Now David. David: a nice blue-eyed, curly-haired boy sweetly playing his harp? Not quite. Actually, a deeply damaged kid from a highly dysfunctional family. And seeing what God can do through someone like that can really encourage us…
David grew up in Bethlehem. Not the greatest place to grow up: Judges’ end has a horrible story of a Bethlehem girl who gets gang raped and cut into pieces. And what about the family he grew up in? When there’s a big celebration and Samuel himself is coming, little brother David’s left out on the hills — where we know there are lions and bears. And look at how viciously he gets bad-mouthed by his oldest brother in the next chapter (17:28; see also Psalm 69:8). The wounds from this kind of upbringing never entirely healed; scratch David when he’s drifted away from God and you can encounter an unreconstructed thug; read his gross overreaction in 25:21-22,34, or what he does to Uriah the Hittite. Or what he does, just before dying, to his old comrade and nephew Joab – maybe he’s senile then, but he’s clearly slipped back (as senile people can) into the vengeful mindset of his childhood. It’s important to recall that we are pre-Pentecost here; the Spirit isn’t yet come in the way we know Him now, with His colossal power to interrupt the evil in us and transform us so it doesn’t just rebound from generation to generation. The Spirit stops that now.
But it’s all too clear how damaged David was. And in 2 Samuel we’ll see that dysfunctionality in the next generations, showing all too clearly what they’d learnt from their family background about how to treat each other. One of David’s sons rapes his half-sister, then his half-brother Absalom kills him. That should be enough bloodshed? No: Absalom now goes after his dad David to kill him, and rapes his concubines in public. Civil war results, during which Absalom is stabbed through the heart by Joab, David’s (probably illegitimate) nephew. Enough? No; David’s not pleased about that, he takes the army command from Joab, gives it to another nephew (Amasa), the two meet in the street and one stabs the other; for which, just before dying, David leaves orders for his nephew the murderer to be rubbed out. It’s a wonderful family. (The horrible realism of all this, rather than nice airbrushed legends, is one reason why we know it’s true. There is chaos sometimes even in the lives and families of those on the right side; this is how things are, not how we’d like them to be.)
But the unbelievable wonder of the gospel is God quietly doing something glorious in all this: God chose David. He wasn’t just a lovely kid from a nice background. Nor was he naturally impressive like Saul (10:24), or giant Goliath, or even big brother Eliab (16:6). He was gifted, but he was also damaged, from a horrible background, and it didn’t stop God. As 1 Cor 1:27 says, God deliberately chooses the weak things of the world. God takes this damaged, gifted but mixed up kid and turns him into someone who builds something massive for His glory, something no other Israelite king ever matched. The one who wrote half the book of Psalms; things that would last. (Like the wonderful `The Lord is my Shepherd` (Psalm 23), quite possibly written when David was kicked out onto the hills where the lions & bears were. `When my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up` (Psalm 27); he’d learned that too.) God uses people like this, and sorts us out bit by bit; He chooses to use the weak, mixed-up things; He is brilliantly loving & creative. (Isn’t this great?) And His strength is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor 12:9), and with us He builds His kingdom.
(And even more astonishingly – Jesus calls Himself the `son of David`. This makes me want to worship. Jesus chooses to identify Himself, to name Himself, after this deeply damaged guy; and He calls Himself by this name throughout history.)
So what do we learn from all this? God chooses `real` people, damaged people, even dysfunctional people, and trains us and brings us into purposes glorious beyond our imagination. Let’s never underestimate what God’s creative power can do with us. This is the great news of the gospel (let’s believe it, let’s share it!) The gospel teaches us that if we invite God’s kingdom into our lives – God’s reign, God’s control; if we take His forgiveness for our sins, and give ourselves to Christ’s lordship; we will find God loves us unreservedly no matter what; and then in the light of that we can be confident – can have faith – that He really plans to change us & do more with us than we can ever ask or think. Let’s get a grip of this imaginatively: think of that one kid whose loaves and fishes Jesus used to feed a whole 5000. God loves us, and if we’ll live for Him He can use us magnificently. Believe it: there is no limit to what His power can do through you!
David says in another of his psalms, God knows how we’re formed, He remembers we are dust. And we can turn to Him and know what Ephesians 4:16 makes clear – every single member of Christ’s Body is indispensable. No son or daughter of the living God is so weak or so used-up that they have nothing to contribute. If we’re in God’s kingdom, God has big purposes, glorious purposes, for us. This is the Word of the Lord! Thanks be to God!
