CALL TO CONFESSION

Colossians 3:12-13

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

Our God and our King, we confess that we have a difficult time forgiving those who sin against us. Instead of putting on compassion and kindness, and forgiving as we have so richly been forgiven, we rehearse the sins of others and grow bitter and resentful toward them. We find it easy to judge people for their crimes against us, and hard to see that we sin in the same ways that they do, against you and others. We confess that we are easily confused about reconciliation. Sometimes in a rush to appear forgiving, we pursue people when our hearts are still full of anger, and at other times we fail to trust people who deserve a second chance. Lord, deliver us from our blindness and confusion, and help us to think clearly and lovingly.

Jesus, we thank you for entering our corrupt and sin-stained world, so that we could be redeemed, forgiven, and reconciled to your Father. We did not value you but despised you, rebelled against you, and ran from you with all our strength. As nails were driven into your hands, you pled for the forgiveness of your tormentors. We too have crucified you. But you pursued us and rescued us, not only paying the great price for our forgiveness, but welcoming us into your family and seating us at your banqueting table. Thank you for your deep love for profound sinners like us.

Holy Spirit, we thank you that one day we will be completely reconciled and restored to all your people whom we have been unable to love and forgive in this world. Until then, give us wisdom to trust wisely, grace to forgive generously, and love to cover mountains of sin. Show us our sin, comfort us with the gospel, and give us grace to repent, forgive, and love people whom we cannot possibly love without your help. Move us toward one another with joy and gratitude for how deeply we have been treasured in Christ. Amen.

“Take a few moments to personally confess your sins to the Lord.”

ASSURANCE OF PARDON

“Hear these words of comfort and assurance.” 

Romans 5:6-10

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

• Everyone has an opinion because we all have a different point of view. A different way of seeing things. A different way of perceiving the world around us. 
• And everyone is convinced that their way of seeing things is the right way of seeing things. 

• We live in a world that is obsessed with how things look from the outside. 
• Social media profiles are carefully curated to present the most perfect version of every life. 
• People worry about how their houses look, how their careers look, and how their families look to the outside world. 
• We judge a book by its cover, we naturally assume that the biggest, the strongest, the fastest, and the most beautiful are the truly successful ones. 
• We see with our eyes, and we trust what our eyes see. 

• Our text this morning is 1 Samuel 16, one of the most familiar stories in the Old Testament and verse 7 one of the most quoted verses in the Bible. 
• And at its heart, this chapter is about two ways of seeing: the way man sees, and the way God sees. 
• Those two ways of seeing are not just different. They are at times at war with each other. 

• Last week we saw the nation of Israel fall into that trap.
• They demanded a king just like all the other nations. And they got one in Saul. 
• Saul was the stereotype. He was tall, handsome, and he looked like a king.
• But Saul had a problem you could not see from the outside. He had a divided heart. He feared man more than God. He cared more about his reputation than about obeying the word of the Lord. 
• And by the end of chapter 15, Samuel had delivered the final blow. 
• The Lord rejected Saul as king because Saul had rejected the word of the Lord. 
• The chapter ended with Samuel grieving over the man he had anointed. 
• And our chapter today opens in the shadow of that failure.
• But the one who sees what no one else sees was already at work. 
• While Samuel was grieving, God was already moving. He already had a king picked out, hidden in the fields outside a little town called Bethlehem. 

• Here is the truth I want to press upon you: God looks on the heart, and the King he chooses is the King he has already provided. 

1 Samuel 16:1-13

• “How long will you grieve over Saul…?” The Lord didn’t ask why he was grieving. It’s not that his grieving was sinful or wrong. 
• Why was he grieving? Samuel loved Saul. He was sorrowful over Saul’s failure. He cared deeply for the people of God and now Saul’s failed kingship had placed them in jeopardy.  Samuel’s grief was understandable. 
• God’s true shepherds know this kind of grief. Samuel's grief is the grief of anyone who has loved someone and watched them fall.
• Some of you are grieving over some loss of a relationship or something you desired. 
• Some of you may be grieving over something that looked promising but ended in failure. 

THE LORD WILL PROVIDE FOR HIMSELF

• But the Lord knows when a season of grief needs to end. 
• We grieve, but then we have to get up, trust God, and do the next thing to move forward. 
• Samuel needed to move past his grief over Saul’s failing and the Lord reminded him that he had rejected Saul as king over Israel. 
• Saul’s kingship had its origin in rejection—the people’s rejection of the Lord as their King. 
• The Lord says to Samuel, “Fill your horn with oil and go.” 
• The oil is for anointing and God says he has provided for himself a king among the sons of Jesse the Bethlehemite. 
• That word “provided” is the Hebrew verb, “ra’ah.” It can be translated as “seen.” 
• Seeing is a key theme in this chapter. Especially that God sees in a particular way. 
• The literal translation is, “I have seen for myself a king among his sons.” 
• God himself, would provide a king of his own choosing. 
• Saul’s appointment was repeatedly characterized as the king chosen by the people. 
• The Lord told Samuel to obey their voice and make a king for them (8:22).
• God was sovereign over this appointment even though it was of their choosing. 
• And now the time had come for a different kind of king. 
• 1 Sam 13:14 The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people. 
• Why? Because of Saul’s repeated failure to keep the commands of the Lord. 
• That’s why the kingdom was torn from Saul and it will be given to a neighbor of his who is better than him (15:28).
• This language of God providing is the same used in Genesis 22. When Abraham obeyed God and climbed Mount Moriah with Isaac. Abraham said, “The Lord will provide.” 
• It is the language of a God who sees ahead, who has already arranged both the provision and the outcome. 
• While Samuel was grieving, God was already at work in a small town called Bethlehem. 
• He had already picked out a king for a new beginning. 

• There is something so very comforting knowing that God is able to provide a new beginning. 
• When everything is chaos in our world, He provides for his people: grace, strength, comfort, and assurance. 

SAMUEL’S FEAR

• Saul pushes back in fear. Why was he afraid? Because Saul still wears the crown and to anoint another king while there is still a king is treason. 
• Samuel had legitimate reasons to fear what Saul would do if he thought Samuel was betraying him. 
• Notice that the Lord doesn’t rebuke Samuel. He doesn’t say, “Do not be afraid!”
• What the Lord does is provide him a cover story. 
• Samuel is to take an animal with him to offer a sacrifice to the Lord. 
• Jesse and his sons will be invited to join him, and then God will show him what he is to do. 
• The Lord is not telling Samuel to act deceptively. The sacrifice is real. Samuel just didn’t need to disclose all of the deeper hidden purposes of the mission the Lord had given him.

• If you’re experiencing grief over something, a wayward child, a difficult trial, a broken relationship, a leader who hurt you, or something in your life that didn’t turn out the way you had hoped; the tender voice of the Lord is speaking to you through his word. “I have provided. Fill your horn with oil and go.” Trust his provision. 
• If you’re feeling like Samuel and you believe God is calling you to something and you are afraid; afraid of what people will think, afraid you will fail, afraid of the cost. Hear the kindness of the Lord. He gives you grace sufficient for today and for what he has called you to. 
• God has already seen your tomorrow, and he has already provided exactly what is needed for his glory and your good. 

• Now the scene shifts to Bethlehem. 
• Samuel obeyed the Lord. He did what the Lord commanded. 
• That phrase summarized Samuel’s life. He did what Saul failed to do, obey the Lord. 
• The elders of Bethlehem are a bit unnerved by the prophet’s arrival. 
• When the prophet pulled up in your town, it often meant judgment. They ask if he comes peaceably.
• Samuel reassures them that he is just coming to offer a sacrifice and they should consecrate themselves to join him. 
• And he invites Jesse and his sons to the sacrifice. 

• V6 When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before him.” 
• Samuel looked and he saw the eldest son of Jesse and he made an assessment, this is the one.
• What did he see? Well, Eliab is the firstborn. He was probably tall.  He was a good looking, muscular young man, the kind of man God would choose to be king. 
• Samuel, the great prophet of the Lord, seemed to be making the same mistake that the people did in choosing Saul; they saw the stereotypical kingly qualities in Saul and that’s who they chose. 
• Samuel judged with his eyes. He assumed God’s choice would be packaged in human strength and stature. 
• Listen carefully to this central truth in the Lord’s correction. 
• V7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
• The Lord sees not as man sees. 
• Man sees the outward appearance, man looks at what is visible, man weighs what is measurable. That is man’s point of view. 
• But God sees the heart. 
• The heart in biblical language is the command center of the human soul. It is the mind, the will, the affections, the whole of the inner person. 
• So God cannot be deceived like we are by outward appearances.
• God is not impressed by what impresses us.
• He sees through it all, he sees what is behind it all, what is underneath it all. 
• He weighs the heart. 
• Our seeing, our point of view is limited. Limited by our experience, our knowledge, our understanding. That is why we all see lots of things differently, why we all have vastly differing opinions and points of view. 
• But God is not limited as we are limited.  
• God’s point of view is not simply one more point of view among many.
• His unlimited, omniscient point of view has absolute validity. It is the only correct point of view.
• God sees according to his heart. His point of view is determined by his own will and purpose. 
• He sees according to his own intentions. And Eliab, for all his good looks and kingly attributes, was not the one God intended to make king. 

• Samuel finally gets it. He can’t trust what his eyes see to discern the Lord’s chosen king. 
• God had already said what he was looking for in a king. Chapter 12, one who would fear the Lord, serve the Lord, and obey the voice of the Lord.
• All seven sons of Jesse that were present were, one by one, paraded before Samuel and none of them were the Lord’s choice.

• A probing question we might ask ourselves is, How does God evaluate me? 
• We have often evaluated our own worth and the worth of others, based strictly on outward appearance. 
• We assume the most spiritually mature people are the ones who speak and pray most eloquently or look like they have their lives perfectly put together on Sunday mornings. 
• But we know that God is not impressed with any of that. 
• You can know all the right theology, use the right vocabulary, look like the pillar of Christian virtue to everyone else.
• But God sees the secret thoughts. He sees the hidden motives. He sees the pride, the lust, the bitterness, the self-reliance that we so carefully hide from one another. 
• That is a sobering truth if you are living hypocritically. 

• But it is also a comforting truth to the broken, to those who feel small, ordinary, and unseen and overlooked. 
• You compare yourself to the 'Eliabs' in your family or workplace or church and decide you just don’t measure up.
• Take heart, your Father sees you even if no one else does. He doesn’t judge you by the standards of this world. He looks at the heart that trusts in him, the heart that mourns over sin, at the heart that is broken and contrite.
• That is the heart God delights to dwell in. 

• So we have seen what God refuses to look at. Now let’s see who God chooses to anoint. 
• Samuel knows God sent him there to anoint a king the Lord chose from among Jesse’s sons. 
• So he asks the only logical question, “Are you sure all of your sons are here?”
• Jesse responds, “There’s still the youngest. But he’s taking care of the sheep.” 
• Jesse didn’t even think to bring his youngest son to the sacrifice. 
• In Hebrew, the “youngest” can also mean the “smallest.”
• In ancient Near East culture, the youngest had the least status, the least inheritance, and the least authority. 
• And later in 1 Samuel we get further evidence that David was treated with contempt and dismissal by his own family. 

• Samuel says the sacrifice is on hold until he is brought.
• David arrives and the narrator gives us a very colorful description of David’s appearance. 
• He was ruddy, he had beautiful eyes and he was handsome. 
• By all accounts, David was physically attractive and a robust and healthy young man. 
• And the Lord says to Samuel, “Get up, anoint him, this is the one I have chosen.” 
• Didn’t we just read that the Lord does not look on the outward appearance?
• V7 is not saying that outward appearance is bad. It’s that outward appearance neither qualifies nor disqualifies someone from being chosen by the Lord! It simply does not matter. 
• Outward appearance is not the basis of the Lord’s choosing. 
• God didn’t pick David because he happened to be handsome. 
• God picked him before anyone saw him. 
• We saw that in v1, the Lord said, “I have seen for myself a king among Jesse’s sons.”
• The choice was made long before Jesse’s sons were presented before Samuel. 
• This is the one who will be the shepherd-king. The least in the least of the towns in Judah, 

• Now, did God choose David because he saw something good in his heart or was David’s heart good because God had chosen David?
• When we consider God’s election of Israel and his people, we have to conclude that David was the type of man that he was because of the Lord’s choosing. 
• David had a particular place in God’s heart because the Lord had chosen him. 
• David acknowledged this in his prayer of gratitude to the Lord. 
• 2 Samuel 7:21 Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have brought about all this greatness, to make your servant know it.
• God chose what he had already provided for according to his own heart. 
• Whatever outstanding and admirable qualities we might see in David, they are the consequence of, not the reason, for God choosing him.
• That’s why David’s reign will be so very different from Saul's.
• The security of his throne will rest on the solid foundation of God’s promises, not on David’s performance. 

• Samuel anoints David before all of his family.
• God subverts human standards and he chooses the most unlikely people to do his will. 
• The Lord delights to choose what the world overlooks. 

• And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. 
• “Rushed” means to “overwhelm” or “to take control.” This is the empowering work of the Holy Spirit to do something beyond natural human ability. 
• God both chose David for kingship and equipped him for the work he has called him to. 

THE GREATER SHEPHERD-KING

• Think about how people saw Jesus and judged him by outward appearance, trusting their eyes. “Nothing good can come from Nazareth. He’s just a carpenter’s son.”
• His own brothers and sisters thought he was out of his mind. 
• Isaiah declared that there was no beauty or majesty that we should desire him, nothing about his outward appearance that would attract us to him.
• And yet from Bethlehem, came the True Shepherd of God’s people. 

• Bethlehem is where Boaz, the kinsman-redeemer, stood before the elders and declared his intention to redeem Ruth, a Gentile widow, and take her as his bride. 
• Boaz and Ruth had a son named Obed. Obed had a son named Jesse. And Jesse had a son named David. 
• The same town that produced Ruth’s redeemer, produced Israel’s king. 
• And a thousand years later, that same town would produce the Redeemer of the world. 
• The God who saw fit to bless Bethlehem with David didn’t stop there. From that same town came David’s creator Son, the true Kinsman-Redeemer, the True Shepherd-King. 
• Jesus is the substance that David, the shadow, pointed us to, the Greater Shepherd-King. 

• Just like David, Jesus was overlooked by those closest to him. 
• Just like David, Jesus was hidden for a season before he was revealed. 
• Just as the Spirit rushed upon David at his anointing, the Holy Spirit rested on Jesus at his baptism, anointing him for his messianic mission. 
• And when Jesus went to the cross, he was judged again by outward appearances.
• But on the cross, the Shepherd-King gave his life for his sheep to ransom and redeem them.  
• On the cross, Jesus satisfied the righteous wrath of God against our sins. 
• And three days later, God vindicated his Shepherd-King by raising him from the dead.
• Proving that the stone the builders rejected had become the Chief Cornerstone. 

CONCLUSION

• I want to leave you with three exhortations from our passage. 

• First, change how you see yourself. 
• If you are in Christ, your standing before God has absolutely nothing to do with your outward appearance, your performance, your pedigree, or status.  You are not accepted by God because you are impressive. 
• On the contrary, Paul writes, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” (1 Cor 1:27-29)
• You are accepted because God chose you from before the foundations of the world…In love he predestined you for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his sovereign will. (Eph 1:3-6)
• You are accepted because you have been clothed in the perfect righteousness of the anointed Shepherd-King. 
• There is nothing for you to prove to the world. You can rest in his sovereign grace. 
• So if you’re feeling weary and forgotten, passed over like David left in the field. God has not forgotten you. He sees you. Rest in the assurance of God’s sovereign choosing by grace alone.
• Remember God is not impressed with the things that impress us. God looks at the heart. 
• If your inner life is a barren wasteland while your life looks like it could be on a magazine cover, you need to come to Christ in repentance for cleansing and forgiveness. 

• Second, change how you see others. 
• Stop evaluating others, your spouse, your children, your neighbors, brothers and sisters in Christ with worldly eyes. 
• Parents, don’t focus solely on your child’s academic achievements or their athletic skills, or their social standing. Shepherd them toward the Savior who sees the heart. 
• Be moved with the compassion of our Lord to seek out the lonely, the marginalized, and the overlooked. That’s the heart of our Shepherd-King. Matthew’s gospel says that “when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matt. 9:36)
• Ask the Lord to help you see as he sees; to not judge with your eyes but to see with the eyes of the Lord. 

• Third, change how you see Christ. 
• Samuel had to appoint a king. That is, in a sense, what we all have to do. 
• We all have to choose who will be king of our lives. Something will rule our hearts. People will look at the outward appearance, choosing what is impressive, powerful, and pleasing. Usually those things make terrible rulers. 
• Christ bids us to come to him. There is nothing weak about him.  He is an all-powerful Savior. 
• And he doesn’t judge you by outward appearances. In fact, he is the one who looked on you in your sin, in your outward filth and your inward ruin, and he loved you. 
• He went to the cross to deal with the heart God sees. And he rose to give you a new heart. And today, he bids you to come and submit to his rule. 

• Whether you are weary, or proud, or wandering today, the same Shepherd who saw a forgotten boy in a sheep field, sees you. And he is calling. 
• Come to the King who has been chosen for you.
• Come to the King who has already chosen you. 
• Come, and find rest for your soul. 

APPLICATION AND REFLECTION

In light of today's message....

• What did I learn about the gospel?
• How can I apply what I learned about the gospel to my life?
• With whom can I share the gospel this week?