Looking Good from God’s View

I doubt very much if there is a rational, thoughtful, reflective believer who has not at some point in their life wondered whether God has lost his mind.  You know, when things just don’t work out according to your plan, when you have made all the arrangements that you would like, and you have determined that this is the rational and the appropriate path, and it doesn’t go that way, you wonder really, don’t you, in your heart:  has God lost his mind?
 
Take the political realm for example, you would think that a rational, caring, almighty God would appoint to provide leadership among us in politics people who are morally sound, who are photogenic, who are solidly politically sensible, who would believe in common threads of justice, and that is the kind of person God would send to lead us, and yet we look around so often in the world and we wonder:  has God lost his mind?

When we look at our own lives and when we have done everything according to what the normal ticking of the box would suggest – maintaining our dignity, working hard, developing our gifts, being honourable, being good to our families, being faithful in our religion – only to find that the path of our life is not an easy one, and that success doesn’t come quickly or even at all, and we wonder if God in God’s great wisdom has not lost his mind, and is not providing the guidance that we would really like.  I think we have all wondered at times, haven’t we?

In that case, we wouldn’t be alone, because in biblical times they thought the very same thing.  In today’s text we have just such an incident.  After the Exodus from Egypt, the moment where God spared Israel, I think the second biggest challenge that the people of Israel faced in their early days was who should lead them.  What kind of King?  What kind of monarch?  What kind of leader should we have they asked?  So, they implored God to find a leader, someone who could unite the nation, someone who could lead them into the new land, someone who could be a sovereign for them.  So, a sovereign was appointed.  

The sovereign was called Saul, and Saul was a huge disappointment.  In fact, he was so bad that he caused chaos in the land.  For example, on a day when his troops were going into battle against the Philistines, Saul decided that his warriors should eat nothing, and that they would go into battle if they were hungry and lighter.  So, they went into battle with the Philistines, they ran out of energy, and the Philistines slaughtered them.  But, Saul was that kind of King:  if he didn’t agree with you, he killed you.  He was paranoid about others trying to take his position.  He was nasty in his core, and he was spiritually destructive to the nation.

The people of Israel said, “Hold on now!  We asked for a King.  You have given us a king.  But you have landed us with Saul.  Have you lost your mind?”  God had not lost his mind at all for Saul came for the sole reason of showing that you do not just pick a monarch for monarch’s sake.  You don’t just pick a leader for a leader’s sake.  It is not always in the appearance of somebody or in the initial sense that this person might be impressive that they have the qualifications to lead the country.  No!  What was needed was someone who was chosen and called by God.  It is not just good enough to be a monarch; you have to be a monarch who loves God.

Enter Samuel.  Samuel is a prophet.  When the people were questioning God and Saul was leading the nation to ruin, Samuel was given the task of finding a new king.  Well, Samuel was terrified.  He was asked to find a new king while Saul was still the incumbent king, while Saul was still in power.  He was terrified!  He thought Saul ever get wind of this, I am dead!  And so, he wondered if God had lost his mind!  But, God instructed him to make sacrifices to God, to worship, to prepare himself.  God said to Samuel, “Look, if you go to a man called Jesse, you will find amongst all Jesse’s sons the one that I have chosen.”

Samuel has a time of worship with Jesse, and finally, they go and look at Jesse’s sons.  Jesse brings them out one at a time – a bit like the television program The Bachelor.  Well, I don’t watch it, but if any of you have watched it, where someone is sort of wheeled out, and then you pick that person and say that is the one I want.  Well, that is exactly what was going on here.  Jesse’s sons were on show!  Jesse said, “Look, the first one of my sons is really good looking.  He’d make a great king!”

But Samuel went, “No, sorry.  That is not the one.”

So Jesse went back to a second son and said, “This is a handsome, very intelligent, clever, wonderful person.”

And Samuel said, “That is not the one.”

Jesse ran through seven of his sons and Samuel said, “No!  None of them have been chosen by God.”

I think Jesse had just about had it!  And then he said, “Look, I have my youngest son out in a field and he is with the sheep, you haven’t seen him, but what do you think?”
 
Samuel says, “That is the one!  Go get him.”

So Jesse brings this shepherd boy, and his name is David.  Samuel looks upon David, and the Lord confirms in his heart, “Rise up and anoint this man, for he is the one.  He is the chosen one.”  Then, there is a little bit of humour in the text.  We often miss it:  The Bible can be funny!  And so, it says, “By the way, he was ruddy and good looking.”  But that was after the event.  The “ruddy and good looking” thing came after he was chosen.  He wasn’t chosen because he was ruddy and good looking!  Everything had been on externals, but what God is interested in is what is in the heart.  And this is exactly what he did.

Samuel then anointed David, and he anointed David because God had revealed to him that it is what is in the heart that matters, not in the outward appearance. God sees things that we just don’t see.  In Greek mythology, there was this sort of belief that the Gods were deified human beings – sort of super human beings.  Achilles or Apollo or Ajax or Orpheus or Antigone or Midas, and the list goes on and on of gods who were humans really in a deified form.  They were ideal because they did spectacular and wonderful things, outward things:  Midas could turn things into gold.  All of them had their great powers, as sometimes their weaknesses, but mainly their powers, as did Hercules, the great one.  All of them had power of some kind.

The problem is that they were all based on an idealized humanity that takes on a God-like quality.  Throughout the history of the world, we have had a tendency as human beings to follow the Greek mythological line.  I would argue for example, and this is something that I have been talking about with theologians in Aberdeen a couple of weeks ago when we were looking at Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I think it is fair enough to say that in the early days of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler took on a god-like quality.  So-much-so, that some of the German Christians actually believed that the service of Hitler and the Nazis was in fact the service of God.

You see the same thing happening in North Korea with Kim Jong Un and the people who went before him:  this sort of worship and deification of the leader.  Oh, maybe we don’t do that quite today in our nation, but believe-you-me we have our other gods who are beautiful, who are ideal, who represent something that we all aspire to, and we worship them in the media, in entertainment, in sport, or in politics.  We cannot separate the god-like quality of leadership from the very faith and religion that we have, and the two of them become synonymous.

Samuel understood that the people of his day were in track with that kind of idealistic thinking.  They wanted a leader who was going to be perfect, a leader who was going to be beautiful and handsome, a leader who was going to be able to slay the dragons and do marvellous things, but it took courage, it took courage for Samuel to present to them a shepherd boy from the hills.  It took courage to believe that God had appointed this man, and that this young man was in fact the one who was chosen.  But, you will notice that before he did that, Samuel actually worshipped God.  He actually took a step in faith.
It is not unlike a story that Larry King, of all people, talked about in a book that he wrote called Powerful Prayers.  Did you know that Larry King wrote a book on prayer?  Doesn’t that just blow the mind?  Anyway, Larry King wrote a book on powerful prayer in 1998.  In it, he tells the story of three farmers who are living through a drought, and these three farmers are praying for rain.  As they prayed for rain, every single day a stranger comes along, and the stranger says to them, “Why are you doing this?”

One of them said, “We are praying on our knees everyday that God will bring rain, for we have a terrible drought and our crops are dying and so are our animals.”

The stranger said, “I don’t think so.”

The second one says, “Oh no, really, we are!  We are praying.  We are praying every single day.  We know the devastation on our family and the land.  We are praying.  We are on our knees.”

And the stranger said, “I don’t think so.”

The third one is getting mad, and he says, “No, we really are.  We’ve been out here every day in the dry, praying for rain.  We’ve been asking God for it.  We really have.”

And the stranger says, “I don’t think so.”

They looked at the stranger and they said, “Well, if you were in our position then, what would you do?”
He said, “I would have brought an umbrella.  I would have taken a step in faith to believe that it can happen.”

Samuel took a step in faith.  He went and he sacrificed things to God knowing that he couldn’t do this on his own.  The people would say, “Have you lost your mind?”  Samuel knew that he had to be obedient to God even if it appeared that God had lost his mind.  David was the chosen one; he would be the King.  But then, look what happened to David!  His was hardly what you would call a smooth and even ride as monarch.  He had an affair with Bath’ Sheba and had her husband killed.  His son, Absalom killed his other son.  His other son raped his sister Tamar.  I mean, it was hardly what you would call a happy family!  David looked disgraceful.  I am sure that Samuel at some point in his life when he had seen these things must have wondered “What on earth has he got up to?  He has called this person to be the king, and this young person as handsome as he is, as great as he is, as chosen as he is, is imperfect!”
Again, God sometimes calls the imperfect.  And, God gives an opportunity for things to change.  Why?  It is because God knows what is in the heart.  He knew what was in David’s heart from the beginning:  a love for God and compassion for his people.  Even with his flaws, even with the things that he had done wrong, God still loved him.  God still knew what was in his heart.  In Psalm 51, David in his later years, after all of this had happened, wrote those immortal words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a ripe spirit within me.”  He knew that even when he had failed God could “renew a ripe spirit within him.”  Why?  It was because he loved God.
 
Even in his imperfections, David’s heart was full of God.  And look what he was able to do.  The nation that was divided was now restored.  The destruction that had occurred by Saul was mended.  The Philistines were defeated and Goliath slain.  Jerusalem was once again made the City of Zion on the hill.  The monarchy was once again proud to provide leadership.  The people had started giving back to God after God had been generous to them.  There was a renewal within the land.  In years to come, there would be a Messiah who would follow in his lineage, who would save the world.

God sees what is in the heart.  God looks at the outward appearance, and God looks at the sham that is often the human desire to impress him, and God looks at the shallowness of what we often try to think is our way of impressing him, but he looks way, way beyond that to what is in our heart. And he knows, he knows those who truly love him.

So, this morning, I ask you “Where is your heart?”  Oh, I am sure you are imperfect, aren’t we all?  I am sure there are moments when you have had your doubts about God and have said, “Has God lost his mind?”  I am sure there are moments when you have let yourself down, let alone God with your own activities and decisions.  I am sure you have your regrets.  I am sure you have your weaknesses.  You are not Zeus, you are not Apollo, and you are not Midas:  you are human.  But God only wants to know what is in your heart.
 
If God knows what is in your heart, and it is love for him, then this God can do great things for you and great things with you and great things by you.  You don’t have to be the top of the tree.  You don’t have to be the best looking in your crowd.  You don’t have to be the most affluent.  You don’t have to be the most gifted of speech.  You don’t have to be the head of whatever it is that you might belong to.  You just need to have a heart that is open to God.  If you do not think that in and of itself is enough, look at Easter.  If Easter is not the fulfillment of all that Samuel hoped when he anointed David, I don’t know what is!  From the Lord coming and blessing Jesus by saying “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased,” and on the Cross “This is my Son who gave himself for the sins of the world,” to the Easter empty tomb, “This is my Son who I will glorify.”  God knows what is in our hearts.  It is God’s choice that matters.  It is God’s love that counts.

In a world that is so often shallow, that judges by things that we only see, it is the most liberating, most life-giving, most joyful thing to know that God does not look on the outside, but he looks in our heart.  And for that we should be eternally grateful! Amen.