1 Samuel 16 - From Bethlehem To The Heart (Life of David 2) Christmas 2

https://www.facebook.com/ablossombiblechurch

Chapters

• 0:00 Tempo: 120.0

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

All right, 1 Samuel 16 is where we're at. Little combo series here. We are starting uh second uh study into uh a series on the life of David, right? Life of David, but it's also kind of a twofer. It's uh if you listen, you'll catch it, it's a Christmas study as well. It will be focused towards Christmas as well. Here in 1 Samuel 16. Let's just jump into it rather than all of that. Um last study was very dark. If you were here last study, we we had as a theme there the end of the book of Judges. It's the time that David came into, where everyone did what was right in their own eyes, and there was no king in Israel. It was a dark time, a time of anarchy. It was a time there when the people uh asked Samuel for a king. We want a king, just like all the other nations. And God gave them really their choice, uh, their Saul. He was what you'd expect, and a king. Tall, dark, handsome. Now, what we know is God had a plan to give them a king, but it wasn't Saul, it was David, who was ultimately the king, Jesus. Um, but here in 1 Samuel 16, uh God is gonna have Samuel go and anoint David as king. Uh look at verse 1. Now the Lord said to Samuel, How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill your horns with oil and go. I'm sending you to Jessen the Bethlehem Bethlehemite, for I have provided myself a king amongst his sons. So, chapter 15, if you turn the page back, uh God is done with Saul. Saul has become more and more stubborn, he hasn't obeyed, he's rebelled against God's command, and God essentially says in chapter 15, I'm through with you. Samuel, go and find me a new king. Now notice the end of verse one here. God says, I've provided myself a king among his sons. Interesting passage to look at. Uh, the literal translation of this is for I've seen among his sons for myself a king. In other words, this one that would be chosen is God's king, God's choice for king. Uh, if the people were going to choose a king, it would have been Saul. That's why he became king, tall, dark, handsome, head and shoulders above it, everybody else, somebody to represent uh the strength of Israel. But if God were choosing a king, it would look like David. We find out later that David is a man after God's own heart. He's got a heart turned towards God. Now, notice verse 2. Samuel's got a problem here. And he says, How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me. But the Lord said, Take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Then invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do. You shall anoint for me the one I named to you. So Samuel did what the Lord said and went to Bethlehem. And the elders of town trembled at the coming and said, Do you come peaceably? And he said, Peaceably. Now, stop there for a second. Um, they're a little nervous when they see Samuel coming. Now, if you read chapter 15, you understand maybe why they're a little nervous. In chapter 15, as Saul disobeys God's word to kill Agat, king of the Amalekites, wicked guy. Saul doesn't do it. Samuel comes and finds out, and what does he do? He hacks Agon to pieces, one of the colorful portions of Old Testament history. This wicked king. Samuel comes in and just ninja on him. You know what I mean? Uh so the people of Bethlehem see Samuel coming with all that in mind, and they go, Whoa, what are you doing here, Sam? You okay? You come in peace? Ninja, you know, and uh and he says, Yes, I come in peace. I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. This is verse 5. Sanctify yourselves and come out with me to the sacrifice. Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. So it was when they came that he looked, Samuel looked at Eliad, the oldest son, there, and said, Surely, the Lord's anointed is before him. But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. So here in the city of Bethlehem, um Samuel comes to sacrifice and to choose the name. Now, Bethlehem, just kind of a little color here, it's about seven, six or seven miles from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is in the hills, in the mountains. And so Bethlehem is really in the foothills there of the area. You can picture that. Bethlehem, the name itself, means house of bread. Um, and so they grow wheat and they have agriculture. Uh it's big on the agriculture. So you can picture this small town, just a few hundred people there in the population, and and the elders are sacrificing was Samuel. Samuel's secretly coming to choose the next king. Now notice, and we'll come to it a little later there, but Eliab, the oldest son of Jesse, comes in. He looks like a king. He's the tallest, he's the buffest, right? He's got it all together. And Samuel says, I'm just gonna guess this is the next king, Jesse's oldest son. In verse 7, though, God sets him straight. And this is a great verse to consider, um, a great verse to underline. Um, God sets him straight and says, Samuel, Samuel, don't look at the outward appearance. Man looks at the outward appearance. And honestly, what else could man do, right? What else do we have? When we see a person, we see the outside. None of us, I don't think, any of us, can look at a person and see their thoughts and see their heart. We can make a lot of judgment calls on the way a person dresses or or what whatever on the outside, but it honestly is the best that we have as people. It's the best we can do. But God says, you don't understand. I don't see people that way, Samuel. I see the heart. Before anything else, and above anything else, I see the heart. And so when God looks at us, he sees the heart. That can be a scary thought, right? God sees our thoughts, God sees our heart, he sees our intentions behind the things that we do and say, Oh, I'm doing this for the people. He's like, Yeah, right, you're doing this for you. And you know, these are wicked little hearts. And and so here, this telling verse, God says that what's inside of this next king is important. Man looks at the outward appearance. I look at the heart. Um, and so God has this real consideration of what's inside David. Um now, what we see in this passage, and and as we move along here, is really the rejection of the king. If last week was the time of the king, what it was like, the world of the king, this is the rejection of the king. And we all have a tendency to reject God as king in our life and God's plan for our life. Um, but but let's just look at this. Who the people had chosen. Now, God gave them who they wanted, it was Saul, but they choose it, they choose him for what he looked like, what was on the outside. He was the choice of the flesh, and that's important to notice. Saul was the choice of the flesh. Um, and God tells Samuel in 1 Samuel 8:7, hey, Sam, don't be upset. They're not rejecting you, they're rejecting me. And that's the flesh, right? The flesh is the opposition to God. And in here they choose Saul, the flesh. The flesh, everybody has it, right? You can hold on to your arm there, that's your flesh. The flesh is our simplest instinct, but it is the polar opposite of the spiritual plan of God. And check it out. We always default to our flesh. What feels good, what feels right, what we want, our desires, we default to those things when left to ourselves. We don't naturally go to the spirit. None of us naturally go to the spirit. We always go to the flesh. Now, we see this because I love God's word. I love to spend time in God's word. But when it's morning time, and I'm gonna spend time in God's word, because that's what I'm determined, that's a discipline I want in my life. Man, I instinctively first check my mail. I check my mail, just being honest, I check the news. I check both sides of the news, right? I check every bit of Facebook that I can glance over, and then I usually check my Amazon deliveries. What's coming today? I want to make sure that I don't miss anything. I check all of that, and then I finally get into God's word, right? Because I'm that distracted. I am, but none of us really crave the things of the spirit. When we do, it's a miracle, right? If you're like, I'm just really into God's word right now, that's a miracle. Ride that way. You know what I mean? Um, now the flesh, the choices of the flesh, just that magnetism of the flesh in our life, will always overpower the spirit if we let it. And it will ruin the things that God wants to do in our life. There really is a warning here. Beware of the flesh, the king of the flesh soul. Beware of sin. Sin, sort of the result of the flesh, right? The end result of the flesh will always keep us from what God wants to do in our life. Be careful of it. But next we see that it's not just our fleshly little selves that take us away from God's king, it's this blind side. Uh, notice it happens to two people here. Um, it happens to Samuel and it happens to Jesse. Um, Samuel, we saw. Um, but notice verse 8. So Jesse called the Benadab and made him pass before Samuel. Samuel said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one. Then Jesse made Shema pass by, Nep's son in line. And he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one. Jesse and Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, The Lord has not chosen. Samuel said to Jesse, Are these all the are all the young men here? Then he said, There remains yet the youngest, and there he is keeping the sheep. And Samuel said to Jesse, send and bring him, for we will not sit down till he comes here. So notice these guys, we could say maybe they're spiritual-minded people, at least Samuel should be, but Samuel misses it initially. He's like, Eliab's the guy, right? Um, Jesse notice he doesn't even think to call David to come along as this is all going down. He doesn't even think that David could be a part of it. Now, David was the youngest, he's the youngest of eight sons, and and yeah, wasn't seen as much. Now, this you can't blame him too much. This was the culture of the day, right? The firstborn had all the rights. Um, and and God even said that in the law that the firstborn would get uh twice the benefit from being the heir there, twice the portion. That's Deuteronomy 21, if you want to read up on that. Exodus 13 says that the firstborn son would assume leadership in the family when the father died. Uh, Exodus 13 also said there was a special dedication of the firstborn to the Lord. And we remember Esau, right? The example of Esau. Jacob and Esau, they're twins, they're born so close together that Jacob is holding on to Esau's ankle when he's born, right? Twins, and you'll find out some of you. The interesting thing with twins is uh even if one is only two minutes younger, they're still your baby. You know what I mean? And and and Esau had the rights as the firstborn above Jacob, and that's just the way it was. So Jesse looking at his sons goes, Eliad is everything. Everybody else is just it's further down the road, you know, and that wasn't anything personal, that's just the way it was seen. And so these two well-leaning guys, Jesse and Samuel, they nearly missed out on God's choice for Cain. Now, this is a practical decision that they're making. This makes sense, even according to God's word. This makes sense. But listen, practicality can keep us from God's plan. That's not to say that God doesn't say use your brain when you make decisions, right? God gave us a brain, right? He expects us to use it in life to do the wise thing and the thing that makes good sense. But that's not always the way it goes. Sometimes God asks us to do things that aren't practical, but they're his will, right? And we oftentimes miss this. God's desire we miss for practicality. When we're thinking the wisest choice for our children's future. Um youth, uh, I would often, you know, every so often I would see kids that had heart at one point for just, you know, whatever crazy thing God might call me to do, I want to do it. And, you know, we do need to pray through those things for sure. But I've seen many parents shut down those ideas. Well, that's not practical. You really ought to think about this from a practical side. And I honestly understand. I understand now that I have kids that are growing up, makes good sense. That's what you want for your kids. That's reasonable. But so many times the practical will shut down God's rule in our life. Um, so many times we'll look at a desire in our heart to help someone. We'll say, Yeah, but that just doesn't make sense right now. If you understood my finances, you would understand that doesn't make sense. Yeah, but God might be asking you, might be telling you to do it. Uh, maybe it's an issue of time. Well, I just don't have any time. But maybe God really is leading you to do something outside of the practical. He does that often, I think. We want to be led and we want to be listening. We want to do the things that God has for us. And we want that for our kids as well. Um, it's not always what we see, it's what God leads to. And you can remember the children of Israel when they got to the promised land, right? The practical was we can't go in there because there's giants in the land. But God said, No, I've given you the land. Go in. Listen to what God says. Um, now sometimes it's the flesh that keeps us away from God's gift. Sometimes it's the practicality of life that just kind of blindsides us. But sometimes it's just the plain old clutter of life. And for this, we're gonna travel through time, right? Luke chapter two. Let's move to Luke chapter two. Traveling through time, that's a sound, right? Um traveling through time, but not space. We're still in the city of Jerusalem, the village of Jerusalem. Luke chapter two, it's the Christmas story. And now you've got a warm, cozy feeling going on here. It's the Christmas story. We read this every year, about a thousand years after David's time. You know the story, but let's read it. Luke chapter 2, verse 1. And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Corinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee from the city of Nazareth into Judea to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So was while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered, and she brought forth her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and lied him in a manger, laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. So it's the Christmas story here. Uh, Caesar puts out that all the world should be registered with attack. They're to go back to their hometown, the hometown of their Family. Well, Joseph is of the family of David. That's his genealogy. He's from the family of David, and so he goes to Bethlehem. And you know the story, it happened while they're there, that Mary gives birth to Jesus. Man, such a spectacular thing in human history that the Messiah is born, God in flesh, and that's all we get. You know what I mean? He was born, and that was that. And we see here this famous line in verse 7 that she gives birth in a stable, likely a cave behind the inn. Notice because there was no room in the inn. And of course, this leads to lots of great Christmas pageants and whatnot, but significant. As Mary and Joseph enter town and they're going around, they gotta find a place to stay, and there's just no room. There's no room for Jesus. And what wonderful application, right? Because the place is just cluttered with people. Every Airbnb is taken. And if they get the opportunity to stay in a shed, you know, a little shed where the animals are kept. And Jesus is born there, and he's laid in a feeding trough. And and yet it's all for the sake of clutter. Now we'll read in just a second that some shepherds they hear about this through a divine uh announcement. But other than that, in the little town Bethlehem, nobody else has a clue. Because there's just too much going on. There's too much clutter. And this automatically, think of a parable that Jesus told a little later in life. Matthew 13, the parable of the sowers, right? Jesus tells a story about four different kinds of soil, three bad, one good. A seed goes into that soil, and it only grows in the good soil. The other soils, no grow produce, right? That's the story in Matthew 13. Well, Jesus gives the interpretation. You can check that out. It's worth a read every day of your life. But in Matthew 13, verse 22, Jesus talks about the seed and the thorns. Now listen to this. The seed and the thorns. Now, he who received the seed, the seed is a picture of God's word, by the way. The soil is a picture of our hearts. He who receives a seed among the thorns is he who hears the word. Now listen, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. So this says so much. Jesus says, the word is always going out, like right now, like when you go home, like when you read in the mornings or in the evenings, whenever it is. God's word is always there and always going out. But our heart determines what the seed does, whether it grows or it doesn't. Now, this formy ground, you can picture it and weeds and such bringing up, it is like a cluttered heart. There's just too much. And the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the world. The cares of the world. Um the distractions of the world is another way you could uh put that. And we all have them, right? We have lots of stuff going on in our life. Um, lots of different things on our to-do list. Those cares can choke out what God wants to do. I have this, it's Christmas time, I gotta buy this, I got a few more gifts, a few more cards. I got these things to do. I just don't have time left now. Clutter, right? The deceitfulness of riches, and you can really think about that. Riches are deceitful. We think if we just had a little more, I wouldn't have a worry in the world. You'd have plenty of worry. You might even have more worry, right? Be careful. All these different things. You can just put things. Things choke out what God wants to do in our hearts, and we miss the most wonderful stuff because we're just cluttered with thoughts, distractions. Be aware of that this year. Now, the heart that receives, I think we see a little picture of it there in Luke chapter 2, uh, verse 8. Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. And the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day, good blessing, in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you. You'll find the babe wrapped in swallowing claws and lying in a manger, and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly boats praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Let's look at this verse 15. So it was when the angels had gone way into heaven that the shelter said to one another, Let us go to Bethlehem and see uh this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us. And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe who was lying in the manger. When they saw him, they why do they know? And the same, which was told them concerning this child. Pretty amazing, right? Nobody else catches it but some shepherds outside of town. Now, I just love to think about this. It's a thousand-year gap, but there's a strong possibility that those are the same fields that David wrote Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. Pretty cool to see. But here they are outside of the clutter. They're alone. It's their job. We can't give them too much credit. They're alone, but they're in their aloneness. God shows them something amazing. The Savior is born today. Nobody else knew it except for Mary and Joseph and these shepherds. Nobody else had a clue. And yet, I think it's just good application for us. There's a lot of things that can take us away from what God wants to do in our lives. Our own flesh, so distracting. Our own desires plus towards things that just don't even matter. Even practicality can sometimes drag us away from what God wants to do. But just the clutter of life, so many different voices, so many different things going on in our heart and in our life, so many things to do. Sometimes we just need to hold away like this outside of the clutter of the town and just hear what God wants to say. And and that's, I think, when God can really be Lord to us, King to us, where we get to see just the wonder of what he's done for us. Even the wonder of Christmas. Yeah, we get so distracted. I feel like Christmas is already here and gone this year. I don't know. It's weird. But yeah, what a wonderful thing that God would take on human flesh and dwell among us. Because he had to? Absolutely not. But because he wanted to, but because he loved us. So that that baby would grow up and and live and teach and heal and love and die on the cross for us. What amazing love that is as we uh come to this Christmas season. So, God, um I'm just gonna say that like everyone else, um, my life is pretty cluttered, and there's some things I just can't help. Guys, I just pray all the all the different things that are going on in your life that you would be able to take time and just see you is to be able to have the state as to how many spend and of course we would actually know you in a in a real and a personal way. That would help us Christmas season in the morning, just a holiday of the time of the year with scratching, quite helpful to see the