Let’s have a quick word of prayer.
Father, bless Your Word as we open it this morning, that we may feed on Jesus. Thank You, in His name. Amen.
Good J. Vernon McGee prayer there, for some of you older folks will know what I mean by that.
It’s really an honor for me to be able to share with you this morning. I thank you for the opportunity.
I want to introduce myself a little bit and just tell you what my approach is to the Word. I’ll just take a couple of minutes to do this.
I’m a student of the Word, like many of you are. Nothing unique about that, but I love to study the Word. In that, I compare Scripture with Scripture a lot of times, seeking the Lord and seeking to have Him enlighten the Word to me.
You know what that means. You know what that is, where it’s just alive—it comes to us. In that, we pull out God’s truth, and it just has this ring in our hearts of the truth of that.
I try not to ever read into the Scriptures, try to come with a preconceived idea and try to prove some point as I look at the Scriptures. I’m always trying to draw out of the Scriptures.
As a young Christian, I used to use secondary sources a lot—commentaries, different books. I find myself, as I’m getting older and older in the Lord, using secondary sources less and less.
I do refer to secondary sources more for interest in seeing the light that they saw in the Scriptures, what truth was revealed to their hearts. Sometimes it is also a verification of something that I think I’ve seen, to see if somebody else saw the same thing.
Finally, theologically, I keep a very tight grip on the pillars of the faith. There are certain things about the faith that you need to hold on to very carefully, with a strong grip: the inerrancy of the Word, and so on and so forth; Jesus, the virgin birth, His death on the cross, the efficacy of that death on our behalf, and so on and so forth.
I keep a really strong grip on that. But when it comes to what I call secondary truths, positions, or issues in the Scriptures, I keep a really light grip on things like that.
I used to hold things very dearly, some things that I’d learned as a young Christian. But I find myself evolving with the Lord, and He’s changing me, and He’s showing new things to me and to all of us. So I keep a very loose grip on those kinds of things.
After all, those positions have usually been propagated or established by some man or some school of theology. The best of men are finite, and we’re dealing with an infinite God. An infinite God is alive and revealing things, so I keep a light grip.
I’m not coming here this morning with any theological position or anything that I’m trying to propagate. In fact, I might offend some people here by the things I’m going to share, but that’s fine.
I want to share on David this morning. Specifically, I want to look at the first seven years of his public ministry.
Some commentators think that it’s seven years, but approximately seven years—from the date that he was anointed by Samuel to the time that he takes the throne over united Israel.
That seven-year period of time covers from 1 Samuel 16 to 2 Samuel 4 and 5, when Ish-bosheth was put to death and David took the throne over all of Israel. Of course, we won’t cover all that this morning.
Before we get into the actual seven-year period of time, there are some things that we need to look at in David’s life—his person and his history, and the things that we can learn from it.
David is a very clear type of Christ: being a king, being a prophet, and even functioning as a priest on several occasions. But he also serves as a wonderful type for us believers, and there are wonderful lessons that we can learn from his life.
That’s what I mainly want to share this morning: some of the lessons that I see that we can learn from David’s life.
This whole thing—when I say seven years, some of you students might immediately start thinking about the seven-year period of tribulation.
There is that which I want to suggest, and this is problematic. It may be from the Lord; it may not. That’s one thing I keep a light grip on. I don’t ever think, “Wow, that is the Lord.” I don’t trust myself.
Too often in my past life, I’ve fooled myself, thinking that the Lord had said something when it was actually something that I might have conjured up in my own mind.
So it’s a little bit problematic that David would serve as a type of the church in that seven-year period of time. Of course, by that I’m suggesting that I don’t believe in the pre-tribulation rapture of all the saints.
I can remember many years ago, back in the seventies, Hal Lindsey was the propagator of the pre-tribulation rapture of all the saints. He had down pat everything that was going to happen.
Then some wise man interviewed him and said, “But what if you’re wrong about that, and the saints do have to go through some tribulation?” Hal Lindsey got a smile on his face and said, “I’ve got contingency plans.”
So not even he really was fully satisfied that he knew all the truth about it. I would suggest that the saints may have to go through a period of tribulation.
I think it’s wonderful, because the Lord prepares His people for those times. He won’t let us flounder and stumble in those times. Even before they begin, He begins to train us. He begins to prepare our hearts.
I’m very thankful for that—that the Lord does think so highly of us that He would prepare us for those times.
It’s very similar to what Jerry shared about John the Baptist. John the Baptist is also a type of the church in these last days.
As I was preparing, I did look at Alan Redpath, who wrote a little book on the life of David, The Making of a Man of God. He wrote this in 1962.
Put yourself in his shoes and consider the situation as it was in 1962. He’s writing to the saints, and in the first chapter I just want to read two paragraphs that echoed what the Lord had put on my heart.
The first says:
These are the days of immense significance to the Christian church.
Any of us with discernment cannot but believe the truth of the Word of God, that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back soon to take His people home and thereafter to establish His kingdom.
Yet how few of us relate our lives to this significant truth: the soon return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That’s been on my heart. It is an expectation that wells up within our hearts—that it is true.
Every generation has had that hope, has had that desire. It doesn’t mean that they were wrong. It just means that that is something the Lord plants in every generation’s heart: that the Lord is coming back soon, and the saints prepare themselves for that day.
I don’t find that Paul was mistaken, or that some of the other saints throughout the generations were mistaken when they believed that the Lord was soon to return.
I can remember reading a brochure that a sister used to hand out: “Eighty-Eight Reasons Why the Lord’s Going to Return in 1988.”
I was raised in my first days under Chuck Smith, and Chuck Smith was a great proponent of the Lord’s soon return in 1977.
None of them were wrong. None of us are wrong to have that expectation. The Lord plants it in our hearts. Perhaps this is the generation. Perhaps we will see the return of the Lord in the next few years.
Then the second paragraph—the second emphasis that the Lord put on my heart—says:
The machinery of the church is put to very severe strain, is working overtime; but that which the machinery produces so often lacks evidence of heavenly reality.
The mass production of modern industry, all kinds of goods which attract the eye but have little lasting quality, is often evident in the Christian church.
In days like these, I believe that it is quality and not quantity that is going to count.
Boy, if that was a prophetic statement for our day, that is so true.
Having experienced the last nine years, having gone to a mega-church wannabe for five or six of those years, the emphasis on the church at large, at least in this country, is quantity.
I can say that in the time that we were there in Atlanta, I heard maybe two messages on the cross. Everything else was about getting saved, going out into the world, and sharing the gospel—that more people might get saved.
There’s nothing wrong with that message. But if that’s your only message, then you’re missing a vast part of what Christianity is all about.
What Alan Redpath is saying, and what emphasis was laid on my heart, is that the Lord is after quality. He doesn’t care about numbers necessarily like men do.
I’ll just throw out a statistic: ninety percent of all pastors and the things that they really want are bigger congregations, bigger buildings, a campus. Then you want two campuses. Then you want three. Then you want four. You want growth, growth, growth.
Souls—and, of course, sadly to say, the money that those souls bring into the church. But that’s not what the Lord wants.
What’s going to happen in the last days is that the quality of the saints is going to matter, and not the quantity. We will see that in David’s life, perhaps, of what that means: that quality—a few, not many.
Let’s go to David and just look at David the man, and look at what the Lord says about David.
There is a verse in 1 Samuel 13:14 in which the Lord tells us who David is before he even comes on the scene.
This is where Saul is being rejected. The kingdom has been taken away from him because of his disobedience, because of the hardness of his heart. The Lord has asked Samuel to prepare another man, somebody else to take that throne.
Samuel says to 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.
That’s the phrase that always attaches to David. What a wonderful, wonderful thing that the Lord saw in David and was able to draw out of David: a man after the Lord’s heart, after the Lord’s purpose.
He had one purpose in life, and that was to serve the Lord.
But before David sought the Lord’s purpose, the Lord sought David first. The Lord brought David to Himself.
We find that the Lord is still seeking in these days for that quality of believers.
I think of the verse in Luke 18:8 where it says, “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?”
I think that is not talking about whether He will find faith among the people in the world, but whether He will find faith in His believers, in the church. There will be some that are faithful to the Lord to the end. But unfortunately, I think there will be many that will be unfaithful to the Lord.
So we catch a glimpse of that in what the Lord says in Luke 18.
The Lord appointed him, selected him, to be a prince among His people. Of course, the Lord has His appointment today.
We’re told in the Scriptures, in Revelation 5 and elsewhere, that we shall be a kingdom of priests and kings, and that they shall reign on earth. They shall be princes in this earth.
The Lord has appointed and selected His people.
“A man after His own heart.” A key to this is: Where do God’s affections lie? What is God seeking, looking for?
Of course, we find first and foremost His dear Son. Everything is wrapped up in His Son. God’s purpose is found in His Son and in His reigning and His taking dominion.
Closely related to that is His body. His body on this earth in these days is where God’s affections lie, where His work lies, where His desires lie.
When I think of that word prince, I think of Jacob. Jacob means usurper, a stealer, a thief—trying to steal the inheritance, the birthright, from his brother, rightly or wrongly. A conniver.
But he was made and called Israel, which means prince. The conniver, the usurper, becomes a prince.
So us Christians, reprobate sinners as we were, the Lord has taken us and transformed us and made us princes before Him.
It’s just a marvelous thing that He’s done for us: that One who is worthy, the Lord, will have dominion, but we also will have dominion over God’s creation.
It’s a marvelous thing that the Lord has destined for us, for those who remain faithful to Him in the days to come.
Paul the apostle echoed these same words, these same thoughts, on his first missionary trip.
As he came to Antioch of Pisidia, he entered into the synagogue, and they asked him to expound the Scriptures to them. Paul stood up and ministered the Word to them.
He talked to them about their history—how the Lord had preserved them through Egypt, delivered them, brought them into the land, gave them judges, and gave them kings.
Then he talks about David, and Paul adds:
I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after Mine own heart, who shall do all My will.
Can you imagine having that epitaph on your tombstone? “He was a man after God’s heart.” “She was a woman who was after God’s heart.” That was her sole purpose, or his sole purpose.
But then Paul adds something to that description: “Who will do all My will.”
Here we have David, this Old Testament saint. The best that could be expected of the Old Testament saints, David possessed. We’ll read about that in a few minutes, where the Spirit came upon him mightily for the rest of his days.
But when you compare that to the gift that has been given to us—that the Holy Spirit doesn’t just come upon us, but the Holy Spirit dwells in us—what a tremendous gift. What a tremendous thing that has been done to us.
It is far greater than anything David ever possessed, far greater than anything David ever had. Yet can it be said of us, as we look at our lives and examine our lives closely, “I will do all His will”?
It puts me to shame that it could be said of David that he would do all of God’s will. But can we say the same thing about ourselves, with such a far greater possession of the Spirit than David ever experienced?
Thank goodness, we can at least say, “I want to do all of God’s will.” There is a desire in our hearts at least to say that, even if we don’t do all of God’s will. We at least want to.
The Lord accepts that and will bring us into the good of that in His time.
Now I want to look at David in the sheepfold. This is before his anointing.
We’re looking at perhaps—some suggest—that David was twenty-five years old when he was finally anointed with the Spirit of God. Twenty-five years, many of those in the sheepfold, taking care of Jesse’s sheep in the hills above Bethlehem.
There, of course, were years of preparation. They were not lost years, but years of preparation.
The question I ask, and we try to answer, is: What was inside David? This is before his anointing, before the Spirit had come upon him—just a man. What caused him to seek and to know the Lord even before his anointing?
The first key, I think, is uttered in Revelation 5 and Revelation 22.
It is said of the Lord Jesus that one of the twenty-four elders in Revelation 5 comes to John the apostle and shows him the Son of God as a Lamb. This Lamb takes up that scroll with the seven seals and is able to open the seven seals.
John is told by this elder:
Behold, the Lion that is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath overcome.
“The Root of David hath overcome.”
Then, in Revelation 22, the penultimate words of the Lord Jesus—the second-to-last words that He speaks—He identifies Himself as “the root and the offspring of David, the bright, the morning star.”
David’s root, before he was anointed, before he became king, was the Lord Jesus Himself. The pre-incarnate Lord Jesus was his root, his sustenance, his very life.
That’s why the Lord calls Himself the Root of David.
The Lord, whom David would later recognize when he said—and Jesus quotes David—“The Lord said unto my Lord.” That was his root.
“The Lord said unto my Lord.” His “my Lord” was his root. His life sprang out of that.
There’s a silly movie that my wife really likes, and I kind of like too. What is it? Something in the Clouds.
A Walk in the Clouds. Okay. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it.
He falls in love with this young woman whose father owns this vineyard, a very fruitful vineyard. Because of the mistakes of this father, the whole vineyard burns down and is destroyed. Their life—everything—is gone from them. Everything is burned up.
Keanu Reeves, or whatever his name is, runs over to the mother plant, from which all the other vines have found their life.
He goes over to this root, and it’s all burned out. There’s nothing left of the branches. He pulls it out of the ground, pulls the roots out of the ground, and brings it to the father.
The father looks at it and chisels away a little bit, and there’s still life in the root. The father is just gleeful because there is yet life. We can start over again because there is life in that root, and we can have a fruitful vineyard again.
That’s what it means to have that root. David somehow knew that the Lord was his root. I don’t know how. Perhaps the other keys that I will share revealed this to his heart.
But it’s so true of all of us. We have that root, and nothing can harm that root. Not even the worst of fires, conflagrations, can destroy that root.
Our branches might get burned, might get scorched. We might seem to have lost all of our fruit in a bad way. But there’s still life in that root, and we shall rise again because of that life in that root.
So let’s stay grafted into that.
I always remember what Paul wrote in Romans—was it Romans 10?—where he talks about the olive tree, the natural branches, and the wild olive branches.
We were the wild olive branches, producing no fruit at all—perhaps just little bitter, teeny fruit, no good for anything in the world. Yet the Lord has taken us and grafted us into that natural tree with that root.
Now we bear fruit because of that. So our root—let us hold on to it always. Let us never forget it, because the enemy will try to dissuade us, get us off track, off base, and make us forget where our life really lies.
It is not in our fruit-bearing. It is not in the good works that we do. It is in the life of the root, and not in the branches themselves.
The second key to David in the sheepfold, I think, is revealed in three different Psalms. These are, from what I understand and what I’ve read, the three earliest Psalms that David wrote: Psalm 39, Psalm 19, and Psalm 8.
He wrote these in the first year of his public ministry, his life in the public domain. So we find another key to David’s life.
He spoke of it in Psalm 19. I’ll just read a couple of verses there that would show us what this is.
Psalm 19:1:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament showeth His handiwork.
Day unto day uttereth speech,
And night unto night showeth knowledge.
Then it goes on later and says:
Their line is gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course.
His going forth is from the end of the heavens,
And his circuit unto the ends of it;
And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
Then again, in one of the earliest Psalms, Psalm 8, David says:
O Lord, our Lord,
How excellent is Thy name in all the earth,
Who hast set Thy glory upon the heavens!
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou established strength.
And so on. Then:
When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that Thou visitest him?
David meditated. David looked at the heavens, and he saw the hand of God in the heavens. He was a man of meditation, who thought long and hard about who the Lord is, who the Lord was to his heart.
Meditation, I think, is a lost art to Christians today, and it shouldn’t be.
David gave himself, took the time, to consider these things.
Sometimes I think we think it’s wasted time to meditate on the Lord. There are so many things that should be done or can be done for the kingdom—where the kingdom of God, most often, is things that we want to do for our own lives.
But we think of it as wasted time. Why be a dreamer? Why think on things like that when there’s so much to be done?
Or we think that we don’t have time to do this. Some of you might say, “You have no idea what my life is like, my job, and the responsibilities I have.”
“You don’t know what it takes to raise a family, raise kids, put food on the table, so on and so forth. You don’t know how busy I am with my recreations and the things that I enjoy. I need time for myself. I don’t have time to meditate on the universe or on the Lord Himself.”
Or we think, “On top of that, I’ve got the church. I’ve got responsibilities with the church. We just don’t have time to meditate.”
But is it really wasted time to meditate on the Lord?
David, again in Psalm 39, tells us what the end of these things all are. If we really are consumed by this world and the things of this world, and the things we have to do in this world and the responsibilities we have, and we just don’t have time to meditate on the Lord, David says in Psalm 39:6:
Surely every man walketh in a vain show:
Surely they are disquieted in vain:
He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.
Meaning, all of these things we do on the earth—all the money we make, all of our toys that we purchase, the homes that we purchase, all of the things that we do—who are you going to leave them with? Because that’s what it’s going to end up being.
You can’t take it with you. Whatever you’re doing on the earth, you can’t take it with you. But only the eternal treasures are the things that we can take to the life beyond this one.
Shouldn’t we then meditate upon the Lord and enrich ourselves in the life of the Lord, and in what He might speak to us as we meditate upon Him?
David was a man that meditated, and it prepared him to be the man who was after God’s own purposes and heart.
A third key we find in the Psalms, in Psalm 19:7-11. Again, one of the earliest Psalms that David wrote.
He says:
The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul:
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart:
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever:
The ordinances of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold:
Sweeter also than honey and the droppings of the honeycomb.
Moreover by them is Thy servant warned:
In keeping of them there is great reward.
David was a man of the Word.
Now, I have no idea how that could have taken place. This was before the day of the synagogue, and going to the synagogue on Sabbath and hearing the Scriptures expounded to you.
How he had access to the scrolls of Scripture, I have no idea. But somehow, through Samuel or through the school of the prophets or whatever, he became very acquainted with the Word of God.
It was very, very dear to him, and he saw the value of it in his life even before the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily.
So he was a man of the Word. He was a man of meditation.
Then the fourth key: we find that he was a man of prayer.
This is one of the emphases that I really saw and really enjoyed in the life of David: looking at his prayers in the Psalms.
I’m a person that likes numbers and statistics. My wife accuses me sometimes of being like—you ever see that movie A Beautiful Mind? John Nash, trying to connect all the dots in the things that he’s reading. That’s what she says my notes are like when I’m reading the Scriptures. I’m trying to connect all the dots and bring them all together.
I’ll just name off a couple of statistics here that impressed me.
By title in the Psalms, there are seventy-two Psalms that say David wrote that Psalm or that prayer. By another source that I read—and if you read the chronological Bible—he says there are actually ninety-six Psalms that David authored.
In those ninety-six Psalms, I counted at least one hundred fifty-four prayers that David uttered. Not all the Psalms are prayers.
He has this interesting methodology in which he combines prayers with declaratory statements, and then he might go back to a prayer in the same Psalm. Then he might go back to another declaratory statement.
So there are many, many prayers—one hundred fifty-four, I counted—in those Psalms.
I just want to give you an example of what one of the prayers sounds like.
David, in one of his earliest prayers, says in Psalm 39:12:
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry;
Hold not Thy peace at my tears:
For I am a stranger with Thee,
A sojourner, as all my fathers were.
O spare me, that I may recover strength,
Before I go hence, and be no more.
And so on and so forth. We find these prayers from the very beginning to the very end of his life. He was a man of great prayer. He laid out his heart before the Lord, and he knew what it was to come into the presence of the Lord.
One of the things that I wonder about is how were these Psalms ever recorded? Some were recorded in his first year, more in his second year, more in his third year, on down through the end of his life.
Every year, there seemed to be some Psalm that David was writing at one time or another. In the cave of Adullam, he’s writing—there’s a Psalm about that, about what he experienced.
When did he have time to write that? Was it right at that moment? Did he have a quill and a lambskin, and was he writing the things that he was experiencing at that time?
Or maybe he had a scribe with him, and as David uttered these things, the scribe was right there writing them down.
Or, better yet, what I like to think is that later on in his life, as he had time to consider these things, he looked back on his life and remembered the things that he said, the things that he declared to be the truth.
He said, “When that happened in my life, this is what my experience was.” There was probably a scribe there then, writing that Psalm out for him. But he remembered these things later in his life.
He was a man of great prayer.
I’m very thankful that there is a fellowship of prayer here, much more than I have found in any other fellowship that I’ve ever belonged to. Similar to Twenty Valley Fellowship, let me put it that way.
But people here love to pray, who come in prayer and petition before the Lord.
I do have to say about prayer—and this is my own experience, and I’ll just share it with you—that I find that prayer is ninety percent perspiration and ten percent inspiration.
Meaning by that, prayer is struggle. I don’t think that when we come into prayer, we immediately have the enlightenment of the Lord and are speaking the words of the Lord.
I think that a lot of times we need to struggle, like David did. We find him struggling mightily in his prayers about overcoming his enemies and the things that he’s facing. He’s petitioning the Lord for His help, and so on and so forth.
I think a lot of that is coming out of his flesh. He’s a suffering man.
A lot of our prayers are like that. We’re struggling. We’re trying to get into the presence of the Lord ninety percent of the time.
But thank the Lord, thank goodness that ten percent is the inspiration of the Lord.
If you stop and listen to what other people are praying, rather than trying to think of what you want to pray next, you’ll catch glimpses of the presence of the Lord, of the Word of the Lord being spoken to His people.
Perhaps it is a prophetic word, perhaps a word of encouragement, perhaps a word of exhortation or correction. But it’s there.
Praise the Lord that even ten percent is the inspiration of the Lord. That means the Lord is really speaking to His people.
Finally, about David, we have the earliest testimony of what David’s character was like.
I’ll read this in 1 Samuel. This is after he’s been anointed with the Spirit, and he’s gone back to the sheepfold. It is just before he comes into the court of Saul.
It says in 1 Samuel 16:17-18, when Saul is having problems with an evil spirit that has beset him, there’s this young man who speaks up and says, “Yeah, I know of somebody that can help Saul.”
So Saul said unto his servants, Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me.
Then answered one of the young men, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is skilful in playing, and a mighty man of valour, and a man of war, and prudent in speech, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him.
This is at the very, very beginning of David’s public exposure, but he is already known to have these characteristics.
He’s a man skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and God is with him.
What a testimony from outsiders—somebody who looked on David’s life, knew David in the sheepfold and what he was like, and had said, “This man is courageous.”
There’s courage here. We know, of course, the story of David in the sheepfold, and the lion and the bear that came and tried to take the sheep, and what David did with them.
By encouraging us and giving us these keys—meditation, prayer, and being a man or woman of the Word, reading and studying the Word, knowing the Word, and knowing the value of the Word—I’m not trying to burden people.
I’m not saying, “Oh, you know, we need to do all these things to really be a Christian, to really be faithful in the troublous times that we’re willing to face in the next few years.”
That’s not the point. I’m not trying to lay a burden on you and say, “Well, you really need to be doing this daily in your lives. You need to be praying for an hour. You need to be reading the Word for an hour. You need to be meditating for at least two hours.”
That’s not the point.
There are gifts that the Lord gives to His people. To some, it may be meditation. To some, it may be prayer. To some, it may be the Word of God.
But to all, it is going to be a combination, in one degree or another, of these elements. They need to all be present in our lives, but they don’t all have to consume our lives and become a burden.
Sometimes we get on these things about reading the Scriptures in one year, or some programs have you reading the entire Bible in three months. You’re just reading, reading, reading to get your day’s assignment done.
What are you really gleaning from that? At the end, you’ve got a full view of what the Scriptures say, but of what value is that particular day?
We don’t do this merely as responsibilities or burdens that are upon us. They should come to us as God’s gift to us, as a delight to our hearts.
Man, I can meditate on the Lord. I can sit here and just think on the beauty of who the Lord is, what He has done for me, and that He is seated in the heavenlies right now with the Father.
All of these things we can meditate on, enjoy, and draw fruit from.
We can spend our time studying the Word, reading the Word. But don’t take it as, “You have to spend at least an hour doing that every day.”
Just open the Word every day and let the Lord speak to your hearts. The more the Lord speaks to you through His Word, the more you’ll want to study, the more you’ll want to read His Word.
It’s a beautiful thing that the Lord does for us.
Then this whole matter of prayer. I used to have a dear brother who said the two things you can bring Christians under the most conviction about as you preach are prayer and giving—the areas that we most often neglect in the Christian life.
May it not be so. As we meditate upon the Lord, may we also have a life of prayer—just talking to the Lord, communicating, having an open channel between us and the Lord, and hearing Him speak to us.
It’s not just telling Him. So often my prayers are petitions. I’m asking for this, asking for that. As Josh shared earlier, needs and wants—mostly my needs, what I think I need rather than what I want.
I’m telling the Lord all these things as if He didn’t even know that I needed them or wanted them.
But so often it is hearing the Lord speak to us also in our prayers, having Him communicate with us.
There’s nothing unique about what I’m going to share here. All of you have experienced it. But when you actually hear the Lord’s voice and He speaks something to you—either through prayer, through another brother and sister, through a song that you sing, through reading the Word, or whatever—when the Lord speaks to us, what a delight.
There’s no greater delight in all of our lives. You can go out and win a million dollars in the lottery; it’s not even compared to one word spoken to our hearts, enlightening us.
It’s just such a delight: Oh, there’s a God who lives. It is a delight to our hearts to hear the Lord speak.
I think I’ll break off what I’m going to share here. Perhaps the Lord might, in future days, allow me to share some more and actually get into the first year of David’s life, and see what the Lord has to say to us about what the church might have to go through.
But also, in those years, those seven years, there are still great illustrations of what the Lord would want our life to be like. We see David as a type of that.
There are great illustrations for us in what he experienced and what we experience as Christians.
I’ll just end it right there, and let me commit it to the Lord with a word of prayer.
Father, we thank You for who You are—that You are a God who loves us with a steadfast love that never ends.
You know exactly what we need for today, and You know exactly what we need for the days to come.
Now, Lord, if it is true that You will bring us through troublous times, even a time of tribulation, Lord, we need not fear what we will face, because You will provide everything for us.
Just as You are today, speaking to our hearts, ministering to our needs, helping us in so many different ways, we’re just so glad to be Your people—to know who You are and how You work in our lives.
Lord, thank You for opening up Your Word to us and speaking to us.
Even if the brothers and sisters didn’t get a thing out of this morning, Lord, You spoke to my heart. You ministered to me, and I’m just thankful for that.
We bless Your name and we worship You today and in the days to come, in Jesus’ name. Amen.