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.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: If I were, if one were to lecture on, say, Jesse and Frank James or Cole Younger, any of the Missouri outlaws of the late 1860s and 70s, it would not be possible to do any kind of comprehensive teaching on them without talking about the Civil War, that they were the leftover dregs of the violence of the Civil War.
You wouldn't feel like you had done a complete lecture on Jesse and Frank James if you don't deal with William Quantrill or Bloody Bill Anderson.
But there's the temptation then to go all the way back to the issue of slavery and how that impacted the Civil War. You could get all these rabbit trails.
So that's what I've tried to both embrace and avoid in this.
There's no way for us really to understand David if we don't understand the epoch in which he lived, some of the major players that impacted his life and whose lives were thus impacted by him.
But I'm going to try to avoid running up rabbit trails.
However, I have the microphone and I reserve the right to if a rabbit trail appeals to me, we'll go there.
So let's have a prayer and we're going to dive into David and his life and leadership. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for this evening and for our church and for our pastor. We thank you that you have returned him to us safe and rested from his vacation.
And we pray for your continued anointing on his ministry on Sunday as we need it very much.
Lord, we pray for this series and particularly for tonight that you will simply brush aside every hindrance to divine communication that we may hear from you in Jesus wonderful name, the strong Son of God. Amen.
So let's talk about some prelude to David.
So the book of Exodus, Moses is leading the people, the Hebrew people, out of their 740 years of bondage in Egypt.
The idea is that they go straight from Egypt, past Sinai, collect the law and go in and take the land. They fail, so they spend 40 years wandering in the desert as it were, being led around in the desert by the pillar of fire and the cloud of smoke until that generation is gone.
And now a second generation has come and they are ready with the inclusion of Two of the veterans, Joshua and Caleb, and they are ready now to go in and take the land they spy out. The Joshua sends 10 spies in, Moses sends 10 spies in and Joshua goes and they come back with this report that the other 10 spies had failed on. Now these spies succeed.
But there's only one way they succeed.
They are hidden.
They are espionage agents spying on Jericho.
And they would be killed if they were not hidden by a woman who runs a house of ill repute.
She is a Gentile pagan prostitute and she hides them.
When Jericho falls, she and her family are saved alive because of her act of faith, Rechab or Rahab.
Her act of faith to hang out the scarlet cord.
When the army marches on past the rubble of Jericho, they collect that woman and her family.
She. She subsequently marries a man named Salmon.
We don't know that Salmon was one of the spies, but it appeals to my romantic heart.
I like to believe that Salmon was among the spies, but we know he was in Joshua's army and that he married Rechab.
They have a son named Boaz.
Boaz lives to be on into his mature years unmarried.
One wonders if part of the reason is because his mother is a Gentile ex prostitute. Maybe not considered the find of the year, but he does become quite wealthy.
The fact that his mother was a Gentile may have opened up his mind to marry a Gentile, which he does.
Her name is Ruth, the daughter in law of Naomi.
They have a son.
Boaz and Ruth have a son. His name is Obed.
There is no record of Obed's wife's name, but Obed and his wife have a son.
His name is Jesse.
We have no biblical record of his wife's name, but Jesse Isai in Hebrew. Jesse and his wife have a son in the village of Bethlehem where Boaz and Ruth lived. So it's a direct descendant, three generations.
And Jesse's son is David.
So I just want you to get this in your mind.
So Rahab the harlot is the great great grandmother of King David.
Ruth is the great grandmother of King David.
Obed is the grandfather of David. Jesse is the father of David. So we're only talking about five generations from David to the fall, from the fall of Jericho, and six generations from bondage in Egypt.
That means that sometimes when we talk about King David or the kingdom of Israel or that kind of thing, we tend to impose our concept of the English monarchy on that.
We tend to think of them as being in the romantic era, that they're all, you know, in the time of George III or something.
This is primitive.
David was born a thousand years before Jesus was, a millennium before the birth of Christ. When Jesus was born, David was ancient history.
He was born on the cusp between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.
So when we talk about the Bronze Age, you're talking about things that happened beyond 3,000 years ago.
And David is born right on that line.
Furthermore, what is called Israel at that time is really a scattering of tribes.
It's not like you have boundary lines. Here's the state of Georgia, here's the state of Alabama, here's, you know, those states, they are intermingled.
12 tribes intermingled with other tribes. All of the, as Travis always puts it, all of the ites, the Amalekites and the Hittites and the Jebusites, they're all mixed in with each other. Not tidy boundaries.
David, for example, was born in Bethlehem, which is almost within eyesight, at least within walking distance, 8 miles or so of a Jebusite stronghold called Jebus.
So David as a small child grows up in a small, tiny agrarian village in the tribe of Judah.
Bethlehem is not the capital of the tribe of Judah. That's Hebron.
So David is born in a tiny little agrarian village that specializes in two agricultural products, barley and sheep.
David's great grandfather grew barley.
His father is largely a shepherd.
So we just have to get our minds around the fact that this is ancient history.
In a world where at the time of David's birth, nobody had ever seen an iron weapon.
Everything, the most the weapons were made of bronze. That's how ancient this is.
As a matter of fact, in passing, I will say the first iron weapon mentioned in the Bible is Goliath's sword.
So that's how new the technology of that was.
Now, what about politically?
There is no.
There's no head of Israel.
There are tribal chieftains. There's the chief of Judah and the chief of Gad and the chief of Asher and the chief of Benjamin. But there's no central government, there's no capital city, there's no parliament, there's no congress.
The tribal chieftains gather and make the best decisions they can. But the tribes are often almost as much at war with each other as they are with the Hittites and the Philistines.
The rising military power of the Middle east at that time is not one of the Ites. It's the Philistines.
Their major prominent geographical power is on the southern Mediterranean coast of what is current Israel, largely where Gaza is today.
That was a Philistine stronghold. And the principal town of the Philistines is Gaz.
What is the. What's the leadership for these scattered tribes?
It's a prophetic leadership.
The prophet Samuel, who functions as prophet and as.
Sort of the advisor.
He's the one who kind of speaks into the life of the nation of Israel.
And he is the last judge.
So let's tie it together biblically.
Exodus, Joshua, judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel. This is where David appears.
So Ruth, the book of Ruth, happens in the same era as the Book of Judges.
The bridge over all that is this magnificent human being named Samuel.
So Samuel is the last judge of Israel.
And we use judge now to mean somebody that sits on the bench and adjudicates, but a judge. It really probably should have been translated deliverer.
They were delivering leaders. They came by the sovereign work of God.
Jephthah, Samson, Gideon, Baruch, those are the judges. Samuel is the last of those.
So with Samuel, the epoch of the Judges ends.
The people begin to say, we don't want to live like this anymore with these scattered tribes waiting on the prophetic judgment.
We want to be like all the other nations around us, all these Gentile nations. They have a central figure of leadership, a king, a chief, something. We want that.
And God finally relinquishes and tells them, I'll give you one.
And he tells Samuel who to choose.
And Samuel chooses Saul.
So there's no way to really understand David apart from Saul. There's no way to understand Saul apart from Samuel. There's no way to understand Samuel apart from the geopolitical realities of a tribal society.
So Saul is anointed by Samuel as the first king of Israel, but he's the king of.
He's the king of something that doesn't exist.
He's the king of a nation that isn't a nation. It's an assortment of tribes. They have their own leaders.
And so Saul has to forge these 12 tribes into a comprehensive nation with a central figure of leadership militarily and geopolitically.
And for all of his catastrophe later, Saul does it.
He is huge, physically.
He's the next tallest man in the nation. Only came to Saul's shoulder.
Look up here. I have absolutely no clue what that feels like, but one can imagine that that makes an impressive human being.
He was militarily powerful, and he had a son, Jonathan, who worked with him. That was impressive.
And they were a great duo. He had other sons as well.
And they began to forge the new nation of Israel.
So you've gone from the Hebrew people in bondage to the Hebrew people in the desert, to the Hebrew people in 12 scattered tribes, all trying to kick the ites out of their territory who are now trying to coalesce into an. Into a nation with a king. And that is Saul.
It goes well at first, but Saul's principal weakness is his egotism.
He wants everybody to love him, which is a failure in leadership.
And he wants to have authority and to be admired, respected. And it becomes an egotistical obsession for Saul.
Now let me say something about the reading 1 and 2 Samuel.
So they're not precisely chronological biographies.
They are often layered and textured.
So sometimes a thing happens here and then one Samuel parks it and then something happens over here that actually happened before that thing over there.
But they have to tell it because it tells about what this thing over here is.
Because it's not like a movie where in a movie you show a flashback. You go to movies, you know, oh, I don't know, you're pentecostals. But you know people that go to movies and you know, you see a flashback and you know it's a flashback.
But what does the Bible say? The Bible can't say, okay, this is a flashback.
Or you know, the old time used to say, remember in the old movies it would say meanwhile back at the ranch.
Well, the Bible doesn't say meanwhile back at the ranch or meanwhile back in Bethlehem, or meanwhile this is happening at the same time that's happening. So what happens is you have to kind of piece together the flow of 1 and 2 Samuel. But there will be things that will be said that almost seem like contradictions.
Let me give you an example.
Suppose we were talking about the state of Georgia in the early 1800s. And I said, in Atlanta there was this and that.
I promise you, somebody will raise their hand and say there was no Atlanta, it was Terminus.
Atlanta was named Terminus in those days. I would say, I know, but nobody knows Terminus. So we're going to call it Atlanta.
1 and 2 Samuel are full of things just like that.
Where there may be things where it refers to Jerusalem before there was a Jerusalem, but it's referring to the place called Jebus.
But it calls it Jerusalem because nobody knows what Jebus is. There are things like that. One of those has to do with David himself.
So let's park Saul.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, David is born into a family of older brothers, his father Jesse and his mother.
I believe David may have been one of these late in life pregnancies that, oops, he is substantially younger than his next oldest brother.
But there are times when in Saul's court later, David is referred to as a valiant man, as a mighty man, before he is clearly charted out as a little boy.
That's one of those. It's not a contradiction. It is telling you different things happening at different times.
So David is born to this family of older brothers.
Almost immediately, the family begins to sense something is up with this kid.
He's just that youngest son who is inordinately irritating to his big brothers.
They begin to wonder a. That he's whimsical or a pathological liar or a nutcase.
He comes in from the pasture. He's not even old enough to do the stuff the big boys do. They send him out to tend the sheep. He comes in from the pasture and they say, how'd everything go with your sheep today? Oh, he said, a lion came. They said, a lion? What'd you do? He said, oh, I punched him with my little fist and killed him.
This is designed to make your big brothers love you.
Oh. They said, oh, yeah, yeah, sure. So the next day, what happened today? A bear came. Oh, a bear, like the lion, right? Yes. What'd you do?
Popped him, punched him right in the face and killed him.
So this is not in the Bible. This is Rutland.
But I believe that his big brother, Abinadab, said, listen to me. The next time you kill some big ugly creature, you cut its head off and roll its head at my feet.
Write that one down and wait.
So meanwhile, back at the ranch, God has become completely disaffected with Saul.
He says, I'm going to take the kingdom from Saul and give it to somebody else. And God reveals this to. To Samuel.
I'm going to pluck the kingdom from Saul's hands and give it to one better than he.
Now, Samuel is commissioned by God to go and tell Saul that.
So he does. And it's a dramatic scene. It's virtually Shakespearean. Samuel is going to leave the room, and Saul grabs his mantle and drives on. You remember, he's a great huge man. Samuel's this little prophet. And he tears his mantle. And Samuel turns in this prophetic moment and he says, thus saith the Lord, as you have ripped my mantle, God will rip the kingdom from your hands and give it to one better than you.
Saul doesn't even argue with him.
Saul accepts the prophetic reality. Samuel has such weight, such anointing, such power.
He doesn't even. Saul doesn't even argue with him.
What he says is characteristic of his greatest weakness. He says, okay, but let's don't tell anybody.
I know I'm no longer the king. I know I'm no longer anointed. I know that God is not with me. But just appear with me on the platform and pray with me so that people will think I'm still the king. He knows he's not.
And Samuel agrees to do that. If all you want is the outward, God may very well give it to you.
And so Samuel then removes himself from Saul's court to a place called Ramah.
And at Ramah, Saul, Samuel. At Ramah, Samuel ran what might be called a.
Like a charismatic Bible school.
It's very spiritual, very mysterious. And he gathers these young prophets around him and kind of teaches them a school of prophets up in the mountains.
And there at Ramah, God tells Samuel, go to Bethlehem.
Go to the house of Jesse, who is descended from Rahab the harlot, descended from Ruth. And one of his sons is going to be the king to replace Saul.
Surely, you see this is a highly dangerous mission.
This is sedition.
You understand? This is sedition.
There is a king. His name is Saul.
No matter what word of prophecy is said, he's not the king. He's the king.
No matter what Samuel says, he still runs the army.
So he goes to some distant village. Saul is at Gilgal, in the tribe of Benjamin. He's going to go to another tribe. Remember, the tribes conflict all the time. He's going to go to another tribe, to the tribe of Judah, to another place, and anoint another king. And he's going to say to Saul, you're the king, but you're not the king.
Then he's going to say to this guy in a village in Judah, you're not the king, but you are the king.
And the worst thing he can think of is that Saul finds out about this.
So he goes to Jesse's house.
And the whole moment really is sort of saturated in a cloak of fear.
There's fear that Saul will find out, but there is also fear the elders of the village of Bethlehem, when Samuel arrives, it's hard for us to grasp it. I don't think we really know anybody in our culture that would be like this. But he is so powerful, so huge, so anointed, so mysterious, that the village, when he arrives, they just want to make sure, are you here to do something good, or are you here to blow the village up?
And they actually say that to him.
Are you here for good or evil?
And Samuel says, for good. And he calls the Elders of the village to Jesse's house.
And it is a remarkable scene.
So try to put it in your mind.
It's evening time.
The boys have all come in from the field. They're all there, minus David. He's out in the pasture, and there's maybe torchlight. The elders are there. They don't know what Samuel's going to do.
And so he says, bring your sons.
So the oldest one comes, and he's not as big and handsome and majestic as Saul, but he's close.
And Samuel says, I knew Saul.
And he reaches his hands out and God says, it's not him.
And it is repeated with every single son.
It's not him. It's not him. It's not him. It's not him.
And then Samuel asks one of the really humorous questions in the whole Bible.
Are you sure these are all your sons?
And Jesse says, kind of apologetically, he says, okay, okay, there's another one.
But I got to tell you, he's an odd little kid.
He's. He's out with the sheep.
Let's sit down and have dinner, and I'll get somebody to go get him. And Samuel says, nobody will sit down and nobody will eat a bite until you bring that child in here.
So somebody goes out into the pasture and collects David and brings him in.
Now, now, put yourself in David's place.
He has no previous knowledge of what's going on.
They lead him into his father's house. There's his dad. There are the elders of the village. There's this strange old man. David walks in. The Bible calls him of a ruddy countenance.
How would we? He's a sunburned little kid. He works in the field.
So he comes in and this old man comes over to him and. And pours oil on his head and anoints him as the king and leaves.
Now, you got to think, what is going on in David's mind?
Is he the king? He's a small boy in a remote village. There is a king.
In what sense is he the king? What does it all mean?
It's one of those mysterious sort of supernatural moments. And David's life has several of them.
One is coming later, and it also involves Samuel.
But it's a mysterious thing.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Saul has now become so demonically oppressed that in his depression and fearfulness and.
And now he can't sleep.
And so somebody says, why don't we get a minstrel who can come and play and sing and sing the king to sleep at Night.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, evidently David's secondary gift, music, has now become so well known, David has won the Hebrew version of the voice and so he is now well known. Somebody in Gilgal says there's a boy in Bethlehem that can really sing and the hand of God is on him. Let's get him.
So they bring David to Saul's camp.
Now, what is not clear is if David and Saul have any kind of a relationship.
Perhaps the king sleeps in one room and there's some kind of a tent, a veil, something. And they tell David, sit over here and play your harp and sing and keep your mouth shut. The king's in the next room. So we don't know what's the nature of this relationship.
At some point or another, Saul goes to war and David goes home.
The war implicates David's older brothers, so they join Saul's army and David stays home with Jesse and his mother.
Now comes the most famous part of David's life. I want to deal with it and deal with it today and get on with it. What I'm always afraid is when people take the life and story of David, they know.
They know about Goliath and Bathsheba. There's a huge rest of his life, but let's deal with Goliath.
So Travis and I, by the way, have been to the valley where this battle takes place.
And it is a valley. There are two hillsides approaching on both sides.
The Israeli army under Saul is on this side. The Philistine army has marched up toward Judah and they're on this side.
And every day this monstrous human being named Goliath from the city of Gath comes out and challenges the army of the Hebrews.
It's an ancient practice.
Armies throughout history have done this. You send out a champion, we'll send out a champion. Whoever wins that army surrenders. It never works that way.
It never works. As soon as the one kills the other one, they still fight, but they often try it. And so Goliath says, send out your champion, and they'll do it. Nobody will go. Day after day after day. It's humiliating.
More than expecting a real champion, it's actually just a way to do trash talking.
And so he's humiliating the Hebrews.
Jesse sends David to the camp of his brothers with some food and stuff like that. And David gets there right at the moment that Goliath, one of these days that Goliath walks out and makes the challenge and nobody will move.
And here's our first real insight into David at This point, all we know is David is a talented, anointed, strange little kid who is not particularly embraced by his older brothers.
That's all we know. We've not seen anything about David. We don't know anything about him.
Now suddenly the personality of David begins to be revealed.
David says, what will be done for the guy that kills him?
That's an interesting insight. It's one of the first things we know about David.
What's going to be done for the guy? In other words, David spends his life. You can write this one down.
David spends his life with his eye on the prize David had. David is goal oriented. He is fixed. It's one of the solutions to David. David goes after it. He never simply wants to get somewhere and camp and hold the line. David is, is a charger, he's a goer. What will be done? What's the prize? What's the outcome if I win, what happens to me?
He doesn't ask, what could that guy do to us if he kills us?
It doesn't seem to dawn on David that he could lose.
That's a fascinating insight. This child, well, young boy appears at this moment and he's talking about victory over a giant and the prize that would be his. Well, they tell him you'll be married to Saul's oldest daughter, your family will never pay taxes again in Israel. Your family will be made free and he'll make put you into the palace in Gilgal and you'll be over the army and be a great promotion and all this kind of thing. And David says, I'll fight him.
Who shows up?
David's big brother.
And he says, I know you. I love the prissy language of the King James Bible. He says, I know the naughtiness of thine heart. Isn't that a prissy phrase?
What he means is, you wicked lying little brat.
This is just the kind of stuff you pulled in our whole house.
And David says, isn't there a cause?
He ignores him.
So we have the famous battle between David and Goliath.
I would like to point out just a couple of things about it that you may have heard, you may not have heard.
So how is David able to kill him?
How can he do that? This is massive giant with armor. It says that there is an armor bearer with him, that all he can carry is Goliath's sword shield.
So this guy Goliath is so big that it takes another man to carry his shield.
And so he brings the shield out, stands it on end, so it's like this. Goliath stands behind it and he taunts the Jewish soldiers.
David's first job, he's got to get that giant out from behind that shield.
That's the number one thing.
So Goliath says, you come out here with sticks and stones. David's got a slingshot and rocks.
He says, you come against me with slingshot. And David begins to. He says, you want some trash talk? I'll give you trash talk.
He says, today I will cut your head off. I will feed your flesh to the birds. You are nothing but an uncircumcised pagan, and I'll kill you today in front of the whole army of the Philistines. And it enrages this giant, and so he charges. That's what David was waiting on.
He hits him in the forehead with a stone and. And he falls. Now, what is not clear is that the stone killed him. He may have killed him, but David's not taking any chances.
David runs out, pulls this massive sword out of his scabbard and chops the giant's head off with his own sword, I believe.
Then he took that great big ugly head and threw it at Abinadab's feet and said, there you go.
It's not in the Bible.
So now comes one of these contradictory things in the Bible, Saul says, who is that kid?
Who is his father?
But remember, presumably they've already met.
He's already been singing for him. So what we're not sure of is if does the President of the United States know everybody that works at the White House?
So that's one way of thinking about it.
Secondly, he hasn't seen him now in some time. Maybe he's gotten bigger. Maybe he's grown boys will do that, and maybe he looks bigger. Also. There's a matter that he doesn't say, who is that boy? He said, who is his father?
So maybe he's wanting to know what kind of household did he come from? But a lot of people want to make it a contradiction that this is the first time Saul has met David. He just says, who is that? So somebody says, that's David. His father's Jesse in Bethlehem.
So Saul brings David. I'm kind of racing through this because it's so familiar to everybody, but now becomes actually right at that moment, the friction between Saul and David begins from the. At the very. At the very start, Saul did not go out and fight.
None of his generals went out and fight. None of his warriors went out and fought. Here's this young guy, maybe. Maybe a young Teenager, we're not sure, but he does it and he wins.
Saul has tried to get him to wear his armor. He wouldn't even wear his armor. He goes out with a slingshot, no sword. They said, what are you? What, don't you need a sword? He said, no, I'll get one, and I know where one is.
So Saul is blessed to have him. He wants him.
He wants what he's done. He wants the victory. He wants that giant dead.
The Jewish soldiers, when the giant is dead, they charge. They're so cranked up, they charge. They fight those Philistines all the way back to Gath.
So Saul's had a great victory. His army's had a great victory.
David is a blessing to him. David's a gift. Everything else but this egocentric, pathological breakdown in Saul makes him suspicious, fearful, and resentful of the very thing that he needs.
And from the very beginning, Saul treats him wrong.
The number one promise was, I will give the winner my oldest daughter.
Saul doesn't do that.
He bypasses his older daughter. We're not 100% sure why, but instead he gives David his second daughter, Michal.
And we'll deal with Michal later on. But I do want to say to you, this is one of the really tragic figures in the Bible, is this woman. She is the classic story of a woman whose life is kind of plowed under by all the famous people around her.
And she has a tragic end.
But Michal is given to David.
Characteristic of David, he doesn't object.
He says, who am I to be married into the king's household at all?
What in the world? I'm a country boy.
Why would I?
Any daughter.
And Michael falls in love with him.
But Saul is also using Michael as a cat's paw to spy on David.
There is a very important thing here.
Michael and Saul, father and daughter, are very close. I'm not talking about anything weird there. There is a deep connection emotionally between Michael and Saul, and he trades. Saul knows that and manipulates on that closeness.
David becomes aware of that closeness, and it shows up later on, and it causes a breakdown. Total. The final, total breakdown between David and Michal is because of that attachment to her father.
So Saul decides to get David killed.
And so he sends him on suicide missions.
Just crazy military operations that are absolutely intended to get him killed.
But the problem is, the more harrowing these adventures are. And David wins.
Saul builds up David's fame. He creates the legend around David by giving him harder and harder jobs. If he had just let him Stay in the palace and keep his mouth shut. Saul made David famous, but Saul hates the fame.
And finally he says, you know, you never did give me a dowry for Michael.
This is a little bit difficult on a Wednesday night, but he says, here's a dowry I want. I want a hundred Philistine foreskins.
I want you to kill a hundred Philistines and circumcise them and bring the foreskins. David says, no, I'll bring you 200.
There's no, no counting in the Bible. How they, how or who counted, it's just a monstrous thing.
But bear this in mind. One reason I tell that is I want you to see what it does with regard to David and the Philistines.
Not only has he killed and mutilated the body of their champion, now he is killed. And in a humiliating way. Basically what he's done is make them dead Jews, these Philistine pagans. David is now considered an absolute monster. War crimes that he has murdered, killed and mutilated the bodies. You can't imagine how the Philistines hate David and you can't imagine how the Jews love David.
He is, he is admired and his legend has grown. He's become bigger than life. He's Prince Valiant, he's Superman, he's everything.
And it's just driving Saul crazy. Until one day as Saul comes through town there in Gibeah, he hears the women around the well singing little made up songs. And they sing, saul has slain his thousands and David is tens of thousands. And that broke it.
So that night at supper, Saul loses his mind and throws a spear, a javelin at David and tries to kill him. It embeds in the wall beside him.
I got an email from a kid. He said, I'm having so much trouble with my. He said, I'm the associate pastor at a church, having so much trouble with my pastor and I don't know whether to leave or not. When do I. How do I know when to leave? And I sent him that text.
I said, that's the moment.
So David flees.
Now we're introduced to Jonathan.
If Michael, Saul's daughter, is a tragic and pathetic figure, really one of the best people in the whole story of 1 and 2 Samuel is Jonathan.
Jonathan is really a wonderful person and Jonathan and David are close friends.
Liberal Bible people have tried to make, turn this into a homosexual relationship.
Let me just tell you something. David had his problems. Boys weren't one of them.
So David and Jonathan were not homosexual lovers.
They were friends of that level of friendship. That is A wonderful love, a pure friendship of love, where they just are the deepest friends.
And Jonathan tries to deal with his dad and talk his dad down from the ledge.
And Saul even comes close to killing him and makes a vague sexual argument attack on Jonathan when nobody's even sure what it means. It's not clear in English and it's not clear in Hebrew what it means, but he basically kind of even implies it says, was David sleeping with your mother?
And it's crazy. Saul has lost his mind by this point.
So Jonathan tells David, we'll come out, shoot some arrows tomorrow. And if you can come, if it's safe for you to come back into Gilgal, then I'll let you know. If not, I'll say to the boy chasing the arrows, they're further, go further.
And so he tells the boy, when he chases the arrows, go further. And David knows he has to flee.
He can't go back.
His life, his celebrity, his power, his prestige, his leadership, his position.
The top military leader in the army of Israel. A hero, a national figure, a celebrity. It's gone.
It's all gone.
It's finished in one moment.
Yes, David's a hero. Yes, everybody loves David. But let's be honest, Saul is the king.
Saul owns the government. Saul owns the army.
And David flees from Saul's presence.
And David goes to Samuel at Ramah, at this kind of spiritual mountain school of prophets.
David goes up there to hide out. It seems appropriate. It seems like he kind of says to Samuel, you showed up at my house and ruined my life.
Yeah, I'm here.
And Samuel takes him in.
Saul finds out we're going to. This is going to bring it to a conclusion.
Saul finds out where David is, and he sends some cops up there to bust him.
And they get up there, and the spirit of God comes on the cops. They're getting ready to put the cuffs on David, and the spirit of God comes on them. And they start prophesying.
The Bible does not tell us what they prophesy, but one assumes they prophesy contradictory to their mission.
They're there to arrest David and bring him back to Saul. And they say, thus saith the Lord. God has anointed you to be the king over Israel in the place of Saul.
And they leave with their tail between their legs.
They go back to Saul and he says, did you get him? And they say, now, your majesty is a little complicated.
Saul sends another group and another group, and finally Saul makes the decision of the mafia. If you're going to kill somebody, you may as well kill them yourself.
And Saul goes to Ramah to kill David.
And this is one of those almost bizarre supernatural moments in David's life. Here it is like his anointing at Jesse's house. Now comes this moment. Saul comes in to arrest David and or kill him.
And the spirit of prophecy at Ramah falls on Saul.
Saul strips himself naked, falls on the floor at David's feet, and begins to prophesy again. We don't know what he prophesies, but one must assume.
He says, david, you're the true king. God has lifted his anointing from me, and the Lord has placed it on you, and I know that you're the true king. And he lays on the ground naked all night at David's feet.
And then David makes an inexplicable decision. We'll close with this.
And I'm tantalizing you because this decision is where we'll start. Next week, David makes a.
If we ever get the chance to talk to David in heaven, we can ask him, when you made this decision, what was up with that?
David leaves Ramah where he has been supernaturally protected by the hand of God.
And David doesn't stay there.
He leaves. And where does he go?
Gath.
Let's have a little quiz. Who is the most famous person ever born in Gath?
Goliath.
He has killed Goliath in front of the whole army, cut Goliath's head off, killed 200 Philistines, mutilated their dead bodies. And he goes to Gath.
Does he think they're going to make him mayor?
It's an absolutely astonishing decision.
And next week when you come back, we will find David in a prison in Gath. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you. How you have blessed and how you prosper this precious church. Thank you, Lord. And we pray that you will bless and prosper every person in this room, that this week that we will walk under your divine anointing and safety.
Lord, we pray for our pastor on Sunday.
Speak through him to us and open our ears that we may hear in the mighty name Jesus, the strong son of God.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Anything else?
Oh, thank you, Pastor.
Thank you.
I knew to do this. I just was testing the pastor.
I. This is something I want to do every week at the end.
I'd like for us every week to read Psalm 23 together.
So this complicated, complex, sometimes conflicted human being, how can he write poetry that will speak to us 3,000 years later?
We read something by Thomas Jefferson and we think. Wow, that really moves me.
This is three millennia ago.
This guy wrote this. Let's stand together.
They'll put it up on the screen, and we'll all read it together.
You ready?
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters, and he restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me. Thank you. Good night, everybody.
[00:56:10] 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, markrutland.com, where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
