God's Draft Choice

I want to welcome you to Christ the King this morning as others have already. I want to thank you for welcoming last week my friend John O'Darville, who came and preached. As many of you know, we are a church planting church and there are three ways that we do that. One is that we send out daughter churches. We've done that three times before, and we're on our fourth right now. We are supporting churches regionally and overseas like Jono planting in Pittsboro. And then we also support Leaders Collective, which trains up five to six church planters every year. It's a significant part of who we are as a congregation. And Jono will be back in December during adult Sunday school and give a fuller presentation for anybody who's interested in more of the work that's happening there in Pittsboro. So thanks for welcoming him last week.

We're going to turn to God's word. We're going to be on page 247 in the hymnals there in your pew if you want to find that. It's our custom to read God's word aloud together for the sermon. We're in First Samuel 16, verses one through 13. So if you would join your voices with me, with mine.

The Lord said to Samuel, "How long are you going to mourn for Saul since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you off to Jesse of Bethlehem because I have selected for myself a king from his sons."

Samuel asked, "How can I go? Saul will hear about it and kill me."

The Lord answered, "Take a young cow with you and say, 'I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.' Then invite Jesse to the sacrifice and I will let you know what you are to do. You are to anoint for me the one I indicate to you."

Samuel did what the Lord directed and went to Bethlehem. When the elders of the town met him, they trembled and asked, "Do you come in peace?"

"In peace," he replied. "I've come to sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice."

Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and said, "Surely the Lord's anointed one is here before him."

But the Lord said to him, "Not look at his appearance or his stature because I have rejected him. Humans do not see what the Lord sees. For humans see what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart."

Jesse called Amminadab and presented him to Samuel. "The Lord hasn't chosen this one either," Samuel said. Then Jesse presented Shammah, but Samuel said, "The Lord hasn't chosen this one either."

After Jesse presented seven of his sons to him, Samuel told Jesse, "The Lord hasn't chosen any of these."

Samuel asked him, "Are these all the sons you have?"

"There is still the youngest," he answered, "but right now he's tending the sheep."

Samuel told Jesse, "Send for him. We won't sit down to eat until he gets here."

So Jesse sent for him. He had beautiful eyes and a healthy handsome appearance. Then the Lord said, "Anoint him for he is the one."

So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully on David from that day forward. Then Samuel set out and went to Ramah.

— 1 Samuel 16:1-13

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

I just finished a book that probably many of you've read—a New York Times bestseller called Theo of Golden by Alan Levy. The premise of the book is very simple. An old man comes into a coffee shop in a fictitious town in Georgia to get a cup of coffee and is really taken by the portraits—the quality of the portraits that hang on the walls inside this coffee shop. They are pen and ink drawings. He comes to find out that they are actually of people who've patronized that coffee shop, and in picking them up, you could turn it over on the back and read the name of the person whose portrait it is. Very beautiful pen and ink work.

It comes to him as an idea: What if I bought each of these portraits and gave them—gifted them—to the individuals whose image is on the portrait? And that's the whole book right there. So I'm not spoiling anything, but why is that a compelling story? Well, it's compelling because an artist has rendered the image of those people, and the artist sees things and represents things that maybe the individual who was portrayed doesn't even see in themselves.

So Theo, one by one, meets up with these people and hands them their portrait and just notices, makes little statements. "Those eyes look like they've seen a lot of sadness." "That's a face of a mother." "That's the face of someone who's suffered a lot." And it's fascinating because the stories just come as a result of that. That's the book.

Now, that's the point of this passage in some ways.

Like what is happening in 1 Corinthians, 1 Samuel 16 is showing us what God sees. In fact, there's a funny little wordplay that the author is doing in this book, Theo of Golden. If you know Greek, "Theo" is the shortened version of "Theos," which means God. And that's all he's doing. It's like, "How does God see?" And that's the question of this passage. How does God see? What if we saw ourselves and others not the way the world sees, but as God sees?

You wouldn't be able to tell this in English, but in this passage, there are nine different versions of the word "see"—ra'ah. All through this passage, it's all about what we see and what God sees.

And so today, here's my outline: God sees, how God sees, who God sees, who God chooses, and how God anoints. We're gonna see how God sees differently, chooses by grace, and anoints us by His Spirit.

What God Sees

Let's look at this first—what God sees. It's probably no big news that God sees differently than we do, but it's really stated starkly in this passage. When God calls Samuel to go and anoint a new king over Israel, literally He says, "I have seen a king among Jesse's sons." I've seen a king. And there's a stark contrast in this passage between what Samuel sees and what God sees, between what Jesse sees and what God sees. And that's what's set up for us. And it's the question: when we look at others, what do we actually see about them?

What does Samuel the prophet see? Well, at the beginning of this passage, he sees a major problem for the kingdom. Saul, the king, has failed. God has torn the kingdom away from Saul and has promised to give it to somebody else, and he sees a succession problem. He sees a dead end. And God says to him, "Why are you still grieving over Saul?" Now that's not cruel. God is not like, "I'm done with that guy." Rather, God is calling Samuel to look beyond what's right in front of him, to see beyond the failure of Saul.

And I want to ask you this morning: is that like you? Isn't that like us? We can also so quickly go to a place of "it's all waste. It's all over. That was such a disaster" because we don't see it all. We don't see as God does. We have very limited vision of what's going on around us. And I just want to ask this morning: is there something in your life this morning that you've called a dead end? Is there someone in your life that you've written off as hopeless? Have you thought of asking God to help you see beyond what's right in front of you? "Help me see what you see."

We live by sight. We can't look beyond the immediate.

Now when Samuel gets to Jesse's house, he's introduced to Jesse's boys one by one, and he sees Eliab, the oldest, and he's like, "Eye candy. This guy is certainly what a king looks like." And it's fascinating because here Samuel is just repeating the same mistake that Israel had made before—judging on the outward appearance. He's like, "Surely this one's tall and handsome, and he looks like somebody people would follow." And that's exactly what Israel had done before, asking for a king like the nations and identifying Saul as that king. Samuel's looking for someone who looks kingly.

And this is a hyperlink back to Genesis 1-3. Earlier in this book, we saw how the people looked at Saul and saw he was both tov, which means good, and desirable. Same words used in the garden for the fruit that was forbidden. It was tov—it was good and pleasing, and it was desirable. And they're making the exact same mistake.

And this is where we get the rebuke, where God corrects Samuel with the words here in verse 7:

Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. — 1 Samuel 16:7

And again, aren't we like Samuel? Don't we tend to mistake the outside for the inside? We look at appearance and charisma and credentials and achievement and influence and pedigree, and we're like, "That person is a person of character, is worthy of following." We do this with churches. We do this in politics. We do this in organizations all the time. We judge by what we see. We judge by what we're conditioned to see. We don't always see what's really on the inside of another person, but not God.

That's the first point of this passage: God is not fooled by appearances. God looks at the heart. God sees differently than we do.

Who God Chooses

But not only that—point two: God chooses differently. Who God chooses. Now, when Samuel shows up and it's like the beauty pageant, right? He's going from brother to brother. He goes to Eliab—nope, not that one. Abinadab—nope, not that one. Shammah—nope, not that one. He keeps going down the order and they're good-looking boys, they're jacked, they'd be good workers.

This is a great crew, but it's funny because he goes and every time God's like, "Not that one, that one, not that one, not that one, not that one." And you can feel in this passage where Samuel's like, "I mean, you are Jesse, right? I mean, I have the right guy, don't I?" And it ends with the question. It dawns on Samuel: "Do you have any other kids? Any other boys in this house?"

And the dad's reply—Jesse's reply here—is really curious. In our Bibles, it sounds kind of even: "Oh, there's the youngest." But in Hebrew, the connotations of that are, "Well, there's the runt."

And this is what's fascinating to me. Jesse brought all the sons that he considered relevant to the meeting with Samuel. It's not that David's not in this room because David is not on the radar for the family. He's out tending the sheep. Maybe Jesse just thinks he's too young—that could be a possibility. But it seems like Jesse didn't forget David. He overlooked him.

I want to tread lightly here, but some of you feel this. Some of you have painful family stories of being overlooked or not seen, and you can relate to this. Remember though, God sees the inside. God sees the heart. God sees what others do not, and God chooses David.

And I love this little flex that happens in this passage. Did you notice that when Samuel anoints David, he does so in front of the brothers? They're like, "Wait. The guy with sheep poop on him is gonna be the king? This is a joke, right?" He does it in front of them. David's brothers may have looked like obvious candidates, but God is like, "I'm looking for something very different."

God's Pattern of Reversals

God always seems to be in the Bible about reversals. Have you noticed this? We read early in this service from First Corinthians about how God doesn't choose the powerful and the wise things of this world, but the foolish and the weak.

And it says the things that are not to shame the things that are. — 1 Corinthians 1

In that culture, Eliab, the oldest son, was gonna inherit the bulk of the family property. He was gonna get everything. But God regularly reverses the order. Abel, not Cain. Isaac, not Ishmael. Jacob, not Esau.

In this culture where women are valued for their looks and for producing children, God chooses the barren women: Sarah, Hannah. He chooses Rahab and Tamar. He chooses Ruth.

You all probably know the story of Cinderella really well. I don't like Cinderella very much, just to be honest. It's a story of a young girl who's overlooked, she's poor, she's unseen. She has the job of cleaning while the wicked stepmother and the stepsisters get to go out to all the balls and all the parties. They get to go. And then the magic fairy godmother shows up and creates, you know, the pumpkin into the carriage and the mice into horses or footmen, and there's the glass slipper and all this, and she goes to the ball and she's discovered and finally seen by the handsome prince. When she disappears at the end, he's got to go find her because she's been the diamond in the rough that he hadn't seen all this time.

That's why I don't like the story—because it's an anti-gospel story. The real Cinderella story of the Bible isn't that God is discovering the diamonds in the rough. You know, that's what bothers me about Cinderella. She was beautiful all along. It just took the fairy godmother for everybody to see it.

But the gospel is that God chooses the wicked stepsisters. He invites us to the ball. And there's no magic involved. It's all of grace. We who are undeserving—it's not like we just need to be seen. No. God sees us entirely as we are and invites us, and that's the scandal of the gospel.

This is why I'm convinced nobody would make up the gospel. It doesn't make any sense at all. It doesn't make for very good fairy tales. It's odd, right? God chooses. He sees, he knows, and he calls to himself. He loves us in the midst of our sin, not because our sin doesn't matter. He sent his Son, Jesus, to come and redeem us from it.

Grace isn't God discovering that we're worthy. Grace is God making us his own when we could never make ourselves worthy.

So don't turn David into some kind of self-help lesson. It's very easy to do that. The point isn't that being an underdog makes you really special, nor is it that God always chooses the least talented person. The point is that God's purposes don't flow according to human rankings. God is not impressed by pedigree or resume or backgrounds.

Grace is not reserved for people who are already winners but just need to be seen. Here's what's underscored for us in David's name. This is all underscored in David's name.

Names in the Bible are kind of like in our cultural context, Native American names that have meanings that are significant. Some of you know the meanings of your name, but they're insignificant. But in a lot of cultures, names are very significant. We've seen that already in this book that Samuel means God heard. Saul meant asked for from God. Ichabod means the glory has departed. Do you know what David's name means? Some of the Davids here do. Beloved of God. Beloved.

So my first application for us today is if you could metaphorically take the portrait that God has of you, that your name is on the back, and see what he sees. This is what he sees: beloved, dearly loved, prized, not according to the standards of this world, but this is what God values. This is what's hanging on his wall. You in his image, prized by God, beloved ones. My homework for you this week and for every week, because none of us believe this, is that you reflect on this, to sit in this: you are the beloved of God. You are his David.

The Anointing with Oil

Point three: Samuel takes out the horn of oil and anoints David. Now this is really kind of far away from us culturally. So let me explain what's happening with the oil and the anointing. Anointing with oil is a symbolic gesture that a person is being set apart by God's spirit for a work. This is being poured out on him. If you think of oil, even though it's used for cooking, you pour it out into a pan, it sort of flows. And they thought about that in line of like, it's a great symbol of what the spirit looks like. In John chapter three, Jesus is having this conversation with Nicodemus, and he says this:

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you can't tell where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit. — John 3

It's like oil flowing. But the oil itself isn't what makes David the king. It's the spirit of God that's being put on David. The spirit of the Lord—this is what it says literally in this passage—the spirit of Lord from the moment he's anointed rushes on David. It's like wind language: rushes on David. So by putting oil on David, Samuel's in a way marking him, marking him as one who's marked by the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now the Holy Spirit comes on David with a power that's not of himself, and we've talked about this a couple weeks ago in a lot of Old Testament books. When we read about the Holy Spirit coming on a person, it's temporary. It's different from the New Testament. It's temporary, and it's like a power up in Super Mario Brothers or in a video game. It's empowerment for a particular task. It's not a permanent possession the way it is for believers since Pentecost.

So this is what happens: God is marking him and empowering him to lead. You know what the word in Hebrew is for anoint? It's the word Yimshah, which is where we get our word Messiah. Yimshah, Messiah. Literally verse 13 says that Samuel took his oil, and he messiahs David. He messiahs him. He sets him apart for this work. This is your lowercase m messiah. This is gonna be your king. This is gonna be the savior. This is gonna be the one who delivers God's people from their enemies. This is the one that God has sent for you. He's the son of Jesse. He's right there in front of everybody.

But David, of course, is just a shadow of the ultimate Messiah, the one who will come from Jesse's line—Jesse's great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandson. Right? Jesus, the capital M Messiah. And just like David, he's going to come. He's gonna be from Bethlehem, and the world's not going to recognize him because he doesn't have the markings of a king. He doesn't look kingly. He doesn't come in power and authority. He's not impressive. He's born in an obscure village. He lives most of his life homeless, far from power.

The word in Greek for anoint is Christos. It's not Jesus' last name. It's Jesus, the anointed one, the Messiah. Samuel took his oil and Christed David that day. And it's all anticipation down the line of when Jesus would be baptized in the River Jordan and would come up out of the water. And two things happened in that moment: the spirit of God is poured out on Jesus. And then these words are pronounced over Jesus:

This is my beloved, beloved and anointed. — Matthew 3

This is where this takes a step in your life. If you are a Christian, there are three things I want you to know. Number one: God sees you. God sees you in ways that you don't even know. He knows more about you than you could ever imagine.

Number two: you are his beloved. You gotta pull out that portrait and remember that every day.

And number three: he has anointed you with his spirit. Look at these two passages from First John:

You have an anointing from the Holy One. — 1 John 2

And verse 27, the anointing you receive from him remains in you. You don't need anybody to teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about all things, and his anointing is real, not counterfeit, just as it has been taught to you, remain in him. — 1 John 2:27

Friends, the greatest news I can tell you: God sees you. You are his beloved, and his spirit has been poured out on your life in a way that David, people Samuel could never have imagined since Pentecost. This is the reality for every believer. This is incredible news. I wonder if you live in this. If you walk around with this sense of how much God sees you and knows you, how much you are his beloved child, and there's nothing you can do to take that away, and how much his power and his marking has been put on your life. Do you have any idea?

Here's one way you know. If it begins to change the way you look at other people. In Leviticus 11, there's this strange story about the sending of God's spirit onto the elders of Israel. The spirit comes, is poured out on the 70 elders, and there's so much extra spirit that it gets overflowed on two other guys. And Joshua was like, "Wait, those two guys, they shouldn't have this." And Moses is like, "Man, I wish everybody had the spirit."

Now what's funny about those two guys—their names are Eldad and Medad. Those are both from the word "David." Those are both the connection between being his beloved and having his anointing. And Moses' wish came true, didn't it? At Pentecost, this is the reality of every believer. And it changes the way—if you really take this into yourself—you begin to look at other people.

Theo of Golden and the Power of Being Seen

So let me finish with Theo of Golden again. As I said, Theo of Golden is about seeing and seeing what other people don't see. There's something about Theo distributing these portraits to people that begins to change them.

There's a scene in the book where a dad named Kendrick meets with a local district attorney. Now here's the backstory. Kendrick has a daughter who's been in the hospital receiving surgery upon surgery for injuries sustained in a car accident where also Kendrick's wife died. Another man named Matteo was at the wheel, fell asleep at the wheel, and crashed into his wife and daughter, killing his wife, injuring his daughter. This man has been behind bars awaiting trial for months. So they come in for the first hearing. It's the first time Kendrick's seen Matteo in person since this accident, and he's just filled with all the emotions you would think—anger, rage, upset.

A couple days later, the district attorney meets with Kendrick and asks, "Hey, I've got three options for punishment for this man, Matteo. Which one should I choose? Do you have any vote on what I choose here? Which way we go?"

But something has happened to Kendrick. Weeks before, Kendrick received this portrait from Theo of himself. And he begins to see himself maybe in a different way. It changes the way that he begins to think about the other man in the courtroom that day—who did such irreparable harm to his family. And he discovers that this man, Matteo, also has a daughter who's really sick. The man fell asleep at the wheel trying to get home to that daughter.

But here's the thing. Kendrick sees the man, and this is what he says to the DA:

Let me tell you what changed me yesterday about that little man in the courtroom. Up till yesterday, all I had in my head was an idea about him. He was that thing that hurt my little girl, and I didn't mind what y'all did to that thing. What changed me though was when I began to look at his face. Did you look? I mean, really look? Not a glance, not a quick peek. I mean, look.

The young prosecutor did not answer. He was beginning to understand what it felt like to be cross examined. "Well, mister Derek, I looked real, real good, real hard. I looked at him. His eyes had tears in them, and I saw hurt and fear and it changed me. When he leaves court tomorrow, I hope he'll know that somebody looked at him and didn't see a thing or a label, but a man with a soul and a man with a child. Even if you all put a hard sentence on him, I hope he knows somebody saw his face."

People who've been seen by God, who know that you are his beloved, who've received his anointing of his spirit—it changes the way you look. It changes the way you look at the people at the grocery store and the annoying neighbor and the really annoying person at work with you. It changes the way you think about the other in our culture because you realize God's not looking for Cinderellas. He's got a bunch of ugly stepsisters.

In the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, I ask you for two things for these dear people this morning. Lord, they have no idea who they really are.

And would you wake them up today to how much you see and you delight and you pour out your spirit on them? What profound mysteries are ours. And father, would you change the way we look at people, change the way we look at ourselves, and change the way that we look at others. Father, we pray that you would change us. Father, help us to see what you see and love what you love so we can look more and more like you. We pray this in Christ's name.