The Lord Looks at the Heart, 1 Samuel 16:1-13 (October 18, 2015)

The Lord Looks at the Heart, 1 Samuel 16:1-13 (October 18, 2015) The LORD said to Samuel, How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons. 2 And Samuel said, How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me. And the LORD said, Take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the LORD. 3 And invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do. And you shall anoint for me him whom I declare to you. 4 Samuel did what the LORD commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling and said, Do you come peaceably? 5 And he said, Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD. Consecrate yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice. And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. 6 When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, Surely the LORD s anointed is before him. 7 But the LORD said to Samuel, Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart. 8 Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, Neither has the LORD chosen this one. 9 Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, Neither has the LORD chosen this one. 10 And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, The LORD has not chosen these. 11 Then Samuel said to Jesse, Are all your sons here? And he said, There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep. And Samuel said to Jesse, Send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here. 12 And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the LORD said, Arise, anoint him, for this is he. 13 Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah. PRAY We have been in the book of 1 Samuel all fall we began back in the fourth Sunday of August. And I very nearly titled the series, The Life of David. But I m so glad I didn t, because here we are, week eight in the series, and we just now get our first mention of David. 1 Samuel 16 is where we read how Samuel the prophet finally anoints David as king of Israel. This is a famous passage in the Bible, and justly so, because in it we get insight into the things God values most. We get to see what matters most in God s economy, and what doesn t matter at all. And I think there s lots and lots of application for us. Three points: first, what doesn t matter to God. Second, what does matter. Third, how to get it. 2015 J.D. Shaw 1

First, what doesn t matter to God. We read in verse 1 that God tells Samuel to stop mourning over Saul. God, we saw last week, rejected Saul once and for all as king. It takes a long time for it to play out, but Saul s doom now is sure. And now God says, Samuel, stop crying. I have provided a king for myself. I think this shows Samuel s heart he s not a fair-weather friend to Saul, only hanging around him so long as the political winds are blowing his way. Rather, Samuel genuinely cared for Saul, and so he grieves over Saul s rejection. But he nevertheless follows the Lord s direction. But we get hints in the first few verses how far gone Saul really is you can see why the Lord rejected him. God tells Samuel to go to Bethlehem and anoint as king one of Jesse s sons, but Samuel is scared Saul will hear of it and kill him. Why? Evidently because Saul is so determined to hold onto the throne of Israel that he will kill anyone who does anything to take it away. Then we read the people of Bethlehem tremble at Samuel s arrival because they know what s going on Saul and Samuel are on the outs, and Samuel is coming to find Saul s replacement. But what if Saul finds out? Yet Samuel goes to Bethlehem anyway, God allows Samuel to tell the people of Bethlehem less than the whole story to calm them down, and Jesse s sons are brought before him, oldest first. And this is what we read. When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, Surely the LORD s anointed is before him. 7 But the LORD said to Samuel, Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. 1 Samuel 16:6-7a. Samuel is mightily impressed by Eliab s appearance. At the very least Eliab was tall, but I think it s safe to guess he was also good looking and had what we d call an athletic build. And Samuel saw him and said, This has got to be the guy. Appearances have always mattered. It s never hurt anyone to be physically impressive, tall, strong, good-looking, no matter what your role was in life or what you were trying to accomplish. It mattered in Samuel s day, and it matters today. But if anything, in our image-obsessed, image-rich culture, it matters far more today than ever before. A lot of historians point out that if Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32 nd President of the United States, the President who led the United States through World War II, were trying to make his first run for office today, he would have faced a much more difficult task than he did back in 1932. Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down because of polio, and he and his team were very careful that no pictures of him in a wheelchair were ever published. Even today, historians have only located a few. But this suppression, and creating the appearance that Roosevelt was healthy and active when, in fact, he wasn t, was possible only because in 1932 radio was the dominant broadcast media, Roosevelt was a very good speaker, and television was still in its infancy. But not thirty years or so later, when Richard Nixon made his first run for the White House. By then television had taken over radio. And Nixon was facing as his opponent a young, attractive man named John F. Kennedy. And in their televised debates, Kennedy 2015 J.D. Shaw 2

was poised and fairly shone, while Nixon sweated and looked uncomfortable. People listening on the radio thought Nixon won the debates, but the television audience thought Kennedy did, and even though Nixon had far more experience Kennedy narrowly won the presidency appearances matter. And it s only gotten worse in the 21 st century, especially now with the advent of social media and platforms like Instagram and Vine, which are basically nothing but images. Friends, how much time do we spend evaluating how we look? Evaluating how are kids look? How much time and energy do spend on making our faces and our bodies look as visually appealing as possible? How much time and energy do we spend on making our homes and yards look as visually appealing as possible? How many magazines and television shows are devoted exclusively to helping us create the best appearance possible with our home? We probably spend far more time on appearances than we d like to admit, and certainly more than any other culture that s ever lived. Now, are pleasant, attractive physical features evil or wrong? Absolutely not in verse 12 we read that when David walked in he was just as attractive as Eliab was, only younger. He was ruddy and handsome and had beautiful eyes. So what do we need to learn about physical appearances from this text? Just this: in God s economy, they just don t matter. Eliab is not qualified because he s handsome, David is not disqualified because he is it just flat out doesn t matter, not to God. You are not more able to serve the Lord nor less able because of your physical appearance. It does not matter in God s economy. We ll apply this in just a moment, but before we do let s get to the second point. Second, what does matter to God? Read all of verse 7 now: 7 But the LORD said to Samuel, Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart. What matters, what is of supreme importance to God, is the heart it s all about the heart. David had a heart after God s own heart, and that s what mattered. Acts 13:22: And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will. Now, what exactly was it about David s heart that made him so pleasing to God? Was it because David never made any mistakes, never sinned? Absolutely not David did a lot of wicked things. If you totaled up the bad things Saul and David did, I m not so sure Saul would win by a landslide it might be surprisingly close. Then how could it be said of David, He is a man after God s own heart? Two things we must see about David s heart: first, David s heart was a repentant heart. The big difference between Saul and David is not that Saul did lots of bad things and David did 2015 J.D. Shaw 3

only good things. The difference is that when Saul did bad things, he would not own up to them. He evaded, he dodged, he shifted blame, he didn t feel genuine remorse. We saw that last week. But when David did bad things, and when he was confronted on them, he repents. In 2 Samuel 11 and 12 we read about one of David s biggest moral failure he affair with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and his subsequent plot to have Uriah killed to cover up his infidelity. But when Nathan the prophet confronts David, when he charges David with the words, Thou are the man! David does not evade, he does not dodge, he does not shift blame. He feels genuine remorse. Why does he feel this remorse and Saul did not? Second, David s heart was a heart that loved the Lord. What made David great was that he did so dearly love the Lord God of the Universe, and friends that s really all that matters. We know this because David left us his journals they are called the Psalms. David wrote 75 or so of the 150 psalms in the Bible. And what becomes clear as you read the psalms is that though David was far, far from perfect, he had one desire: to serve and praise and love the Lord his God with all his soul, all his strength, all his might. And it was the love in David s heart that made it such a repentant heart. The mark that you really love someone is not that you never mess up and hurt them. The mark is that when you know you ve messed up, when you know you have hurt them, you go to that person quickly and try to repair the relationship. You repent, you apologize, you ask for forgiveness. You do whatever it takes to reconcile. That s David far from perfect, morally in some ways a mess, yet repentant, wanting to know the Lord and see his face, knowing that at his right hand are pleasures forevermore, and that s what gave him a heart after God s own heart. In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis illustrates this truth wonderfully that the heart, not appearances, matter. If you know the premise of that book, it s basically Lewis wondering what it would be like if a busload of people from hell could tour heaven for just a few hours to see what it was like. And one of the things the people from hell saw in heaven a huge parade of people all singing and dancing, with musicians playing, and in the middle a lady in whose honor the parade was being done. And in the book C.S. Lewis says the lady radiated love it flowed from her, and she was so radiant that it was as if joy was her garment. She was unbelievably beautiful; it hurt to look at her she was so beautiful. And one of the people from hell turned to the tour guide and said, She must have been someone really important on earth. The guide said, She was, but you must remember that fame in this country and fame on earth are two quite different things. You ve never heard of this lady her name on earth was Sarah Smith, and she lived at Golders Green. And then he went on about why Sarah Smith was so important. Every young man or 2015 J.D. Shaw 4

boy that met her became her son even if it was only the boy that brought [her groceries] to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but [more true], to their own wives [And even] every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them. What made Sarah Smith of Golders Green so great, what made her so wonderful in heaven, was not her appearance or her importance (on earth, she was a nobody) it was her love. Three applications: marriage, ministry, and money. First, marriage. If you re single and you hope to get into a relationship with someone, that one day you hope will lead to marriage, how do you determine who you ll go out with? How do you determine who, of the opposite sex, will make the first cut? I ll tell you how you make the first cut, because it s how I did it and it s how we all do it: we look around at say, twenty people of the opposite sex, twenty people with whom we might have a shot, and before we ever have the first bit of conversation with that person, before we know anything about them, we immediately eliminate 16 of them based on their appearance. And of the remaining four, we might find one that is really attractive to us, and then we start praying and say, Oh, God, please let her be a Christian! Don t do that that s totally backwards. If you re single and you re thinking about getting married, don t make that mistake. Don t pass over scores of people who might make outstanding spouses only because they don t meet your ideal of physical beauty. Don t be a Samuel! Don t see only as man sees man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart. Someone may be thinking, J.D., are you saying I have to go out with ugly people? No, I m not I m just saying don t make appearances your first cut. Who knows how many otherwise wonderful potential spouses you re passing by just because of the most superficial of qualities? Let the heart be your first cut. And by that I mean put yourself in a position to find sincere Christians of the opposite sex first by meeting them at church or at a campus ministry or serving in the community and then, then, consider appearances. Second, ministry. Now you would think that if anyone would have learned his lesson when it came to choosing leaders for God s people by appearances and not by the heart, it would have been Samuel. Why? Because he had such a disastrous experience with Saul! Saul, remember, was a head taller than anyone else in Israel. But apparently Samuel had a thing for tall guys, because as soon as he sees Eliab, Samuel starts saying, This must be the one. I started to title this sermon, Blinded By the Height. 2015 J.D. Shaw 5

Now, let me go on the record as being in favor of tall men. There is nothing wrong with being tall unless you re taller than me, but other than that there s nothing wrong with being tall. But there s nothing right about it either. It just flat doesn t matter. When we start looking for leaders in the church, we tend to say things like, He s so sharp, he s so good in front of people, he makes such a good first impression, and while we might not say it, we might certainly add, He s so good looking. I know of one lady who, when her church was about to choose a new pastor, openly said, I just want him to be handsome. And when someone asked her why, she said, Well, if I ve got to look at him every week, I don t want him to be ugly. All too rarely do we ask questions that get to the heart of the person. All too rarely do we ask, Does he pray? Does he repent? Does he love to be with his wife? Do his children love to be with him? Is he confrontable? Is he patient? mdoes he serve? Next week the church is electing elders for the coming year, and let me tell you how we went about nominating men for this very important position. Because we did not want to anyone to accuse of looking at the outward appearance instead of the heart, we nominated the homeliest looking men we could find in the church to serve as elders. Of course, I m joking they are all ruggedly handsome men. But, here s what I do hope is true: you ve seen, just like I ve seen, from these men how they do love the Lord Jesus Christ. Not that any of them are perfect, but that you have seen as I have, they have hearts after God s own heart. Third, money (and power). As a pastor, though I hate to admit it, I have often over the years had to remind myself not to get excited when someone walks through our doors on a Sunday who might have a lot of money or might have a lot of influence in the community. I ve had to work to not to think about what that tithe could do for the church or what that person s connections might do for the church. Again, there s nothing wrong with having money or having influence. You can be a godly Christian and have both. It does not disqualify you from being great in God s economy. But, what? Neither does it qualify you! It just flat doesn t matter. Friends, Jesus Christ does not need celebrity endorsement. It feels like its getting worse and worse ever year Christian ministries and churches bringing in celebrities actors, politicians, athletes, coaches, or people who are famous just for being famous not because we know much about their character and not because they are gifted to teach, but because of their celebrity status and getting them to talk to crowds basically with the mindset of getting people to think, If this person is a Christian, maybe I should consider becoming a Christian! This goes totally against what is taught in 1 Samuel 16. In the Bible, God always works through the called and not through the celebrities. But if we do persist in the strategy of 2015 J.D. Shaw 6

caring about the power and influence of others, it leaves us open as Christians to the grievous sin of favoritism. My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don t show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, Here s a good seat for you, but say to the poor man, You stand there or Sit on the floor by my feet, 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 5 Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? James 2:1-5. In a town like Oxford we really have to be on our guard against it, because we, relative to the rest of Mississippi, have so many gifted, talented people in this town who are looking for churches, or who are looking for business opportunities, or who are looking for friends and maybe spouses, and Christians if we re not careful we will ignore the weak, the unimportant in the eyes of the world, we will ignore the godly but middle class, as we chase after the attention of those with money and power. We must, if we wish to have a heart like David s heart, a heart after God s own heart, be just as excited to mingle with the unattractive, the unimportant, and the poor as we are to mingle with the attractive, the important, and the wealthy. Now, doesn t everyone want to be the kind of person that really cares only about the character of another person, and not the size of their wallet or the size of their dress? Don t we all want to be the kind of people who aren t swayed by externals but see things as God sees them for whom the heart is most important? How can we get that way? Third, how we can get a heart after God s own heart? We must know the Son. We read that Samuel has Jesse s seven oldest sons pass by him, and none of them are God s choice for king. Then Samuel says in verse 11, Jesse, are these all your sons? And Jesse replied, There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep. David was the youngest, eighth out of eight sons, and so unimportant in the eyes of his family that he was not even invited to service. Instead, Jesse left him out in the fields to keep watch over his sheep. And all the commentators point out that Jesse doesn t even call David by his name he just calls him, The youngest. Jesse can t even be bothered to mention his own Son s name. Now, here s what you must know if you want a heart after God s own heart: God loves to operate in the world through the weak, the despised, the rejected. David was the youngest son, and in a world of primogeniture, where being the firstborn was everything, it meant that David was nothing. An afterthought. Forgotten, a nobody. One thousand years later, also in Bethlehem, another child was born. He was a descendant of David. His family, we read in Mark 3, thought he was crazy. The people 2015 J.D. Shaw 7

in his hometown rejected him, and took offense at him. He was, in the eyes of the world, a nobody. But we know that he was God s only begotten Son. We know that Jesus Christ, of Bethlehem and Nazareth, is in fact very God of very God. He had only veiled his glory, and become a man, to do God s work in the world. Was he rich? Absolutely not! Our Fighter Verse for next week is 2 Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich [and he was all the riches of the universe were at his disposal in the throne room of his Father in heaven], yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. He was not rich, and he did not seek celebrity endorsement. He never went around to the popular, to the so-called leaders of his day, and say, Hey, will you endorse my ministry? Finally, this is what the prophet Isaiah says about him: He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Isaiah 52:2b-3. When God chose to physically enter the world and do his work on earth, he made himself nothing. He was not attractive nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. And before it was all over, what attractiveness he did have in his appearance was taken away from him, when he was beaten to a pulp and nailed to a cross. The only way God could reconcile sinful man to himself was by becoming a man in Jesus Christ and taking the punishment we deserve for our sins on himself. Do you believe that? Do you believe that you are a sinner and it will take the death of God s own Son to atone for your sins and make you acceptable to God? Friends, to the degree you see that Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of what matters to God and you hold onto that that he is not impressed with the things that impresses us, but he loves to work through the weak, through the despised, through the rejected, through the unattractive, through the lowly to that degree you won t be blinded by the height! You will see things as God sees things, you ll have a heart after God s own heart. You will see, as 1 Corinthians 1 says, But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 1 Corinthians 1:26-29. PRAY 2015 J.D. Shaw 8