God Is Always Working

1 Samuel 16

It was one of the worst days of 23-year-old Brenton Winn’s life. But it paved the way for one of the best. He was angry at God after he relapsed from an addiction to methamphetamines. Winn knew nothing about Central Baptist Church of Conway, Arkansas, when he broke in that evening. High on drugs, Winn went on a rampage and destroyed $100,000 of church property.

Six months later Winn was baptized at Central Baptist. He said, “As I’m starting to understand how God works, I’ve realized I didn’t pick the church that night. God picked me. If it had been any other church, I think I’d be sitting in prison right now.”

Winn’s journey from a jail cell in February to a baptismal pool in September began when Central Baptist senior pastor, Don Chandler, talked to the prosecutor. Chandler knew the godly response to Winn would be to offer forgiveness rather than judgment.

Chandler said, “You can’t preach grace for 50 years without practicing it, especially in front of your whole church …This was a young man who had made some mistakes. He was on drugs and alcohol when he did what he did. But he was redeemable.”

Chandler told the prosecutor that the church would like to see Winn get help with Renewal Ranch, a faith-based residential recovery ministry. The judge, who at the time had been a board member of Renewal Ranch, gave Winn the option. He could either go to jail, potentially for 20 years, or he could voluntarily choose to go to Renewal Ranch. Winn chose Renewal Ranch.

Winn accepted Christ as his Savior after one of the Bible studies at Renewal Ranch. Winn and other ranch residents attend church at Central Baptist on Wednesday evenings. Winn chose to be baptized at the church on one of those Wednesday nights.

Winn said. “I gave my heart to Christ. I used to think it was a coincidence [that I chose to break into the church], but now I call it confirmation that God is real, and he answers prayers. I needed a relationship with Jesus Christ.”[i]

God is ALWAYS at work. Even when things seem like a mess, God is always at work. The question is, can we see the situation, can we see people, can we see things with God’s eyes? Are we willing to let God transform the way we see thing, and therefore, the way we respond?

Today we’re starting our summer sermon series on the life of David, a series we’re calling David: Faithfulness and Failure. Outside of Jesus himself, no one is more heavily featured in the pages of Scripture than David, Israel’s warrior, poet, and musician king. It was out of the line of David that God chose to bring his Messiah, his pathway to our salvation, into the world. That’s why the Gospel writers emphasize so heavily that Bethlehem – hometown to both David and Jesus’ earthly father Joseph – is the “City of David” (Luke 2:4), and that Joseph was a “son of David” (Matt. 1:20).

But when you meet David in the pages of Scripture, you come across an incredibly unlikely king who is very, very human. He does some incredibly faith-filled and faithful to God things, and then follows them up with some really boneheaded things, and gets involved in some things that are downright despicable and evil. Like all of us, he’s a mixed bag.

In our world of social media and a 24/7/365 news cycle – where anyone’s life can be placed under a microscope and dissected, where every word someone says or writes and every picture they post will be preserved forever – in that kind of world, we tend to flatten people. We judge every move they make and reduce them to their worst moment. That’s what I mean by “flattening” people. We reduce them to a single moment, rather than accept that every human being is an incredibly complex mixed bag of successes and failures.

There’s a social media page out there that analyzes the clothes that some of the world’s most successful, well-known pastors wear while preaching and then posts how much the outfit cost. Now, SHOULD a pastor be wearing $5,000 shoes or a $700 shirt? Should we idolize and hero-worship any pastor or Christian leader? No! I agree with the premise. But can we reduce someone to an outfit? No, we can’t do that either.

Every Christ-follower who has ever lived is a mixed bag of faithfulness and failure, and in the midst of it all is God’s grace flowing from the cross, through Jesus, into the lives of broken people. We’re all complex and multi-dimensional, we can’t flatten or reduce people.

Open your Bibles to 1 Samuel 16, where we find things in an absolute mess. Let me set the stage for you. For two years, Saul had been Israel’s first king. They had a king because they wanted a king. They asked God to give them a king. And God gave them what they wanted. They wanted a king because things had been all over the place for them as a people in the promised land. Just read the book of Judges. Things for Israel are constantly going up and down – from good to bad to worse and then back to better and then even good, and then back to bad and then worse again.

And every time things got really bad, God raised up a leader – they called them “judges” – who would set things right again under God’s law. And then the people would wander away from God again. When people come up to me and tell me, “Things are the worst they’ve ever been in human history,” I’m like, “No, go read the book of Judges.” Human history has been mostly really bad with a few good eras mixed in since the beginning. We’ve always bounced back and forth between better times and worse times. Always.

So in that chaos Israel – a pretty loose confederation of tribes –  decided they wanted a king, just like all of the other peoples around them. A king who would unite them and make them great. So God gave them Saul. And things stared out pretty well for Saul, but they went south pretty quickly. We’re only two years into Saul’s rein, and he would sit on the throne for several more, but at this point, God has already removed his anointing from Saul and is ready to pass it on to another. The reason for that is Saul’s pride and greed and inability and even unwillingness to do what God asked him to do. The very last verse of 1 Samuel 15 says that God “regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.” Turn with me to 1 Samuel 16:1-5.

Things are a mess. Israel’s first king is a nightmare and God is preparing to withdraw his anointing from him. God has rejected him as king just two years into his reign, because he has made a mess of things. And while he appears to repent and seek God’s forgiveness, the writer of 1 Samuel pulls back the curtain and reveals that he’s really just trying to save face in front of the people. Things are a mess, but God is still at work. He sends his prophet Samuel to Bethlehem to find a man named Jesse, because God has already chosen one of Jesse’s sons to replace Saul as king. “I have provided for myself a king among his sons.”

The word translated as “provided” here actually appears 9 times in this chapter. It’s translated as provide twice, as “see” or “look at” 5 times, and as “appearance” twice. What the writer of 1 Samuel wants us to see is that God has been at work in and around this son of Jesse all along, from his birth and even before for even his physical appearance is a part of God’s providing this new king. While Saul and the rest of Israel have been making a royal mess of things, God has been at work. Even as we’re making a mess of things, God is already at work setting things right. God isn’t caught by surprise.

Now Samuel is a bit nervous about making this trip to Bethlehem. Saul is, after all, still king, even though God is in the process of getting rid of him. And human beings as a general rule of thumb don’t let go of power and wealth and influence very easily. So get this – God comes up with a ruse of sorts to protect Samuel from Saul’s wrath. Take a heifer and say you’re going to Bethlehem for a sacrifice, and invite Jesse and his sons to join you at the sacrifice.

People are messy and life is messy, and the Bible doesn’t hide or artificially clean up or downplay the mess. The text hints at Samuel actually performing the sacrifice, but there was no real need for Samuel to go perform a sacrifice. It happened, but it was a cover for something even more significant to happen that even those who were involved, outside of God and Samuel, didn’t realize what was happening. It wasn’t a lie, but it WAS a cover to protect Samuel. It gave Samuel a reason to be in Bethlehem.

Now look at Vv. 6-13. Jesse lines up his seven sons and parades them, one at a time, before Samuel so that he can consecrate them for the sacrifice and then the sacrificial meal afterward. Only Samuel is privy to the silent, inner conversation happening between Samuel and God. And only Samuel and we, the readers, know that he is there to anoint the next king. As with us in our lives, Jesse and his sons don’t know what God, or Samuel, are up to. They just know that they’ve been invited to participate in a sacrifice with Israel’s primary prophet and on of Saul’s primary advisors. An honor, to be sure. But they don’t know just how deep that honor goes.

So the first son, Eliab, comes to Samuel and he looks at him and thinks, “Wow, handsome, winsome, big and strong, and the eldest. Surely this is the one.” Same response Samuel had when Saul was anointed king. And unless God had intervened and stopped Samuel, he probably would have anointed this son as the next king and Israel would have gotten another Saul. This isn’t the one.

1 Samuel 16:7 is one of the most well-known verses in the entire Old Testament. It is also the hinge point of this chapter and the entire book of 1 Samuel. It is God’s silent response to Samuel after Samuel is floored by Eliab’s appearance, strength, size, and charisma. “Do not look on his appearance or the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. (That word “rejected” is the opposite of the word “provided,” by the way. God is saying ‘This is not the man I have provided for Israel.). For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

How often are we influenced by what we can see in others? Their beauty. Their strength and stature. Their charm. Their charisma. Their winsome personality. Their wealth and influence. The ones who always seem to say the right thing and who know all of the right people. Strong and confident. God sees all of that. But he looks beyond all of that too. He looks deeper. He sees the heart.

On the surface, Saul checked all of the boxes: handsome, tall and strong and built like an ox, a mighty warrior, a cunning military and political strategist, a winsome personality that people were drawn to. But his heart wasn’t fully God’s, and even in his victories he messed things up and refused to obey God. He was a train wreck of a king, even as Israel won military victories under his leadership.

In 2017 the Kansas City Chiefs drafted Patrick Mahomes from Texas Tech. In 2018-2019, his second season, Mahomes led the team to the AFC Championship game. Then in 2020 he led the Chiefs to their first Superbowl win in 50 years. His performance in the biggest game of the season earned him the title of youngest Superbowl MVP. Some sports analysts suggest that Mahomes has the potential to become the “Greatest of All Time.”

Mahomes has not always been universally adored, however. After being drafted in 2017, a writer from the USA Today gave the Chiefs a C- grade for selecting Mahomes. The writer proclaimed:

“Calling Mahomes a project is a major understatement. He’s nowhere near ready to play in the NFL. And, honestly, he may never be. Between his inconsistent accuracy due to poor mechanics, his tendency to bail from clean pockets and his lack of field vision, he’s going to leave as many big plays on the field as he creates. This was a risky pick.”

This writer gave the Chiefs a C-. History, however, will give the Chiefs an A+, even if Mahomes were to never take another snap in an NFL game.[ii]

Then the second and third sons, Abinadab and Shammah do the same, but they aren’t the right son either. Then the rest of Jesse’s seven sons come to Samuel and none of them are the one to be anointed king. Then the other four come by, and they’re rejected too. Seven sons. Seven rejections. Seven was considered by the Israelites to be a complete, or perfect number. Of course, Jesse had eight sons, but the eighth one hasn’t figured into things yet. He’s off tending the sheep. The point is, somewhere in these seven, surely, was God’s chosen king for Israel. This is the place any human would look, and this was as deep into the family as any human would look.

Samuel is standing there looking around going, “Uh, is this ALL of them?” “Oh, well, there’s one more. My youngest. He’s out tending the sheep.” “We aren’t doing anything else until I see him.” And Jesse’s youngest son is found, and brought before Samuel. And Samuel hears the words from God, “This is he.” The Bible still hasn’t given us his name yet. Do you realize that. Saul has been named. And Samuel, and Jesse. Even Jesse’s three oldest sons, Eliab, Abinadab, and Shammah, are named, all three rejected by God. But the youngest son, the one anointed by Samuel – the reason for the anointing still unknown to everyone but God, Samuel, and us as the readers – is still unnamed. He’s just Jesse’s youngest son, who was out watching his father’s flocks, Israel’s next king.

Oh, he’s described. He was “ruddy.” That means red, and was a word used to describe a handsome, fit man. And he was handsome and had beautiful eyes. He was younger and smaller than his older brothers. He was still maturing. But he was as handsome as they were. Good looks, strength, ability, and a winsome personality do NOT disqualify someone from God’s service. They simply are not taken into consideration by God. He wants a heart that beats for him. If you lack the rest, he’ll give it to you when you need it. Look at Vv. 14 – 23.

At this moment, the Spirit of God, and the anointing of God, depart from Saul and fall upon David. The anointing of God for kingship left Saul and rested on David. God equips and anoints you to do what God calls you to do. And God’s calling and equipping and anointing aren’t just for pastors and church leaders. God has called YOU to something, and he will equip you and anoint you for that to which he has called you.

Now, check this out. One of his advisors has heard of a “son of Jesse” who plays a mean lyre (a stringed instrument). He STILL isn’t named. He’s still this nameless, mysterious, youngest son of Jesse. So Saul sends a message to Jesse asking for his son DAVID to be sent to him. Saul, the one David is to replace as king, is the one who first speaks his name in the Bible. And Saul, the one David is to replace as king, is the one who invites this unknown young man from Bethlehem into the court of the king in Israel. David’s first invitation into royal life in Israel WAS GIVEN TO HIM BY SAUL. The king rejected by Saul whom David would replace. Talk about irony. God is at work, even when we’re making a mess of things.

Don’t ever question what God can do through you. He took the eighth son of a man from Bethlehem, who was out tending sheep while his brothers – the complete, perfect seven – were brought before Samuel, and made him king. He moved young David into the royal court at the invitation of the rejected current king, who loved David and took him under his wing. God is at work, even when things are a huge mess. God is at work IN the mess, and behind the mess. Let’s pray.

[i] Tobin Perry, “He Got High and Broke Into a Church. Months Later, He Was Baptized There, Christianity Today online (10-11-19)

[ii] Joel Thorman, “2017 NFL draft grades for Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes are all over the place,” Arrowhead Pride (4-28-17)