I would like to read one sentence from Acts 13:22—the last sentence:
I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who shall do all My will.
“I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who shall do all My will.”
We know that David’s life is very, very colorful. His experiences were varied: he was a shepherd, a refugee, and a king.
In the Bible, David represents, in a very full way, a type of our Lord Jesus. In the life of David, we can also see the principles governing the making of a king. We are all kings and priests unto God, but how can we really be kings? You will find the answer in the life of David.
But this morning, what the Lord has impressed upon my heart is the witness of God—the comment of the Holy Spirit—upon the life of David. When God looked upon David’s life, He gave a witness concerning that life. It is God’s verdict concerning that man, and it is very simple:
I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who shall do all My will.
Now, brothers and sisters, in the very beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, you find in Genesis 1 that God spent six days in creation. Every day He did something and said that it was good, except, of course, the second day.
But on the sixth day, He created man in His image, according to His likeness. He blessed man and gave man dominion over the fowls of the air, the fish of the sea, and all living things upon the earth.
Then God looked at all that He had created, and He said, “It is very good.” In other words, when God completed His work in creating man in His image and after His likeness, He said, “It is very good.” He was satisfied, and then He rested on the seventh day.
In a sense, I feel that this gives us some kind of clue. God’s intention in creating man was that man should be a man after His heart. When man was created, His heart was satisfied.
God gave dominion to man. God wanted man to represent Him on this earth, to do His will, and to carry out what was in the mind of God. So I believe that originally we were created to be men and women after God’s heart. That is what we were originally created for.
But unfortunately, we all know the story of how man sinned against God. Since that time, God has been searching, seeking, and trying to find a man or woman after His heart. That has been the work of God throughout the ages.
So, to me, I feel that it was not only in David that God said, “I have found David, a man after My heart, who shall do all My will.” As a matter of fact, I believe that throughout the centuries this is what God has been searching for. He is trying to restore, to regain, the man that He has in His heart—a man after His heart.
I believe God today is still searching. He looks over all the men and women in this world, and it seems that He is not able to find many of them.
So when He found David, out of all the multitudes and all the people in Israel, He said, “Finally, I have found My man. This is the man of My heart, who shall do all My will.” How it pleased the heart of God.
To me, I feel that this is something God is doing today, as if He is looking at all of us here, searching us and trying to see whether He can find among us a man or woman after His heart. If He does, how happy and satisfied He must be.
So this morning, I feel we would like to consider together David, a man after God’s heart.
The first mention of David is found in the book of Ruth. In Ruth 4:17 and Ruth 4:22, you find the name of David mentioned. David was the great-grandson of Ruth; Ruth was the great-grandmother of David. His name means “beloved.”
Now, if you turn to 1 Samuel 16, you find that David was actually the eighth son of Jesse. But when you come to 1 Chronicles 2, in the genealogy there, you find David as the seventh son of Jesse. People believe that probably one of the sons passed away, and that is why the eighth became the seventh. But that is really not the big problem.
The problem is this: usually in a family, when you are the last one born, whether son or daughter, you are the darling of the family. Not only will you be beloved by your parents, but you will be loved by your brothers and sisters too. I mean, that is natural.
But when you come to the life of David, you find something very different. He was the last-born of the family, and his very name was “beloved.” Yet you find that he was neglected by his father and despised by his brothers. You wonder why. It is a puzzle.
Through the centuries, people who have studied the Bible have tried to find an explanation for this. Of course, all of this is guesswork.
Dean Stanley offered one explanation. He said that David was born of the same father but not the same mother as his other brothers. He suggested that David’s mother had previously been the wife of Nahash and later became the wife of Jesse. Thus, David and his brothers may have been half-brothers.
Furthermore, if you read 1 Chronicles 2, you find that David had two sisters, Zeruiah and Abigail. One was the mother of Joab, captain of the host under David, and the other was the mother of Amasa, captain of the host under Absalom. There is a great difference in ages here, and people seek to explain it by saying that David may have been born much later and by another mother.
But then some people begin to think that this does not really explain why he was neglected by his father and despised even by his half-brothers. So people try to find an explanation in David’s own writings, in the book of Psalms, because the Psalms express his inward feelings.
People come to Psalm 51:5. You remember David said:
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity;
And in sin did my mother conceive me.
Usually we take that verse generally, because we are all born in sin. But some take it personally and say that perhaps David was born out of wedlock. If that were the case, perhaps they reason, there was some justification for his brothers to despise him.
Then, in Psalm 27:10, David said:
When my father and my mother forsake me,
Then the Lord will take me up.
So, when people gather all these different hints together, they try to explain why something so unnatural happened in David’s family.
David was sent, as a boy, into the wilderness to take care of a few sheep. He was completely neglected by his father. There is no mention of his mother. He was looked down upon by his brothers. Poor David—he was completely cut off from normal human relationships.
He was shut out from everything that we would consider normal and necessary. But thank God, there he was being shut in to God. He did not have anything, so in the wilderness, in nature, his heart began to turn toward God.
That was his only hope and his only comfort. As he turned his heart toward God, he began to know God. The more he knew God with his heart, the more he began to understand God’s heart.
In this young boy, you can almost feel how his heart must have longed for the right relationship with his father and his brothers—how he must have longed for real union with his own people. Yet he was rejected. Because of this, he began to understand God’s heart.
At the time of David, God was completely forgotten and rejected by His own people. You remember the story of how the ark was captured by the Philistines.
When the ark came back on its own, instead of the whole nation turning to the ark of God—which represented the presence of God—the ark was taken to the woods of Kiriath-jearim, into the house of Abinadab. It was hidden there. Nobody cared for it.
During the time of Saul, he never inquired of the ark. He had no heart for God. During that period, you can almost feel the heart of God—how His heart yearned to be with His people and to bless them with all the riches that He had.
Yet somehow His people did not understand Him. His people forgot Him, and His people rejected Him. It must have hurt God’s heart very deeply.
David, because of his own personal story, began to understand God’s heart. That is how he gradually became a man after God’s heart. He longed for God. He longed for the ark of God to return and become the center of the nation of Israel, that the people might be blessed.
So, brothers and sisters, oftentimes, when people live a very easy and normal life, as it were, they do not think much about God. They do not care much about the heart of God or what God really wants, because they have everything they need.
Sometimes, if we are deprived of something that we normally would have, we may think it is a tragedy. But in God’s sovereignty, it can be something of great blessing—that we may be shut up and shut in to God.
When you lose everything outwardly, then you begin to turn within, and your heart begins to turn toward God. By that, you begin to understand God’s heart.
God wanted, at that time, to have a king according to His heart. Saul was a king chosen by the people. Saul was a man of the flesh.
Naturally speaking, he was not a bad person. In the beginning, he was quite humble. When the lot fell upon him to be king, they could not find him because he hid himself among the baggage.
But when they found him and he stood before the children of Israel, he was head and shoulders above all the children of Israel. He was of good stature. Of course, the people said, “Well, that is all right,” because they chose a king according to outward appearance. So they got their king.
But Saul never understood God. He was not the king of God’s choice.
When God sent Samuel to anoint one among the sons of Jesse to be the king after God’s heart, Jesse gathered his seven sons. But he did not call David back from the field, because in the eyes of Jesse, David was nobody. Nothing good could come out of David.
He did not even bother to call David. It was such an important occasion, but he put no hope in David.
Then Jesse asked his seven sons to pass before Samuel. When Samuel saw the first one, Eliab, he was of good stature too. Samuel secretly said, “This must be he.”
Even Samuel was deceived. God said, “No. Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” That is the difference.
All seven sons passed by, and Samuel said, “No.” So Samuel asked, “Do you have any more?” Then Jesse remembered that he had another one in the field. So he called David back.
When David came, God said, “This is he.” Brothers and sisters, you find that God’s way of choosing people is very different from man’s way of choosing. Man chooses according to outward appearance because that is all we can see.
How misleading outward appearance can be. We can put up a kind of front, but God knows the heart. Before God, outward appearance is nothing; before God, the heart is everything. Today God looks upon our hearts.
The Bible says in Proverbs 4:23:
Keep thy heart with all diligence;
For out of it are the issues of life.
The heart here does not refer to our physical heart. Even so, our physical heart is, in a sense, the center of our physical being, because all the blood passes through the heart. If you have a bad heart, then you are in trouble.
I recently had that experience, but I did not know it. I did not know I had a bad heart. I nearly had a heart attack, but I never knew it. Thank God that He saved me in time, so I am here this morning.
But in Scripture, the heart is not the physical heart. The heart is the center of our moral and spiritual being. Before God, we are not merely physical beings with a body. Before God, we are moral and spiritual beings. That is what we really are before God.
Our heart, in the Bible, is the very center of our moral and spiritual life. Out of it are the issues of life. Whatever our moral and spiritual life is comes out from the heart.
That is why the wisest of men, Solomon, said, “Keep thy heart with all diligence,” because it is the most precious thing in your life.
How much time we spend trying to improve our outward appearance. But how often do we try to examine our hearts? I think it is something we should do, but probably we neglect it.
Yet our heart is the most important thing in our life before God, because this is the one thing God is looking at. You may try to improve yourself in other ways, and men may notice it, but God never notices. Only the heart is what God looks at, and we need to guard it above all things because everything comes out of it.
You remember in the Gospel that even our Lord Jesus spoke about the heart. In Matthew 12, the Pharisees blasphemed the Holy Spirit, and our Lord Jesus said:
For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
A good tree produces good fruit; a bad tree produces bad fruit. You cannot change it. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
Again, in Matthew 15, the disciples of our Lord Jesus ate without washing their hands. The Pharisees came and said, “Why do Your disciples not wash their hands according to the tradition of our fathers before eating?”
Our Lord Jesus used a parable. He said that what goes in does not defile, but what comes out defiles. Later Peter came to the Lord and asked Him to explain the parable. The Lord said that what comes from the heart—evil thoughts, sins, and wickedness—that is what defiles a person.
It is very important that we guard our heart above all things. But strangely, when you turn to Jeremiah 17:9, it says:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?
But the Lord searches the heart. He examines the heart and proves the thoughts. Again, you find that the heart is so important, and yet the heart is deceitful above all things. You cannot think of anything more deceitful than the heart.
It not only deceives other people; it deceives ourselves too. We do not know our hearts. We may think we have a good heart, but it turns out to be a bad heart. We do not know our hearts. We are deceived even by our own hearts.
The Bible says that the heart is incurable. If that is the case, what can we do about it? Nobody can do anything with his own heart. It is deceitful and incurable. But God knows our heart. He proves our thoughts. He is the only One who knows.
Thank God, one day, when we believe in the Lord Jesus, something happens. Not only do we receive a new life, but the Bible says that we receive a new heart.
This old heart is deceitful above all things and incurable—hopeless. So when we believe in the Lord Jesus, He does something marvelous in us. He not only washes away our sins from the conscience of our hearts.
Conscience is part of our heart. We have had a guilty conscience all our lives, and there is no way we can take away that guilty conscience. You may try to accumulate merit, try to appease your conscience, or bribe your conscience, but it does not work. It does not work.
Only the blood of the Lord Jesus washes us from an evil conscience. But He not only washes us. The Bible says in Ezekiel 36 that God will give us a new heart. He will take away the stony heart and give us a heart of flesh.
Before we believe in the Lord Jesus, we have a stony heart. What does that mean? A stony heart has no sensation, no feeling—no feeling toward God. We are hard.
But when we believe in the Lord Jesus, He not only cleanses our hearts from an evil conscience, but He gives us a new heart, a heart of flesh. A heart of flesh means that it is something that can feel. You can sense. You can feel.
That is why, when we first believe in the Lord Jesus, as some people say, when you even mention the name of Jesus, you begin to shed tears. Why? Because you feel it. You feel the love of God. You have a heart of flesh toward God.
In our first love toward God, our hearts are so tender toward God. We can hear His voice—the still, small voice within us. Our hearts can hear it, and we love to obey the teaching of the anointing within us. Our hearts are really tender toward God.
If this can be kept throughout our lives, how good it will be. This heart of flesh should remain tender, soft, and pure toward God. With such a heart, we can see Him.
So in the Beatitudes, the Lord said:
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
So we see God every day. But unfortunately, we do not guard our hearts. We do not carefully and diligently guard them.
Because we fail to guard our hearts, very soon the world begins to influence us. Sin begins to harden our hearts, and the flesh begins to lead our hearts away from God.
When our hearts are tender toward God, we hear God’s voice. But sometimes we neglect it; sometimes we even rebel against it. By doing that, gradually our hearts become hardened.
So in Hebrews, you find: “Today if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” This heart of flesh, this new heart that God has given us, is so precious. It is the center of our spiritual life, yet we neglect to take care of it.
Eventually it can gradually become hardened until, to such an extent, you cannot even hear the voice of God. Sin is so deceitful. Our hearts can become hardened because we do not keep them carefully.
So, brothers and sisters, the point is: how can we guard our hearts? Are we able to really keep our hearts as fresh as when we first believed in the Lord Jesus?
We cannot save ourselves, nor can we keep ourselves. The perseverance of the saints—the power is not in us; it is in God.
In Proverbs 23:26, the same wise man, Solomon, said:
My son, give me thy heart,
And let thine eyes delight in my ways.
We are not able to keep that heart, but there is one thing we should do: give our heart to the Lord. If you give your heart to the Lord and let Him keep it for you, He is well able to keep your heart until the day when we shall see Him face to face.
So, dear brothers and sisters, the important thing is that we need to give our hearts to the Lord. Love the Lord with all your heart.
Have you given your heart to the Lord? Say, “Lord, I love You, but I am not sure about myself. If left to myself, my heart may become hardened toward You. You are the only One who is able to keep it—able to keep it unto eternity.”
“I want to give my heart to You and let You keep it for me and for Yourself.” If you give your heart to the Lord, the Lord will keep your heart tender and pure toward Him throughout your life.
That is what the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives. You have the anointing within you. He is teaching you in all things, great things and small things. If you obey the anointing, you abide in Christ. Then your heart will be kept by Him.
So, brothers and sisters, I suggest that we pray the prayer of David every day. In Psalm 139:23-24, David prayed:
Search me, O God, and know my heart:
Try me, and know my thoughts;
And see if there be any way of wickedness in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139 is a wonderful psalm. David speaks there of God—how God is omniscient. Finally, he prays this prayer: “Search me, O God, and know my heart.”
Here you find David as a man of heart. He turned his heart toward God and said, “Search me, O God.” David was not a perfect man. That is very clear when you read the Word of God. Yet his heart was always toward God.
He turned his heart to God and asked God to search him. He said, “Search me, and know my heart. I do not know my heart. I can be mistaken. I may think I have a good heart, but I may do something very wrong. So You search me.”
“Prove me, and know my thoughts. See if there is any evil way in me.” One translation says, “See if there be any idolatrous way in me.” Why is it idolatrous? Because idolatry simply means that, aside from God, you worship something else.
Be a man of heart, and let your heart be in tune with God’s heart. Gradually, you will find that you come to know the heart of God more and more. What is the heart of God? You want to be a person who will, in some small sense, satisfy God’s heart.
God said, “I have found David, a man after My heart.” Can God today say to each one of us, “I finally have found you”?
Unless you are a man of heart and a man after God’s heart, you are not the man God is trying to find. But if you are, how happy God will be. As He said, “I found you, David, a man after My heart,” you can see how God’s heart is happy and joyful: “I finally got one.”
May it be true with each one of us. We need to pay very special attention to our hearts. But again, I say, we do not know our hearts. So bring them to the Lord. Ask Him to examine us and keep our hearts always pure before Him, that we may see God.
But in this sentence, you find that it is not finished yet. He said, “I have found David, a man after My heart, who shall do all My will.”
The heart is invisible. It is visible only to God, but invisible even to ourselves. Yet what is within will eventually work out.
David was a man after God’s heart, and that was manifested in doing all God’s will. When you find God’s will being done, then you see what was really in David’s heart. That is the way to prove what is within the heart.
It is not merely a mystical thing. It is expressed and manifested in outward action. When you read the story of David, you find that, as soon as he had opportunity, he acted.
Before David had opportunity, he could not do very much because he was a fugitive. In Psalm 132, he said, “Lord, remember me in all my affliction.” What does that mean? David afflicted himself.
He said, “I cannot rest because I am thinking of the ark of God. Nobody cares about it. Where is it? Where can we find it? I want to find it. I want to worship before the ark. I want to find a resting place for the ark of God.” But he could not do it.
As soon as he became king of all Israel, notice what he did immediately. In 2 Samuel 5, as soon as he became king of Israel, the first thing he did was to take Jerusalem. He made Jerusalem the capital of the nation.
We are told that, so far as political and geographical situation is concerned, Jerusalem is out of the way. Why was David’s first action as king to take Jerusalem? There was a reason for that.
Way back, when God led the children of Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness, God said in Deuteronomy 12:11:
Then it shall come to pass that to the place which the Lord your God shall choose, to cause His name to dwell there, thither shall ye bring all that I command you.
After they entered the promised land, God would choose one place and put His name there. The children of Israel would go there to offer their sacrifices. Three times a year, all the males would go to worship God. By this, the people would be united as one nation under the name of God.
But after they entered Canaan, this did not happen. Nobody inquired where the place was where God would put His name. Throughout the book of Judges, for four hundred years and more, even under Samuel, nobody knew where God would put His name.
The ark moved here and there. The tabernacle moved here and there. There was no settled place.
When they first entered Canaan, they made Gilgal their base. Most likely the tabernacle was set up in Gilgal. But later it moved to Shiloh. During the time of Saul, it moved to Nob, where the priests were and where David fled. Later it was in Gibeon.
There was no settled place where the people would go and worship as a nation. Nobody knew where the name of God would be put.
But somehow David, being a man after God’s own heart, knew God’s heart. He was given revelation: it was Jerusalem. So the first thing he did was to take Jerusalem. It was not out of consideration for geography or politics; it was out of consideration for God’s will.
That was the place where God would put His name. The children of Israel would flow into Jerusalem, and under that name they would become one nation, one people, under God.
Brothers and sisters, do you know why God’s people are also scattered today?
Our Lord Jesus said:
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
Where He puts His name, that is where we gather. That is where we gather as one people under one name.
But unfortunately today, among God’s people, we neglect that name. Many of God’s people gather together under other names—sometimes under the name of a great man of God, sometimes under the name of a form or a system, sometimes under the name of a doctrine or teaching, and sometimes under the name of an experience.
When you gather together under such names, God’s people are scattered. Only when we respect the name of the Lord Jesus and gather together under His name, under His authority, are we one nation and one people.
No matter where we are, we are one nation, one people. It is His name that gathers us together into one. Of course, it is not merely mentioning the name of the Lord in vain. It must be in reality. That is to say, we really gather together and put every one of us under His authority.
How can we be scattered? How can we be separated if we are all under that one name—a name which is above every name, and at which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God?
So, brothers and sisters, to us today it is no longer a physical place; it is His name. If we are men and women after God’s heart, that is what we should do. That will be doing the will of God.
Then, secondly, the second thing David did was to bring the ark back to Jerusalem.
Nobody cared for the ark, but David cared because the ark represented the presence of God. It was hidden in the woods of Kiriath-jearim, in the house of Abinadab, and was not inquired of. In a sense, people did not care whether God was present or not.
If they could have other things, they were satisfied. But David could not be satisfied with anything if God was not there. He wanted to make God the center of the life of the people.
So the second thing he did was to bring the ark back to Jerusalem, to the tent he had prepared for the ark. In the beginning, what he did was right—his heart was right—but the way he did it was wrong.
God’s will must be done in God’s way. Unfortunately, God’s will was not done in God’s way, but in the way of the Philistines. David tried to bring the ark back on a new cart. Then something happened, and David was frightened. Not only frightened—he was indignant.
He felt that he had done something right for God, so why had God done something bad to him? He was not happy with God. Instead of bringing the ark back to Jerusalem, he let it go into another house—the house of Obed-edom.
But after God blessed that house, David understood that the ark had to be carried upon the shoulders of the priests. Finally, you find how joyfully he brought the ark back. The presence of the Lord—God became present among His people.
Brothers and sisters, the presence of the Lord is really everything to us.
Even Moses, who knew God, said this when God told him, “I will send My angel before thee, but I will not go up in the midst of thee.” Moses said, “No. If You do not go with us, do not send us on. We will not go.”
“What makes us different from all the nations is Your presence. If Your presence is absent, we are no different from other nations.”
Brothers and sisters, do we really treasure the presence of the Lord—not just personally, but corporately? When we gather together, what are we looking for? Are we looking for something that will satisfy us?
Oftentimes we come to a meeting, and when we leave the meeting, we shake our heads and say, “We did not get anything. It was a waste of time.” But is that the reason why we gather together?
When we come together, what are we looking for? We are looking for His presence. If His presence is here, everything is fine.
In His presence is fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures for evermore. Without His presence, nothing—nothing.
Here we know the heart of God. Here we are men and women after God’s heart. Brothers and sisters, do you desire His presence more than anything else?
If His presence is not here, everything is nothing. Individually, that is the thing you seek for. Corporately, that is the thing you look for: His presence. Only His presence can satisfy.
Then, thirdly, you find David, as the account continues in 2 Samuel 7, wanting to build God a house.
He said, “I cannot live in a house of cedar while the ark of God is still within curtains. I cannot do that.” He loved God so much that he said, “I have to build Him a house.”
He shared his heart with Nathan the prophet. Nathan knew, in principle, that David was a man after God’s heart, so Nathan said, “Go ahead. That is the right thing to do.”
Yet God’s word came to Nathan: “Go back to David, because he is a man of war and has shed much blood. That does not represent My house. But his son will build it.”
Even so, you find David’s love for the house of God. In all his affliction, in all his power, and in all his affection for the house of God, he prepared an abundance of materials for the house of God.
Brothers and sisters, that is what we should do if we are men and women after God’s heart. What are we doing every day? Are we gathering things for ourselves, or are we gathering materials for the house of God?
Are we preparing materials for God’s house—preparing ourselves as His materials, preparing others as His materials, and doing so in abundance?
Out of our trials and afflictions, we gather the materials. With all our power, we gather the materials. In all our affection toward God, we gather the materials. That is the way we do all His will.
Have you noticed that His will is singular—“all His will”? His will is one.
His will is to have a habitation, a dwelling place, a house where He can live together with man. That is the will of God.
So, dear brothers and sisters, how can that will be fulfilled? Only by those who are men and women after God’s heart. May the Lord find in all of us such men and women.
Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, our hearts do go out to Thee, knowing how Thy heart longs for Thy people to be Thy dwelling place, that Thou mayest be able to pour forth Thyself to Thy people and enable Thy people to manifest Thy glory.
O dear Lord, we pray that Thou wilt impress this upon our hearts. Make us men and women of heart, after God’s heart, that we may do all Thy will.
We give Thee all the glory. In Thy precious name we pray. Amen.
If we could play the hymn based on Psalm 139, the last verses: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.”
Congregational singing, indistinct.