Just Your Boy
Let the Children Come - Part 4
Sunday, August 28, 2022
1 Samuel 16:1-23, 1 Timothy 4:12
Then Samuel asked Jesse, “Is that all of your boys?”
“There is still the youngest one,” Jesse answered, “but he’s out keeping the sheep.”
“Send for him,” Samuel told Jesse, “because we can’t proceed until he gets here.”
1 Samuel 16:11 (CEB)
Listen to this week’s sermon here:
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Though he didn’t become king until around the age of 30, David was most likely between 8 and 15 when Samuel first called him in from the fields and anointed him as Saul’s successor to the throne of Israel. He was quite literally “just a boy”. He was so young and insignificant, in fact, that his father didn’t even see the point in bringing him along when Samuel invited his family to the sacrifice. While his father and older brothers were going through the ritual purification to be cleansed before God for worship, young David was out in the fields with the sheep composing psalms of praise.
How appropriate that God would use Samuel, himself called as a child, to anoint another child king over all Israel. We know the stories of David’s heroism, how he defeated Goliath and the Philistine army with just a sling and a stone, and how he united the tribes of Israel and strengthened the whole nation with its most expansive borders ever from Dan to Beersheba. We know how he spent so much of his life on the run from King Saul who sought to kill him because he was a threat to his own dynasty, despite God’s clear ruling that Saul’s family would no longer reign in Israel due to his own sin. And we see David at his lowest point, committing adultery and murder to attain what he couldn’t have. We read and sing his psalms of praise and lament, of joy and of repentance. Yet despite all his accomplishments and all his mistakes, in the end only one thing mattered… He was just God’s beloved child singing praises in the field.
As you look at your own life, your highs and lows, what matters most to you? What matters most to God?