Scripture readings: 1 Samuel
17:17-54; 1 Samuel 24:1-22
The story of David and King Saul in the cave is very
serious and also very nearly crazy and absurd; absurdly funny. This is basic. I
don’t think we can understand the Bible, or the God who is revealed in the
Bible, or God’s way of working in our lives without understanding this
foundation of seriousness and absurdity.
 |
| Some Creatures: Summer and Fall of 2013 |
The stories of our life are often very serious and it
is often hard to make sense of them. Until we do, these parts of our life can
seem crazy and absurd. They seem like thing that should not happen, or cannot
happen; and yet they do happen. As God’s people we must learn to build our
lives through these serious parts of our lives that seem as though they should
not happen. We need to learn to live through these parts of our life by faith
I have to confess that I can never read about Saul
using the cave for a bathroom, and David being able to argue with his men at
the back of that cave, and sneaking up behind King Saul, and cutting off a
corner of the king’s robe, with a knife, undetected, without my wondering about
how it was even possible.
David should not have been able to cut the corner of
Saul’s robe without getting caught. Saul shouldn’t have been allowed to escape
from the cave. Saul should have ordered his army to slaughter David and his men,
when David came out of hiding. Saul should not have responded to David by
weeping. David should never have been forced to live so much of his life on the
verge of destruction.
Most of what I can say to explain it (or to explain
it away) is just that I have had a lot things happen to me that shouldn’t have
happened. There have been so many things that were highly improbable and completely
ridiculous. The improbable and the ridiculous do happen.
And then there is an old limerick that suggests a
biological process. This process could have resulted in a miracle for David.
The most ridiculous thing in the world could have covered up David’s movements
in the cave. The limerick goes like this.
I sat next the duchess at tea,
It was just as I feared it would be.
Her roarings abdominal were simply abominable.
And everyone thought it was me.
Yes, the king could have had the same symptoms as the
duchess; only much, much, much worse. The king could have made quite a racket
all by himself. We know that Saul was always very up tight.
One of the foundations of The Story of the Bible is the
process of how the shepherd boy (David) became the king of
We have, before us, a stretch of The Story that tells
us the long process of how a shepherd boy could become a king. In this story we
see how God works in human lives. If we can imagine the process of God working
in you and me, this part of the story shows us that God shapes us and works in
our lives through a long process of struggle
A struggle can just be a long, hard job. In such a
job you probably have some set of tools to do the work. A struggle can also be
a fight, or a battle. In such a battle you probably have a set of weapons.
In the Old Testament Book of Proverbs there is a line
about people being like tools or weapons. It goes like this: “As iron sharpens
iron, so one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17)
God shaped David’s life and character by means of the
strangest tools and weapons: people who grossly underestimated him, people who
hated and despised him, people who loved him, and people who feared him. God
shaped David through insanity, and fear, and betrayal, and confusion. God
changed David, or transformed David, by taking him, just as he was, and mixing
him up, over a long period of time, through many crises, with many people,
through hot and cold, and thick and thin.
Every person and every success and failure is a tool
of God in a never ending project. There is that saying from years ago: “Please
be patient, God is not finished with me yet.”
The judge and prophet Samuel, who secretly set the
boy David apart as king, said this to King Saul, “The Lord has sought out a man
after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have
not kept the Lord’s command.” (1 Samuel 13:14)
But just when was David a man after God’s own heart; when
he was a shepherd boy, when he was a commander of Saul’s troops, when he was on
the run, when he was the miserable father of spoiled children? Were you a
person after God’s own heart when God first made himself to be real, and
beautiful, and strong, and good, and desirable in your heart? By the grace of
God you were. And are you a person after God’s own heart today? By God’s grace
you are.
But do other people think so? Do you always think so?
Or do you see some awful difference, some great gap, between God’s heart and
your own? By God’s grace you do see it: you must see it. Yes!
Yet there is a danger in not seeing what God has
done, or what God has put there, or what God may do. There is the continual
danger of the sin of underestimation. You underestimate others and they
underestimate you. We all underestimate the raw materials God is giving us to
work with. We can’t begin to know how to estimate our successes or our
failures, our virtues or our sins, or our time in life. We don’t know how to
place the right value (God’s value) on all these parts of our lives, or on all
of these people.
When Samuel went to
The Lord told Samuel “no”. The Lord said, “Man looks
at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)
David’s father knew that Samuel was there to make
something important happen, and so he had his seven sons there, ready to be
part of it. Only he had an eighth son who clearly wasn’t needed for something
so important. David was the eighth son.
David was the spare boy. Maybe he was the runt. Clearly
his older brothers saw him this way. When they were out facing Goliath (or not
facing him) and David came with the supplies, they saw their youngest brother
as a nuisance and a brat. Maybe they had good reason to think of him that way.
Then David must have been a nuisance and a brat after God’s own heart, and his
brothers were underestimating him.
The more I read about the Goliath business, the more
I think that King Saul was only using David. Sending a kid against Goliath was
an excellent way to insult the champion warrior, or to put him off guard. Saul
deliberately sent David into what had to be certain death.
The only good that could come of it was that David
might beat the odds and injure Goliath just enough to put him off the field.
Goliath might get so mad at the sight of David that he could get careless.
Most of all, if Goliath killed a kid like David, it
would not be in a fair fight and the term of the duel could be disputed. The
terms were that the winning champion would decide which nation had defeated the
other, and which nation would serve the other. In a clearly unfair fight, all
bets were off.
What Saul saw as a game and a plot, his son, the
crown prince Jonathan, saw as the evidence of God at work in a kid of faith,
and courage, and humility. As cocky as David seemed, he had no problem
admitting that he wasn’t a warrior who could wear a king’s armor, or that he
could fight with anything but a slingshot.
This is a courageous humility. So we read that as
soon as Jonathan saw David, he loved him.
Jonathan was very close to being a person after God’s
own heart, and he saw that David was just such a person. And so Jonathan saved
David’s life more than once, and he was like a good brother to him; much better
than David’s own brothers, and his best friend.
The tools and weapons that God used in David’s life
(in order to transform him from a shepherd into a king) included commanding the
Saul’s troops and marrying the king’s daughter. They also included nursing an
insane king; singing and playing music to calm him, running from him when the
king tried to pin him to the wall with a spear. The tools of God included years
on the run, years of danger, and years away from anything like home.
In the end, when David was king, when we are told
that “the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies” (2 Samuel 7:1), David
was grateful. We might not have been so grateful. We might have resented all
the wasted years.
We underestimate God’s raw material for our lives. We
underestimate God’s tools and weapons. We think that God owes us rest, when
rest is a prize, a miracle. David’s real life was never about rest, except as a
miracle.
Rest was a blessing that came in the moments when God
gave it. Rest was something to be passionately enjoyed and celebrated and lived
to the fullest, but always as a blessing and a miracle.
Sometimes, in his worst possible moments, David did
not underestimate or undervalue the tools and the weapons of God. And so, after
he cut off the corner of the king’s robe, he was cut to his own heart. He went
out and showed himself to Saul; and David called Saul, “My father!” (1 Samuel
24:11)
Even though Saul had devoted his life to destroying
David, something in David’s experience, when he was still young, kept him
loving the mad king. There was something between the times of madness, and
maybe even during those times, when David had played his harp for him, that
Saul had become just like a father to him.
Sometimes David would fail at this but (in the case
of Saul) David had a heart after God’s own heart. So David could see the very
thing that God had seen and loved, when God told the prophet to make Saul king.
David never turned his back on that. David never undervalued the gift of Saul.
David could see what the others around the king could
not see, because those others were using Saul for themselves and for their own
security and their own ambtions. They were underestimating and undervaluing
Saul. They were making a mistake that David would never make because he was a
person after God’s own heart.
David was a person after God’s own heart, and he
could an honest look at “Saul the mistake”, and love him, and see what God
might do with him, or might have done with him. At least for a while, David’s
confession broke Saul’s heart and brought him to tears. David’s sorrow led to
Saul’s shaky change of heart.
Though we hardly see it or hear it, and though it
didn’t change Saul’s future or his final failure, Saul may have gone to his end
with a better heart than he had for many years. David’s willingness to speak to
Saul’s heart shows us God’s heart, and this is the God we meet in Jesus, the
Son of David.
We underestimate the people around us as the proper
and legitimate tools of God (if we can call them that). We do not love them. We
are not thankful for them though they are working on us through the hands of
God who shapes us through them. We are not thankful for the times in our lives
when God may be doing his most important work. We are not always people like
David: people after God’s own heart.
God uses strange tools and weapons in his struggle
with us and in his long, long labor of love. God became human in Jesus in order
to be the iron that sharpens our iron. Just as David went out to fight the
giant with sticks and stones, God comes to us with sticks and stones: the
sticks of a cross and the stone that covered his grave.
We are not changed into people after God’s own heart
by our intelligence and courage, or by our practice and wisdom, but by
receiving the mercy of a cross and the defeat of a grave. As the apostle Paul
says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
Our hearts are only made in the image of God’s own
heart through receiving the power of mercy and grace. Only through the strangest
tools, in the hands of Jesus, does God make our hearts like his. Will we let
him change us and give us a heart that sees all the strange seasons in our
life, and all the people in our life, as the work of God to make our hearts
like his own heart?
hello pastor dennis,
ReplyDeletethis is very inspiring one.
i totally love your enlightening treasures that continue to bless my heart and my day, pastor dennis.
have a blessed weekend!
and thanks for all your wonderful comments and continued support.