David Anointed
"And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come hither. And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him: for this is he" (1 Samuel 16:11-12).
"ARE HERE all thy children?" is the question, and the answer is "Practically all. There is the youngest, but he is a negligible quantity and does not count. He is keeping sheep along with the hired servants". It was never thought for a moment that the man of God, the venerable Ruler and Judge, who had evidently come to Bethlehem on an important mission, would want a lad like that. Perhaps if Jesse, the practical farmer, the sheik of his village, had been questioned concerning this youngest son of his, he would have described him as a peculiar lad, unlike his brothers, dreamy and romantic, doing all manner of extraordinary things in his spare hours and even while he kept the flock. David was most evidently the unappreciated genius of his home. Unlike Joseph, he was not even his father's favorite. There is no story more skillfully told in the pages of the Old Testament than the story of his appearance. There is the old judge and prophet - breaking his heart, as you would say, over the disappointment concerning Saul, an intense patriot in every drop of his blood, aroused from his grief by the Voice which he has been accustomed to hear and obey ever since the night long ago when it awoke him from his sleep in the temple, now bidding him go to Bethlehem and anoint a new king for Israel.
The whole picture is vividly brought before us in the chapter: Samuel's fear of Saul, the first time he has shown it; the fear of the Bethlehemites at his coming, as though it were to expose and punish some crime; the summoning and inspection of Jesse's sons; the wrong impulse of Samuel as Eliab appears before him (as faithfully related as his unworthy fear), an impulse corrected by the inner voice, for even a Prophet's impulses may need correction and his instinct may mislead him. As though Israel had not had enough of mere height and strength, of inches and muscle! One by one the sons of the old chief of Bethlehem pass before the man who is God's messenger, and none of them will pass muster. Still the prophet is seeking what he cannot find. Then, after some haste and confusion the expected man appears, and I do not know a more dramatic appearance on the page of Old Testament history, looked at from the interior of the prophet's mind. He has come to look for the future king, and he finds him in the neglected and overlooked youngest son. There is the silent and puzzled group patiently or impatiently waiting. Only one man knows for what. And there breaks upon it this rustic youth, fresh from the field, bearing with him the scent of the sheepfold, with ruddy locks and parted lips, and the great eyes of a poet full of wonder. And even as he enters it is revealed to Samuel that this is the future king, and the voice to which he has been accustomed to render implicit obedience says, "Arise, anoint him: for this is he."
So David appears suddenly, and from the moment that he appears he captivates us who read the narrative- while for the history, the troubled history of the chosen people, his coming is as the dawn of a new day. For a long time the day will be stormy and doubtful, he, however, is the sun of Israel's hope, and it is of the manner and meaning of his rising that we have to speak.
I
We must look at the matter from Israel's point of view. The first king is a failure. The worst fears of Samuel are confirmed, his hopes are disappointed. With all the evident latent power in him, Saul has not risen to the opportunity. There has been a battle in his breast - a battle that goes on in the breasts of all of us between God's will and self-will, and self-will has conquered. He is not going to be God's instrument, as the man who will rule Israel must be. And the first thing that I bring to you as the fruit of reflection on this situation is that God's purposes are not ultimately and finally foiled by one man's disobedience. By his self-will Saul may delay, hinder, and injure the Divine purpose, But God has many alternatives. His resources are not soon exhausted. If one man will not do a thing, another will be chosen, and the consideration applies to Churches and nations and individuals. Great possibilities clustered about the beginning of Saul's reign, and great promise attended its first days, Because he failed, God would not give up the idea of a king who would reign under Him. Life would be insufferable if one man had it in his power to thwart and overthrow the purposes of God for a whole people and for all time. You may block the way so far as you are concerned, but your power to do so will soon be over, and there are other men to come.
Mordecai's words to Esther are memorable in this connection: "If thou altogether hold thy peace at this time, then shall deliverance arise to the Jews from another place, but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed; and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" So it may come to all of us. If thou wilt not do the will of God then thy way will be covered with shame, but some other instrument will be prepared who, with the help of God's hand, will perform the enterprise. Saul is a failure, but the word to Samuel is, "I have provided Me a king." The question is, "Why is not the king produced at once?" And if the answer to that be: To attempt that would spell revolution - the question again is, "Then why anoint the man?" The answer to that may be, partly for Samuel's sake, for the comfort of his sorrow, and partly for David's, that there may come to this ignored and despised man some suggestion, at least, that God has a high purpose and destiny for him.
As to what actually happened the record is somewhat confused. The probability is that Samuel's anointing of David was taken by Jesse to mean his choice for the school of the prophets; the probability is that he went back with Samuel, and that it was from thence that the reputation of his great capacity reached the court of Saul (1 Sam. 16:18). One reason, therefore, for the early anointing may be found in the necessity that both Samuel and David should know and be preparing to carry out the Divine purpose.
And if you take that view, then what a conception it presents to you of the overruling and patient providence of God. Things are going from bad to worse in the kingdom, and Samuel is crying out in grief and alarm; but God has His other king in reserve and in training, first by his shepherd life, then at court, then on the battlefield, then as the leader of an intrepid and desperate band of outlaws. So, unspeakably the greatest man in Israel, richly dowered, musician, author, warrior, administrator, is tested in the fiery furnace of adversity through long years before he comes to his own. And all this time affairs in the nation are in a tentative condition and, as it seems to me, at least, the door is left open for the self-willed king to return, and all this time the nation is growing more weary of its first assay in the direction of monarchy. The lesson that should come to us all out of it is that when to our much tried faith God seems to be doing nothing, He is busy planning, thinking, unresting, working, and all for our good.
II
We regard the matter from David's point of view. I said a good deal some Sundays ago on God's choice of men as indicated in the anointing of Saul. One thing I may repeat here, viz., that they fall on men who are not dreaming about them. We may most certainly say this of David. Indeed, through the whole of his life before he becomes king he impresses you with the fact that he is devoid entirely of personal ambition as he is devoid of jealousy. There is no scheming for the crown, no shadow of disloyalty to the reigning monarch. All through the troubled years which intervene between the first anointing and his accession he seems willing to leave his life in God's hands; and though here and there his faith fails him and he gives way to gloomy fears, there is never any attempt, so far as we know, to take his affairs into his own hands and to control the will of God. I spoke just now of Divine patience. Surely we may say, considering the long years of David's testing, that he furnishes us with one of the most conspicuous examples in history of human patience. Under the grossest and most galling injustice he never loses his temper with Saul, never harbors resentment, and never cherishes a disloyal thought. If you want an example of patience under provocation you have one of the finest here that history can show you.
I must point out to you, from a somewhat different standpoint, that he furnishes you with an example of the fact that real worth is discovered, and the men for whom God has some work to do are found out. The history of humanity abounds with examples of this kind. Of men who were apparently effectually buried; born in obscure places, kept down and kept back by their seniors and their supposed superiors, pursued by the jealous hatred of those who dreaded them as rivals; misrepresented and maligned by unscrupulous enemies, and yet holding on their way and ultimately conquering, because they were faithful to duty, and their strength and their trust were in God. Could a man have been more effectually buried than David was? Everything against him. The scullion of the family, relegated to the most despised tasks, and kept at them even when great occasions came. A buried genius! What chance was there for him? Yet you see him, in that obscure place all out of sight, imperiling his life for the sake of the sheep and saying nothing about it. And you see that all the power in the world cannot ultimately keep him back. You see through all his life, so full of vicissitudes, the providence of God marvelously steering his course, turning evil into good, and making, what is adverse, a means of shaping him for the high destiny to which he has been called.
And if I might dare to say it in these materialistic days, I would say it very emphatically, that no man need fear that he will come to his appointed lot in the end. What is needed to ensure it is not plotting and scheming and pushfulness, but a faithful discharge of present duty and a patient steadfast trust in God.
The behavior of David once more is marked by sweet modesty. Not only is his modesty indicated by contentment with his lot before Samuel anoints him, but afterwards. Whatever he knows of the purpose of anointing there is no assumption, none of the egoism that makes even an able man an abhorrence to his neighbors. After a little interval he goes on with his sheep keeping as though nothing had happened, exhibiting no vanity, giving himself no airs. Probably if you could get at his heart you would find him perfectly happy at that lowly work and desiring for himself nothing better. We are all of us disposed to pity people of genius put to work that is far below their gifts -
The gems of purest ray serene,
The flowers that live to blush unseen
And waste their sweetness on the desert air.
I want to express my own conviction that the sweetness of a human life is not wasted anywhere. The life of Jesse's servants and of his sheep were made the better for David's sweetness, and both sheep and servants were sorry when be was called away. And what is more, he was probably never happier than in those dear days when he watered his father's flock at the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate. And what I would say, if I dare, to people who know that they have genius or think they have - preachers, writers, workers - is display your genius where you are, pour it out on lowly folk and common work. It is the man who does that in all the modesty of his soul to whom, if be be worthy, the providence of God will some day say, "Come up higher."
III
One other great principle and fact seems to me to be illustrated
by this incident, viz., that God is seeking for men who will fulfill His
purposes and do His will. Taking human life through, you are disposed
to exclaim, How rarely He finds that which He seeks! How frequently
men for whom God designs great things are unready when the call to them
comes. Looking at human life through the medium of the history of
Israel, how often men fail and disappoint God. How often, when they
get into a position as Saul did, a great position with great possibilities,
they fail to do God's will in it. Little bits of His will they will do,
but the whole of it! How rarely you will find a man devoted without
reservation to the will of God. What a strain of perversity and distrust
and self-will there is in our human nature! Here are men sore and
resentful because they cannot get into a great position in law, in literature,
in commerce, in the holy ministry. And here are men who, when they
have got these develop vanity and pride and selfishness and folly and the
characteristics that make human life hideous. The great thing that
God was seeking in Israel was a man who would do all His will. He
has been seeking such men ever since through all the weary centuries.
He seeks them still, Shall He find them in us? In
position lofty and lowly, in work called secular or sacred,
in obscurity
or prominence, who will be plastic to the Divine hand,
amenable to the holy guidance, obedient to the heavenly vision?
The path of him who will say "yes" will not be easy, but
you do not want an easy path. It will be far better - a path lighted up
with the glory of the approbation of God. He is waiting for those who will
say, in the spirit of Jesus, it will be sweeter than the music of angels:
"I delight to do thy will, O my God".
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