“God’s Unlikely Choice”

1 Samuel 16:1-13

August 6, 2006

Before we get to the heart of our text for this morning, let us begin our sermon series by setting the context of the life and times of King David. Going back to Exodus, we know that YHWH delivered the Hebrew people from the Egyptians and put them under the leadership of Moses. Under Moses’ leadership, the people of God entered Sinai where God made a covenant with them and set them on the journey toward the Promised Land, the land of Canaan, which the Israelites took possession of about the year 1200 B.C.

For the next 200 years, the Israelites were nothing more than a loose organization of tribes united in their faith and worship of the one god, YHWH. As time went on, the Israelites became aware of the increasing need for centralized leadership. Apparently, God was not centralized enough for them, but that is another story. Therefore, the Israelites came up with an idea: they needed a king, someone they could follow and who would lead them and protect them.

The Israelites need for a king was in response to two kinds of problems: external and internal. Externally, the Israelites were under constant threat from the Philistines, a non-Semitic people, who continually attacked and plundered the Israelites. The Israelites believed that if they had a king, then they would have a stronger identity, a stronger government, and a stronger defense. Internally, the Israelites were facing economic and political problems.

A king would provide government and policies to help address the problems associated with population growth, economic pressures, agricultural concerns, and other political factors. And so, despite divine warnings from YHWH, the Israelites persisted in their demands, so in about 1000 B.C. the monarchy period began with the appointment of Saul as the first king of Israel. But, this major political reorganization also brought a serious religious crisis.

Kingship was not an Israelite innovation. Kingship had a long tradition in the culture of the world, and it brought with it its own set of ideological and religious belief systems and mythologies. The problem was that religious culture of the worldly institutions caused a conflict between the polytheistic cultures and the monotheistic faith of the Israelite people. The polytheistic religious systems and mythological ideologies placed an emphasis on the balance between order and chaos. When the polytheistic gods were appeased, order in sued. When these gods were not appeased, there was chaos.

This idea of a balance between order and chaos also found itself embedded in the cultural world of politics. When the worldly kings exercised their authority properly and maintained justice and peace, there was order. When the worldly kings failed to exercise their authority properly and could not maintain justice and peace, the result was chaos.

The danger for the Israelites was that by taking on the form of government of worldly institutions and systems, they might also take on the religious and mythological of those same worldly institutions and systems. As the saying goes, “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Such was the problem with Saul’s kingship over Israel. As one commentator so eloquently said about Saul, “He seems to have been the kind of man who could think of nothing but himself, and when anyone reaches that point he has nothing to think about.”

David is Israel’s second king after King Saul, and is known as Israel’s greatest king. His kingship is legendary. As King, David ruled for 40 years from about 1010 – 970 B.C. He defeated numerous enemies of Israel, captured Jerusalem and made it his capital, unified the nation of Israel, built an empire that stretched from Egypt to Mesopotamia. His political and economic reforms helped ensure the security and safety of people, and he is known as the standard for all the kings of Israel. David had many gifts and talents. He was a shepherd and poet, a musician and warrior, an administrator and shrewd politician. But most of all he is known as the father of the Judahite dynasty and recipient of YHWH’s divine promise of prosperity and long rule known as the Davidic covenant, a covenant which provides the basis for the Israelites belief that the Messiah would be a direct descendant of King David.

David was the youngest of as least eight sons of Jesse of Bethlehem. Scripture tells us that his genealogies show him as descended from Judah, and that his line continues unbroken among the kings of Judah all the way to Jesus of Nazareth. Scripture also tells us that David’s ancestry was not fully Israelite. It also included a non-Israelite line that ran through Ruth the Moabite and Tamar the Canaanite; a good reminder that YHWH was not be too tightly bound to Israelite nationality or ethnicity. David had eight wives who are named in Scripture, seven of them bore him children, the other being Michal, Saul’s daughter.

As a whole, Scripture portrays David without pretension or cover up. It is honest about David’s greatness and his sins, but in spite of David’s failures, YHWH’s covenant remains steadfast. Even though David is flawed, heis favored by God who promises in the Davidic covenant to preserve David’s dynasty forever. Through YHWH’s divine intervention and initiative, David becomes the symbol of Israel’s monarchy, and the model for what it means to be a righteous and faithful king. And with this context in mind, we now turn to the story of David.

Our text for this morning gives us a remarkable beginning to the life and times of King David, a rather unusual beginning that is very different from one that we might expect of a future king, especially a king as legendary as David. But David’s beginning is anything but legendary. Kings were groomed from birth to be king, they were raised in nobility, and ascended to the throne either by power or by lineage, but not David. In fact, David’s call story to kingship is not even a call story we have become accustomed to in Scripture. No burning bush like Moses, no hot coal on the tongue like Isaiah, no touching of his mouth by God like Jeremiah, or no eating of the divine scroll like Ezekiel. For all practical purposes, David’s selection was as unlikely choice as they come, but not for YHWH. YHWH’s purpose and plan for David had already been set in motion.

As the text tells us, the Lord sends Samuel on a mission to Jesse in Bethlehem to anoint the one whom the Lord has chosen as king. With his horn of oil in hand and a heifer in tow, Samuel goes to Jesse with the most unusual request – to join with him in sacrificing to God and sanctifying himself and his sons. But the real reason for Samuel’s visit is never mentioned to Jesse or the elders. Jesse and that elders do not know that they are witnesses of a decisive event in the life of Israel. And so with Jesse’s seven sons all prepared to parade in front of Samuel, Samuel begins the process of waiting for God to make his choice. But God has already made his choice. The selection of David as king has already been made. YHWH’s intention and initiative in the selection process has already been settled. This new king will not be chosen using the standard cultural process of picking the greatest, the prettiest, or the biggest. This new king will be chosen by YHWH’s sovereign purpose and will.

How contradictory this is for us. We base our choice of leaders on appearance and charisma, strength and stature. Those who have the most, and are the most, are always in more of a position for our choosing than those who have little or are little. But that is not God’s criteria. God chooses by the character of the heart, what is inside a person, not by outside appearances. The seven sons of Jesse do not fit into God’s criteria. But there is another son who does, a son not even in attendance at the event, a son who is the youngest of all the sons, who is nothing more than a lowly shepherd boy keeping watch over the sheep. When this son finally arrives, God immediately instructs Samuel to anoint the boy. God’s king has been found, and from that moment on, the Spirit of the Lord remained with David.

David is God’s unlikely choice. David is one of the marginal people, uncredentialed, and with no social claim to make. But David is the right choice, because he is YHWH’s choice, and what a choice David was. Through David, YHWH made a claim about and to his people, that regardless of their social standing in the world, regardless of their outward appearances, the too had been chosen by the character of their heart, that even among the most marginalized people of the world, there are still beautiful people, that even among the lowliest, there is the potential for greatness.

God’s unlikely choice of David is a reminder to all of us that God’s choosing of us, while seeming to be an unlikely choice by the world’s standards, is of great significance, of great importance in God’s purpose and plan for God’s people. Regardless of our place in this world, regardless of our stature and appearance, regardless of our social standing, we too have been chosen by God with the potential for greatness.

We may never have a kingdom to rule over, or the resources of an empire at our command, but we do have the anointing and blessing of God and that is all we need to accomplish all that God has called us to do for God’s kingdom. Like David, we too can make an impact in the world in which we live and change the course of human history.

As we make our way through the stories about David, take him down from the pedestal upon which he stands, and see him as he really is, an agent of God’s purpose and will, an instrument of God’s work for justice and peace, and a leader among God’s people. In spite of his flaws and his sins, he is the one who God has chosen for a great purpose, and if God can choose a person like David, God most certainly can chose people like us. Amen.