Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The advancement of the kingdom. It's the work that God is doing to advance his church in this world.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Okay, we're continuing our series today in First Samuel. If you want to go ahead and turn to 1st Samuel 18.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: I had a tooth pulled on Friday unexpectedly, and so my jaw actually specifically told me not to do public speaking for the first 36 hours.
So you might be thinking to yourself, ah, that means the sermon will be shorter.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: I love you guys and I'm going to suffer for you today.
Oh, man. If. Listen, if blood just starts coming out
[00:00:42] Speaker A: of the right side of my mouth
[00:00:43] Speaker B: today, just ignore it.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Keep pushing through. We'll be good.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Ibuprofen is a gift from the Lord. We're continuing our series in First Samuel that we're calling Hard Mode. And basically we're just talking about how hard it can be to live our lives in this cursed and broken world. Like that's. That's just fundamentally true, right? Like, if you've lived life for more than a day or two, you can relate to the fact that living in this broken world is oftentimes difficult.
And beyond that, beyond just living in this world. Giving God your Yes.
Seeking to actually live a life that glorifies God, that submits to him, is often harder.
It's more difficult. A life seeking our calling in the goodness of God, seeking our calling in the kingdom of God is inherently hard.
And yet it is often in those difficulties, in those hard places in the trials of life that God actually sharpens us and matures us and sanctifies us and prepares us for the call he
[00:01:52] Speaker A: is putting on our life.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: So in our study of First Samuel, we've taken this chunk to look at a similar season in David's life. He's been anointed as the next king of Israel, but Saul is still reigning, Right? Like, that's the issue we see here. This creates years of difficulty and suffering and trial for David. We've seen it with over and over and over in the text, but God is in the hard parts. He's in the trials. He's using it to grow us, to perfect our faith. 1st Samuel 18 is where we're going to be today. If you want to go ahead and turn there. If you don't have a Bible with
[00:02:26] Speaker A: you today, we have house Bibles around the room.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Just look under the chairs. They are around. We really believe in the importance of
[00:02:32] Speaker A: access to God's word here at Emmanuel Fellowship. If you don't own a physical Bible, I would strongly encourage you to take one.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Before we get into this text, I do just want to say if you
[00:02:42] Speaker A: are visiting today, we are so glad you're here.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: You picked one of the top five weirdest texts of the Bible to visit today.
I just want to pre warn you, get ready because this is very gross. We're about to read my contender for like maybe second place grossest passage in all of the Bible. So welcome. We're glad you're here.
Last week we, we saw David's meteoric rise out of obscurity with his defeat of the giant Goliath. You should have come last week. That was the famous one, this one's the weird one. But that was on you. You made that choice. Anyway, last week David killed Goliath and we saw him rise out of obscurity. He went from being this unknown shepherd, this low level servant in the court of Saul, to being probably the most well known person in all of Israel next to King Saul himself. And really when we think about this like this really should have been David's moment. This was his rise, right? This is what should have started him down his path to the life he wanted. But it actually doesn't make David's life easier. In fact, this new state in his development of being known publicly is actually going to make his life incredibly difficult. Significantly more, more difficult than his days herding sheep.
And today we're going to see specifically how David's personal integrity is used by God to help him navigate this new and difficult life in the public eye
[00:04:17] Speaker A: under the scrutiny of the King.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: And I'm going to say something here, it's incredibly obvious, but it's the kind of thing we have to say because
[00:04:24] Speaker A: it's so hard to live.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: And that's simply this integrity. Personal integrity will always beat out position.
Yeah, Hundred percent of the time. Always. Integrity will always beat position. The scripture comes back to this idea over and over and over and all of us intuit it on some level. Give me a guy who actually means what he says over a guy who just thinks he's a big deal. Yeah.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Does whatever he wants, right?
[00:04:55] Speaker B: How hard is it yet? Even though we know that, even though we all intuit that, even though we all believe that, how difficult is it to actually live that?
Right?
We all know how valuable integrity is
[00:05:15] Speaker A: and yet it's incredibly hard to live with integrity.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Right?
That brings me to my main point
[00:05:23] Speaker A: today that I think we're going to see in this text. It's simply this.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Jesus fuels your integrity in this life.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: I think that's what we're going to see over the Course of this text is not just look at David, he's a cool guy.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: But we're going to see that it
[00:05:38] Speaker A: is Christ himself, Jesus, who fuels our integrity.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Because I think this is a real
[00:05:46] Speaker A: issue for us, more so than we probably are willing to admit publicly.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Like we know integrity matters. We see the hollowness of politicians and bosses and celebrities who have all the
[00:06:00] Speaker A: attention but have self serving hearts. Right.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: We want to be people of integrity ourselves, but at a bone level, if we're willing to be honest, we know
[00:06:13] Speaker A: that that is just hard.
It's hard to be honest, it's hard
[00:06:20] Speaker B: to be hardworking, it's hard to be
[00:06:22] Speaker A: kind, it's hard to be consistent, especially when we know no one is watching and there won't really be consequences.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: When we're in our own seasons of
[00:06:34] Speaker A: obscurity and difficulty and trial, we so easily justify slipping into selfishness and sin. Yeah, just.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Just me on that one or can we all like.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Yes.
Well, if that's you, I.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Yes, it is. That's all of us.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Let's pray and let's see what God
[00:06:53] Speaker A: might have for us in this text.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Jesus, we. We need you this morning.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: We need you to be our discipler. We need you to speak to us through your text. Holy Spirit, we ask that you would. You would just do the ministry you do, that you would challenge us, encourage us, remind us that you would draw life and gospel out of your and meet our hearts in what we actually need today so that each and every one of us could leave this space today having connected with you in a way that's real.
Holy Spirit, move us closer to you. Move the needle in our heart and our life and our faith that we might walk in greater security in you, that we might walk in faithfulness to you, that we might be more like you.
We need you to do it, Jesus. We cannot do it on our own.
So we pray this in your name. Amen.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Okay, we are in 1st Samuel, chapter 18.
And to kind of set us up for this before we read it, remember kind of what's going on here. David has literally just slayed Goliath, the really famous story. And it led to this absolute rout of the Philistines by the Israelite army. And now the triumphant Israelite army is making their way back to Saul's palace in Gibeah. And David just went from being a mostly unknown shepherd and court worker to one of the most famous men in the whole country. Saul would be foolish to not capitalize on this and draw David into his inner Circle of warriors. Saul's own son, Jonathan has built a deep, abiding connection with David and has sponsored him as a soldier in the army. He essentially pulled from his own equipment to outfit David so he could be a part of Israel's army. David is a royal warrior in every sense of the word.
Now, with the spoils of victory and the literal head of Goliath and a whole lot of attention, David begins making his way alongside Saul and the rest of the army back to Gibeah and his new permanent home.
So read with me. Starting in verse six, it says this.
As the troops were coming back when David was returning from killing the Philistine, the women came out from all the cities of Israel to meet King Saul, singing and dancing with tambourines, with shouts of joy, with three stringed instruments. As they danced, the women sang, saul has killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.
Saul was furious and resented the song. They credit tens of thousands to David, he complained, but they only credited me with thousands. What more could he have but the kingdom?
[00:09:27] Speaker A: So Saul watched David jealously from that day forward.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Okay, so. So to really get ourselves into this story, you have to remember something. This was not a normal border dispute. This, this, this war campaign, this battle around Goliath. This was not the normal kind of
[00:09:46] Speaker A: just violent neighbors attacking each other that
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Israel experiences all throughout its history.
This was an intentional, destructive, and almost successful campaign by the Philistines to destroy Israel.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: They marched deep within Israel's territory and
[00:10:04] Speaker B: conquered a bunch of key cities. And by the time we got to last week's battle with Goliath, they were a scant 15 miles away from Gibeah. They were right at the border of the capital. And they knew if we take out the capital, if we kill the king, the nation is ours, right? This was an existential threat to Israel that God has saved them from through the bravery, through the efforts of the faithfulness of David and the advancement of his army. And so when they're making their way back, everyone's really stoked.
Like, this is a time to celebrate. News of David's miraculous defeat of Goliath has spread ahead of the army. And by the time they start passing through these cities and villages on the way home, the women are singing David's praises alongside Saul. Now, there's an interesting little detail here that we can easily miss in the English, but this phrase they use in the song, Saul has killed his thousands,
[00:11:01] Speaker A: David has killed his tens of thousands.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: That is almost certainly not meant as a dig at Saul, that that particular Figure of speech. Thousands and tens of thousands is actually a well attested figure of speech in ancient Hebrew that was often used in their music and poetry. We have examples of this inside and outside of Scripture. Several psalms use this exact same phrase. And the point I'm trying to get at here, that we can easily miss, is that those two are meant to go together as a couplet, not a contrast.
Thousands and tens of thousands together, not thousands versus tens of thousands as a contrast. And the difference there is subtle, but it's important. These women are praising Saul for his victory.
And then alongside that, they're praising Saul again for selecting and finding such a great warrior and champion in David.
That was a normal thing kings would do. They would find the best warriors amongst them and make champions. Goliath wasn't the king of the Philistines.
He was some random dude from Gaff a city they conquered. But their king drew him in and made him a champion and raised him up as a warrior. This is the kind of thing kings in this day did. And these women are praising Saul for his wisdom. Look at this awesome dude you found.
Look how much butt he kicked. That's great. You're great. This is all great.
This is the kind of song that is meant to be sung in celebration, accompanied by dancing and children running in the street. And confetti, where applicable, right? Anyone listening to this song in that moment would have heard this as praise, as celebration. God has saved Israel and the king and all his generals are amazing.
And Saul hates it.
He hates it.
He sees the celebration and rather than joining in what is obviously intended, he sees rivalry in David.
Why are they crediting David with more kills than me? And here's what I think is so ridiculous about this thought. Like, think about this for just a moment.
Saul is the king of Israel who has reigned for years at this point.
He's an elite trained warrior. He's led Israel in countless, countless battles.
He's been mostly successful over the course of his career. He has probably literally killed thousands of Philistines. And at this point, David's kill count of Philistines is precisely one, but it's one.
This is obviously hyperbole, right?
This is obvious to anyone listening. This is meant as hyperbole. It's meant as celebration. But Saul can't engage it that way.
Saul sees it as competition and we're left with this absolutely, I think, astounding revelation.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: If you think about this text for
[00:14:12] Speaker B: a moment, this was supposed to be David's breakthrough moment, right?
He was faithful, he was obedient. He was brave when no one else was willing to trust God.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: David trusted God, right?
[00:14:28] Speaker B: All those years alone in the fields, watching the sheep in obscurity, not being known. And it all comes together in this moment where David is the one who steps up in faithfulness, steps up in bravery, and God works through him. And everyone sees and everyone recognizes it. Now he's marching back to the Capitol as a triumphant warrior, well known, being praised, being acknowledged. This is supposed to be his moment, and yet it is not.
Instead, instantly, Saul the king sees him as a rival, as an enemy.
He's jealous of him.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: And that changes things for David forever. They cannot go back to how they were now. There is no going back. David has now crossed a threshold in his story.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: He can't go back to the field because Saul said, you have to work
[00:15:23] Speaker A: for me from now on. So he's not going to go home and see his dad. His shepherding days are over. But honestly, his days in Saul's court have changed forever.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: He doesn't get to slip into the
[00:15:33] Speaker A: background and be the music therapist or the intern anymore.
Now he's too known.
Now the king's eye is on him and things are about to get way harder for him. Read on with me and let's see how bad this gets. Verse 10.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: The next day, an evil spirit sent from God came powerfully on Saul and
[00:15:54] Speaker A: he began to rave inside the palace.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: David was playing the lyre as usual, but Saul was holding a spear and he threw it and thinking, I'll pin David to the wall.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: But David got away from him twice.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with David, but had left Saul. Therefore, Saul sent David away from him and made him a commander over a thousand men. David led the troops and continued to be successful in all his activities because the Lord was with him.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: When Saul observed that David was very successful, he dreaded him.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: But all Israel and Judah loved David because he was leading their troops.
So Saul told David, here is my oldest daughter Marib. I will give her to you as a wife if you will be a warrior for me and fight the Lord's battles. But Saul was thinking, I don't need
[00:16:43] Speaker A: to raise a hand against him.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Let the hand of the Philistines be against him. Then David responded, who am I and
[00:16:48] Speaker A: what is my family or my father's clan in Israel, that I should become the king's son in law.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: And when it was time to give
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Saul's daughter Marib to David, she was given to Adriel the Methy as a Wife.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: So we see how this elevation in
[00:17:03] Speaker A: position actually goes for David.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: It goes nowhere. It's bad.
It shows us first how. How David can no longer serve in his old role. Just like David can't hide in the fields, he can't hide in the court. He tries to, but now he has Saul's eye, and he has Saul's jealousy. And when one of Saul's fits comes over him, David tries his old standby, right, I'm going to play music for him. I'm going to calm him down. But now David isn't that guy anymore. He's a rival.
And Saul, in his state of raving, decides to take him out. He throws one of his spears at David. And notice, by the way, the text says he does this twice.
That actually shows us.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: That little detail, shows us two important things.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: The first one is this.
I don't know if you've thought about this bit, but David should not have
[00:17:51] Speaker A: been able to dodge Saul's attacks.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: And that's just. That's just the reality of this. This is closed quarters. Saul's palace was not large by any means. We actually, we have archeological evidence of it. It was incredibly tiny.
He had, like a big, old, huge
[00:18:07] Speaker A: living room for his throne room, right?
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Like, it's not big.
And there's not an easy way to
[00:18:12] Speaker A: dodge a throne spear.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Trained soldiers would throw these spears at
[00:18:15] Speaker A: about 90 miles per hour.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: And so when a spear is thrown
[00:18:19] Speaker A: at you in close quarters, this is
[00:18:21] Speaker B: the military doctrine of the day, is not dodge it.
It's deflect it with your shield, hope it hits your armor at a glance. That's the strategy when a spear is
[00:18:31] Speaker A: thrown at you at close range because
[00:18:32] Speaker B: they're too fast to dodge David, I
[00:18:36] Speaker A: don't know if you thought about this.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Not wearing armor, no shield. He's off duty. He's in musician mode, right? He's got his lyre with him, but he dodges the spear not once, but but twice.
That that is a miracle from God. Like, that's God intervening for David supernaturally to save him. And by the way, it seems that Saul notices this, right? Like, Saul very specifically is like, oh, shoot. That's evidence to him that even though the Lord has abandoned Saul, he's with David because he miraculously escaped his spear twice.
The second thing we see here is that David, in the midst of all this, is still in good faith attempting to serve Saul as his king.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Think about this for a moment.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: The fact that David dodged his one singular spear twice tells us one really important detail.
It means David didn't run out of the room after the first spear throw, right?
David's in there trying to calm him
[00:19:40] Speaker A: down while he's having this episode.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: He's playing music for him, and Saul goes psycho and throws a spear at him, and he dodges it and keeps playing music.
He loves Saul. He sees this as an expression of his episode. He's trying to help him, to soothe him. It takes a second throw before David goes, I should leave, right?
I think this is important because it speaks to David's heart and his desire for Saul.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Even now, he honors and serves him as king, as a good Israelite ought.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: But Saul is done.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: He doesn't want David around anymore, so
[00:20:18] Speaker B: he makes him a raiding captain and sends him out with a band of a thousand troops to help protect the
[00:20:23] Speaker A: border and to engage in skirmishes and raids.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: By the way, this is just a little moment.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: It's not the point of our text
[00:20:29] Speaker B: today, but in terms of the ark of David's life, this is actually a really important moment.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: This is a transition point that helps define who David becomes as a man and as a king.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: And this is something that's actually kind of. Kind of disconcerting, kind of uncomfortable for
[00:20:44] Speaker A: us as modern Western readers. We do a lot to avoid this truth.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: But this little bit shows us where David begins his training and transitions from
[00:20:52] Speaker A: being some random guy, some random soldier,
[00:20:55] Speaker B: to being a warlord.
In fact, the primary way David would
[00:20:59] Speaker A: have been known in his culture and his society and in history is as a warlord.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: We want to think of David as a king, as a general, as an artist, and those things are all true.
But David spends the vast majority of his young life leading a group of soldiers that are mostly independent to raid and pillage as they see fit as the primary means of paying themselves and feeding their families. David is every definition of an ancient Near Eastern warlord. And it's actually really important to know that because it defines his character, it defines the decisions he makes. We're going to get to certain texts
[00:21:37] Speaker A: over the course of his life where
[00:21:39] Speaker B: he makes decisions that to us seem incredibly strange and foreign, but actually make
[00:21:44] Speaker A: total sense to an ancient Near Eastern independent warlord.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: And so you have to hold on to that piece. Again, not the point of our text today, but this is the road David begins down. He gets given this small company, this small band of soldiers, and they're sent to protect the border, but really to engage in raids, to go across the border, to pillage, to take stuff, to strengthen Israel's position. And what we find out is, and this Again is also just kind of strange to us.
God blesses this endeavor.
David is the spirit of God blesses David as a warrior and as a captain. And he's really, really good at this.
He's so good that he becomes famous. The people know him. They know when David's band shows up, things are going to go good for Israel. Well this, this pushes Saul even further.
Saul begins the text says to dread David. This isn't just jealousy, this isn't just dislike, it isn't even just fear. He has a dread of David, Saul and has handed David the platform that now makes him a very real threat for his throne. And Saul sees it.
The people love David. He's good at his job, he's protecting them. But Saul sees a threat, so he comes up with a scheme.
He offers to marry David to his oldest daughter. This is interesting a little bit because David has already promised, or Saul's already promised that David would get to marry
[00:23:11] Speaker A: one of his daughters. Right.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: That was part of the boon for defeating Goliath. But for whatever reason, he hasn't actually pulled the trigger on that deal yet.
And now we see a little bit
[00:23:21] Speaker A: of what's going on.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: You see if you remember this bit,
[00:23:24] Speaker A: just a little bit of cultural disconnect.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Love marriage as we practice it in the west was not very common at
[00:23:32] Speaker A: this point in history.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: And especially amongst ancient Near Eastern like
[00:23:37] Speaker A: royalty, it was almost non existent.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Saul's daughters, as much as he probably loved them, they were also incredibly powerful political tools.
Their marriages were incredibly strategic and important for Israel. Those marriages would have been reserved for moments that strengthened the kingdom. And there were two primary ways in history we see that happen. The first one was that simply just a super wealthy family would pay a massive bride price to get one of the king's daughters. As a normal custom back then, if you wanted your son to marry someone else's daughter, you gave her dad a ton of money and any dads and
[00:24:13] Speaker A: daughters in the room were going, sounds like a sick custom, we should bring that one back.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: But that was pretty normal back then. You paid some form of a bride
[00:24:24] Speaker A: price in order for the honor of your son marrying someone else's daughter.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: A kingly bride price was pretty massive and so only the wealthiest of the wealthy could afford it. And that was good for the country because it would increase the king's holdings and strengthen the nation. The second most common way it happened was when a strong political leader would
[00:24:45] Speaker A: marry one of the king's family.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: This would either merge their political interests or even make formal treaties between nations. You have to remember, back in this day, most political networks were actually kinship networks.
That's really how politics were formed in
[00:25:00] Speaker A: the ancient near east, was through weddings and cousins and second cousins. Like, that's kind of how they did it.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: So Saul offers his oldest daughter to David as a way of trying to lock him down.
Commit to me. Essentially what he says, Commit to me that you'll be content as just one of my generals, and in exchange, I'll let you marry my daughter and your children will be princes.
That's basically the deal that Saul's offering to him here. Commit to me that you'll be content in your current station, and I'll let
[00:25:35] Speaker A: your kids be princes.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: Saul is trying to deal with his dread. He does not want David to exist as a threat to his throne.
Ironically, and this is very key to just how we see Saul at this
[00:25:48] Speaker A: stage in his life, ironically, that even
[00:25:52] Speaker B: if you took worldly motivations, the ones that Saul was assuming, and those were actually true of David, even if David was just as conniving and evil as Saul thinks he is, and even if David was willing to abide by this agreement, which there's nothing forcing him to outside of his word, all this was doing was setting up Saul's kids to be rivals with David's kids. This was punting the problem one generation.
Like, if he actually thought David was this conniving warlord who wanted to steal his kingdom from him, all he's securing with this plot is, well, at least I won't have to deal with it. My kids can figure it out when it's their turn. Which is the exact kind of selfishness we expect from Saul. This is the kind of man he's becoming as his story, as his life progresses. But beyond this, David has to commit to dedicating his life to being a warrior for Saul at the border.
And so Saul's looking at this going, man, the law of averages is on my side. If you spend your entire life doing border skirmishes, eventually a Philistine arrow is going to strike true, and my problems will be solved.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Right?
[00:27:05] Speaker B: That's what he sees going on here. But David is not about these political schemes. David is over here trying to walk forward with faith and integrity.
He's over here doing his best to serve God and serve his kingdom. And I think what's interesting is the author here really presents it in such a way that we're supposed to see David is just kind of naively unaware
[00:27:25] Speaker A: of these plots going on against him.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Instead, he defers marrying the king's daughter. He goes, oh, look, my family's not wealthy. We can't afford a big bride price. We're not influential. There's nothing gained for the crown. But it would be wrong for me to be the one to marry your daughter.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: This would be wrong.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: I shouldn't do this.
Even though by every single fleshly account, this would have elevated David, this would have secured him, secured his family, he steps back from it out of his integrity, and in doing so, he sidesteps this massive trap that Saul has laid for him. We're getting to the point in the text where there is an almost Mr.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Magoo level of protection against David in his political intrigue.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: Like, it is. It is almost as if God has given David plot armor as he works his way through the life in the throne room in Gibeah. Like, the king tries to kill him with a spear. And David's like, and this dude's mental health is crazy. I should be nicer to him. That's. That's a wild response, right? I need to serve him better. The king goes, fine, go get killed defending the border. And David's just wildly successful and becomes a deadly captain and a war leader. So Saul's like, marry my daughter, and I'll send you permanently into battle so you can die. And David's response is, I'm not worthy to marry your daughter. I'm just a simple shepherd and warrior. Let me serve the kingdom in my own way. Right? Like, by all of this, God is working through David's honesty, working through David's integrity, working through David's hard work to protect him from tragedy.
And, guys, I think it is worse. Like, yes, laugh at that for a moment. I think it's worth stopping there for
[00:29:04] Speaker A: a moment and considering this truth.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: This highlights a powerful truth for us
[00:29:10] Speaker A: as followers of Christ.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: We keep coming back to this theme, but the reality is following Christ is difficult.
To give your yes to Jesus is hard. It's difficult.
It means you have hardship in this life.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: It means you have difficulty. It means you have trials.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: And yet we very likely have no
[00:29:33] Speaker A: idea how much God is actually protecting us outside of our knowledge.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: We have no idea all the times
[00:29:40] Speaker A: God is going ahead of us and around us and behind us to protect us from traps and tragedy.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: We just don't see it.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: We're Mr. Magooing our way through life, and God is going ahead and setting up these scenarios and protecting us. If you were too young to know what Mr. Magoo is, you need to go on YouTube today and remedy that. This is Classic, like Hannah Barbera era. Worth the knowledge to have in your head.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Because many of us, many, and I'm not going to give you further than
[00:30:10] Speaker A: that, you have to go find it.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: Many of us allow the pain of
[00:30:14] Speaker A: this world, I think, to harden our hearts, to make us cynical.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: I've been hurt.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: I've been hurt so many times that
[00:30:21] Speaker B: I have to be wary. I have to be cynical. I have to protect my.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: My own heart.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: But in David's life, we see him walking forward in faith and integrity, not assuming the worst in Saul or his life or in his God. We see God going ahead of David in the midst of that, in the midst of that integrity and protecting him.
I think it's beautiful. I think it's beautiful because as you see reading the story, David's circumstances are still incredibly difficult.
God's supernatural provision for David is not to remove the difficulty from him.
It's not to put his life on easy street.
He still is facing trials, he still is facing suffering, he still is facing difficulty. And yet in the midst of it, God is going in the midst of his life and working in ways that David Blakely never knew to protect him, to sustain him, to walk him forward.
He doesn't allow the trials to crush him, but instead he protects him in the midst of the hardship. I think that's beautiful.
There was a moment earlier in my life when Kim and I were still
[00:31:35] Speaker A: engaged, really close to getting married. I got laid off at my first ministry job.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: I have an undergraduate degree in theology, and I thought I would be the youth pastor at the church I grew
[00:31:44] Speaker A: up at my whole life. That is what I thought. I loved it. I loved working there.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: But five months out from my wedding, it fell apart.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: And I found myself delivering Chinese food part time while filling out applications for government aid for housing so that my wife and I could afford to live in five months. I felt crushed.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: I had walked forward in faith. I was trying to give God my radical yes. In the education I pursued and the training I got and the discipleship I got and the. The way I was living my life,
[00:32:16] Speaker A: I was trying to give God this radical yes, but nothing was working out.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: And then seemingly at the last minute,
[00:32:23] Speaker A: I got a bite and this church started talking back and forth with me. And I actually ended up in the final running for a youth ministry position for a church in inner city, Salt Lake City.
And they wanted me to come in and be their youth pastor and do outreach to the gang community, the youth gang community in their particular neighborhood.
And Kim and I prayed over It. And we said, okay, we want to be willing to walk forward with this in boldness, and we give God our yes. And we're willing to move away from family. We're willing to move into this dangerous neighborhood. We're willing to do this. And so we. They scheduled a time for us to fly out, and they were going to have me preach and show us the neighborhood and give us time to do house hunting and all these sorts of things. And so we're letting our family into this. Okay. Like, we think. We think we might be moving to Salt Lake City.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: And then about a week before.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: The week before that weekend, they called us and said, just kidding, we're actually going to bring out just someone else. We're canceling your flight. Sorry.
And that was six weeks before my wedding day.
And I was crushed.
I thought, what the heck am I supposed to do?
[00:33:26] Speaker B: How. How can I. How can I be more open to what God has for me? How can I give him a more radical yes than I'll move across the country and go work with the Heresity gang kids, right? Like, whatever you want, Lord. Like, what. What is going on here? And I remember calling one of my
[00:33:42] Speaker A: mentors in the middle of deliveries. I was like, between deliveries, and I was crying in my car, and I was so upset. And I called this mentor in ministry, and he just said to me, he
[00:33:51] Speaker B: goes, you know, I don't know if
[00:33:53] Speaker A: this will help you right now, but I'm going to share it with you.
He goes, when. When the fish showed up and ate Jonah, Jonah thought he was dying.
Jonah thought that was his punishment, but that was actually Jonah's salvation.
That was actually God intervening to protect Jonah from death.
And he actually had something for him on the other side of that. And he goes, this. This may feel like a punishment, but I actually think God has something for you in it.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: And I'll be honest, in that moment, that's not what I wanted to hear.
Well, Addison says, not encouraging at all. Thanks a lot. You know, but unbeknownst to me, that
[00:34:33] Speaker A: same week, my wife shared with a friend what happened as a prayer request.
And that friend said, you know, I think the church I grew up at is looking for a youth pastor, and that church was looking for a youth pastor. And that church was in Baldwin, Missouri.
And that was the path that God moved forward to move my family into West County 15 years ago so that we could plan our roots in this community in this zip code and get to walk for a decade and a half with the same families, the same Community, pouring out, gospel faithfulness and getting to see children raise up and become adults and fall in love with the Lord and get married and have kids. Like all those things, I had no clue that was what God had in mind.
But that was the way God worked in that moment. He took our radical yes, to do
[00:35:16] Speaker B: something really extreme and then crunched it
[00:35:19] Speaker A: right at the last second.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: And I, you know, I literally, I
[00:35:22] Speaker A: don't know anything about that church.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: That may, that may be an amazing church.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: That may have been a wonderful position, but that wasn't what God actually had for us, right?
And God intervened. He intervened in a way that didn't
[00:35:33] Speaker B: feel fun, that didn't take away the
[00:35:34] Speaker A: hardship, but was actually a protection, was actually a preparation, was actually moving us toward what God had for us.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: God worked in the midst of David's
[00:35:45] Speaker A: difficulty and faithfulness to protect him. Beloved, God is doing the same for you.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: He's doing the same for you.
And you need to know something.
God's loving, gracious kindness on your behalf. It empowers you to live a different kind of life.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: Read on with me and let's finish this text with one of the single grossest passages in the whole Bible. Verse 20.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Now, Saul's daughter Michael loved David and. And when it was reported to Saul, it pleased him, I'll give her to him. Saul thought, she'll be a trap for him and the hand of the Philistines will be against him. So Saul said to David a second time, you can now be my son in law. Saul then ordered his servants, speak to David in private and tell him, look, the king is pleased with you. All his servants love you, therefore you should become the king's son in law. Saul's servants reported these words directly to David. But he replied, is it trivial in your sight to become the king's son in law? I am a poor commoner.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: The servants reported back to Saul, These
[00:36:47] Speaker B: are the words David spoke. Then Saul replied, say this to David, the king desires no other bride price except 100 philistine foreskins to take revenge on his enemies.
Actually, Saul intended to cause David's death at the hand of the Philistines. When the servants reported these terms to David, he was pleased to become the king's son in law.
Before the wedding day arrived in David and his men went out and killed 200 Philistines. He brought their foreskins and presented them as full payment to the king to become his son in law.
Then Saul gave his daughter Michael to David as his wife. Saul realized the Lord was with David and that his daughter Michal loved him. And he became even more afraid of David as a result. Saul was David's enemy from then on. Every time the Philistine commanders came out to fight, David was more successful than all of Saul's officers, so his name became well known.
Okay, we are all mature adults in this room and we can do this.
We can do this.
David had downplayed marrying Saul's older daughter, so he eventually married her off for strategic reasons. But now he hears that his younger daughter, Michael, actually really does love David. How convenient. Perfect. This gives him an exception. Excuse to try the same scheme. But this time he ups the ante. David has said he can't afford a bride price. Fine. Michael loves David and Saul's already promised one of his daughters, so he plays it cool.
He sends his servants to go drop hints to David. Oh, just go tell him. Tell him how much of a good idea it would be. Tell him how great it would be to be my son in law. Tell him how much everybody loves him. And so they go and they tell him that. They tell him how good an idea this would be. But David's integrity steps in again.
[00:38:38] Speaker A: I shouldn't do this.
I have nothing to offer the king of value.
But Saul has planned for this.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: So he has his servants tell David. Oh, Saul loves David so much. And Michael is so in love with him, he doesn't want a traditional bride price. All he wants is you just kill
[00:38:52] Speaker A: 100 Philistines and that's enough.
Okay, we can't move past this without acknowledging the reality for just a second. Just a second.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: The bride price Saul asks for is 100 foreskins.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: And here's the thing, guys.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: The reason for that is practical. You have to remember Israelites circumcised their babies. So any male soldier who was in
[00:39:18] Speaker A: possession of a foreskin was guaranteed not to be an Israelite.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: So that's the evidence that the guys David killed were actually Israel's enemies and not Israelites. Gross.
Effective, but gross.
The text here is really plain.
Saul is envisioning David going out in
[00:39:40] Speaker A: this role of this elite warrior and
[00:39:42] Speaker B: slaying 100 enemies to prove his love for Saul and his daughter. He thinks this is more than enough odds to get David killed. But Saul's scheme backfires. Because when David hears of the bride price, he gets excited.
Killing Philistines.
I've actually become surprisingly good at that over the last couple of years. That's my actual job.
I can do that really well.
And so he thinks about the tools at his disposal. Because David is not an idiot. And he has a band of a thousand soldiers who, like him, are also trained to do nothing but kill Philistines.
And so they go out and they double the amount because, you know, he
[00:40:23] Speaker A: has a thousand trained warriors, and it's really just 200 philistines.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: And so he gets the stuff, and he comes back with a bag, 200 philistine foreskins, and gives them to the king. Listen, guys, this is not at the point of the story, I cannot emphasize enough how much this is not the
[00:40:44] Speaker A: purpose of this text.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: But you do have to just think
[00:40:48] Speaker A: about that for a minute, right?
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Like, just a minute.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: Because you don't kill 200 guys in one day.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: You gotta find them. That takes time.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: There's harvesting, there's travel time.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: And then he's just in the room, like, okay, Saul's, like, sitting in his throne room, right? And the page comes in and he's like, hey, David's back. He needs to see you. He's got something.
And David walks in the room, and he's just got a bag.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: It probably squelches when he sets it down.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: Anyway. Contender for top 10 grossest scenes in scripture, right? Regardless, you imagine the scene. David's excited. He's been honoring God and serving the king, and now he's getting rewarded, right? He gets to marry the princess who actually loves him. It's a textbook ending.
Except that this wasn't Saul's plan.
He's not excited that David is back. This was supposed to kill David.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: But now, because of David's popularity, because
[00:41:50] Speaker B: of his raging success, Saul has to keep his word and marry Michael off to David. The text tells us from that moment on, Saul saw David not as a friend, not as a soldier, not as a worker, not even as a threat or a rival, but as an enemy.
Saul's heart has completely turned on David.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: He is the enemy.
And by the way, think about this
[00:42:18] Speaker B: from Saul's worldly perspective for a moment.
His son Jonathan is loyal to David. His daughter Michael loves David. He's successful in everything he does. Nothing can kill this guy.
And everyone, all of the leaders, all the political leaders, all the common people, everyone loves him.
This is nuts.
Saul wants to take him down, right? This guy is a very real threat to his rule.
But the text ends with this note
[00:42:51] Speaker A: reminding us of the larger theological context for the story.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: You see, Saul may see David as
[00:42:59] Speaker A: an enemy, but God has put his spirit in David.
And God is blessing everything David does. God is the one working on David's Behalf.
Here's what I think is so cool about this story. I think this brings us to the fundamental gospel truth of this scripture. And that's simply this.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: David didn't short circuit God's plan.
You see that David knows he's been
[00:43:26] Speaker A: anointed King of Israel. He knows in the clearest terms possible
[00:43:29] Speaker B: what God has called him to in his life. But he doesn't try and reach out and grasp it. He doesn't chase after it. Instead, he walks forward with slow faith and integrity. He continually chose faithful service, and God blessed it. There have been so many moments when David could have grasped for more power, more prestige. And we can see how each of those was a trap that had a plot hiding behind it. David didn't know that.
He just knew that God had anointed him. And God had his own timing. So he walks forward slowly, in patience, in faithfulness, and God blesses it.
He protects him. He uses the trials to sanctify him, to prepare him. And God takes him step by step forward toward his calling. Beloved, this should draw your eyes to Christ.
This should. This should immediately make you think of Jesus. Think of the life and ministry of Jesus.
Jesus knew his calling.
He knew why the Father sent him to earth. He knew what he was about. But like David, Christ didn't short circuit the Father's plan.
I mean, think about Satan's temptations of Jesus. In Matthew 4, he offered Jesus all the things he wanted. Food. And in the midst of fasting, acknowledgment from the religious leaders, spiritual authority over the lost people of the earth, but on Satan's terms rather than God's.
So Jesus rebuked it and chose to walk forward toward the cross. Think about that, beloved.
Christ walked forward with integrity and confidence. And God the Father worked through it in power to bring about our salvation.
Because the power of salvation was not in Satan's authority. It was in Jesus blood spilled on the cross. It was in God's righteous wrath poured out on sin being fulfilled in Christ's broken body. Jesus didn't short circuit the plan.
He walked forward in faith, in obedience, in integrity, even though it was unimaginably hard.
[00:45:31] Speaker A: And God used that to bring about the redemption of reality.
[00:45:35] Speaker B: Paul says it better than I can
[00:45:36] Speaker A: say it in Philippians 2. You guys know this text? It's the Christ Hymn. He says this to you. Church.
[00:45:42] Speaker B: Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form
[00:45:46] Speaker A: of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped or exploited. Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant taking on the likeness of humanity.
[00:45:57] Speaker B: And when he had come as a
[00:45:58] Speaker A: man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient
[00:46:01] Speaker B: to the point of death, even to
[00:46:03] Speaker A: death on a cross.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, Jesus. Humility. Jesus's own integrity created the environment where the triune God could work out the gospel redemption of the universe.
Come on, church.
And by the way, look what Paul says at the beginning of that hymn.
Your attitude, beloved, of Jesus, your attitude, your mind, your thoughts should be the same as that of Christ.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: We are to live like Jesus in this sense.
We are to live with the kind
[00:46:59] Speaker B: of trust and integrity that creates space to see God move in power.
I would say that is the actual
[00:47:07] Speaker A: truth and reality of Jesus. Accomplished work on the cross.
It fuels our integrity, beloved.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: It's the fuel behind our integrity. Because Jesus did what he did, because he had integrity and faith, because his work on the cross is real and sufficient, we can look to our own lives and choose moment by moment, integrity and faith in the midst of difficulty. Because here's the deal.
We know integrity matters.
We know the people who actually do what they say, even when no one's looking. We know the real ones when we see them. We know that and we want that for ourselves. And we sort of can.
Right?
We sort of can. We can use discipline and willpower and training to try and live holy lives when no one is looking. But ultimately we know in our heart of hearts that people are people. And we do what we do for a reason. And usually it's we do what we want.
We do what is comfortable. We do what brings us pleasure. We do what we do for our own selfishness.
And even if you might hold out in discipline for a while, eventually we all choose that.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: But the cross, beloved, frees us.
Frees us to true and real integrity. Because now we have context for our lives and our decisions.
Because the cross defeated sin and death. The cross means I have my eternity with Christ secure. I don't have to take things into my own hands.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: I don't have to control or bend
[00:48:35] Speaker A: things to my own benefit because I can trust in God's timing.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: The cross frees us to actually live with integrity because it secures our lives within a context of grace.
[00:48:49] Speaker A: Band, if you want to come back up, I'm Going to invite us to land out and pray and consider this.
Beloved, think of the areas of your own life.
[00:48:59] Speaker B: And I'm being.
[00:49:00] Speaker A: I'm being very serious when I say this. Be as specific as you can in your own heart.
[00:49:04] Speaker B: Think of the areas of your life,
[00:49:06] Speaker A: day by day, that test your integrity.
Think about the moments you choose, minute by minute. Your work ethic, whether it's a classroom or a boardroom or a warehouse.
[00:49:20] Speaker B: Do you cut every corner?
[00:49:21] Speaker A: Do you slide on reported hours and exact assignments?
Are you honest?
Or do you bend your words and your agreements toward your own benefit?
But your sexual ethics?
Do you honor God with your thoughts, your actions, how you spend your time, what you choose to watch, who you. What you. What people you choose to spend time with and think about your time?
Do you honor God with your time?
Do you redeem the moments you have for good, for the sake of others, for the sake of the kingdom?
Or do we waste our moments away in our anxiety and our scrolling as. I could keep listing examples and they're helpful, but I would encourage you to think about your own life, because I'm pretty confident if you're quiet for a moment.
You know the moments in your life that test your integrity.
You know the struggles you have, the sins you run back to because they're comfortable, the decisions you make for self, for flesh, over and over and over.
I would encourage you to remember that for a moment.
[00:50:29] Speaker B: Not because I'm trying to make you
[00:50:30] Speaker A: feel bad right before we're done, because
[00:50:34] Speaker B: I want to encourage you to take
[00:50:35] Speaker A: your integrity, your relationship with your own integrity, and put it next to the cross of Christ.
Because, beloved, Jesus changes this for you.
The cross of Jesus changes this for you.
You can come to Christ today. Hear this, church. I'm so serious when I say this.
It doesn't matter if it is the first time or the 5000th time.
You can bring your failure, your selfishness, your lack of integrity, your habituated sin. You can bring it to Christ and say, I just.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: I just can't.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: I can't do it, cannot fix this. I keep doing it.
I know this is what integrity looks like. I keep choosing this.
You can do that. You can do that right now.
And Jesus, do I know Jesus, who we talk about, the Christ who died on the cross for you and me, his response to our confession and our repentance is grace.
It's grace.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: It's forgiveness, it's life, it's redemption, it's restoration.
That's hard for us because we don't work that way right like, there's a story where Peter is a Jesus, and
[00:51:58] Speaker A: he says, hey, my buddy does something bad to me. The same thing over and over again. How many times should I forgive him? Like, seven times, right?
And he's thinking, this is so holy. Oh, I'd forgive the same guy for the same thing seven times. Because most of us wouldn't do that, right? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. But it's the same thing. Get out of here, right?
Jesus's response to him is, hey, if you're counting how many times you forgive someone, you're doing it wrong.
Beloved, that is how your Christ views you today.
That's how he views you today.
The cross is available to you.
There is redemption. There is forgiveness available to you. It does not matter if this is the 5000th time. You can come to him and you can find life and forgiveness and redemption.
And that changes you.
That's what builds integrity in our lives. That's what changes our actions and our decisions.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: It is the safety, the bedrock of
[00:52:57] Speaker A: the grace of Christ, who loves you so much that his grace never runs out.
