by Chris Alexion, Copyright March 08, 2008, all rights reserved. 1142 views
"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.'" So begins the story of David, possibly Israel's greatest king, in 1 Samuel 16:1.
David's beginnings weren't auspicious. He wasn't the top draft pick for the next king of Israel. In fact, when Samuel arrives to meet Jesse's sons, no one even thinks to call David in from tending the sheep (16:11). But God's choice was clear. "For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (16:7). The best leader isn't always the one we think would make the best leader. God's leaders aren't culled from the ranks of the secular elite, or the most talented, or the most popular. The temptation for today's church is to compromise intellectually and ethically with the secular systems around us, just as Israel clamored for Samuel to "appoint us a king to judge us like all the nations" (8:5).
Not only did David's road to kingship begin humbly, but it didn't accelerate quickly, either. Samuel anoints the young king in chapter 16, but David doesn't inherit a unified Israel until the book of 2 Samuel. The intervening chapters/years are filled with trials, temptations, struggles, hopes, fears, triumphs, and blood.
How does David respond to this long road? More pertinent, what do we get out of David's response? We could take the Sunday School route and point to how faith slays giants. We could also use David's life as some kind of motivational story. But I'd suggest that David's primary witness to us is that young leaders only grow into older, wiser leaders by maintaining faith in God's timing.
Easy to say, but incredibly hard to practice. And what right do I have to say this, anyway? Because I know firsthand how hard it is to live the "young man" part. I don't naturally want to wait for God's timing. I figure I know best. Yet look at David. He was promised the kingdom, but had incredible trials to pass through first. His patience is key.
Still, I don't suppose we could leave David's life without mentioning Goliath. David's battle with the giant Philistine was the breakout moment of his life of leadership, and demonstrated the young man's immense courage (he either didn't fear death, or, more importantly, did his job in spite of fear) and faith. The battle also highlights David's true motivation and the source of his power. "For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?…The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine" (17:26,37).
The young leader here shows us two very important things: (1) His motivation was God's honor. It wasn't so much that Goliath had insulted Israel; it was that he had defied the living God. This enraged David. (2) His strength wasn't his own. The young David was confident, not cocky; he knew better than to trust his own strength. "This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head…that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand." This will turn out to be a key theme in the Psalms: a horse is vain for safety, no king is saved by his great armies; if the Lord had not been on our side, we would have perished.
So David slew the giant. You'd expect that now his leadership career would be set. He received the priestly anointing and proved himself in combat. But David has one more trial to experience: politics. David doesn't skyrocket to kingship; he has to work his way up the ranks under King Saul, who grows extremely jealous of the young commander (18:8). Saul manipulates circumstances in order to try to get David killed (18:17ff), but God is with David even there.
Finally the threads holding Saul's sanity together begin to snap, and David finds himself a wanted man, hiding in hills and caves (21:1ff). What happened to God's promise? What kind of timing is this? Instead of becoming king over Israel, David is leading a band of rejects in the mountains (22:2). And Saul still wants him dead. Wouldn't many people–many Christians–lose hope and take matters into their own hands? Through everything, however, David trusts in God's timing, even when presented with what looked like golden opportunities to kill Saul and seize the kingdom (24:4ff, 26:10ff).
Young people can wait–and I'm not just talking about sex. We can trust God in a multitude of areas, and the results are always better this way. David's example is incredibly relevant to issues facing young people. Take relationships–some of us are single, maybe coming off a painful relationship that didn't work out. We haven't met "the one," and we don't know when or how we will. Do we stress out and try to take matters in our own hands? Or take career pathing–not all of us know exactly what we're going to do with the rest of our lives. The future is hazy; heck, even the present gets a little foggy. Do we have the patience to live life as it unfolds?
I'm not talking about using faith as an excuse to do nothing. There are obviously things we need to do to take charge in our lives–"waiting on God" shouldn't be code for sitting on our hands. But the question is whether, as we do these things, we rely on our own strength or wisdom to get us through, and whether we get frustrated because we can only see so far ahead. David had only bits and pieces; he was only given enough at one time to take the next step in his life. What made it possible for David was that he knew the One who was doing the unfolding.
Is that good enough for us?
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