Author
Our next stop in our “Route 66” sermon series is the Old Testament book of 2 Samuel. As we learned last week, originally 1 and 2 Samuel were one book. Jewish sources ascribe the composition of 1 Samuel to Samuel himself. But since Samuel’s death is recorded in chapter 25, Samuel could not have been the author of 1 Samuel 25 and following.
As I pointed out last week, according to most modern scholars, 1 Samuel is but one part of the Deuteronomistic History which consists of the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings. The editor who put together this history probably drew together earlier written sources to compose the book of Samuel.
Date
If we follow the traditional view of authorship by Samuel, then the composition of the books of 1 and 2 Samuel may be dated to the time of Samuel’s life and the lives of Nathan and Gad who also, according to the traditional view, had a hand in this work. If this is true, then we might date this book to the tenth century BC. If modern scholars are correct and the books of Samuel are part of a larger Deuteronomistic History, then the final composition of these books might best be dated to the exilic or even post-exilic era, 500 years later than the traditional date.
Themes
Among all the characters mentioned in the Old Testament, King David is a real stand-out. Born halfway between Abraham and Jesus, David became the leader of all Israel and the ancestor of the Messiah. The book of 2 Samuel tells David’s story. We see the excitement surrounding his coronation (2 Samuel 5:1-5); we see David praising God with exuberance as he brings the Ark of the Covenant back to the Tabernacle (6:1-23); and we see David exulting as he leads his armies to victory over all their enemies and completes the conquest of the Promised Land begun by Joshua (2 Samuel 8-10). David was a man who accomplished much, including the conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment of what became known as the City of David as the governmental and spiritual center of Israel.
But David was fully human, and so there were dark times in his life when he stumbled and fell into sin. The record of his lust, adultery, and even murder is unflinching in its honesty (2 Samuel 11-13). David’s story reveals that even great people who try to follow God are susceptible to temptation and sin.
David also had a dysfunctional family. David’s son incited the entire nation of Israel to rebellion and crowned himself as king (2 Samuel 14:1-18:33). On one occasion, David took a census so that he could glory in the strength of his nation (24:1-25). This shows us that greatness can lead to pride.
The good news is that the story of David as a fallible hero does not end in tragedy. Through repentance, David’s fellowship and peace with God were restored. But he still had to face the consequences of the sins he committed (2 Samuel 12-20). These consequences remained with him throughout his life and reminded him of his need for God.
Structure
I. David’s Successes (2 Samuel 1-10)
A. David becomes king over Judah.
B. David becomes king over Israel.
C. David conquers the surrounding nations.
II. David’s Struggles (2 Samuel 11-24)
A. David and Bathsheba
B. Turmoil in David’s family
C. National rebellion against David
D. The later years of David’s rule
Key Concept—The Person after God’s Own Heart
I want to talk with you today about the character of David, looking at some things from both 1 and 2 Samuel. In 1 Samuel 13:14, Samuel tells Saul that God has taken the kingdom of Israel away from him because of his disobedience…
But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.
According to Samuel, David was a man after God’s own heart. In other words, David was a man of God’s own choosing. I don’t believe God chooses us because of anything in us, in our hearts. God chooses us because of what is in his heart. God chooses us because he loves us. And he loves us in spite of our sin.
Nonetheless, I invite you to look with me at five characteristics of David’s heart this morning.[1] First, David was humble. Even after Samuel anointed David as king, David did not boast to his brothers. In fact, the Bible says that David returned to being a shepherd just as he had been before.
There was something about the humble task of being a shepherd that prepared David to be king. David developed a shepherd’s heart that prepared him to have a good king’s heart. Think about it. David cared for sheep. What are sheep like? They are dirty, defenseless, and dependent. Perhaps caring for sheep prepared David to be a shepherd of God’s people.
Later, when David became a servant of Israel’s first king, Saul, he continued to display humility. David knew that God had rejected Saul and anointed him as the next king, but he served Saul anyway.
In his humility, David was patient. David had to wait fifteen years between his secret anointing by Samuel and his public coronation. For seven of those years, David was a fugitive, hunted down by King Saul, and even hiding in caves.
Secondly, David had integrity. Psalm 78 says…
He [God] chose David his servant
and took him from the sheep pens;
from tending the sheep he brought him
to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
of Israel his inheritance.
And David shepherded them with integrity of heart;
with skillful hands he led them.
The Hebrew word for integrity is “tome”; it means full and undivided. It is also the word used for the high priest’s breastplate on which he bore symbols of all the tribes of Israel, holding them in integrity together. David had integrity in the sense that he did not have divided loyalty. There was a wholeness about David’s heart. It takes time to develop integrity, wholeness in life. I don’t think it happens all at once. But the more time we spend with God, the more God integrates our life around single-minded devotion to him. Integrity is not the same thing as perfection. Integrated people still make mistakes. The difference is: integrated people keep coming back to their center. David kept coming back to his center in God.
Thirdly, David was obedient. Acts 13:22 says, “After removing Saul, he [God] made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’”
David was obedient. That seemed to be his core response to God. Did David make mistakes? Yes. But his default was to return to obedience to God in every situation. David was prepared to lead because David knew how to follow first.
God needs leaders today too. But if we’re going to be leaders, we need to learn how to follow first. It doesn’t matter whether we are leading a family, a business, or a church. The prerequisite to good leadership is obedient followership.
Why should we obey God? I have a sneaking suspicion that our heavenly Father knows what is best for us. That’s why we should obey him. Not only does he know what is best for us, God also wants/desires what is best for us. Whenever we disobey God, it is because we shift our mindset to supposing that we know what is best. At the core of obedience is a clear understanding that God knows best and desires our highest good.
Certainly, there were times when David wavered, when he followed his own inclinations, rather than God’s way. But again, the thing about David was that he always came back to God’s way.
That leads to a fourth thing we see about David. He had a heart that trusted in God. Let’s look back to a story in 1 Samuel, a story that a lot of people know well. It may be the most famous story told about David. It is the story of how he faced and conquered the giant, Goliath. We don’t have time to examine the whole story in detail. But I want you to notice one thing. When everyone else in Israel responded to the Philistine enemy in fear, David responded in faith.
David shows up on the battlefield. He’s just a young kid. But he asks who is this Philistine giant taunting the armies of God? Goliath is looking for someone to fight him in single combat, to the death. David says he’ll have a go. Everyone asks how a young kid can face down and win out over a giant. David says, “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” David had learned a lesson or two while he was defending sheep. He had learned how to trust God amidst difficulty and danger. David developed a heart of faith.
How is it for us today? Are we facing giants in our lives? Maybe it is the giant of financial difficulty, or marital struggle, or family problems, or a health scare. We have a choice about how we are going to face the giants of our lives. We can face them with fear, or with faith in God, trusting God to see us through.
It is interesting to me as I look back on the pandemic we have just come through. How many of us responded to the pandemic in fear? So often we acted out of fear. How many of us responded and acted out of faith? We always have that choice in life, no matter what happens to us. We can choose to respond in fear or we can choose to respond in faith.
The fifth and final characteristic of David’s heart that I want you to notice is that David had a repentant heart. Being a man after God’s own heart does not mean that David never made mistakes. It is not as though David never sinned. The important thing was that when he sinned, he repented. He changed his mind and changed his direction. David changed his mind about himself and about God. And that change of mind led to a change in direction, from going his own way to going God’s way.
I imagine everyone here knows the story of what was, perhaps, David’s greatest sin. It happened one day after David became king. He was at home in his palace in Jerusalem when he should have been on the battlefield. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
One evening, David went strolling on the rooftop of his palace. From that vantage point he saw a beautiful woman bathing at a nearby house. Now, David could have stopped at that point and done nothing about what he had seen. No big deal. But David didn’t stop. David sent one of his servants to find out who the woman was. The servant returned with the report that the woman’s name was Bathsheba, and she was the wife of one of David’s soldiers, Uriah the Hittite.
Again, David could have stopped and given up his pursuit of the matter. But he didn’t. He sent the servant back to get Bathsheba and bring her to his bedroom. And David slept with her.
As if that was not bad enough, the woman became pregnant. So, what does David do? He tries to cover up his sin. He recalls Uriah from the battlefield and tries to persuade Uriah to go home to his wife. But Uriah refuses. He has greater integrity than that. He says, “How can I sleep in my own house when the rest of our army is sleeping in tents out in open country?”
David makes a second attempt. He gets Uriah drunk. But still Uriah refuses to go home and sleep with his wife. So, David takes a different approach. He sends Uriah back to the battlefield and writes a letter to his trusted general Joab. In the letter David says, “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.”
Joab does as David commands him to do, and Uriah the Hittite is killed in battle. When Bathsheba hears about this, she mourns for her dead husband. Then David lets an appropriate amount of time pass, and he takes Bathsheba as his wife.
It is at this point that the author of 2 Samuel comments, “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.” That little comment reveals an amazing thing about the Bible. The Bible shows us some of the greatest heroes of our faith, but it shows them to us “warts and all”. The Bible does not paper over the faults of its heroes.
Now what happens next is key. We read in 2 Samuel 12 that the Lord sent the prophet Nathan to David. And Nathan proceeds to tell David a story about two men in a certain town. One was rich, the other was poor. The rich man had everything he could want or could buy anything he wanted. The poor man had only one little lamb. A visitor came to the rich man’s house and the rich man, rather than feed his visitor one of his many sheep, took the one little lamb from the poor man and served it to his visitor.
How does David respond to this story? The author of 2 Samuel tells us that “David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.’”
Then we read these powerful words from Nathan to David, “You are the man!” David had all the women he could want, but he took from Uriah the Hittite his one and only wife. And then he had Uriah killed. Because of this, Nathan tells David,
Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’
This is what the Lord says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. 12 You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’
Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
There is much more to the story. But that last verse points to David’s repentant heart. David was far from perfect, but here is the key to his whole life. When David sinned, he repented. He kept coming back to God.
2 Chronicles 16:9 says, “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” I wonder, do we have hearts like David? Do we have hearts that are humble, full of integrity, obedient, full of faith and repentance? If we are honest, we will admit that our hearts are not always like this. We too fail like David did. The question is: what do we do when we fail? Do we turn back to God and seek his forgiveness through Christ? Do we get back up when we fall and continue a long obedience in the same direction, following Christ?
I learned an interesting thing from Pastor Philip Griffin while working on this sermon. It took Michelangelo four years to sculpt his statue of David. It is 13-feet tall. But here is the really amazing thing: Michelangelo used flawed marble. We know the exact quarry the marble came from. The same block of marble was rejected by another artist because it had breaks and impurities in it. But Michelangelo chose that piece of marble anyway.
Michelangelo once said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” And on another occasion, he said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
David was broken and flawed. He had many imperfections, but God chose him anyway. And then God began chipping away at David, until he had created of his life a masterpiece.
Pastor Philip Griffin says,
God looks at all of us. He looks at our hearts and says, “I want you to have a heart that I can mold and shape into a masterpiece. I want to make you into a masterpiece. I want to make your marriage, your family, your life, your future, and your plans into a masterpiece. Will you let me? Will you allow me to mold and shape you into the person I want you to be?”
C S Lewis once wrote, “This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.”[2]
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