Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: I hope you've been enjoying this series.
Let me just sort of share with you again the concept of the series.
It is, I'm calling it sort of also mentioned in the cast.
It means that in every movie there's a star or a couple of stars. There's the protagonist, there's the hero, there's the villain, whatever. But then there are all these other people that are just in the movie, but the movie can't exist without them. But they, but you may not ever know them. And there are people who spend their entire careers as that kind of actor. They're called character actors and they spend their entire career, they, when they show up in a movie, you've seen them in a million movies, but you may not know their names.
If you have your Bibles, if I want to read one passage of scripture and then we're going to talk about characters in the David movie, king David's movie.
1 Samuel, chapter 16. 1 Samuel, chapter 16. And the Lord said unto Samuel, how long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill thine horn with oil and go, and I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided me a king among his sons. And Samuel said, how can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me. And the Lord said, take an heifer with thee and say, I am come to sacrifice to the Lord.
And call Jesse to the sacrifice. And I will show thee what thou shalt do. And thou shalt anoint unto me him whom I name unto thee. And Samuel did that which the Lord spoke and came to Bethlehem. And the elders of the town trembled at his coming and said, cometh thou peaceably? Just pause a moment. That passage always gives me a bit of a chuckle. Imagine being so such a powerful and famous prophet that when you walk in the village, the people want to know, are you here to bless us or burn the place down?
And he said peaceably, I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord. Sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice. And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and called them to the sacrifice.
And it came to pass when they were come, that he looked he meaning Samuel, the prophet Looked on Eliab and said, surely the Lord's anointed is before him. But the Lord said unto Samuel, look not on his countenance, nor on the height of his stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord seeth not as a man seeth, for the man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.
Then Jesus called Abinadab. Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, neither at the Lord chosen this.
Then Jesse made Shammah. That Shamma is also called Shamai. And other places in the Old Testament. It's the same man. Then Jesse made Shammah to pass by. And he said, neither hath the Lord chosen this. Again, Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel. And Samuel said unto Jesse, the Lord hath not chosen these. And Samuel said unto Jesse, are here all thy children.
And he said, there remaineth yet the youngest. Now, you realize that's funny, don't you? You do say, okay. He says, okay, we got this other kid. Are you sure you want him?
There remaineth yet the youngest. And behold, he keepeth the sheep. And Samuel said unto Jesse, send and fetch him, for we will not sit down till he come hither. And he sent and brought him in. And now he was ruddy and with all of a beautiful countenance and goodly to look to. And. And the Lord said, arise, anoint him, for this is he. Put your hands on your Bible, if you will, and let's pray. Heavenly Father, in the next few moments, I pray that your spirit will so open us to your word that we may receive it and make find benefit to our souls. Come, Holy Spirit.
In the mighty name of Jesus, the strong son of God. Amen.
So our character actor for tonight is a female, an actress. A character actress. She was born in the very early 1900s, and by the 1930s, she was an ingenue. She was playing parts as young girls. She was quite attractive, beautiful. I'm going to put her picture up on the screen. Her name is Frances Bavier.
You may not recognize her or ever. She appeared in movies. She appeared as, you know, sort of the. The sweet young thing in a dozen movies or so. But her career never really took off until she was quite a bit older. You don't recognize her here, but I wonder if you recognize her. Here she is, Aunt.
In. In the David movie.
There are such a vast parade of character actors. We could. We could just go forever on those people who appear in the David movie. I've just chosen a Few, beginning with David's brothers.
If there are people in your personal movie who are nervous about you, they maybe they don't like you or they struggle with you, or they're just, they're just not sure who you are. David's brothers are unsure of him from the very beginning.
There is even this obvious moment where the prophet Samuel shows up and says, I want you to bring all your sons before me. And they just don't bring diving.
That's like, you know, really, he, he was envied by his brothers. There was something. He was a kid, they were all grown. He was that proverbial late in life accident.
He. All the others, all his brothers are grown. And I think they felt he was sort of a weird little kid at best.
Imagine you're a grown man and you send your little brother, just a child, out to tend the sheep in the field.
And he comes in and says, he killed a lion with his bare hands.
You say, okay, you did.
Where is he? Or.
And then he comes again and he says, you know, the bear came and I, I just punched him with my little fist and he died.
You don't know what to think. Maybe he's a weird little kid. Maybe he's a pathological liar.
You don't know what to make of it beyond that. He is a musical prodigy.
David. David won the Israeli version of the voice.
He's. He's a child prodigy. We have no indication in scripture that anybody else in his family was musical.
Not only was he musically inclined, he wrote his own lyrics. And the lyrics, the lyrics remain 3,000 years later.
So there must have been a considerable amount of envy of his, of his brothers.
Six of them are named Eliab, Abinadab, Shimeya, or Shama Nathanael Reddai Ozem. And the seventh son is never clearly named. There is, there is. There is a person mentioned later on in scripture that may have been the seventh son. And then David is the eighth. David also has two sisters, Zeruiah and Abigail.
When David arrives at the camp of Saul and the whole incident with Goliath shows up, the whole, the whole battle for which David is so famous. And remember, we don't want to concentrate on David. We want to look at the also mentioned in the cast. And let's look at his brothers.
When David begins to ask what shall be done to him that kills this giant, what reward comes? His brothers are furious, especially Abinadab, the oldest. And here's what he says. I know you, and I know the naughtiness of your heart.
Your Pride.
Listen to this.
If there are people in your movie that are accusing you of that of which they are guilty, it is. It is the most common thing.
Jesus gives us an indication of this. If you remember, it is not until the resurrection that Jesus brothers really, at one point his.
His family says he's beside himself.
He's gone out of his head.
And Jesus was the oldest. I have an older brother. I have an older brother.
Before I believed he was anything very good, he'd have to raise from the dead. So.
But it was not until the resurrection that. That Jesus brothers believed in him. And David's brothers do finally come around.
But it is after he is literally raised from the dead of the death of the cave of Adullam, after he is lost, after he's rejected, after he's alone, after he's in the wilderness, after he's in the cave, his brothers do finally come out to him and see his leadership and follow him.
But it must have been. It must have been a thing they had to break through.
I know your pride.
They were filled with envy.
I now believe someday I want to preach a whole sermon on envy. I believe that envy is one of the wickedest sins in the human bank of carnality.
If you remember, it says in the New Testament that Pilate discerned. This is a fascinating passage. Pilate discerned that the Pharisees brought Jesus to him to have him killed because of envy.
Envy never the haves, never envy the have nots.
Nobody, nobody ever stands in front of his Lamborghini and watches somebody drive by an effusion and say, oh, that guy thinks he's poorer than everybody.
So what can happen?
There is such a thing as spiritual envy.
If his brother sensed there is some unique thing, there is some way something is upon him. A child who kills wild animals, who writes this music, who sings these songs. There's something. The hand of God is on him. It is that which they envy.
So if there are people in your movie that sense there is some unique blessing in your life and they envy you and they claim that you have something in you that isn't. It may be that which is in them.
Now, the second person we want to deal with in the, in the David movie is David's first wife, Michael.
Michael is.
Michael is a pathetic character.
It's, it's sad. Her story is just a. It's an unfolding tragedy.
The problem is that she lets her tragedy overwhelm her.
And, and, and it becomes.
She becomes in the grip of deep bitterness.
There may be People in your movie that.
That have just allowed the hardships of life to turn them cold and angry.
Michael, no woman wants to be the second choice.
David. By killing Goliath, David was promised to marry Saul's daughter, the eldest daughter.
Instead, Saul reneged on that deal and gave her to another man and then gave David Michael.
And she loved David, but it must have always been in her heart.
I was. I was second best.
It's the. It's the same issue that Leah struggled with in. In her life. She struggled with the fact that. That her sister Rachel was really the one that was. That was the apple of her husband's eye.
Michael loved Ivan.
Secondly, Saul thought he could use Michael as a spy.
It says in 1 Samuel that. That Saul said to himself, I will put Michael in David's house that she can report to me.
So he wanted to have her as a spy. But she loved her husband.
She adored him. When he fell from grace in Saul's eyes and had to flee, she helped him escape and lied for him.
And then she. She made a statue, an icon, if you will, and put it in the bed and made him think it was David and lowered David out of the window and he escaped. When her father said to her, why did you help him get away? I wanted to kill him. She says, oh, he threatened me.
She says, he stood over me with a sword and said, if you don't help me, I'll kill you.
And David flees and goes into the wilderness, as you know. Now what happens to Michael? Remember, this is not about David. This is about Michael.
Michael is given to another man.
It's hard for us.
In the spirit of equity of the 21st century, we can't think of what the female's life was like in 1000 BC.
She had very little to say about her life, especially a princess.
Her marriage would have been for political advantage or economic advantage. So her father just simply says, your husband's banished. He's gone. He's dead to me. And gives her to another man, a man named Paltiel.
Michael has nothing to say about that.
So what does she do? She makes the best of it.
She loved David, but David's gone.
The hope of that is finished.
So Michael makes the best of her life with Patiel.
David finally comes to be king. I'm not going to go through all of that story. That's David's story, but he finally comes to be king. Saul is dead. Jonathan is dead.
The kingdom, the. The. The headquarters of the kingdom has moved from Gibeah down to Jerusalem and David is king of the whole unified kingdom. What's the first thing David does?
He tells his kinsman Abner. He says, go and get Michael and bring her to me.
It's been years.
It's been years. She's had multiple children with this man she's married.
David is like a stranger. They were only married the blink of an eye, and then he was gone.
And David says, go and get her and bring her here.
That's.
It's so hard for us to understand. We're talking about a Bronze Age warlord. You can't project onto David 21st century ethics.
A king who allows his first wife to go on living with another man is a king that has no respect. And a king that has no respect for may not live through the night.
So David sends him to go get Michael. And it is one of the most pathetic scenes in the Bible.
He loads Michael up and leaves. And Paltiel comes behind his horse, weeping and crying.
He's. Who's David? He's nothing. He's nobody. He was her other husband. That life is over with. That's been years. That's been years and years and years.
And he comes behind the horse weeping and crying until finally Abner turns around and says, turn back or I'll kill you.
And he takes Michael to Dyvat, and she is reunited in her first marriage now. And so all those years, all those children, everything with Paltiel is wiped out and she's back with David.
That's.
That's hard.
That's hard.
Now David has got a new capital. He's got Jerusalem. He's got his wife back. He's also got these other wives, Abigail particularly, whom he adores. He's got all these.
Everything.
What does he not have?
He doesn't have the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of Hosts. It's at Shiloh. So he takes parade and goes and gets the Ark of the Covenant. We know that one went badly. I'm not going to go through that, because we'll get our eyes over on David and not on Michael. We're dealing with a woman who's also mentioned in the cast.
The second attempt to bring the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem is successful. David does it the right way. And when they enter Jerusalem, David is overcome, overwhelmed with joy, unspeakable.
He just throws off his outer robe and begins to dance before the people.
He is overwhelmed with joy and delight and praise and worship and its fruit, which is generosity.
And David dispenses to every man and woman in Israel.
It says, a side of beef and a loaf of bread and. And a flagon of wine.
I don't. I don't know how much a flagon is, but I expect it's enough to get a pretty good buzz on. But he's. He gives all this to everybody in Israel.
Imagine what that must have cost.
I believe that the prosperity of Solomon is the result of the generosity of David on the day that he brings the Ark of the Covenant back.
So he's filled with joy and generosity.
And it says that Michael viewed him dancing in the street and despised him.
So when he comes home, David is in an atmosphere of joy and generosity and he throws the door open and he says, I'm home.
And he's given and given and given and given. Imagine he would have given her anything thing she wanted.
You want a mink coat? I'll buy you five.
You want a Mercedes Benz? Just ask. Anything. What do you want?
And Michael is standing in the foyer of the house with her arms crossed, patting her foot. And you can hear the acid in her voice when you read the scripture. What a wonderful day.
What a wonderful day when the king is dancing like a pervert in the street.
David says, you're just angry. Listen to what he says. You're angry because God took the kingdom from your father and gave it to me.
David cuts right to the heart of her bitterness. She has had a tragic life. She is to be pitied. I'm sorry for Michael. I hate it. But the root of her bitterness goes all the way back to the fact that her father was. Was replaced by David. Listen to this. There are a lot of women that can't ever become a queen in their own house because they won't quit being a princess and their fathers.
She wouldn't let go of it. And it fills her with anger and bitterness and resentment.
The story of Michael ends with one simple sentence. It says that from that day on, Michael never had another baby.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: Why?
[00:21:23] Speaker B: We don't know.
Don't know if it's because Diabet, who was not short of wives, just simply didn't go back to her, never brought her to his bed. She's angry, mean, bitter at him. Why would he do that?
It may be, however, that something happened in her.
Bitterness can dry up the fountain of your life.
Got a good friend. He's a sweet guy. Pastors a little tiny church in West Texas, and he's as good as gold.
He's one of the finest Christians I've ever known, but he is semi literate. And he told me he was preaching on Michael one time, and I said, that's great. He said, here's what I'm going to title it. If you don't dance, you ain't going to have no babies.
I said.
I said, john, you may have missed the point, but there is a certain truth in it.
If you don't have the joy of the Lord, the fountain of your life may just dry up.
So David is surrounded on the one hand by these envious, jealous brothers. He's now got this. This character actress in his movie that is filled with anger and bitterness and is still resentful over the replacement of her father.
Now I want to choose the third of our character actors in the life of David, and it's Absalom.
I'm not going to. I could preach a whole sermon on the spirit of Absalom, and I would like to sometime, but I'm not going to in here tonight.
What I'm going to give you is a quick thumbnail because we want to get our eyes on Absalom and not on David.
Absalom, David's son, is one of the few people in the Bible who is described physically.
The Bible doesn't deal with physical descriptions, but he is described as handsome.
And he has, as you know, this wonderful, beautiful hair which becomes the source of his death. He gets hung by his hair in the tree, and Joab, his uncle, kills him.
Absalom leads a rebellion against his own father.
He is deceitful and bitter and angry.
The source of his bitterness is that his full sister, you know, a polygamous household. The problem with a polygamous household is that produces all these half siblings that may barely even know each other.
So his full sister Tamar is raped by their half brother Amnon.
And David, for all of his strengths, he was a genius in many fields of life.
There was one thing he was never good at, and it was family.
He just didn't do well with his own family. And he didn't deal with the rape of Tamar.
And so Absalom waits and then murders his brother and flees the country.
When David doesn't call him to come back from exile, Absalom begins to send emails to his uncle Joab saying, make my father bring me back. Make my father bring me back. But Joab won't answer his emails.
And Absalom burns Joab's farm.
And Joab says, well, you burned my farm. He said, hey, man, answer your emails.
And Joab goes to David and pleads with him to bring Absalom back to Jerusalem, which He does.
And once he's in Jerusalem, Absalom draws such attention to himself.
He has a group of men that run before him in the street. Make way for the crown prince. Make way for. And he stands in a chariot, and he's so beautiful and striking. And it says he steals the hearts of the people of Israel.
So Absalom, whereas his brothers, David's brothers, envy him and his first wife is filled with bitterness and resentment.
Absalom becomes literally psychotic in his anger and unforgiveness to the point where he now rebels against his father, leads an army against his father, tries to destroy the kingdom. And David takes his small little army, the giborim, his 600 soldiers, and leaves Jerusalem when Absalom's army is marching up from Judah.
I've asked myself a hundred times, why didn't David fight for Jerusalem?
And I've come only with two answers. One is, David never defended anything in his life.
He only attacked.
David did not really feel comfortable doing defense.
The second thing was David loved Jerusalem. And he knew that a pitched battle, house to house, street to street, could destroy the town that God loved and that David loved. He goes into the wilderness when.
When Absalom takes over the palace.
David has left behind at the palace 10 concubines to take care of the palace.
The first thing that Absalom does is put a tent on the roof of the palace. And one by one, he rapes all 10 of his father's concubines.
So you see what he's saying.
You didn't deal with my sister's rape. I'll show you how it feels in 10 times.
And then he pursues David into the wilderness. And in the battle, Absalom is killed.
Absalom speaks to that person that may be in your movie, who is egocentric, revenge driven, rebellious and merciless, will not, cannot dare not forgive anything, who overreacts, who leads rebellion, who, despite any mistake you've made, you may.
You may not be a perfect parent or a perfect grandparent. You may have made mistakes, but you may got this Absalom in your life that just drives it, that is filled with hate and bitterness and anger.
Then I just want you to know David, for all of his mistakes, this is very, very important.
For all of his mistakes. David is not responsible for Absalom.
Absalom is responsible for Absalom.
You cannot excuse one. Cannot excuse one's sins because of the sins of someone else.
David mishandled the situation with Amnon. He mishandled it.
He should have dealt with it.
But it doesn't excuse fratricide. He Absalom murdered his brother. He became judge, jury and executioner. Murdered his own brother, raped 10 of his father's concubines, declared war, led a rebellion and tried to murder his own father.
That's not David's sin. That's Absalom's sin.
If there are people in your movie that are living in this outrageous sin of some kind against you, I'm not trying to.
How can I say this in a balanced way?
I can't just say that any mistake you made is not important. But that's between you and God.
But the sins that are committed by those others, that's on them.
David's brothers were offended by the anointing that was on their baby brother.
That's not on David. That's on his brothers.
Michael was hurt and wounded. She's to be pitied. What a sad woman.
But her bitterness is not on David. It's on Michael.
Absalom is an egocentric, narcissistic psychotic.
David made mistakes as a father, but that's not. But Absalom is not on David. Absalom is on Absalom.
If you don't get that in your mind, the sins of those around you will sink you.
Because Satan wants to blame you for what those around you do wrong.
If there are people that envy you, he wants to tell you that you weren't modest enough. If there are people that are bitter around you, he wants to say that they're justified in it because of how you misbehaved. And if they're rebellious and angry and unforgiving, he wants to blame you.
It's important that you understand.
Everybody answers for their own place in life.
Now, there's one other person that I want to mention in the. In the David movie.
And he is probably the most admirable person in the whole movie, including David.
He is the person that is the most noble, fine, best person in the whole movie. He's really a better man than David is. He's certainly better than his father.
And that is Michael's brother, Jonathan.
Jonathan.
I pray that you have a Jonathan in your life.
First of all, Jonathan had remarkable discernment.
He looked at David and sensed, this is the guy.
This guy's different. This guy's even. Even he should be king.
If anybody should have been suspicious and egocentric and fearful of David, it should have been Jonathan, not Saul.
But Jonathan realized it. Jonathan had the discernment of the Lord. This. This is God's choice.
He had brilliant Discernment. What could have hindered that level of discernment?
Pride.
So not only did he have discernment, the discernment ran like a locomotive on the rails of humility.
You cannot discern that the other person is the greater, better, more powerful choice of God if you're trying to live in competitive, in competition with that person.
So he not only has discernment about who David is, he has discernment about who he is.
He says to David, it's not me, it's you, it's not me.
The second thing is he was faithful and generous.
He took care of his friend, he provided for him, he saved his life.
And he was generous, sacrificially generous.
He took his authority and gave it to David.
He put his robe on David's shoulders, he took his weapons and gave them to David. He walked covenant with David in a covenant when David had nothing to add into the covenant.
It was a pure covenant of grace.
Jonathan is the crown prince. David is a shepherd boy. Yes, he's living in the palace now, but he's not really anything.
Jonathan's father is the king. David's father is a shepherd, a farmer.
David doesn't bring anything to that relationship. Jonathan brings everything.
So he is humble, he is discerning, he is gracious, he is a faithful friend.
The book of Proverbs says there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
My father, God rest his soul, is a combat veteran of two wars. He was a paratrooper in the Second World War, 11th Airborne in the Philippines. And between the wars he transferred to Armored Cavalry and he was a tank commander in Korea.
So he was a, he was a tough guy.
He told me about something that he said happened in the Korean War.
I, I'm telling you my dad's story.
He said that there was a soldier that was badly wounded and he had some kind of exotic blood that they couldn't match.
And he said they found this boy in his unit.
And he, and dad said the boy was just semi literate, that he was just barely could even read.
And they said to him, we wanted to do a match. And they matched him. His blood matched.
And they said, we want to take blood and give it to him. And he said, of course, he's my friend, he's my friend.
But he said, they have to have the blood. We're just going to, we don't have time to do all the things to it that have to be done medically. We're going to do a direct transfer.
They put them on two cots and plug the needles in. It said they were there for a while and Daddy said, this boy looked up and said, how long is it till I die?
And they said, what are you talking about?
He said, well, when my blood's all gone, how long will it be till I die?
They said, you're not going to die. We're not taking all your blood.
He said, oh, I thought you were taking my blood to save my friend.
There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
Now, you may have people in your life that envy you, that are filled with anger and bitterness over some reason, that are rebellious and have turned against you. They may feel totally justified and you feel totally mystified.
Let me just comfort you with this.
What a friend, what a friend we have in Jesus.
All our troubles and struggles and fears, he carries them all.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: You've been listening to the Leader's Notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on X @Dr. Mark Rutland, or visit his website, DrMarkRutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
