My brother James said that we have really felt the love of the saints here in Richmond, and we are so thankful. My family was staying with the Grahams, and we really felt the love and hospitality there.
I noticed something on the way over here: we hit traffic for the first time this morning, and I realized that we are actually in the Bible Belt down here in the South. It was kind of refreshing, actually, to see so many people rushing to meet the Lord. I think we came around the table and met the Lord this morning. I am so thankful for that.
Why do we not open to Acts 13:22? This was the theme verse for the conference this weekend, so let us start there.
And when He had removed him,
He raised up for them David as king,
to whom also He gave testimony, and said,
“I have found David the son of Jesse,
a man after My own heart,
who will do all My will.”
If that is the positive side of this thought of being a man after God’s heart, the other side is found in 1 Samuel 13:14. This speaks of Saul.
But now thy kingdom shall not continue:
the Lord hath sought Him a man after His own heart,
and the Lord hath appointed him to be prince over His people,
because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee.
Lord, we are so thankful that we can come before You this morning. It is such a privilege to come and remember You, Lord. Even as we open Your Word, we want to remember You. Lord, turn our hearts to You. We want to hear what the Spirit is saying to us in this hour. May not one moment go by that we do not see what You are after in all of our hearts. In Jesus’ name we pray.
The Lord has always been looking for men and women who are after His heart. What a blessed title David had: he was called, “My servant.” The Lord called him, “My servant,” and we see that the reason he was His servant was because he was a man after His heart.
For the course of the conference, I had the responsibility of taking up the early years of David, particularly before he became king. Very briefly, by way of introduction, we see three main themes in David’s early years—things that were really the focus of why he was a man after God’s heart.
First, he had a searching heart—one who pursued God and ran after Him with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength. David had a searching heart.
Second, David had a pure heart—one who searched his heart and responded when the Lord exposed something, so that his heart would be pure. There were multiple parts to that.
Third, he had a trusting heart. Before getting into these points, I want to go a little bit into David’s background.
When David was anointed king by Samuel in 1 Samuel, do you know how old he was? I know the people who were here for the conference know the answer to that question. He was probably about fifteen or sixteen years old when Samuel anointed him king.
It really struck me when I thought about how young he was when he was anointed, because at that point in his life he had accomplished nothing. He was a humble shepherd—simple, unaccomplished, and, I do not even know if this is a word, unspecial, as you can imagine. He hung out with sheep. He walked through the fields around Bethlehem with stinky, dumb sheep.
This was the lot in life of the youngest of eight brothers, one who did, in many ways, just menial tasks. But we see that his anointing had nothing to do with any accomplishments he had made.
If you looked at David from outward appearance, there was nothing special about him. As we were reminded concerning our Lord in Isaiah 53, there was nothing beautiful in Him that He should be looked upon in any special way. Saul was the one who had the outward look: one who was a head taller and handsome. He seemed, in man’s eyes, to be the rightful king.
But the Lord was looking for a man after His own heart. It is the heart that matters. It is not accomplishments. It is not outward things. This is such a good lesson for us when we consider what the Lord is looking for in His people in this day. He is looking for the heart.
Certainly, fruit comes out of having that heart, but what He is looking for is the heart.
When we consider these three areas of David’s heart, we can also see Beatitudes that correspond with them. The searching heart finds a parallel in Matthew 5:6:
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:
for they shall be filled.
David searched for God. As he continued to search and pursue Him, he discovered God’s heart. As you go through David’s early psalms and the early parts of his life, you see that he had seen something of the Lord. That then motivated him to have a pure heart and a trusting heart.
David was motivated to have a pure heart because he saw that God is holy. Because he saw that God is holy, he realized that God hates sin. When you see God’s heart—that He hates sin—the response of one who is after His heart is also to hate sin.
That is why David says in Psalm 139:23-24:
Search me, O God, and know my heart:
Try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
He was asking for there to be a full searching, that there would be nothing wicked in him. David was a man of grave faults. I mean, man—the quintessential defendant in a courtroom: conspiracy, adultery, murder. Heinous stuff, things that we know on the surface are obviously horrible.
But David did not count only those large things as displeasing to the Lord. He saw the Lord’s standard: God is holy. In 1 Samuel 24, when he was baited by the men around him to destroy Saul, he cut Saul’s robe. David’s heart troubled him because he saw that even cutting the robe of the Lord’s anointed was displeasing to Him.
David had this fear of the Lord—a pleasing fear. He wanted to please God in everything that he did. The more he saw the depths of who God was, the more his heart responded. God is love, and David loved as a result. God is righteous, and he had a heart to be righteous. God is truth, and he wanted truth in everything he did. God is holy.
Out of that pure heart, we see the Beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” What a blessing that is—to see God. Is that not what we are really after, to see Him? When we see Him, there is a heart response that comes out of that.
David not only had a pure heart that repented and was always searching, but he had a single heart. We were fellowshipping in devotionals this morning at the Grahams’ place about the last portion of Acts 13:22:
I have found David the son of Jesse,
a man after My own heart,
who will do all My will.
All His will—not part of it, not most of it, not only when it pleased him. David did all the will of God.
You see this comparison between Saul and David. Saul tried to do some good things, but ultimately he was found disobedient. Samuel told him to wait, but Saul took it upon himself to give an unlawful sacrifice. Later, he was told to utterly destroy the Amalekites—everything: the sheep, the infants, the nursing ones, the women, everybody. Yet he saved some because he thought it would be good to sacrifice them. That was found to be dishonoring, displeasing, and disobedient to the Lord.
It is so easy, when you have children, to realize how easy it is to be disobedient. Bless their hearts—I love my cute sinners, my children. They really need the Lord. As we fellowshipped over the weekend, they need a new heart.
So often they give partial obedience. They give you lip service: “Yes, I am going to do that.” Then what happens? The next thing they do is exactly what they said they were not going to do—or they do what they are not supposed to do, or fail to do what they should be doing. Whatever it is.
But this is how David saw the heart of God: even though he messed up—oh, thank God—David was a man after God’s heart, and he was a failure over and over again. Who can identify with David? So many times in my life, I have messed up. I have seen the displeasure I have given to the Lord in things I thought I was never capable of doing. I have made vows: “I will never do this,” and then I do the exact thing that is displeasing to the Lord.
But the thing that was so special about David was that as soon as he recognized it, he dealt with it head on. He did not let it sit there. He dealt with it head on.
That is such a lesson for us: not to sweep things under the rug, but to sweep them all the way out of the house. When we see something displeasing to the Lord, we need to deal with it head on.
God is looking for men and women who have pure hearts, single hearts, whole hearts—no mixture, no compromise, nothing that distracts us from living for Him in a way that is pleasing.
The other thing we see about David is that he had a trusting heart. If you make the parallel with the Beatitudes, it would be Matthew 5:5:
Blessed are the meek:
for they shall inherit the earth.
Who is meek? Someone who relies on someone else, who realizes that in themselves they can do nothing—wholly reliant, the complete opposite of self-reliant or self-assertive. Totally meek.
We find that in David’s life. A great example of this trusting heart is found in 1 Samuel 17, in the story of David and Goliath. Let us spend a little time considering this trusting heart and drawing out lessons David probably saw initially, and lessons he learned in a deeper way as he walked with the Lord longer.
Jesse, David’s father, sent him with supplies to meet his brothers in battle and take some rations with him. Let us pick up the story at 1 Samuel 17:31.
And when the words which David spake were heard,
they rehearsed them before Saul; and he sent for him.
And David said to Saul, Let no man’s heart fail because of him;
thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.
And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him:
for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.
And David said to Saul, Thy servant kept his father’s sheep;
and when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock,
I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth:
and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him.
Thy servant smote both the lion and the bear:
and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them,
seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God.
Let us move down to 1 Samuel 17:40. Saul wanted to give David armor, but David said it was not for him.
And he took his staff in his hand,
and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook,
and put them in the shepherd’s bag which he had, even in his scrip;
and his sling was in his hand:
and he drew near to the Philistine.
You can picture the anticipation building here. The Philistine came and began drawing near to David, and the man who bore the shield went before him.
And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him:
for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance.
And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves?
And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.
Then said David to the Philistine,
Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a javelin:
but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts,
the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.
This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand;
and I will smite thee, and take thine head from off thee;
and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day
unto the birds of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth;
that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
And that all this assembly may know
that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear:
for the battle is the Lord’s,
and He will give you into our hand.
We know what happens after that.
How do we start our walk with the Lord? When we consider David’s trusting heart, a trusting heart starts somewhere. Our trusting heart begins when we trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
When we recognize that His precious blood has covered us from our sins and our sin, and we see that He has conquered Satan, death, and sin—He has conquered the power of cancelled sin—we realize that this work has been completed. That is where we start, and then we build from there.
What we see in David’s life is that he started small. Picture him out on the hillside with his sheep. Picture that first lion or first bear that came up to him. It was not easy. Can you imagine the first time David was out with his sheep and saw a lion or a bear? I have to imagine that it was death-defying. He must have been deathly afraid.
But he had to take that first step of faith. He went out there, and it was not merely one lion or one bear. In 1 Samuel 17, David says that whenever a lion or a bear came, he went out and struck it and killed it. It started with a simple thing the first time. Then the second time got easier, and the next time got easier.
I feel that every time David exercised that bit of faith—every time he saw that God was trustworthy and worthy to be relied upon—he laid down an Ebenezer: “Thus far hath the Lord helped me.”
He remembered those times: “I remember the last time, Lord, You helped me. I grabbed the beard of that lion and that bear, and I struck it and killed it. I know You will do it for me again.” Then the next time it happened, he did it again and again and again.
The more David put his faith in the Lord, the more God showed him who He was, how trustworthy He is, and how faithful He is. We remember His mercies every morning.
So many times in my own life, I have to be reminded of the times when I laid down those Ebenezers. I think about the time when I wandered from the Lord for years in college, and the Lord captured my heart again. I look back to that time so often, and I am reminded of how good the Lord is—how He has never let me go.
No matter how far I have roamed or how disobedient I have been, the Lord holds on to us so tightly. He loves us with an everlasting, unbreaking love. I remember that time and look back on it, saying, “Thank You, Lord, for never letting me go, no matter how far I have gone.”
There are so many different times in our lives when we need to remember those Ebenezers and look back on them to see how faithful He has been. Sometimes those Ebenezers come in corporate ways. The Lord brings us through some trial or tribulation in our corporate life, and we look back on it. It propels us in our own prayer time and in our corporate prayer time.
The Lord showed us that He answered this prayer. He can do it again, and He will do it again.
There are deeper lessons in this story of David and Goliath. I will list a few and then talk about them.
First, we need to realize that the enemy is real and ready. Goliath was ready from his youth. Every word in the Bible is important. It does not merely say that Goliath was a warrior and champion; he was a champion and a warrior from his youth. He was trained for battle.
Make no mistake: the enemy is trained for battle. His purpose is to seek to kill and destroy. That is the enemy.
If I can make a natural parallel from my own life, I am a prosecutor. When I am in court, I see this very real enemy—though I should be praying for the enemy in the courtroom. I see the enemy in the courtroom, and I see his advocate, who is also the enemy.
The enemy is always prepared. He is planning to twist every fact I have in my case and make it seem like something else. How often does the enemy try to twist us, accuse us, and change what we know to be the truth? This is what the enemy does. He has a plan.
Part of my preparation for a trial is to think about what the enemy is going to go for. What is his angle going to be? How is he going to approach this situation? I have to be aware of it. If I am not aware of it, it catches me, and the result is not good.
We have to realize that the enemy is real and living. Just as God is living, the enemy is living.
My wife, as a little lesson with our children, made a Goliath out of craft paper—like the paper that you roll out. I mean, nine feet six inches tall, right? Goliath? I was kind of scared of a piece of paper.
It is imposing. I was looking at this piece of paper and was scared of it. What a wimp I am. But in reality, the enemy is scary. When the enemy tempted the Lord and then left Him, he waited for an opportune time. What a schemer. How sneaky is the enemy.
He is not someone to disregard. He must be considered. He is real.
Second, we cannot underestimate our preparation. Think about David. David had the bag with him; he already had the bag. He just had to pick up the stones.
All of these Ebenezers that he had laid down—trusting in the Lord with lions and bears, and who knows what else he learned in his youth by the time he was a teenager—were being stored up.
I have to imagine that David did not know, when he went out that day, that he was going to fight Goliath. He knew the battle lines had been drawn, but he had no idea what he was in for that day. But he was prepared.
This is such a lesson for us. So often, when we go through a situation, we ask, “Why do we have to go through suffering? Why? It does not make sense, Lord. Maybe it does not even seem fair. Why do we have to go through this?”
The Lord does not put us through situations, or allow us to go through situations, for nothing. We can go through them without seeking His face to see what He wants to show us through them. But all these things can be redeemed for Him.
Do we read the Bible merely as a check mark in the morning? Or are we hiding His Word in our heart for when the time comes that we can use that Word? Even as we think about the armor of God, the Word of God is a sword.
The Word is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword. We study the Word. We meditate on His Word. It is used not merely defensively, but offensively against the enemy.
Do not take for granted all these things from our youth, from when we are young. These are all ways we are being prepared for what the Lord has to show us, if we continue to press on with Him in this last hour.
Let us not forget all the ways He has prepared us. Think of how many messages we have heard over the years, how much truth we have heard. May we not forget how the Lord has shared His life with us in so many different ways. All of this is preparation.
Another thing we see in the story of David and Goliath is the great difference between God’s ways and man’s ways.
Man’s way was for the warriors to run away. The second option was Saul saying, “Here, take my armor and take my sword.” Man always has an answer.
There are a hundred and fifty thousand ways to get advice. There are subway ads all over New York about philosophy. I think the title is, “Philosophy Works.” Go to these ten sessions and you will have answers to all your problems—or whatever it is, some nonsense like that. I just sit there and laugh at it.
It is amazing how many people are seeing therapists—people I know who are seeing somebody because they are seeking truth and seeking advice. In a much more subtle way, how easy it is for us to seek man’s advice instead of going to the Lord first.
Now, look, the Lord uses brothers and sisters. I do not want to disregard that or suggest that it is not important. The Lord has used so many brothers and sisters in my own life. But we need to go to the Lord first.
When we seek the Lord first, let Him give us the answer. Sometimes it takes time, and it takes searching. David searched and searched, and the Lord shared His heart.
You do not see David in his early life asking Jesse, “What do you think about this?” You see him searching after God’s heart always and always and always. Of course, there comes a time when we seek the counsel of a brother or sister. There is nothing wrong with that. But we need to first seek out God’s way.
What was God’s way in this situation? God’s way was five smooth stones. I bet that when David was out with his sheep, walking through the hills, stopping for a drink of water, and seeing stones in a running stream, he appreciated their beauty as part of God’s creation. He never would have known that God would use such a simple way.
God uses the simple things of the world—not the wise, but the foolish. Everything is upside down in His kingdom. Simple things: five smooth stones.
What else do we see in the story of David and Goliath? We see that the battle is the Lord’s. This is why I asked that we sing that hymn, “Hallelujah, Christ Is Victor.” The battle is the Lord’s.
We know the end of the story. God won, He is winning, and He will win. Praise God—He will win. We know the end of the story.
Sometimes it almost makes me laugh at the enemy. You try, but you are going to fail. You can continue to try, but you hold nothing against us.
Recently, we were praying in Manhattan and thinking about the seemingly victories ISIS was winning, how it seemed they were on the rise and everyone else was on the back burner, whatever it was. Then I thought about Psalm 37:1-2:
Fret not thyself because of evil-doers,
Neither be thou envious against them that work unrighteousness.
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass,
And wither as the green herb.
Brothers and sisters, the Lord has already won the battle. The battle is the Lord’s. He is Victor. David had such confidence in that victory. This is the way that we press on in these end days: to see that the victory is His.
My prayer, when I think about this, is often, “Lord, help my unbelief.” That is the opposite of this trusting heart. Lord, help my unbelief. I need to know Your heart. I need to know that You are the Victor and that the story has already been written.
David also saw, under this same matter of recognizing that the battle is the Lord’s, the power in the Name—the power in Jesus’ name.
David called on the name of the Lord. He said, “Do not defy the armies of the living God. I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts.” That is not something to be taken lightly: the Name.
What a discovery when we see the Name, but also the Man—the One who is the Name.
As a closing thought, another lesson from the story of David and Goliath is the testimony that one person has to others. David had an individual testimony: he trusted in God, took steps of faith, and saw that the battle was the Lord’s.
But what do we see as the story continues in 1 Samuel 17? David slays Goliath, and Goliath goes down with one stone. What is the result of David taking that step of faith? Verse 52 tells us:
And the men of Israel and of Judah arose, and shouted,
and pursued the Philistines,
until thou come to the valley,
and to the gates of Ekron.
And the wounded of the Philistines fell down by the way to Shaaraim,
even unto Gath, and unto Ekron.
They had been sitting on the line for forty days. They were on two sides of a valley, standing there for forty days, yapping back and forth. Goliath would come out and talk trash, and the Israelites would sit there and be scared.
Then someone took that first step of faith. David went out and took the step of faith. What happened? The men of Israel and Judah arose, shouted, and pursued the Philistines.
What an encouragement one brother or one sister can be to so many people. Do not take for granted how much impact you can have on others.
Sometimes the impact can be in the simplest way. We come to the Lord’s table, and a simple prayer from a quiet one can be such an encouragement to other people. A simple step of faith by someone who is new in the Lord can be such an encouragement to someone who has walked with the Lord for decades.
Do not take for granted these things. So much of our walk with the Lord happens in hidden places and secret places. But when you see these little glimpses of how the Lord has spoken through people, used people, and worked through all different ways of service, what an encouragement it becomes to the body.
Do not take for granted your role in the body of Christ. Everyone in this room—young and old, new to the Lord or walking with the Lord for a long time—there is a place for all of us to encourage one another. We see that corporate testimony because David took a step of faith.
There is also our testimony to the world. David said in 1 Samuel 17:46:
This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand;
and I will smite thee, and take thine head from off thee;
and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day
unto the birds of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth;
that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
That all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. We are a testimony to this world.
Think about the last thing our Lord said before He ascended. What do we see in Acts 1? He said, “Ye shall be My witnesses.” This is the word He left us with before He ascended back into heaven: “Ye shall be My witnesses.”
It is a testimony not just to the body, but to the world, when we stand for the Lord. We need to take a stance for Him.
That plays out in many different ways, and I will leave that to how you feel led. But when we take a stand for the Lord, it becomes noticed. It can be as simple as letting your friends at work know that you are a believer.
My friends at work know I am a believer. They do not curse around me. I always thought it was the other way around—that I would be scared to proclaim that I am a Christian because I did not know what people would think of me.
But you take that stand. You say something as simple as, “I am a believer,” and a real friend will recognize that. There is fruit that comes from it. People around you guard what they say because they know you are a believer.
Think about the ways we can take a stand for the Lord, and what a testimony it can be: that all the earth may know that there is a God—not only in Israel, but a living God right here in Richmond, in Memphis, in New York, in Vancouver, wherever you are from.
There is a living God, and we serve Him. He is the Victor. The battle is His. We stand on His side.
Let me close in a word of prayer before Lucio comes up.
Lord, we are so thankful that we can come before You today, that we can trust in a living God. We are so thankful that You are looking after our hearts. We come before You now and pray that You would search our hearts, Lord, and see if there is any way in us that is displeasing to You.
Lord, we want to be those who are walking worthy of Your calling as we go forth in these end days. In Jesus’ name we pray.