The Life of David
Week 1 | A God Who is Working
Dean Pollard
May 14, 2023

David’s life gives us insight into 3 essential truths:

  1. Ourselves
  2. God
  3. Jesus

The David story is a plunge into the earthiness of humanity. So emphatically human. We see David fighting, praying, loving, sinning. David conditioned by the morals and assumptions of a brutal Iron Age culture. David with his eight wives. David angry. David devious. David generous. David dancing. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that God can’t and doesn’t use to work his salvation and holiness into our lives. —Eugene Peterson

David’s isn’t an ideal life…the David story, like most other bible stories, presents us not with a polished ideal to which we aspire but with a rough-edged actuality in which we see humanity being formed. The God presence in the earth/human conditions. The David story immerses us in a reality that embraces the entire range of humanness, stretching from the deep interior of our souls to the farthest reaches of our imaginations. No other biblical story has this range to it, showing the many dimensions of height, depth, breadth and length of the human experience as a person comes alive before God- aware of God, responsive to God. We’re never more alive than when we are dealing with God. And there’s a sense in which we aren’t alive at all until we’re dealing with God. David deals with God. As an instance of humanity in himself, he isn’t much.

He has little wisdom to pass on to us on how to live successfully. He was an unfortunate parent and an unfaithful husband…but David’s importance isn’t in his morality or his military prowess but in his experience of and witness to God. Every event in his life was a confrontation with God. —Eugene Peterson

2) God

3) Jesus

Sometimes the greatest act of judgement that God brings is allowing us to have what we want. —Ross Lester

1 Samuel 16:1–3 (ESV): 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.”

1) God is a working God

1 Samuel 16:4–5 (ESV):  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.

1 Samuel 16:6–10 (ESV): 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.”

2) God is working, and God loves working through very unlikely people

1 Samuel 16:11 (ESV): 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.”

3) God is still working, even when no one is watching

Psalm 18:1–2 (ESV): 1  I love you, O Lord, my strength.
2  The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

1 Samuel 16:12–13 (ESV): 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.

4) God often works in us before he works through us