A Man After God's Own Heart Prays
Tom Shrader walks through 2 Samuel 24, the account of David's sinful census and its aftermath, identifying eight characteristics of a person who is truly after God's own heart: a sensitive conscience toward sin, a prayerful response, genuine repentance, humility, a worshipful spirit, servant leadership, obedience, and a willingness to sacrifice. Closing in 1 Chronicles 28–29, Shrader draws on David's final words to Solomon—know God, serve Him, seek Him—as the enduring legacy every believer is called to leave. He challenges the congregation to examine whether these characteristics are present in their own lives and to embrace the real cost of following Christ rather than a comfortable, convenient faith.
“God knows everything you've ever thought, everything you've ever said, everything you've ever done, everything you ever will do, and He loves you anyway.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: So You Really Want a King?
Recorded: 2009 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 50 min
Themes: repentance, prayer, sacrifice, obedience, conscience, humility, worship, legacy, struggling with sin, feeling unworthy, parent, mentor, new believer, seasoned believer, navigating failure, leaving a legacy
Scripture: 1 Samuel (reference to Samuel confronting Saul), 2 Samuel 24, 1 Chronicles 21:1, 1 Chronicles 28:1-20, 1 Chronicles 29:26-28, 2 Corinthians 2:11, 1 Corinthians 13, Philippians 3:8, Acts 13:36, Daniel 2
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, penitence, servant leadership, biblical repentance, spiritual maturity, substitutionary atonement, progressive holiness
Full Transcript
Introduction: No Immunity from Sin
Open your Bibles, if you would, please, to 2 Samuel. You can almost go to 1 Kings and you'll be close, because we're at the very end of this book — the last chapter, 2 Samuel 24. We are at the end of David's life. There are some flashbacks going back and forth here.
You would think that by a certain age you have pretty well sealed the deal, but there is no guarantee of that. There is no guarantee of success, either in man's eyes or in God's eyes, at any point in life until the very end. Chuck Swindoll, in his biography on David, when he reaches this point in the study, writes these words: "It would be wonderful if I could announce that as we grow older, we automatically grow up, or that the longer we walk with the Lord, the more we are guaranteed immunity from sin. That is not the case, however." And then he writes in all caps: "We will NEVER be immune from sin's appeal. Often those who fall the hardest are those who have walked with God the longest. Not until we are with the Lord" — by that he means in heaven — "will we be what we ought to be. There is no such thing as outgrowing sin."
David: A Man After God's Own Heart
David's life, at this point near its end, has been that up-and-down life, hasn't it? It has been a life that we have admired. It certainly caught our attention early in our study. Back in 1 Samuel, when Samuel confronts Saul, he says these words: "You have acted foolishly, and you have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded to you. For now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, but now your kingdom shall not endure. The Lord has sought out a man after His own heart." It is talking about David.
If you have been around church for a while, you will hear David identified that way — a man after God's own heart. When I hear that, I think there must be something really extraordinary about this. And though I understand that humanly nobody is perfect, and that we sin, we still somehow have internally this kind of barometer — an idea of a man after God's own heart that it would be different somehow. But when we read David's life, we do not get that sense at all. He has these moments of exhilaration, these moments of closeness with God, these moments where he just oozes obedience and love and care for God. And then the next moment we see adultery and murder, and all sorts of shenanigans going on. You say, what is happening here?
The Setup: David's Census
I want to pick up the story in chapter 24 of 2 Samuel. I want to suggest that the last sixteen verses — verses 10 through 25 — give us a glimpse, at least in my mind, of the components, or elements, or characteristics of a person who is after God's own heart. But here is the setup of the story.
"Now again, the anger of the Lord burned against Israel and incited David against them to say, go and number Israel and Judah." He is calling for a census. The king said to Joab, the commander of the army who was with him, "Go about now through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba" — north to south, he is saying — "and register the people, that I may know the number of the people." He has asked for a census, and there are huge ramifications to this.
In fact, Joab even senses something is wrong. He says in verse 3, "Now may the Lord your God add to the people a hundred times as many as there are, while the eyes of my Lord the king still see." Joab is saying, I hope God increases your number — whatever the number is, I hope He increases it a hundred times over, as long as you are alive. But then he asks, "Why does my Lord the king delight in this?" Why do you want to do this?
Satan Never Taps Out
In a corresponding passage, 1 Chronicles 21:1, we are told this: "Then Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel." There is never immunity from sin. There is never a time where I am done with sin. I have a friend I talk with occasionally, and we text back and forth. He has great phrases he uses, and just the other day — I do not know what prompted it, because this was all the text said — he wrote: "Satan never taps out." Satan never gives up. Satan never stops.
Here is David toward the end of his life, and Satan is still after him. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 2:11, "We are not ignorant of the devil's schemes." The word "schemes" carries the idea of mind — we know his mind, we know what he is after, we know what he is about. He is a roaring lion seeking someone to devour, and he is relentless as he comes after David. He prompts David to take this census, and Joab asks, why?
Misplaced Faith and the Idol Factory
Verse 4 tells us, "Nevertheless, the king's words prevailed against Joab." We get the sense from the word "prevailed" that there may have been a discussion, a debate — I would call it an argument. Nonetheless, in verses 5, 6, and 7, that census takes place in a systematic way.
What is prompting this? Here is what is going on. David, at a moment of insecurity, is putting his faith and trust in the size of his army rather than the size of his God. That is what has happened. God has what I would term a natural human flinch — we are continually finding places to put our faith and trust and security in places other than Christ. That is why John Calvin said our hearts are idol factories. He did not mean they are lazy; he meant they are constantly creating and making idols. In our lives, we are continually saying: if I had that, when I get this, when I arrive there — whatever that is — then I will be safe, I will be secure, I will be fine.
Pride, False Gods, and the Census
False idols are false gods, and false gods never fail to fail. If I am putting my faith or my trust in anything other than Christ, that person, that place, or that thing will eventually let me down and disappoint me without fail. That is what is going on with David here. This is a matter of pride. He is going to be proud of the size of his army. He has some sense of what it is, but he wants a formal declaration of it so everybody knows and everybody can see.
Julius Lewis defines pride as a complete anti-God state of mind. He identifies it as the ultimate vice. If pride is the ultimate vice, then we can suggest that the ultimate virtue is humility — and what I really think we mean there is love, because when you define love the way God does in 1 Corinthians 13, you see that at the core of love is a humble spirit. But David in this moment is finding his strength somewhere other than Christ.
It takes, in verse 8, nine months and twenty days — almost ten months — to complete the census. Joab comes back and presents the totals: in Israel there are 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and in Judah, including the Levites, there are 500,000 men. Over that period of ten months, Joab and his men registered the people and brought David the results.
Eight Characteristics of a Heart After God
By way of introduction, I identified eight characteristics in verses 10 through 25 — eight characteristics of a man, a woman, a person who is after God's own heart. There may be many more than eight; I simply identified these. Each one emerges from what David does in the moments that follow the census.
The First Characteristic: A Heart Sensitive Toward Sin
Look at the condition of David's heart in verse 10: "David's heart troubled him after he numbered the people. So he said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly in what I have done, but now, O Lord, please take away the iniquity of Your servant, for I have acted very foolishly." His heart was troubled. The word is a severe one — it means to be attacked or assaulted. His heart was under assault. He realizes he has done something foolishly and says, what have I done?
This is the first characteristic of a person who is after God's own heart: their heart is sensitive toward sin. They realize something is wrong when they sin. They cannot stay in sin and be comfortable. Somewhere along the way — and I will speculate here only because I know how I operate — the minute Joab left, David was thinking, I wonder if he is right. I know he is right. Why do I want to do this? For a period of roughly ten months, David had this playing in his mind.
That is what happens when you are a person who wants to be a man or a woman of God. You cannot be comfortable in sin. Your heart will be troubled, attacked, assaulted. You will be saying to yourself, what have I done?
The Second Characteristic: A Heart That Prays
That troubled heart leads right into the second characteristic, because immediately David said to the Lord, "I have sinned." He begins to pray. When we talk about prayer, there are those moments of formal prayer, and then there are those moments where the heart breaks into prayer spontaneously. I could be driving down the street, something comes to mind, and all of a sudden I begin to talk to God about it — that is what we mean by prayer.
When I pray about something, what I am doing is acknowledging that God cares about it and that God, if He so desires, can intervene and do something about it. I am acknowledging that I am weak and dependent upon Him, that these things are beyond my control but not beyond His control. David's heart is troubled and he begins to pray.
The Third Characteristic: A Repentant Heart
The third characteristic follows naturally. David has a repentant heart. He calls sin what God calls sin. He agrees with God. He does not try to excuse it or explain it away. He simply acknowledges it for what it is: "I have sinned." It is his fault. He knew what to do and did not do it. He does not call it an indiscretion. He does not call it a mistake. He says, God, I have sinned deeply against You.
The Fourth Characteristic: A Humble Heart
What happens next is that when David arose the next morning, the word of the Lord came to him through the prophet Gad. In verse 12, Gad brings this message: "Thus says the Lord: I am offering you three things. Choose the one which you want me to do to you." There are consequences to David's sin, and God will give David the choice of how they come. Option one is seven years of famine in the land. Option two is three months of fleeing before enemies who pursue him. Option three is three days of pestilence in the land. God says, consider and see what answer I shall return to Him who sent me.
David then demonstrates, in verse 14, the fourth characteristic of a man after God's own heart. He is humble. In what I find to be a beautifully understated response, David says, "I am in great distress. Let us now fall into the hand of the Lord, for His mercies are great. But do not let me fall into the hand of man." That is a humble heart. As long as David is king, rather than grasping for control, he throws himself upon the mercy of God. He would rather be in God's hands than in the hands of men, because he knows that God's mercies are great.
A Worshipful Heart
It is in that Isaiah 6 moment when David compares himself not on a horizontal plane with the subjects in the land, but to God Himself. He says he is not even in a position to figure this out. He has played God in his own life before, and he wants to go a different way. He surrenders entirely: "You're God. You do what's best. You select it. You pick it out. I don't even know what to ask for. I don't even know what I could possibly begin to say. You decide, God. You figure it out."
In this surrender we see the fifth characteristic of David's prayer: a worshipful heart. He is restoring God to His rightful place — not that God ever left it on His own — and he is trusting Him and Him alone. I was listening to something recently where someone made the observation that so often when we are angry, disappointed, or hurt, it is because we have placed our faith and trust in some person, place, or thing. That anger or hurt is doing nothing more than revealing that our hearts have had a misplaced affection.
That is exactly what David comes to here. He does not want to fall into the justice of man; he wants to fall into the mercy of God. He wants to come before God and trust in Him alone. He has tried it his own way, and now he will take God's way — whatever that looks like — because whatever God brings into his life is for his good and for God's glory.
David acknowledges he could not begin to determine whether the consequence should be famine, exile, or pestilence. He simply trusts. This connects to what we often call a midlife crisis: at its core, it is simply a place where either we have set goals we will never achieve, or we have set goals, achieved them, and realized they will not fulfill us the way we thought they would. Either way, we have set up a false god — and false gods never fail to fail.
The Consequence of Sin
Now, in verse 15, comes the result of David's sin. "So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel from morning until the appointed time, and 70,000 men from Dan to Beersheba died."
There is an elephant in the room here, and it is this: that does not seem like a very large sin. Even at the beginning it is hard to see taking a census as a great sin, other than the fact that God told him not to do it — which, of course, is precisely what makes it sin. But if we are measuring, the sin of taking a census seems this small, and the punishment seems this large. We know God is just, and so this functions as something of a footnote or an asterisk to the passage for me. What I do take from it is this: there are consequences to our sin.
If a king sins, the people and the nation suffer. If a CEO is corrupt, the company suffers. If a father or mother sins, the family suffers. If a friend sins, the friends suffer. We never sin in isolation. There is no such thing as two consenting adults who affect only themselves. You might argue with me that this feels like a huge overreaction on God's part, and honestly I might join your side — but your argument is ultimately with God, not with me. What is not in dispute is that consequences to sin are real, and they are often enormous. David is forgiven, and he is a man after God's own heart — I keep coming back to that — and yet there are still massive consequences to what he has done.
A Servant's Heart
When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, verse 16 tells us the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel, "It's enough, now relax your hand. And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor." Then David spoke to the Lord when he saw the angel who was striking down the people: "Behold, it is I who have sinned. It is I who have done wrong. But these are sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me and against my father's house."
Here I see the sixth characteristic: a servant's heart. I have been in a number of meetings lately with pastor types and business types, and there is a great deal of discussion about leadership. I often seem to be the odd man out in those conversations, so I will accept that the problem is probably me. These men are reading books — Attila the Hun on leadership, George Patton on leadership, all these volumes. I know of two college coaches who read everything about Patton, studied his biography thoroughly: Bobby Knight and Woody Hayes. I would not want to be around either one of them. The point is, you are not George Patton chasing Rommel through the desert. You are coaching basketball. You are running a business.
What these leaders are beginning to acknowledge — though I do not see much of it in practice — is what they call servant leadership, which is the Jesus model of leadership. He said He did not come to be served but to serve. That is a model that says it is not "Me Tarzan, and the rest of you figure it out." It is not Patton at war.
David says, "I love my people. God, punish me, not them. Come at me, not them." That is the responsibility of a leader. I feel it in my own areas of leadership. In any area of leadership you are a steward. Even if you are running a business, running an office — however many employees you have, however many customers or patients or clients come through — you are the one who bears that responsibility.
Servant Leadership and the Mind of Christ
You are a servant leader. You are there to serve those people. You are there — clearly you have a job to get done — but the result is what you see in the illustrations I gave you, rather than the leadership model you see in Christ. Isn't that what we are called to? Have the mind of Christ. "Let this mind also be in you who, though He existed as God, did not cling or grasp to that form of God. He emptied Himself — not of His deity, but of His glory — and became human like us, and obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." That is what it means to lead.
The Seventh Quality: Obedience
The seventh thing is right there. Gad comes to David and says, "Go and erect an altar here." Verse 19: "And David went up according to the word of Gad." That is always interesting. I remember when I was first reading my Bible and I didn't know much — I thought, well, it has to be a typo, that must be an O in there. No, it's Gad. He is the prophet, and the word comes to him, and just as the word came to him, David did as he was commanded.
If you are a person after God's own heart, there is going to be an attitude of obedience in you. Jesus said it this way: "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." Or, said slightly differently: because you love Me, or since you love Me, the result will be that you obey My commandments. If you say Jesus is Lord and you follow Him, there is a corresponding change in life. You do what He says.
There is an irony here, isn't there? We are talking about a man after God's own heart, laying out these qualifications, and everything in me wants to argue — we have just spent however many months watching this man blow it, time and time and time again.
The Eighth Quality: A Sacrificial Heart
David goes to build this altar, and the man offers to give him the threshing floor, his oxen, and the wood to burn. But David says no. Verse 24: "I will surely buy it from you for a price, for I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing." That is the eighth thing. There is a sacrificial heart here.
I may go off and use myself as an illustration quite a bit here. I have what I would call besetting sins — maybe that is too strong a word, but let's just go with it. I am lazy, and I love convenience. Maybe they all roll together. I hate to be inconvenienced. I was talking to Susan on the phone the other day and I said I had to stop and get gas, and I told her I hate this — I hate getting gas. She just said, "Yeah, it's really tough."
I had a situation about a year ago when my phone contract was up and it was time to get a new phone. I just said I'd wait. I called Sharon and told her my phone was up and I needed a new one but didn't know what to do. She said, "Why don't you go to the store?" I said I didn't want to do that. Here is what I actually want: I want the doorbell to ring, I go to the door, and someone just hands me a phone with a number already on it. I don't even need a manual — I'll just figure it out as I go. That is probably everybody to some degree.
Convenience and the Cost of Following Christ
My fear is that when we come to following Christ, we bring that same love of convenience with us. Here is what I mean: we follow Him when it is convenient for us. So we pray when it is convenient. We study His Word when it is convenient. We serve when it is convenient.
Those of you who have been around know — and if you are new, you will have to take my word for it — I do not hammer people about church attendance and all of that. But it is amazing to me how many people will say they did not make it on a Sunday because the ASU game ran late.
One of my all-time favorite stories that summarizes this: I was standing by Mary's desk one day — she is the receptionist, she is really the key to the office — and I only have her end of the conversation. I hear: "East Valley Bible Church, this is Mary, can I help you?" Pause. Then: "Eight, nine, ten, eleven, four, five, and six." Another pause. Then: "No, I'm sorry, those are the only services we have." So the person on the other end had asked when the services were, been given six options across a weekend, and still asked if there was something else available. I mean, other than me swinging by your bedroom, I cannot make this much easier than that.
I will hear from people all the time — and this goes both ways. I will run into people around town and they will say they do not come to East Valley anymore, and when I ask why, it is because it is a twenty- to twenty-five-minute drive. I will get people in the connect class who say they are looking for a church closer to their house. I have to tell you, that kind of makes me sick.
A Cemetery in the Cornfields
I went home to visit my mom recently. She thinks I went home for the football game, but there happened to be a football game on the weekend I visited. My mom lives in a little country town. If you come out of her house and go south a half mile, there is a Hy-Vee store — like a Fry's — and a whole shopping center: an Old Navy, a Chili's, a Borders, a bunch of stores. That is if you go south. If you go north, you see some houses for another mile or mile and a half, then you cross over Interstate 80, and then you are just in cornfields.
So we went for a ride, and in the middle of what I would call nowhere, there was a church — and next to it, a cemetery. I love cemeteries, so I said, "Let's go in and look around." She said, "Okay, sounds a little weird to me, but whatever." So we went in, and I was walking around, and this —
The Cost of Following Christ
There is a cemetery near my mom's house in Iowa, and as I was driving past it, I noticed the headstones dated back to the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, and early 1900s. I asked my mom why there was a cemetery there, and she said it was probably because there was a church nearby. That struck me as strange, because my mom's house was built in 1995, and to reach that cemetery in 1900 you would have had to travel fifteen or twenty miles. I asked her how fast she thought a horse goes pulling a cart, and she said she had no idea and didn't particularly care.
But here is what I could not let go: those people were riding in a horse-drawn cart, roughly two and a half hours to get to church, and then two and a half hours back home. And if you factor in that they likely ate while they were there, that is the entire day — the only day they had off, since they worked on Saturdays. And for those who don't know, the weather in Iowa is not very good.
That image blows me away, because we have people today saying they can't drive twenty-five minutes. My fear — and I want to be clear that nothing is motivating this beyond the text and where we are — is that Christianity has become too easy. It is a little like what Bonhoeffer described when he talked about cheap grace. For a while, faith became fashionable: a few key athletes, some movie stars, some famous people made it trendy, and somewhere in that we lost what Jesus actually said.
Jesus said, "I want you to follow Me, but before you do, count the cost, because this is an expensive venture." What He meant was that you are no longer your own. For thirty years, speaking personally now, I was the master of my own life — at least I thought I was. I called the shots. If I liked something, I did it. If it suited me, I did it. If I thought it would help or advance me, I did it.
Then when Jesus became my Lord and Master, I realized there was a new master and I was now a servant. That is exactly how Paul identifies himself — as a slave. Am I saying I live there perfectly all the time? No. But all of a sudden there is an inconvenience to this. There is a cost associated with it. My agenda begins to change, my security is now in Him, and I begin to trust Him. A reversal takes place. We are no longer our own owners; we are stewards — stewards of our time, our energy, our effort, and our money.
The Danger of Christianity Made Too Comfortable
I have spent a lot of time over the last couple of years with high-powered pastor types, and there are endless discussions about how to motivate people. I genuinely dislike that conversation. I should not have to motivate. It is not quite as simple as just opening the Bible, but the idea is to open the Word of God, teach it, and let the Spirit of God apply it to a person's heart. Lives begin to change — not because you got someone excited about a series or a program.
I also want to say something about where we are as a nation. In every meeting I am in — and I am not talking about here specifically, but around the valley — people are talking about how tight money is and how hard things are. The national unemployment rate is around 10.2 percent. Unemployment and underemployment together are at 17.5 percent. It is genuinely hard. And even those who have jobs have in many cases experienced decreases in salary and the loss of benefits.
I want to be absolutely clear: I am not saying all of this to manipulate anyone into a discussion about money. I am simply saying I believe we have allowed our Christianity and our faith to become too easy, and for us as a nation — as a people — perhaps it has been too easy for too long.
Raising Wanting Machines
I did a talk on parenting this week and came across an article from Newsweek that I want to read, because I think it connects directly to what I am describing. The article states: "Despite their good intentions, too many parents find themselves raising wanting machines. Even getting what they want doesn't satisfy some kids — they want more. Now a growing number of psychologists, educators, and parents think it's time to stop the madness and start teaching kids what's really important: values like hard work, delayed gratification, honesty, and compassion."
The article goes on to say that saying no is harder when you can afford to say yes. I will add my own insert here: saying no is also harder when you are exhausted. The article continues: "Kids who have been given too much too soon grow up to be adults who have difficulty coping with life's disappointments. They have a distorted sense of entitlement that gets in the way."
A Dream Deferred and a Legacy Given
I had intended to build a permanent home for the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the footstool of God. So I made preparations to build it. But God said to me, you shall not build my house. Here is what David is saying: I had a dream, and the dream was to build this temple. That was my goal. God said no because he was a man of war, not a man of peace.
Rather than pout, look at what David does in verse 4. He says, "I don't want to tell you what God didn't do for me. Let me tell you what He did do. He chose me from all the houses of my father, all the nations. He chose me." At the end of forty years of service, David says, here is something I wanted to do and didn't get to do — but I don't want to talk about what didn't happen. I want to tell you what God did do in my life. That is a huge attitude.
As you mature and get older, it becomes really clear that you are not going to achieve every dream. That is not something isolated to older people either. Once you are twelve, thirteen, fourteen, you start to have your dreams crushed. When you are a little leaguer who wants to play in the major leagues and you are hitting .125, it is not going to happen. You want to be a ballerina, or you want to be a doctor but struggle with basic math — dreams get crushed.
You can sit in the ash heap of your dreams and cry, or you can say, "Here is what God did." That is the choice David models for us at the end of his life.
David's Three Pieces of Advice to Solomon
Turn to 1 Chronicles chapter 28, verse 9. David has this moment with Solomon — a father-and-son, parent-and-child tender exchange, much like what we see between Paul and Timothy in 2 Timothy. He says: "As for you, my son Solomon," and then he gives him three things. "I want you to know the God of your father, serve him with your whole heart and a willing mind, for the Lord searches hearts and understands every intent of thoughts. And if you seek him, he will let you find him. If you forsake him, he will reject you."
Before looking at those three pieces of advice, it is worth noting the legacy Solomon was already receiving. One author summarizes it this way: a nation unified under one flag; a royal capital established in Jerusalem; a military force now respected by every surrounding enemy, with every enemy subdued, including the Philistines; Israel's boundaries extended from 6,000 to 60,000 square miles; prosperity brought in through extensive trade routes David established; and the people hungering and thirsting for God's righteousness, with the sound of David's songs filling the air throughout the land. That is the legacy Solomon inherited.
But David says that far more important than any of that is this first piece of advice: know God. The night before He died, Jesus said, "This is eternal life" — so whatever comes next, it may be important to know Him, the one true God. Paul says it this way in Philippians 3:8: "I count all things as loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."
Knowing God — What That Really Means
Right now, during the week, I am teaching the book of Daniel. In Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar the king comes to his astrologers — his best and his wisest, the ones who interpreted dreams — and he says, "I want you to tell me what my dream was and then interpret it." They push back, saying that is not fair. Historically, what they would do is come and interpret the dream after the king described it.
A God Who Is Knowable and Near
We can know God. That is a revolutionary thought. First of all, that He is knowable, that He wants to be known, and that you can know Him — not merely about Him, but in a personal way. That is what we mean when we talk about a relationship with Christ: that I can know Him deeply, intimately, personally. I speak with Him through prayer. He speaks with me through His Spirit and through His Word. He is not a distant God, like the wizard in the Wizard of Oz. He is an intimate, personal God.
The typical view of God is that He is distant and removed and does not interact with us. I taught in PL the other day — something you have heard many times — that everything in our life is either caused by or allowed by God. And yet someone came up afterward and said, "I don't know that that's true at all. I'm not sure that God is that intimately involved in the details of my life, or frankly even cares." But He does. He is near, and He can be known.
Know Him, Serve Him, Seek Him
The first thing is that you would know Him. The second is that you would serve Him — and that you do it with your whole heart and your whole mind. That is, doing the right thing, the right way, for the right reason. Paul writes to Timothy and says that no soldier in active duty entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him. I can know God, and then I serve Him.
How do I please God? By faith. Without faith it is impossible to please Him. And that faith begins to transform my life, and one of the ways it transforms my life is that I begin to have this desire to serve. The word literally means to minister to one another. We are called to serve Him, and here is why that matters: He knows everybody's heart.
That little phrase — "for God searches all the hearts and He understands every intention of your thought" — is either really scary or really comforting to you. God knows everything you have ever thought, everything you have ever said, everything you have ever done, everything you ever will do — and He loves you anyway. God has that unbreakable love for His people.
The third thing is that you would seek Him. That you would be someone who truly seeks after God, who pursues Him and follows Him, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness. "Seek first His kingdom," Jesus said, and all the other things will take care of themselves. These words are directed at Solomon, but they certainly apply to us: be courageous and act. And in the next verse it is expanded — be strong and courageous and act. Those are the words to you and me: to be strong, not in ourselves, but in the Lord.
The Legacy We Leave
A couple of weeks ago I did a memorial service, and I met with the family in preparation for it. We went through the usual elements and I asked if anyone wanted to come up and speak. No. No. No. So we decided to do an open microphone. The first one to speak was a son, and what he said absolutely moved my heart. He said, "My dad taught us a whole bunch of stuff — he taught us to work hard, he taught us to do this, he taught us to do that — but the greatest gift my dad gave us is the comfort we have right now in knowing that he's in heaven."
Have you thought about this? That you are leaving a legacy right now — maybe an awful one, but you are leaving one? A legacy is an inevitable thing. We have walked with David from when he was just a young man whom everybody ignored. If you turn to the very end of this book, 1 Chronicles 29, verse 26 says: "Now David, the son of Jesse, reigned over all Israel." The period of his reign was forty years, and then in verse 28, he died at a ripe old age.
Luke tells us in the book of Acts what that looked like. Acts 13:36 says: "For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep." The same thing is going to happen to you. As soon as you are done with the purpose that God has for you here on earth, you will fall asleep — that is a euphemism for dying. God has you here for a reason and a purpose, just as He had David here for a reason and a purpose.
An Ordinary Man Used in an Extraordinary Way
It is very easy to look at David and think he is a man after God's own heart because there is something special and unique about him. But no — he is an ordinary man that God uses in an extraordinary way. We see those characteristics in his life, and then we ask the question: are those same characteristics present in your life and mine?
If so, let us praise Him and thank Him. If not, let us confess it as sin and ask that through His strength and through His power — beginning right now, today — we will be the person who begins to exhibit those characteristics in our heart.
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*Father, thank You for the incredible testimony of the life of David. It is a story of love and power, mercy, grace, sin, and forgiveness. There are these moments of highlight and exhilaration in his life, and then there are these moments that…*
A Man After God's Own Heart Prays
We find ourselves asking, "David, what are you thinking?" And then all of a sudden, we realize it is just like that in our own lives.
God, we pray especially this morning for those that are here who are hurting, that we might have the opportunity to comfort them. God, I pray that for those that are rejoicing, we can rejoice with them. We pray for Michelle and the families as we prepare for the memorial service on Tuesday.
God, remind us of that inevitable reality in all of our lives — just like David, just like Todd, just like every person that has ever lived. We will achieve the purpose that You have for us, and then we will fall asleep. God, thank You for that. We pray that we are obedient in that.
God, we thank You in advance for next Sunday, that we can get together and celebrate. It is not a celebration of any of us individually — it is a celebration of what You have done in our life here at East Valley Bible Church. God, we focus again on the things that You have done, not the things we wanted to do. We pray that to You here this morning, in Christ's name, amen.
Have a great week. We will see you next Sunday morning out on the lawn.