A Blossom Bible Podcast

1 Samuel 18:5-16 Power Under Control: Choosing God’s Will Over Your Own

• Jason Yetz

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SPEAKER_00:

All right, 1 Samuel 18. Start around verse 5. But we are considering the light of David, and we've seen his choosing, his anointing, his fight, standing in faith there against Goliath. And David's doing well, right? It's an uproad, uh, uphill climb there for him. Um, but he's doing well. But Saul is not. He's on the decline. And today we'll see Saul Growing in Jealousy. Now that's not the theme of this, growing in jealousy, but that's the that's the ugly part we see in Saul. Um Saul's response to David's success. But the thing we're going to want to notice, though, is David's response to Saul, because this is the part of the life of David where David is growing to be the person that God wants him to be. Well, let's read, starting in verse 5. So David went out wherever Saul sent him and behaved wisely. And Saul sent him over the men of war, and he was accepted in the sight of all people and in the sight of Saul's servants. Now it happens as they were coming home when David was returning from the slaughter of the Philistine, that's Goliath, that the women had come out from all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing to meet King Saul with tambourines, with joy, with musical instruments. So the women sang as they danced and said, Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands. And Saul was very angry, and the saying displeased him. And he said, They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed only thousands. Now, what more can he have but the kingdom? So Saul eyed David from that day forward, and it happened the next day, when that distressing spirit from God came upon Saul, then prophesied inside the house. So David played music with his hand, as at other times, but there was a spear in Saul's hand. And Saul cast the spear, for he said, I will pin David to the wall. But David escaped his presence twice. Now, Saul, by the way, was afraid of David. So here we see this growing jealousy in Saul. There's a new song in verse 7. It is the top ten, right, of the day. And I'll tell you, Saul hates this song. Saul is slaying his thousands, but David has tens of thousands. And you know what? I think David hated that song too. Every time he heard it on the radio, he was like, I hate that song, right? Because it really led uh to Saul just losing his mind because of jealousy. Uh Saul hated it from the get-go and became very angry. We see there the same displeased him. And the idea there is that it just broke him apart, right? His poor little Saul King heart there, it just shattered in a million pieces when he saw he wasn't the end all of everything. Um, jealousy. Man, it's a very common thing. Envy, super common in our lives. We don't even notice it most of the time, but here today, if anything, we can see how destructive those little things of jealousy and envy are. When somebody has something that we want, uh whether it's a life or a job or money or stuff or whatever, uh, give me anything. And they have what we want, and envy just starts to go inside of us, and jealousy just starts to grow. Um, it's human nature, right? Now, Saul, we read there, um he he started. Notice verse 9, he eyed David from that day forward. Um, give him the evil lie, we could say. And it's human nature to have a hard time with these kinds of things. Um Romans 12, 15 says this. You heard it. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. We thought that's that's good, that's Christian character, that's nice. But you ever notice it's way easier to weep with those that weep than it is to rejoice with those that rejoice, right? You know, when somebody's going through a hard time, they look down on and they're on the ground, we're like, oh buddy, come on, let me pick you up. And we weep with them. But when they get the promotion, right? They get the they win the lottery and we go, well, that's good for you, right? And a little bit of jealousy can jump in, or it's harder to rejoice with those who rejoice. And Saul's got a really hard time with it. He's not hiding it, he's jealous, he's envious when he sees David succeeding. So for Saul, this was a downward spiral. And if we were studying the life of Saul, it's a depressing story, for sure. Now, this will be a painful season in David's life, a season of testing and trial, but it'll be a time when God's really building character. About 13, 12 to 13 years the season in David's life is, but it'll bring character. Listen to this, Paul says in Romans 5, 3 through 5. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing. Now listen to this, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance. And perseverance, character, and character, hope. Now, hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. So Paul here says, tribulations, difficulties ultimately produce hope, but also character. Man, there is no other way to get character in our life, godly character. For David, it's the school of hard knocks. And what we really want to look at today is David's response in this. He's going to trust God. Where others might take matters into their own hands, David in meekness, and we'll talk about that idea, meekness, will determine to trust God to get him through. Now, there's a principle in this that David's living by, and I want you to see it. Turn to just a couple pages over, 1 Samuel chapter 20. Saul's gonna chase him all around the wilderness, but David's got a principle that he's living by. It's 1 Samuel 24, verse 10. I think that's what I said. Maybe. All right. So to understand what's going on here, Saul is chasing him around the wilderness. David's hiding in caves with his men, and this group of men is growing every day. Um, but David is hiding in a cave. And in verse 10, Saul goes into that same cave, well, essentially to use the rescue, right? And there's Saul in the same cave as David. And his men say to him in verse 10, look, this day your eyes have seen that the Lord delivered you today into uh my hand. And oh, this is David explaining it after the fact. So he's explaining what happened to Saul. Look, this day your eyes have seen that the Lord delivered you into my hand in that cave, and someone urged me to kill you, but my eyes spared you. And I said, I will not stretch out my hand against the Lord, for he is the Lord's anointed. So this is something that David has in his mind as Saul throws spears at him as he chases them around. David says, I'm not going to raise my hand against the Lord's anointed. Somebody told me to kill you, but I won't do it. You're the Lord's anointed. And this is David's reasoning. Saul had been anointed as king. Samuel came and poured oil on his head. It represented the Holy Spirit on his life to do the job that he was called to do to be king. The same word is used there in 1 Samuel 16 as David is anointed as king. And David understands that. Saul, you have been ordained by God to be king. Uh, this idea goes throughout life for all of us. God anoints us as his people to do certain things. Let's turn from here, turn to Romans chapter 13. I think a verse that will be applicable to all of us, but some more than others. Romans 13. Paul says the same kind of thing about certain people in his life. Romans 13, verse 1. Paul says this let every soul be subject to the governing authority. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God. And those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. So Paul here, he mentions that all governing authority is given by God. So in Paul's mind, he's talking about politics, right? And this has been true throughout the Bible. God has ordained people to rule. The Babylonians. The Babylonians were ordained by God to bring judgment to God's people. And Jeremiah the prophet had a problem as the people withstood that. And he said, Don't withstand that. Go along with it. This is God's purpose. The Babylonians are ordained by God. A little later, the Persians come. And Cyrus, the Persian, Isaiah 44 and 45, we read that he is the Lord's anointed. This Persian king, anointed by God to bring the people back to the land. The Romans come along, and that's where Paul's at. And Paul says, these guys have been established by God. Now think about it for a second. Who was the governing authority in Paul's day? Paul's day, it's the Romans. It's a king named Nero, right? Now you don't have to know much about Nero. You just hear his name and he goes, I think that guy's bad. That guy's bad. He's really bad. He's wicked. He's evil. But Paul says, don't go against the governing authorities. They're established by God. Now, when the governing authorities, of course, tell you to disobey God's law, resist. Otherwise, God has them there in our life, whoever it is, for a purpose. Now, for some of you, and for really all of us, this applies to law enforcement. You are anointed by God for the job that you're doing. And the law is God's law to be obeyed. Uh, it's not up for suggestion, it's God's purpose that we listen to that. It's important to understand that. And those of you to whom it falls, it's your anointing to do your job as unto the Lord, for sure. And and here David goes, I'm not gonna raise my hand against the Lord's anointing. And we go, but David, Saul. I mean, he's lost the spirit, God's totally rejected him as king. Didn't you know that? And David says, I don't know, maybe, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm gonna leave it in God's hands. And David respects God's authority in his life even through Saul. Now, one point I've seen this idea misuse and come back for this. One point I've seen this misuse is in the ministry realm of pastors and teachers. I've seen people come and have false teachings. Totally misrepresents the heart of God, totally goes against the word of God. And you say, hey, that's not true, that's not what God says. And the response might be, hey, don't touch the Lord's anointing. If anyone comes saying that, but somebody who's truly brought by God doesn't need to say, don't touch the Lord's anointing, right? Reject it. You've got to know what God says in his words. Paul uh complimented the Berea's there in the book of Acts for not just taking his word for it, but seeing what God had to say. Very important. Well, here back in Samuel, 1 Samuel 18, David's response in all accounts is this back to 1 Samuel 18. I'll get there too. David's response in all accounts is meekness. Notice verse 10. I set the scene here. The next day, this distressing spirit came upon Saul and he prophesied inside the house. The idea there is that he's kind of just ranting, right? He's just kind of going on, just a little bit on the crazy side. And and uh and he prophesied in the house. David plays music. This is the prescription there, right, to calm Saul down. But there's a spear in Saul's hand. And Saul casts the spear and said, I'm gonna pin David to the wall. I'm gonna kill him. And and notice this didn't just happen once. Um this happened twice, verse 11, the very end, that David escaped his presence twice. Now, it's one thing when you put up with that once, but when you put up with it twice, that takes some serious self-control, especially if you're David, right? He's leading soldiers, he's a tough guy, and yet he puts up with it. Again, you may think that your boss is unreasonable working for Saul, not fun, right? And and there, David, he dodges it and he puts up with it. And if it were me, I would be very tempted to take that spear out of the wall and throw it back at Saul. Um now Saul's decline here. This is a little bit of foreshell. If you live by the spear, you die by the spear, and the spear is gonna be Saul's demise. But David responds with meekness. This is important to see. David responds with meekness. Now, you know, meekness is not meekness. We think about meekness and we think about a wimpy little guy who doesn't do anything. He's meek, so meek. Uh meekness is not weakness. Meekness is defined as power under control. Just for the sake of an illustration, picture a big old lumberjack. And this lumberjack finds a little baby bird in a log as he's cutting the tree down. He takes his big old lumberjack hands and he takes that baby bird out. He very carefully walks it over and puts it in another tree. If he can do that, I don't know if he can do that. But he does it. It takes a huge amount of power under control to not just crush that little baby bird. He has the strength to do it, but he's not gonna do it. He limits himself. That's maintenance. It goes against what we admire most in the business world. We admire somebody with initiative, a real self-starter. And we'll talk about that. Initiative's not bad, but the Christian life does not work well with self-initiative. Um, hear me through this. The Christian can't take matters into their own hands. We have to, listen, we have to leave it in God's hands. The self-initiator will say, My kingdom come, my will be done. But obviously, that's not the Christian response. The question has to first be, God, what do you want me to do? I have the strength to do a lot of things, but God, what do you want me to do? Now, check it out. Once you know what God wants you to do, take some initiative. There's some amazing initiative in the book of 1 Samuel, right? We got Jonathan, who knows that God's saying, you go ahead and face off with those Philistines in the garrison. I'll be with you. And he gets up there and he's just going for it, right? David knows it's God's will that I face the light. And it says that he ran into the battle. That's a serious initiative. But it comes after you know, this is what God wants. And and so it's power under control. There's a lot of things I can do, but God, what do you want me to do? And it leads to a huge amount of character, a huge blessing, a huge amount of character in our lives to say, God, what do you want? Now, this leads to something even more than that. It leads us to an opportunity to represent Jesus in our life. Meekness screens the character of Jesus. Um, without meekness, David would have been just another Saul. If he had taken that spear and thrown it right back, David would have been just another Saul. He would have been establishing his own kingdom. But he represents Jesus there in meekness. Because no one is as meek as Jesus. Let's turn one more place, I think. Yes, one more place. Philippians two. And it's a common place to go, but it's so good. Philippians chapter two. Verse five. Talking about. Philippians 2 verse 5. Let this mind be of mine which was also in Christ's evil. Who, being the form of God, did not consider robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of the man. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore, God also is highly exalted and given him the name which is above every name. So basic theology here, Jesus is God in the flesh. You get that all over the place. Jesus is not a God, he's not an ideal God, he is the actual creator of the universe in human flesh. Now picture that. That's a lot of power. That's a lot of authority. And although he laid down his rights, he never laid down that authority to that. And yet, here he takes the form of a bond servant. That's sweet. Picture the things on the cross that Jesus went through with him being actual God. They hit him in the face. They put a bag over his head, they hit him in the face. And they say, Who hit you? Prophesy, tell us. And you know what? He could have told him everything. And he didn't open his mouth, Isaiah 53 telescopes. He didn't open his mouth and say a word. Meet these, right? They nailed him to the cross. His creation nailed him to the cross. And then they challenged him and said, If you're really the Son of God, come on down and we'll believe in you. And he could have died. No problem. But he stayed there. He laid down his life for us. Huge amounts of meekness. He didn't defend himself. And that meekness, power and the control, won our salvation. Nothing represents the heart and character of Jesus like the meekness of laying down your life, your rights for someone else. Entrusting yourself to God, that's something David had to do. God, you're gonna have to do this. I'm not taking matters into my own hands. You're gonna have to do it. And one way to represent Jesus by trusting God this week. God, your kingdom come, your will be done. What's your will for my life this week? God, it's super easy to talk about it. Um, but it's difficult to live. Because we're all little kings in this world. We want to do what we want to do. We got plans. Some of those plans are from you, but God, we want to know. We want to know what you have for us. And in mute in this, we want to lay down our own will for what we got. God, you can bring such wonderful things in and through our lives. Uh if we just do that. God help us.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, I just pray for those, especially that are just really going through a trying time, it's not comfortable, um, it's not easy to persist. I pray that you give them just the strength, your spirit to represent you in this world. God, uh, for those that are just representing love, uh, when love's just not a natural response. God, that's all of us. God, bring it out in our life. We pray glove American. God, we would represent everybody. Thank you for your faithfulness and all these things. God, thank you that you'll get us there in Jesus' name. Amen.