For the Lord Was with David
Posted on April 27, 2014 by Unknown
I your reached the end of your life and the pastor at your funeral for some reason said the worst thing about you, what would that be? In 1st Samuel, Samuel's sons are given one of the most terrible judgment. They were call "worthless men, who did not know God."
Let us turn this around. It is your funeral. What is the best thing the pastor could say of you? Good parent, husband, etc. All good, but is this the best thing we could hear? Also in 1 Samuel, there is a description of David that is probably the best that can be said of a man.
>"For the Lord was with him."
This morning we will look at this knowledge. What does it mean for the Lord to be with David, or for the Lord to be with us?
**1. David's Place in God's sovereign plan.**
Let us pause for a moment and understand that what we are reading in the Psalms, in the Bible as a whole is not David's story or our story, but it is God's Story! Psalms 78
David is a character in God's story. So let us look at what David's role is in this.
*David is a descendent of Adam. - 1 Chronicles 1 and 2*
O.K. what is the big deal with that? Aren't we all descendants of Adam? Yes, but answer this question why would the writer of Chronicles gone all the way back to Adam. He could have started with Noah, or perhaps just Abraham. This is the point when the nation of Israel is born. Why go all the way back?
The purpose is that David is a partial remedy of Adam. Ask this, what was Adam's purpose in creation? Adam was God's, the sovereigns creator, ambassador to creation. Adam was to have dominion and to rule over all the earth. Yet, when Adam sinned he not only abdicated the position God had given him, Adam set himself up a throne of his own, and so set himself in opposition to God.
In David for the first time since Adam, an man sets up a kingdom of righteousness. He in part was set back on the throne that Adam had abdicated. There had been no other earthly king that had done this. So David partially depicts the one that would come later to rule completely in righteousness. This is found in Jesus.
*David is a descendent of Abraham*
This also is important, for in Abraham God set forth the promises that he would fulfill in Christ. Under the kind rule of David, Israel would see many of the promises partially fulfilled. Only in Christ is this finished, but under David Israel's borders were exactly the boundaries that God had given to Abraham. At know other time was their borders this large. In David experiences the greatest manifest to date of the promises given to Israel. Yet, in Christ, these promises reach to all people, fulfilling that promise that all people in the world would be blessed through Abraham, through David, through Jesus.
Psalm 78 - While David was shepherding sheep in the fields, God was preparing him to be the one to shepherd His people. In Psalm 78 we see the place that David would play. He was the one that would first shepherd, to teach, to "tell the coming generation.".
Yet let us not place David too high. Scripture speaks highly of him, but the promises of God is not fulfilled in David. For David falls immensely and his kingdom falls apart after he his gone. Sin again destroys the relationship that God was establishing with his people. Yet, this has a profound point. Like David we must understand our place in God's story. We like so often to put our stories at the center, but this is still God's story not our own. Only in Christ, only because of his work do we understand and see God's story. Only in Jesus are the promises completely fulfilled.
**2. David's trust in God's faithful promises.**
In Psalm after Psalm we see that which sustained David. His trust in God's promises sustained Him. He rested in the promises of God. David's knows these promises, trusts them. There were so many times that David was getting the credit. David knows that he was already anointed of God as king. Consider what followed the fight with Goliath. The people loved him. He could have made his move. Several times he could have killed Saul, but David said no! Saul was God's anointed, and he could not be touched. Only God could judge Saul and David knew this. He knew that that was not his purpose. So David trusted God is all this time. Only by God's work could this be done, and so David trusted God. He would act.
>For the king trusts in the LORD, and through the steadfast love of the Most High he shall not be moved. Your hand will find out all your enemies; your right hand will find out those who hate you. Psalm 21:7-8
**3. David's yearning for God's abiding presence.**
We see this throughout the Psalms. Consider Psalm 84. David would rather be in God's presence as a doorkeeper that a king in the court of another. To live apart from God's presence is disaster and David declares this.
Consider his lament of the death of Saul and Jonathan. This is not a lament of David's loss, but the loss of the potential glory for God.
But here is the hard question. How often do we really live by this. Do we really seek God's presence over all else. Can we place our name where David put his. Would we be a doorkeeper? Are we trusting in God's truth?
May the Lord be with us as he was with David, and even more as he was with Christ. Amen.
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