A Tale of Two Kings: Part 2
A King after God's own heart
Israel had asked for a king just like all the nations had, and they appointed a king just like all the nations had. However, what Israel needed was a king quite unlike the kings all the other nations had. You will remember that Israel was supposed to be a beacon to all the nations around them and that they were to show the nations what life was like under God’s rulership. Israel’s first king proved spiritually disastrous, and as we finished part one of our story last week, we saw that the Lord rejected King Saul as Israel’s king because he did not trust in God. Saul answered the first part of a question the Book of Samuel seeks to answer: what kind of king does Israel need? Saul’s story tells us 'not a king like all the nations have.'
The rest of the Book of Samuel chronicles the rise of David. He appears for the first time in chapter 15 of 1 Samuel, which is just after God tells Samuel that he has rejected Saul as king because he is not the right type of king. God instructs Samuel to go and anoint a new king, and so Samuel goes to Bethlehem to find this new king.
When Samuel gets there, a comical story plays out where Samuel is introduced to all the sons of Jesse. The sons are presented to Samuel, with the oldest going first, and each time the candidate gets less and less impressive. Finally, only David, the youngest, is left. When Samuel sees him, the Lord says that he is the one, and as Samuel anoints him, the Spirit of the Lord empowers David, and it is clear that God’s favor now rests on David, no longer on Saul.
As the newly anointed and newly spirit-empowered future king, the first thing David does is defeat Goliath. We all know this famous story. The army of Israel and the army of the Philistines are drawn for battle, except the Philistine force is so overwhelmingly strong that Israel ends up hiding in the caves or cowering behind the bushes. Every day the mighty boss fighter Goliath comes to defy the army of Israel, daring any man to come and fight against him. The agreement is that if Goliath could be defeated, then the Philistines would become the servants of Israel, but if Goliath won, then Israel would be enslaved to the Philistines.
David, still a boy at this stage, goes to the battlefield to bring supplies to his brothers, and he overhears Goliath taunting Israel. He volunteers to fight Goliath and, in a great show of faith in God, rejects any sort of armor or armament, and instead picks up five stones to fit into his sling. Critically, David’s faith is not in his military prowess, but in the Lord. He tells Goliath as much, and with a single stone, brings down the mighty giant. Dismayed by the loss of their mighty warrior, the Philistines are routed, and David’s rise to the throne of Israel begins in earnest.
The rest of the Book of 1 Samuel chronicles Saul’s increasing hatred for David. The more success David has, the more Saul hates him. Several times Saul tries to kill David, and every time David escapes. The author of Samuel wants to make it clear that David was morally superior to Saul in many ways. Several times David had the opportunity to kill Saul, but he refused since Saul was the Lord’s anointed king. David’s rise continues, and as the Book of 1 Samuel ends, Saul dies, and David’s reign of Israel is all but assured.
The Book of 2 Samuel starts with the short civil war that erupts after Saul’s death, but pretty quickly David is enthroned as the king of all Israel. Once this happens, God makes a promise to David that someone from his line will forever be on the throne of Israel and that his house (his family line) will endure forever. In response, David prays an extended prayer of humble thanks, and in the prayer, David references God’s promises to Abraham. Remember how God promised Abraham that He would make him into a great nation, that He would give him the land of Canaan as his special possession, and that He would bless all the nations through his descendants? At the same time, God declared that He would be Israel’s God. In his thanksgiving prayer, David highlights each of those aspects in some way.
The next chapters tell us about how David’s reign is secured, how he subdues Israel’s enemies, and brings peace to the nation. Up to this point, David is presented as an essentially perfect king, and the thing that sets him apart from Saul is that David was a king quite unlike the nations had. He was a king after God’s own heart. The books of 1 and 2 Samuel set out to teach us what kind of king Israel needed. Saul showed us that 'a king like all the other nations have' is insufficient for Israel. David was a different kind of king, a king after God’s own heart. Was David perhaps THE king of promise? The one who would undo the curse of sin?
The answer is unfortunately no. You see, David had a critical flaw: he himself was a sinful human being. While he was a king after God’s own heart, his own heart still had a sin problem. In David’s case, this resulted in David stealing another man’s wife, getting her pregnant, and arranging for her husband to be killed in battle in order to cover it up. As good as David was, he wasn’t good enough. We need a better king, even better than the great king David.
Now the point is not so much that David was so flawed, but that, in fact, all of us are so flawed. We need a king like David, but much better than David. But one day, one would come from David’s line, one who was not only a man after God’s own heart, but also a man with God’s own heart. The perfect King who slayed a Goliath much bigger than the one David slayed: death itself. But more on that, next time.