A missionary from New Zealand came and gave a talk at a church we were visiting. As is often the case, I have long since forgotten his name and his organization.  But the sermon he gave has stuck with me to this day.  He read the following verse.

The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” 1 Samuel 16:1

King Saul had come up a failure. He did not fulfill the commands of God to completely destroy the Amalekites and their property and left the enemy King alive. When confronted by Samuel, Saul first claims otherwise, and then when caught in his lie he claims he did not do it because he feared the people. Samuel is left to finish the job, and Samuel proclaims God’s decision to remove the kingdom from Saul. Samuel appears despondent of the entire situation and departs to grieve.

God then challenges his great prophet. How long will you spend bemoaning? I have other and better work for you. I need you to go find the King after my own heart. Here the missionary stopped and challenged us. How much are we, God’s representatives to the world now, spending on grieving the past when God has great works still to do? How much of the weight of our lives are now being placed on the way things have turned out that were not as we hoped or predicted.

How wrong things have turned out is a popular subject in Christian circles. I think just about every other sermon or talk I hear starts off something like this: Remember back when we had prayer in schools, remember when marriage was marriage, remember when our leaders acknowledged God and our institutions and could be trusted, remember when our families were more on track with God, and on and on it goes. I am not saying any of these developments are good, they’re horrible, or we should not grieve these works of our own rebellion and of the devil. But we act as if God is surprised and defeated by these.

The Bible would indicate that God has other plans than for us to stay wallowing in Pilgrim’s Progress’ “swamp of despair.” Though it may not be as splashy, God is going somewhere in our lives just like God was going somewhere with Samuel and the monarchy in Israel. God knows that the best is yet to come. That the best and main point of the monarchy story has not even happened yet. Samuel has not even done his greatest act which is anointing David as King. God knows Saul is just a sad sidenote in history serving only as an example of what a bad, self-centered, and worldly king looks like. But King David is out there, and he has not been discovered. 

David will be a king with an authentic zeal for God. Saul was the people of Israel taking things into their own hands. They were demanding a King that looked like the rest of the world, and they got it. And like it usually goes, following after what the world wants has turned into a sad dead end. But God now has a King that is a key part of the thread of real eternal life, the lineage that eventually will lead to the savior. This is the eternal king who is his son Jesus Christ. God wants us to always be moving forward in the direction of King David. The direction of David is the work of revealing Jesus to a lost and dying world no matter how rich, well thought of, powerful, technologically proficient, and well-educated it is. It is still ultimately a dead end like Saul. The line of Jesus is the main story. When we are moving in the direction of David, there is still more to be added to the story.

If you are like me, this is challenging news. I like to spend time grieving how many things did not turn out. This grieving and morning of loss is not unimportant and there are many examples in God’s Word of this being a legitimate use of our time. But we are tempted to stay there and not leave just as even some of the spiritual greats like Samuel were. But God’s message to us is not to stay there. There is important work to be done in our brief lives here on earth. No matter what happens next, we will one day stand face to face with our “friend” and savior Jesus rejoicing in his great work of salvation. The best is yet to come. Let’s get working.

Doug

The words of British poet Robert Abrahams say it well, “For some men die by shrapnel, And some go down in flames, But most men perish inch by inch, In play at little games.”  Our goal is to identify the little games and put a stop to them and put the right weight on the right things.