, that is not His last name, that is His title. Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the One who is anointed. Now what does it mean to be anointed. Samuel is a prophet and prophets must choose the king. The king is not selected democratically. Democracy does not function in the Old Testament, in one sense it doesn’t function. It doesn’t function in the sense that ultimately the leader is God’s man. Democracy functions later, in proving to the public that, in fact, God’s man is God’s man and is qualified. We will watch that in the early part of David’s career. But initially it is the sovereignty of God. Samuel does not have any choice in the matter; God decrees it is David. Samuel can do nothing less except “Yes Sir,” and anoint him. No discussion, no putting to a vote; no gallop poll being conducted on the most popular candidate.

It is God’s choice and this is a very vital lesson to learn, that in the theocracy it is God’s choice and the whole political process that follows from the Christian point of view has only one function, and this goes for Christians operating in today’s democracy. The Christian never can go to the polls, and never can cast his vote thinking I am sovereignly choosing, independently of the sovereignty of God, this particular leader. What we are attempting to do in the political process is discover qualifications of a man. So hopefully the democratic process, if there were enough voters who knew what they were doing, hopefully the democratic process would operate so that the people who have spiritual discernment would simply add their confirmation to the man of God’s choice. So Samuel anoints David, [13] “…and the Spirit of the LORD” it says, “came upon him [from that day forward].” This is that point when the Spirit leaves Saul and it comes upon David. [14, “But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.”]

And when this happens and Saul begins to go into his negative volition in an intense way, and goes into discipline, we have the anointing followed by two incidents. Now the first incident involves music. The second incident involves the Goliath episode. Now you may have wondered, and this is something that if you haven’t done this yet as a Christian, try it. When you read stories in the Old Testament visualize the stories as beads on a necklace; don’t visualize the stories in the Old Testament maybe like you learned them in Sunday School and here’s a little bead here, and here’s a little bead there and we just kind of have all these beads disconnected. All the beads are carefully put together in a line and in a sequence. And here, in this section of Samuel, you’ve got two themes; music and war. And the two themes occur repeatedly in the book, and they occur immediately after this boy is chosen.

In short, what we’re saying is that God’s man shows himself, publicly, so that the people then respond trusting him, by showing his proficiency in music and war. Now for us this sounds like two entirely different areas. And we have to adjust our sights a little bit and look at something and if you’ll turn to 2 Samuel 1:18 you’ll see how the two are tied together. When David became king he instituted a program of universal military training in the nation. David had watched men get slaughtered on Mount Gilboa; he watch men slaughtered in battle because they were inept at hand to hand combat. And David, right after the eulogy of Jonathan, and he’s lamenting the death of his close friend; he’s vowing to himself this is never going to happen again in this country. And so in an attempt not to ever lose a military victory again he institutes a program of universal military training.

And in 2 Samuel 1:18 the manual that was used to train Israel is spoken of: “He bade [ordered] them to teach the children of Judah the use of the bow; behold, it is written in the book of Jasher,” the book of Jasher, lost to us, was a manual of arms. That book had two things in it. It had directions on the use of the sword, the spear and the bow, and it had directions on dance and music. Now why would these two combine together in the training manuals. The answer is because… one of the answers, there’s several answers I think, but one of the answers is that they did not see any dichotomy with training men in dance and music, and in hand to hand combat because in those days to use a sword skillfully in a close-knit situation, involved music; it involved rhythm, it involved coordination. And these would be developed, actually through teaching them dance. This has come down in history so that in certain karate circles even to this day the kata that are performed are actually a dance, and there’s a dance routine that is used to teach offensive and defensive moves.

Now the book of Jasher, because it’s been lost, has basically caused us to lose the whole sense of Israel’s military training. But this verse coupled with many references in extra-biblical material, at least allows us to have some idea of it. There is one other reference to the book of Jasher. Here, obviously, it is talking about the use of the bow, but the other reference to the book of Jasher is in Joshua 10:13. The book of Jasher, besides a training manual on military arts and hand to hand combat, was also a manual that recorded the great battles of war. So we could say that it formed what we would call today a study of strategy and tactics, or military science; not just the actual moves in hand to hand combat but the overall strategies that would be used.

So this is why in Joshua 10:13 we read, “And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still [in the midst of heaven, and hastened not to go down about a whole day. [14] And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man….]” In other words, the great battles were recorded in the book of Jasher and so we have to tie music and combat together.

Now this combination of music and war is reflected in other cultures at this time. Those of you who have done any study in Greek classics, you will know if you read Home’s Iliad and The Odyssey, that you have the same theme of music and war; music and dancing were part of training in the ancient Greece. We know that even as late as Rome music and dancing were part of military training. So while it seems strange to our ears, understand that it was not strange in those days. And this is why the two stories that immediately follow David’s anointing have what? His skill at music and his skill at war. And this is why those two beads, those two Old Testament stories which we’ll look at tonight are linked together. They have a purpose; they are to prove that the man, this young boy… at this time David is probably in his early 20s; he’s not the little boy, incidentally that you see in Sunday School stories that goes out with his little baby sling shot; it’s a little bit evener than that; not quite, not much, but David is not a little boy out of grammar school. David is an adolescent in his late teens or his early 20s at this time.

All right, so in 1 Samuel 16 we have David’s skill depicted in the area of music. We mentioned last time this in connection with Saul; but tonight we’re looking at it from David’s point of view. You’ll notice what happens; in 1 Samuel 16:16, after Saul begins to lose his marbles, the word goes out from the palace, we’ve got to get some therapy for this guy. Notice the phraseology that’s used in verse 16, “Let our lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man, who is a cunning [skillful] player,” that means a very, very skillful player, a man who has practiced long, “a skillful player on a harp; and it shall come to pass…” and we read that last time. But the word tonight we’re looking at in verse 16 is the word for skill. David is skillful. He has learned the harp.

There’s something else we want to notice about what he had in common in this learning of the harp and that was that most of David’s skills as a young boy were skills that he learned by himself. David was a self-motivated learner. Not this is something because both of these skills, music and war, to learn rightly requires what? What quality must a young man have to do anything in either one of these arts? The answer is discipline, and discipline is something that can’t be crammed down your throat. The army can do part of it, the military can do some of it but it really can’t provide the positive spirit of discipline; that’s got to come forth from the individual himself. So right away, if we back off from the text and just think a minute, just put ourselves back there, what kind of a guy is David. If you had to write a 500 word description of David, what you describe him like?

Well, the first thing you’d infer from the text is that he is a highly motivated, self-disciplined individual. He learned the harp all alone, as far as we can tell, because there’s no mention of his family, which was a commoner family, ever being in the court where the Levites were, and that was the musical center of the culture. And David lived down in Bethlehem; yes, it’s only a short distance down the road but we have no inkling, no description whatsoever that he learned it from any Levite influence. Apparently he just had this skill himself and he taught himself this. You say well, to be a good musician he had to practice every day; it’s a discipline. Where did he practice? Out with the sheep, the same place he practiced with the military weapon, the sling.

Now visualize this boy; here he is, youngest boy in the family; he’s out, given a job, first of all. He probably had less schooling than many of his brothers. He is left with all the details that younger brothers get stuck with in a family, when the older brothers have a little authority and they begin to shove and push. You know, the saying goes it flows downhill, and David was at the bottom of a hill. All right, so David, in this situation, catching all of it, he accepted it, went out with the flock, without a tutor, without any adult standing over him to beat him into submission, and he learned.

Right there, you don’t have to go any further but that this kid’s got character; this kid can’t help but be somewhat successful in life because he’s got what nine out of ten people don’t have—stick-to-itiveness and discipline. What does it say in verse 7? It says God looks on the heart. What does God look at when God looks at the heart. God looked for a disciplined person, that’s who He looked for and David was a man of discipline. A lot of men may have gifts, and David had gifts, music is a gift; in fact, there are studies that show that your skill in music is transmitted in a gene, and scientists are rapidly coming down to the point where they’ll probably soon be able to map exactly what that gene looks like. Why it’s hereditary we don’t know. It doesn’t mean that people can’t improve their skill, but it does mean that there are genetic transmissions in the human race of a certain musical talent and people have it or they don’t. And within boundaries you can develop skill but the skill has to be residual also.

David had, then, gifts. So here’s a man who has gifts; these are natural gifts. He has at least two. What are they? The skill in music and we will say, instead of saying skill in war, we’ll say skill in coordination. Any guy that got a shot off in a sling like David did against Goliath, and I’ll show you the place where it happened tonight, because since Samuel we visited the valley of Elah, and took a picture of it, and when you see that valley and you can conceive of this giant walking towards you, David rushing down to the brook in the valley of Elah and picking up five stones, and waiting until the giant gets within range, and then whipping it off, and we’ll show you the significance of the five stones, you begin to understand this man had fantastic coordination under pressure.

So David had gifts but now this is very important for men, particularly men in competing in business and so on; David had the discipline to go with the gift. You can have all the gifts in the world and you are not going to amount to a damn if you do not have the discipline to develop your gift. They are going to sit and they are going to rot with you. And some day you will be held accountable for the misuse, the tragic misuse through laziness and lack of discipline of gifts. Give me a disciplined man with minor gifts and I’ll run the operation. I don’t need prima donnas with all their gifts who haven’t got the stick-to-itiveness to learn. You can see it in many areas of our own local congregation. Take the choir as a good place; Tom often tells me that many of the people in the choir are not the most musically gifted people in the congregation; the musically gifted people in the congregation haven’t got the discipline it takes for being in the choir and so we run the operation with people with lesser gifts but they have the discipline and therefore they produce a superior performance. And the people with the gifts, that aren’t using them… well, they may stay forever in that state. But they’ll never develop it until they utilize the gifts in a disciplined fashion. So David begins his career with discipline and gifts together.

Now let’s look at this. After he comes and he provides this, 1 Samuel 16:18, his reputation. “Then answered one of the advisors [servants],” this is in the court of Saul, “Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, and a mighty, valiant man, and a man of war, prudent in matters, and an attractive [agreeable] person, and the LORD is with him.” Do you notice there is no juxtaposition in verse 18; you don’t feel like there’s a discontinuity with that last phrase, “the Lord is with him,” with the first part. Do you see how the discipline, “the mighty, valiant man,” the boy is only 20 or thereabouts, and they’re already calling him a warrior. But David hasn’t had military training. Now just look at verse 18 and think for a moment. We know from the subsequent dialogue in the next chapter this boy is not a member of the army; he hasn’t engaged in the normal drills. When it comes to wearing armor he doesn’t even know how to put it on, he has to be helped, he’s not used to what we will call classical military training. Yes, he has a reputation in his generation for being a man of war.

Now why do you suppose this young boy of 20 had the reputation for being a warrior? It’s because of his bearing; he walked straight, for one thing, he wasn’t shuffling around like the last breath, plopping in, like some of you guys come in here at 11:00 o’clock service and the evening service like this is the last place in you’re life, you’re just going to make it to that pew, you’ve got it. And then if you can get your energy saved up the next hour or so and then you can make it back home again, that kind of thing. David had bearing and the bearing communicated to people. And so he had this reputation immediately, before he was even in the army. So verse 18 is a tremendous testament to this boy and how at an early age, on his own, he disciplined himself and developed these skills. Notice again in verse 18 the combination of music and war; the combination of cunning in playing, and a valiant man, a man of war. There’s no friction between those two positions. Again I refer you to Homer, The Iliad, The Odyssey, the great classics of ancient history and you’ll see the same motif again and again.

So much, then for 1 Samuel 16 and his gift of music; we’re going to take that up later on, the gift of music with David and we’re going to show you how, when he became king he formed the platform of Israel’s culture, which was music. And we’ll show you who it was David who activated the Levite choir, who really took, on top of Moses, and really pulled the thing together; David, the mighty warrior and the mighty musician.

Now in 1 Samuel 17 we have the classic David and Goliath story; one of the great, great stories of the Bible, a story that has motivated men for many, many generations. And you can’t read it each time but be refreshed by what you see there. “Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle, and they were gathered at Socoh, which belonged to Judah, and pitched between Socoh and Azekah, in Ephes-dammim. [2] And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together, and pitched by the valley of Elah, and set the battle in array against the Philistines. [3] And the Philistines stood on a mountain,” we’ll see that in a moment, “on one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side, and there was a valley between them. [4] And there went out a champion….”

First let’s see if we can look at the geography and fix the terrain in our minds. [shows slides] This picture is shot looking southwest toward the Mediterranean Sea. To get the picture of where we are in Israel here’s the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, and you have some mountains, a ridge line, running down like this, the highlands, and you have the sea coast here which is flat, and in between the sea coast and the mountain range you have what is called the Shephelah, and the Shephelah is a series of valleys because obviously when it rains in the mountains the waters runs down from the mountains into the sea. And so there’s a series of river valleys and one of these valleys is the valley of Elah. Now the Philistines are along this coastal plain; the Jews are up in the highlands. And so there’s constant clash all during this period in history along the Shephelah, and so the valley of Elah is located right about here; Jerusalem is located here, the modern city of Tel Aviv is located here. There is the location of this valley.

Now this shot is looking southwest from the Jewish side; there’s the mountain, as far as we can tell, that’s mentioned here, the “mountain” in the text. You’ll see the valley of Elah is not such a big thing, but for safety’s sake and security the armies would camp at night up in those mountains. Nobody would camp down here because they’d be subject to frequent raids, night attacks, harassment. So for security reasons everything was withdrawn to these mountains. Charges would be periodically made from this mountain across the valley toward this place where we are now standing. We are standing on the line of Israel, looking at the line of the Philistines. Now driving over here and standing right about there on that mountain, on the Philistine side this is looking the other way. By the way, those hills had forests on them, that’s what the Arabs did, they chopped all the trees down, but the days when the Bible was written it was looking like this. By the way, reverse it a moment, here is what I mean when I tell you people where you can tell where the old line was, 1948 up to 1967; the area of the Philistines was occupied by Israel before 1967 and look what they did with the land. Now here is what the Arabs did with their side. We needn’t make any more comment, I think you can see who takes better care of the land.

But in Biblical times this Shephelah here was occupied by Israel; you can’t see the real brook, it’s just about running down through that area; it runs across underneath the highway there into a culvert. But there’s the place where this event took place. Notice the long distance, that’s the think you want to get your mindset for the text; just visualize how long it’d take to walk across that valley; it’s about half a mile wide, and that was how long it took for David to get nervous. So visualize how long it would take you to walk half a mile, all the while you see this giant telephone pole coming toward you. So now you see where verse 3 occurred. Let’s look at verse 4.

1 Samuel 17:4, “And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath,” the word “champion” is a word in the Hebrew literally translated means the man of the middle. That is a technical word; the word “champion” or man of the middle is a word that is used in a linguistic equivalent in The Iliad; it is used when you have the duals; it is used in the same context, those of you who are reading Prince Caspian, in The Narnia Chronicles, when High King Peter takes on Miraz, the king, that dual, where the whole outcome of the battle is determined by the battle between two champions of the army. All right, that’s the language, the “champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.” Now six cubits, a cubit is this far in the Bible, from your elbow to here, classically it was taken as eighteen inches; so this puts him at nine feet and a span is your hand. So this guy was nine feet tall, and needless to say he stood, shall we say head and shoulders, above his contemporaries.

[5] “And he had a helmet of brass upon his head,” literally bronze, “and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass [bronze].” Do you know how they knew that? Because after David killed him they took it off and weighed it. Now let’s see what five thousand shekels of brass is; a little multiplication here. Each shekel is equal to twelve grams. So we have 60,000 grams, or 60 kilograms. And this equivalent in pounds is 132 pounds. So just his armor alone weighed 132 pounds. So needless to say walking across the valley he had a little momentum.

[6] “He had greaves of bronze [shin armor of bronze] on his legs,” the greaves would be equivalent to what the catcher wears in baseball to protect his shin. “…he had a target of bronze [javelin of bronze carried] between his shoulders. [7] And the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam; and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron,” that’s sixteen pounds, that was just the end of the spear weighed sixteen pounds. So you can imagine what this guy’s wrist looked like, to hold a pole with a sixteen pound shot at the end of it, and not get wearied at all; in fact, hold it with one hand and just heave back. Well, it’s just describing the fact that this man was a little on the strong side, shall we say.

And the Scriptures are internally consistent in this story; they’re internally consistent because giants were in the land in Deuteronomy and those giants were pushed over into the Philistine plain. So the Bible is consistent. We know the Bible writers didn’t know anything about genetics but it’s obvious from our perspective, knowing what we do about genetics that there must have been a freak gene in somebody and this thing manifested itself all the way down into the Philistine culture because … by the way, Goliath was not a pure Philistine; he was a crisscross from these old inhabitants. He had this gene and not only he did but his brothers; he had some brothers and some of them had six fingers and so on; they’re described in the book of Samuel, so obviously there’s some genetic problems in this whole family. But this gives you credence that these men actually existed, it’s not some figment of the Bible writer’s mind.

1 Samuel 17:8, “And he stood and he cried to the armies of Israel, and said unto them,” and by the way, those valleys, under the proper conditions, have very good acoustics. You don’t need a P.A. system; he doesn’t need a blow horn to go chase the Jews down with; you can yell across those valleys and it will echo. Arnold was telling us when were there one of the experiments a guy did, he actually did that on a tape recording to show the acoustical quality of those valleys. He stood and he shouted to the armies of Israel, “Why are you come out to set your battle in array? Am not a Philistine, and you slaves to Saul? Choose you out a man for you, and let him come down to me. [9] If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your slaves; but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall you be our slaves and serve us.”

Now he added one little problem. And as always in the Bible, evil is its own undoing. You never have to worry about starting a fight with evil. If you give evil enough rope it always hangs itself. Goliath was a man who, up to this point, could have legitimately engaged in battle. Up to the end of verse 9 there’s nothing immoral at this point. What becomes immoral is verse 10, because now with verse 10 he makes a theological and spiritual claim. “And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together.” When he said “I defy the armies” he’s defying the armies of God. And so at this point it becomes sacred holy war, and this is why we want to track how David picks up on this.

Let’s watch. 1 Samuel 17:12 “Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem-judah, whose name was Jesse, who had eight sons; and the man went among men as an old man in the days of Saul. [13] And the three eldest sons of Jesse went and followed Saul to the battle….” And it gives the names. [14] “And David was the youngest; and the three eldest followed Saul. [15] But David went and returned from Saul to feed his father’s sheep at Bethlehem.” This is up the road up into the hills. [16] “And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and” for forty days he went on. By the way, notice, forty days, the days of testing. See how often forty occurs in the Bible. And so he would go up day and night, day and night, and the story goes how in verse 17 Jesse gives David a box lunch, things are bad, army rations being what they are now, always were the same, they’re lousy. And so the army rations weren’t any good then and so he said you’d better take a few burgers down to your brothers.

1 Samuel 17:20, “So David rose up early in the morning, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took, and went, as Jesse had commanded him; and he came to the trench, as the host was going forth to the fight, and shouted for the battle.” This doesn’t mean they fight, they’re going into formation in the morning. They go through this ritual; the Jews come down in formation, the Philistines come down off that mountain and they just stand there and they look at each other all day, because nobody can decide what to do. And this goes on day after day, for forty days it’s going on, the lines never shift. [21] “For Israel and the Philistines had put the battle in array, army against army.” Now look at the curiosity of David. This is just a very, very human interest story. Now just watch how the boy operates here. And notice, he’s going to have to go through five trials before he fights Goliath. This is a picture of a man developing his skills. I don’t know how many trials he went through with his harp, maybe it was like the organ, it fell apart every time you go try to play it, but the harp obviously took him some time to practice and so here he has to go before the clash with the giant and he has trials. So let’s look at the trials the poor kid goes through.

He watches the scene, he comes upon his brothers and he just sits there and he watches. And in 1 Samuel 17:28 is his first trial, intimidation by his brothers. This is a great setting; keep in mind the future. Here’s the anointed of God who’s going to come out and he’s got to give empirical evidence of his gifts and he can’t give empirical evidence of his gifts unless he’s sharpened his gifts by disciplined practice. And how would you like to have to fight Goliath when you start out and you start getting ribbed by your brothers; see, this really works on the mental attitude. [28] So “Eliab, his eldest brother, heard when he spoke to the men,” see, David’s saying hey, why don’t we go out and blast the guy, “and Eliab’s anger was kindled against David, and he said, Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine hear; for you came down that you might see the battle.” Sure, any good boy is going to come down and watch the war. You don’t expect me to mess around with the sheep when I can watch a good war, we don’t have TV, I’ve got to see the real thing.

So he comes down, and verse 29, and his answer to his brothers is what wrong have I done, “And David said, What have now done? [Is there not a cause?]” See, he’s always getting picked on. That’s another very typical thing; it’s always the little brother, the big boys are pushing him around in the family.

1 Samuel 17:30, his second trial; from verses 30-33 his next trial is not intimidation by his family, but he’s got to overcome another obstacle, discouragement by the leaders, by those in authority. Now you watch the trials of men; here’s a man developing his career spiritually, and look at the obstacles that are thrown in his way. Obstacles are normal to a man’s career. So “David says to Saul,” in verse 32, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him; thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” Well, you can imagine what Saul does; here he is, all these guys he’s trained, all in uniform, and this kid shows up with hamburgers. And he says I’ll take care of your problem, king, no sweat. [33] “And Saul said to David, You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; you are but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.”

So David’s answer now in 1 Samuel 17:34-37, is the third trial, not in chronological order, but this is a trial that David had to go through years before in his life and it shows you God’s anointed having the gift but notice that on his own, he used that gift and he used the gift and he used the gift and he used the gift and he used the gift over and over and over and over. What was the gift? Physical coordination. And when he was out with the sheep the Lord was grooming David for years on down. That was a bad news kind of job, the first job that he got; like a lot of guys, the first job they get out of college or out of school is a lousy job, but David didn’t mind it. He used the lousy job to hone his skills because God would promote him in due time. God would take care of the promotion. So while he was out there, verses 34-37 and the Hebrew text indicates an interesting thing about this. It didn’t happen just once; we know this from the tense of the Hebrew verb. The Hebrew verbs here are what we call iterative; that is, they depict action that occurred more than once.

Verse 34, “And David said unto Saul, Thy servant was his father’s shepherd with the flock, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock; [35] And I went out after him, and I smote him, and I delivered it out of his mouth. And when he arose against me,” Notice the deliverance out of his mouth, I don’t know whether you can visualize this, some of you who saw that film one Sunday night of the dogs killing the sheep, get an idea how quick it happens; remember how that German shepherd went after that lamb and he had him chewed and gnawed before you could turn around. Well, David was so quick that when the lion and the bear grabbed the lamb David was quick enough to get to it before he had broken the lamb’s neck, before he had chewed into it. See, “I delivered it out of his mouth.” So don’t just read this in a nice, sweet, Sunday School poetic way, just look at the text carefully and see what the text is telling you. It’s telling you that David was exceptionally fast and exceptionally quick. “…I delivered it out of his mouth. And when he arose against me I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him,” the idea being there he just lifted it up and stuck him in the throat.

1 Samuel 17:36, “Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear;” in this situation. And by the way, the delivering, that’s the verb, I delivered him, the indication tends to be that this is just one of a pattern of things that happened in David’s life; he just accounts one particular instance of several instances. “Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God. Now you notice in verse 36, the casus belli, the cause of war, do you see that it’s not the anger of Saul now. Both men are angry men; both men authorize killing; both men are soldiers; both men are courageous, but both men have two completely different motives. Saul’s motive in battle is I get my vengeance against the enemy. David’s motive in the battle is this clown has defied God’s glory and that makes me angry. So why is David angry?

Do you see the character of this boy? The things that cause him to get angry show you his character, and so when he says “the uncircumcised Philistine” he has reference there to the Abrahamic Covenant. This Philistine has no respect for our covenant. He is the non-elect; he isn’t part of the elect nation. I don’t mean in the soteriological sense now, I’m just talking about elect nation. He’s not part of God’s nation and what right does he have to come and defy the armies, notice, not of Jehovah, but he uses “the living God,” and the word “living” means that God interferes in history. Everywhere you see the word “the living God” it means an active God, a historically active God.

That’s why he can say, 1 Samuel 17:37, here’s a confession of David’s great faith that made him the king eventually. “David said, The LORD that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” Now notice his confidence. David has a gift; David has discipline to develop the gift. But he never becomes autonomous in the use of his gift. No matter how skillful he is in honing his gifts of music and combat, he always knows that I can never approach this thing autonomously. It’s like a guy in business; maybe he’s studied accounting, he’s studied financing, he’s studied management, he’s studied the whole thing, but he can never say well no sweat, I studied it, I got it under control, no need to pray about this, no need to look to the Lord in this, I’ve got it all knocked. Well, if you have that kind of attitude my experience is that you are about to get knocked, because I’ve been there. And so David is in a situation where he is always open, in spite of the fact that he brags on his skill but it’s always subordinated to the Lord’s deliverance. He never breaks lose of that.

In 1 Samuel 17:38 we have the fourth trial of David. We have the three trials, the family, the leaders and the trials earlier in his life and now we have the fourth trial. The fourth trial is the temptation to use normal means, habitual means, to keep up with what everybody else does, not to use one’s creativity, but gee, everybody else does it this way, we’d better do it this way. Or in Christian circles it comes out as “in the beginning it was and always shall be, world without end.” If we have done it this way we always shall do it this way. If we have a rinky-dink hymnal we must always unto eternity have a rinky-dink hymnal. So we have the habitual problem, and so the habitual way you fight giants is get your armor on and hope that his sixteen pound shot at the end of his spear, his telephone pole that he’s carrying with him, doesn’t go through the armor. “So Saul armed David with his armor,” and this must have been funny because the armor didn’t fit, “and he put a helmet of brass [bronze] upon his head; also he armed him with a coat of mail.” These men are older and their waist size is a little larger than David.

1 Samuel 17:39, “And David girded his sword upon his armor, and he assayed it,” this means he tested it for balance, “for he had not tested it. And David said unto Saul, I can’t go with these; for I have not tested them.” That’s the idea of using a weapon and becoming proficient in the use of that weapon. So “David put them off.”

And now in verse 40 he comes, verse 40-48, his final and fifth trial. And this trial, you guessed it; it’s fear. And David experienced fear, and any man going into this thing experiences fear and it’s not a sign of cowardice to admit that you’re afraid; it’s just what you do with your fear. David is afraid. Now watch what this guy does with his fear. He has to walk across that valley you just saw; it’s quite a long valley, it’s not just a little brook in the woods. He’s got a long time to think, now David, you know, there are other ways of doing this; why can’t we just not get so fanatical about this, you can hear the voices of fear rising in his heart as he walks toward the stream, because as he walks across the valley of Elah, you saw that valley, the rocks are all at that mid point. So here’s that mountain where the Jews were, here’s the mountain with the Philistines; the valley turns like you saw in the picture and the two start walking toward one another. And they walk and they walk. David has no weapons from this point to here… no weapons; he comes out unarmed. If that guy beats him down here to the brook he’s in “bad news” situation. So David has to wait until he gets down there and when he gets down to that brook he picks up some stones, and then he becomes armed.

Now watch this guy. 1 Samuel 17:40, “And he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones out of the brook,” by this time he’s walked all the way down to that brook in the middle, “and he put them in a shepherd’s bag which he had, even in a wallet; and his sling was in his hand: [and he drew near the Philistine].” Now commentators have often wondered why five stones. The answer is not found in this context, it’s not found in this passage, but there is a biblical reason; it comes across very clearly to the careful readers of 1 and 2 Samuel. The answer is that Goliath had four brothers; they are all named in the book of Samuel; Ishbi-benob is one of them, a great name; Saph is another one, Lahmi is a third one, and there’s another guy that’s never mentioned in Scripture; there’s four brothers of Goliath and they’re all just as big as Goliath. And apparently what this little guy was doing was saying after I get Goliath I’m going to take care of the rest of these guys so we can permanently injure their system and we’re not going to have any more of this noise about giants stopping Saul’s army.

So just think of the cunning skill of this boy, under the pressure, never having faced this in combat before, never having been in a sword drill, never having been in a spear drill, never going on a military maneuver, having none of this, he’s thinking, calculating, cool calculation. Afraid? Yes he is afraid but he’s still cool in the middle of it. This shows you the greatness of this guy.

1 Samuel 17:41, “And the Philistine came on,” and it’s in the participle in the Hebrew, it means he kept coming, and he kept drawing near to David; there’s a motion picture tense in the Hebrew language; “and the man that bore the shield went before him.” So Goliath comes out with a helper. [42] “And when the Philistine looked about, and he saw David, he disdained him; for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance. [43] And the Philistine said to David, Am I a dog, that you come against me with staves? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.” Now notice the theology; I said evil always defeats itself; all you have to do is give evil a chance and it falls into its own trap. [43] “And the Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.” This is psychological war, you see it in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, how Hector, for example, taunts Ajax and so on. In Book 13 we have this passage, it’s just to compare it with heroic literature:

Hector says, “Ajax, this day is big with the destruction of the Achaeans and you shall fall among them if you dare abide my spear; it shall rend your body and big you glut our hounds and birds of prey with your fattened flesh as you fall by the ships of the Achaeans.” So it was psychological war and David could give as well as receive. Watch what happens.

1 Samuel 17:45, “And then David said to the Philistine,” and this is one of the finest passages of Scripture, one of the finest verses that you can ever see about spiritual courage, this one is one to memorize and think about and let it soak into your soul. This is a classic passage of Scripture; it ought to be written in the front of your bibles under courage. “You come to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of armies [hosts], the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. [46] This day will the LORD deliver you into my hand; and I will smite you, and take your head from off you; and I will give the carcasses of the hose of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. [47] And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear; for the battle is the LORD’s, and He will give you into our hands.” Now particularly verse 47 is a verse that ought to be memorized; in times of discouragement and times of spiritual depression, that is one of the finest passages of Scripture I could commend to you.

But we can do more than just gloat over this, let’s go back and look at some of the elements in verses 45-47; it’s very carefully constructed. Again it shows you David’s coolness. First in verse 45, he recognizes the real threat; David has no illusions; he has not hypnotized himself and said oh, the army is nothing, no sweat. No, that’s not David’s attitude. David knows he faces a very serious military situation. He has evaluated the enemy; notice there’s a listing of all the enemy’s weapons. He has a good grasp of his opponent. He has an inventory of all the possible ways Goliath can kill him. David has thought that through; so he’s not a blind little fool coming out with just sheer bravado in the middle of battle; he knows his enemy’s ways.

But he also knows at the end of verse 45 something else. “I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts,” the word “name” has reference to God’s essence. God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is loving, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable and eternal, that is God’s name. And David says that makes a difference. I have weapons that come directly from the essence of God Himself. And so he goes on to say, “in the name of Yahweh of armies,” the word “host” is Sabaoth, it’s tzaba; tzaba is the Hebrew word for armies. Today when you go in Israel, instead of saying USA on the GI’s coat you’ll see something that looks like this, Tzahal this is read from right to left and it reads TzHL, and on all the army trucks, instead of saying U.S. Army, it says TzHL. What is TzHL? TzHL is an abbreviation for tzaba, Armies; Hagana, defense; L of Israel, Le’Israel. And so to this day tzaba is still used for the modern army of Israel, and that’s the word used here; it’s Yahweh of the Sabaoth.

Now that’s the word, when we read and we sing Martin Luther’s A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, I always like to watch in the congregation because when we get to that Lord Sabaoth, and it sounds like Lord Sabbath; that’s not it. If you look carefully in Luther’s song it’s S-a-b-a-o-t-h, it’s not Sabbath; it looks that way when you first look at it but it isn’t; that’s not Sabbath, it’s Sabaoth. And it’s Martin Luther’s rendition of this exact phrase, the Lord Sabaoth, the Lord of armies; o-p-h is the feminine ending, the Lord Sabaoth, why we have a female verb for an army I don’t know but that’s just the way it is. Maybe they thought that would scare the enemy. In the modern Israeli army the girls have what amounts to a miniskirt and we have some of the Israelis why that happened and they jokingly said because we know that if we parade our girls out in miniskirts the Arabs aren’t going to shoot them. But the armies of this time in Israel were all men and they didn’t have the girls out with the M-16s.

[45] “…but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.” That last phase, “whom you have defied” is David’s confidence. David’s only confidence in battle is that he right and his enemy is wrong. Now I don’t know how long it’s going to take some people in this country to wake up because since the Spanish American War there has not been one war fought with maybe the exception… well, we’ll have to say this, the moral factor came out very strongly in World War I against Kaiser, and World War II against the Nazis, but the Korean War and the Vietnam War were never clarified morally, and this is why it is kind of a gum shoe operation, both of them. And the reason is that you can’t fight full-heartedly if you’re not convinced in your heart you’re right. And you can’t be convinced that you’re right until there’s been a discussion of the basic moral issues. If that discussion had occurred in 1964 and 1965 instead of just hooching in a little bit by little bit and we had resolved it, then we would have had unity and a proper mental attitude.

But you cannot fight a war if the moral issue is not clarified. Do you know why? It goes back to the way God designed our souls. There’s a very interesting application here of the divine institutions. We have the divine institutions and this fourth divine institution is to do what? How did God design the fourth divine institution to operate? He designed it to be judgmental, did He not? Taking life and the army is taking life in battle, is part of the function of the fourth divine institution. Whether the army recognizes this, whether the politicians recognize this, at least Bible-believing Christian ought to recognize this; that there is that within the human heart called God-consciousness. The God-consciousness testifies, whether men want to say it or not, to the fourth divine institution’s validity. It does testify to the validity. And what it testifies to is that when we have a war it is for a moral purpose. We don’t just have war. Wars are not wrong. It’s when they’re fought on the wrong basis; there is just violence in the Word of God and it’s commended.

So the point here is that David’s last phrase, “whom you have defied,” gives him confidence that God is on his side here; his enemy is morally wrong, and therefore this is what keeps him going. His soul functions knowing the full effect of the fourth divine institution. That’s why now he goes on, if you explore verse 46 and 47, which is sheer application of the faith-rest technique, “This day will the LORD deliver you into my hand;” notice the future tense; this is a promise and assurance. But then notice it is not again as Saul’s braggadocio. It is not some anger just for the sake of anger and bravado, it has a moral purpose; look at the end clause of verse 46. What is the end purpose of it? “…that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.” What’s that saying? What is the ultimate ultimate summon bonum?

You see, David now, this is what we’ve been curling around to all evening, we’ve studied Saul and I made the statement at the beginning of Saul’s career the guy was all screwed up. Why? What was the one thing that screwed him up more than anything else? Wrong summon bonum; he lived in a universe cut off at the ceiling, there was nothing above. So his highest good was only (quote) “helping his fellow man,” why, Saul would have been president of the United Fund and the whole thing, got 100% participation in his little company and he’d have been the little league manager and the boy scout troop guy and all the rest of it, helping his fellow man in the community. But a tragic figure, tragic, because every effort, whether it was United Fund, Boys Town, I’m not knocking these groups, the United Fund, Boy Scouts or whatever it was, he would be using as fig leaves to cover his basic problem, he wasn’t right with the Lord, and so he’s just doing this to salve his guilty conscience; that’s all.

Now look at David; here’s the young boy starting his career; we’ll track him as he develops in his career, but at the beginning of his career let’s pull this together and see what we’ve got. We’ve got a guy, first of all, that has gifts and he knows what his gifts are; he knows his natural gifts. In this case we’re talking about spiritual gifts, he knows his natural gifts. And what does he do with them? We have adequate testimony that through discipline he developed those gifts. But now we add a third feature and this is the key that locks it all together. The reason the boy had discipline, the reason he kept at it, was for the glory of God. It’s just that simple. It’s just that simple! I do this because you’ve desecrated God’s name and I’m going to show you one thing, there’s a God in Israel. David’s not even thinking about glory to David; Saul is, he’s worried about who David’s going to marry and all the rest of it.

That’s what 1 Samuel 17:55 is all about. Saul has promised anybody that knocks off Goliath gets his daughter, so when David comes strolling out and Saul saw David going forth, it’s a participle, it’s the process of walking out there, “he said to Abner, the captain of the host,” Abner was commander in chief, “whose son is this youth?” A real interesting scene; here David’s about ready to knock off the giant and he’s worried about the social delicacies of who his daughter is going to marry. See, this is Mr. Human Good operating, always concentrating on the trivial. When everybody’s fighting a war he’s got to discuss social relationships and who’s dating his daughter. “And Abner said, As thy soul lives, O king, I cannot tell. [56] And the king said, Inquire whose son it is,” in other words, I don’t care what your G-2 is in the Philistines, I don’t care how swamped your spy net is right now trying to figure out the logistics, drop it, I want a social investigation of this kid’s background, if he’s good enough for my daughter. Now there you’ve got the contrast. One guy is worried about who his daughter is going to date and the other guy is worried about God. One is Jesus Christ’s ethic; the other is the ethic of Judas Iscariot.

Now let’s conclude by tying this to a New Testament passage; 1 Timothy 3, we talked about a man who has a gift, or gifts, who has discipline to utilize those gifts and train those gifts. Now let’s take it and apply it to ourselves as a congregation. We’re coming down in this congregation to what we always have, the annual meeting. I think for the last four or five annual meetings we have had what I facetiously call a Russian election. And by a Russian election I mean the fact that if we have four slots on the board it seems we only have four men to fill the slots; if we have three slots on the board we always have three, and I’m sure that some innocent people sitting out in the congregation wonder, Clough must really work his system out, he controls the whole thing, or if he doesn’t do it then somebody on the board’s doing it; they’re knocking all these guys off; you know, maybe we have 15 apply in a congregation this size, surely there must be about 20 men that apply for the board and say sure, I’ll run for the board, and we always come out with a Russian election.

Now what’s going on? Well let me tell you what’s going on, and here’s we need spiritual growth in our own congregation. We send a letter out, as you male members know, asking at a certain time whether you want to be on the board or not. And many men have legitimate reasons; some men have reasons of family pressure right at the moment, their business is going bad and they’ve just got all they can do to handle that problem right now. And they have legitimate reasons. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about something else. Here’s what happens and here’s why we have Russian elections and here’s why we’re going to continue to have Russian elections until this problem is solved. We have men who say I’ve got this spiritual gift, some of them when they handed in the inventory a while back, I guess somebody on the board or the secretary or something asked for spiritual gifts, what do you think you can do, we had some guys list things, it looked like they were George Patton with all their list, you know, if you had all the battle ribbons down on the left side; it was just amazing to watch this.

And then we have the problem that some of these very same ones will say yeah, I’ll run for the board, just move aside, I’ve got all my 25 spiritual gifts and just sit down and let me handle the show. Well, then the nominating committee and I, I haven’t talked to the nominating committee but I presuppose this is what must have happened, they begin to look at this and they say now let’s see, here’s so and so, now has so and so, if he has all these gifts, I wonder if, like David, he’s developed those gifts; what has he done to develop the gift? Maybe he’s had them but what does he do? Well, let’s look over here; he says he has the gift of helps. Well now let’s see, the last 15 months we’ve needed ushers, has he ever volunteered to be an usher? For the last 18 months we’ve needed something else over in… I don’t know, inner church committee or something, has he ever volunteered to do that? No; he has the gift of helps though. Well, this is what happens. We’ve got a lot of claims to gifts but we don’t find them functioning on the committees. So apparently, and if I were the nominating committee this is the way I’d think; I can’t believe the claim to the gift, quite frankly; it has no credibility… no credibility because it’s never exercised.

This is precisely what we’re watching here with David. David was anointed by Samuel the prophet and he legitimately had the gift, didn’t he? Legitimately had the gift, dogmatically and emphatically. But what did God do to display David? Before David became king, God put David in this situation, with a harp, He put David over in this situation with Goliath. Why? Because there was a doubt in God’s mind? No, because He wanted to display that gift, so the people would have confidence in David and then they could follow David because they had faith in his capabilities. That’s the point. And the point is that the board is a leadership position. Now in the past I’ve made some remarks about how difficult the board’s work is; it is that, but it’s also a tremendously satisfying thing. This is not a pitch to go drop everything and be a board member but it’s just one application of the truth we’re looking at in David.

In 1 Timothy 3, do you notice when they’re talking about the qualifications here of a bishop, but whether that or a deacon, it doesn’t make any difference, we’re just looking at a principle, in verse 2, 3, particularly verse 4 and verse 5, what is all that about? Do you see anything in those verse that say well, elect so and so because he’s got the gift of teaching? Yes, he might well have the gift of teaching, but the New Testament insists that the gift be proven out in various areas and one of the areas is in the home. And so that’s a situation. And we can comment… and I’m not just saying, trying to pump all the committees, I’m just saying we have needs in the local congregation, the local church doesn’t function without these needs. But again, the people who claim the gift never seem to show up when the committee is functioning in the committee’s needs.

Another factor where we watch, again, is where some men apparently don’t through the nominating committee, and this is to encourage you, not discourage you, just because your name might have been dropped or something by the nominating committee, don’t let that faze you, just quietly develop your gift and then try again. One of the other sources of elimination is the failure of men to be consistently taking in the Word of God. Oftentimes a man will have his name proposed and people look around and they say hey, do you know so and so? Yea, I think so, he shows up once or twice at the 11:00 o’clock service. Now sometimes he’s on a sales meeting or something, we’re not talking about business out of town, but we’re just talking about normal consistency in the Word. If he’s out of town is he on tapes; does he ever show up for family training. Does he ever show indication… or is his wife always at family training but he’s never at family training. Ah, well, that shows you something, what’s he delegated all the spiritual work to his wife and he’s going to do (quote) “the non spiritual” work. What’s going on.

Well, the price comes out in the end because we’ve so structured the system so that it filters itself; I don’t filter people and I don’t filter men’s names; believe me, I have nothing to do with the nomination process. It’s peers, men that we chose to be on the nominating committee and that’s their evaluation; it’s closed letters, I see the final list but I have nothing to do with elimination. That’s the congregation itself that’s functioning this way. I’ve been very pleased, the nominating committees have always done a good job. It’s always very discouraging, though, when we come to this time of year and we have a congregational election, like we will have, and we have X amount of, I don’t know, three or four this year, and we have only three or four men, and I know sooner or later 2 or 3 people are going to walk out of the meeting say boy, that was a fixed deal. Well, I’m telling you now, it is not a fixed deal. If anybody fixed it it was the people that never exercised their responsibility in the first place that fixed it. So let’s put the burden of problem on the people it belongs to and not on the nominating committee, not on the pastor, not on the chairman of the Board or the Vice Chairman of the Board, or anybody on the board; it was just the way the system worked. And we think the system works pretty well because it does have this filtering feature about it. So remember that.

And by way of application, personally, in this congregation we could do with a little bit more of what David is doing. People who have gifts need discipline to develop those gifts. You don’t develop and be a giant killer overnight. David didn’t become one overnight. David did it gradually, a little bit here, a little bit there, and that’s how he worked his way up. Not for the sake of man, but for the fact that he understood, he was a man, he had certain gifts, he had certain responsibilities before the Lord, and he worked it out. He was just as busy as anyone else but he worked it out.