Let’s review… In the last four sermons…We’ve followed King David from boyhood to his coronation as King of Israel. I want to go back in his life and pinpoint a couple of snapshots in time… and ask same some very important questions… before we more forward.

Next Sunday’s message is going to deal with David’s son Absolom… you may,or may not, remember the tragic story…but before we can understand the significance of that story… we have to grasp something in David’s earlier life.

After David killed Goliath…what was David’s next job?... Royal on-call giant killer?... No….King Saul made David a commander of his army. …because…

1 Samuel 18:5 Whatever Saul asked David to do, David did it successfully. So Saul made him a commander over the men of war, an appointment that was welcomed by the people and Saul’s officers alike. (NLT)

Now here’s comes trouble… same chapter… five verses later:

Whenever you think back about King Saul…what picture comes into your mind?

1) Great King of Israel

Always # 3 isn’t it? Do you know that the book of 1^{st Samuel spends several chapters describing Saul as the great conquering King of Israel….}

As the first anointed King of Israel, for some years, Saul really did a good job… Yet all you and I now remember about him was that he was quite mad in his later days.

What drove him mad…what drove him to be so jealous of David? What could get into a guys head that would cause him to take his attention off ruling the kingdom, that God had clearly set him up to rule…and make him obsessed with blotting out the one little guy who might one day succeed him?

Saul was the one with all the power. David was just a young man…He was no threat to Saul’s present kingdom. Yet Saul got so fixated on this one young man that he repeatedly tried to kill him with his spear and, as we’ve already seen, when that didn’t work …eventually used his entire army to chase David through the wilderness.

Can you imagine our president…calling in a famous musician to sing for him.. and then pulling out a pistol and trying to blast a hole in him?... How do you explain that to everyone else in the palace… or in the kingdom. Sorry guys…must have been a muscle spasm…

I’m asking questions to get us to think…but our answers to these questions aren’t really where I’m going with this message… Here’s the point:

What did David do when Saul through the spear at him?

He dodged! There were other courses of action he could have taken…He’s an army commander…for goodness sake. And this wasn't a one time event…Saul's muscle spasms only seemed to happen when David was in the room! Imagine David turning right around coming back the next time to play for Saul again…clearly remembering the flying wood and pointy metal from the last session.

There is an attitude issue here that is really, really important? I want you to note Saul’s bad attitude, but more than, that… I want you to compare it to David’s righteous attitude. Let me drill that home by personalizing it…

What do we do when a ‘spear’ is thrown at us?

Many of us dig any spear thrown at us out of the wall and throw it back…

After all we stand for right… we will boldly stand out against wrong wherever we find it. If wrong comes from those in authority, in our lives, then we are duty bound to set them straight… So…

Many of us would have dug any spear thrown at us out of the wall and throw it back… or if the person who threw it was more powerful than us…we would be forced to go outside the palace and start talking about how bad of a person the spear-thrower really is. Right?

We don’t have to just take the spears thrown at us… we aren’t wimps! Neither was David! This was the guy who, as a boy shepherd, killed wild animals by taking them by the jaw and clubbing them to death…this was the hero who killed Goliath… this was the great Army Commander.

David could have reacted against Saul…David was anointed to be king himself…. And everybody knew it. You remember when they finally asked him to be king they said…we know you were anointed by Samuel years ago.

Or… All David needed to do was go outside the palace and begin a campaign against Saul…exposing him for the fraud he was… and he could have possibly turned public opinion against Saul in favor of himself.

Did David ever do that? No when the spears came at David.. he dodged.. and when he became convinced that the spears were going to keep coming… he ran… David.. the "giant killer" ran away from mad Saul!

Did David run away from Saul because he was afraid?…

Then why do you think he ran?_______________________

We all know…and so did David…that God would eventually make him King.

Before God could use David as King…God needed to break him.

It seems like the lonely shepherding…crying out to God years would have been enough…apparently they weren't…. As soon as David achieved the fame of killing Goliath and becoming an Army Commander… the need for further brokenness must have been evident….at least to God..

Saul was God’s anointed man ...to shape David’s life even though he was quite mad.

You know what I’m taking about… you probably have a picture in your mind right now.

David willingly submitted himself to Saul’s authority…because for him…Saul was God’s authority… you see that?

The reality is: There is a little bit, to a lot, of King Saul in all of us.

If God hadn’t graciously cut away the cells that cause mad-Saul disease… David could have followed in the path of the example Saul had set.

You all know how that, that happens…we come to dislike an authoritarian parent…twenty five years later we are them…A child can despise a parent’s alcoholism and follow the exact same path.

God had no intention of David becoming King Saul II…and the scalpel God used was David’s years hiding out in the wilderness. We’ve already seen the fruit of this process coming out in the Psalm’s, David wrote at that time.

David ran…through soggy fields… down slimy riverbeds. Sometimes Saul’s dogs came close…sometimes they even caught up to him. He took food from the fields, dugs roots by the side of the road, slept in trees, crawled through briars, mud, and sand. For days he ran… not daring to stop. Half naked, filthy, he stumbled, crawled, clawed onward…going nowhere…

In the past Israel’s mothers had always told there children that if they did not behave they would end up like… the worst criminal in town… Now they had a better, more frightening story; Be good or you’ll end up like the giant killer.

In Jerusalem, when people taught of being submissive to kings, and honoring the Lord’s anointed, David was their new parable. “See this is what God does to rebellious people.” Cchildren shuddered at the thought and resolved never to become anything like the rebellious David.

We know that the opposite was true…David was not showing rebellion…

These were David’s darkest hours: What I’m calling his "caveman" days.

Slowly David's mad-Saul gene was carved away and in it's place came true humility before God….and his fellow man.

Obviously the kings madness grew. The six hundred men who eventually joined David were not cut-throat murderers.

Who can remember what the brother’s occupation had been? They were all warriors in Saul’s army. For David’s seven older brothers to come out into the wilderness and follow him…was quite something. And these other guys who were "discontented"… discontented with what? I’m suggesting to you, and many Bible students feel… that they were political dissidents. They were very upset with how their country's leadership was going… upset enough to take up with the giant killer.

I want to ask you something:

When David began to lead these men… do you think his leadership style was authoritarian and un-yielding? No ? Why not? Because God had shaped him, using a very harsh, and blunt tool…named Saul.

Do you think David got up and gave speeches to him men about how he was the leader and they were the followers and how he expected them to treat him with deference?... I don’t think so. David went about doing what had to be done and this ragtag bunch of men, including his older brothers, simply began to follow and in time developed into an unbeatable unit… but not a unit after the order of King Saul.

David lessons to them about humility were vivid. Imagine…all of those men huddled in the back of a cave when none other then Saul, himself, comes in to use the water closet. They all sneak up until they can see Saul’s robe sticking out of the water closet. David refuses to take his spear and, simply end the drama.

David’s general Joab is just plain mad… how can you do that? We are going to go to bed on a cold cave floor tonight, because you wouldn’t take your spear and jab Saul.

Joab… "Why would I return to God’s anointed King the same injustice he tried to use on me? I’m not King Saul! I don’t want to become a King Saul! God brought me out here into the wilderness to make sure I didn’t become Saul II".

Joab.. never could get the spirit of Saul out of himself… he goes on to kill several people unjustly including David’s son Absolom…and when Solomon, David’s son, starts his reign.. He has General Joab put to death.

It’s hard for us to grasp the fact, that God "anoints" some people who end up being very destructive to the kingdom of God. We’ve had events happen in this community this last year where “men of God” did some very sinful things. They were men after the order of King Saul…

You have all had, or will have, circumstances happen in your life, where people you believed in have hurt you deeply. Perhaps they were made after the order of King Saul.

Perhaps… they were still God's anointed tool to shape your life.

Before you get too angry with them…remember there is a little King Saul in us all. The process of removing the Saul II tendencies will probably mean God allowing us to go through whatever is necessary to rip the mad-Saul gene out by the roots. It may, for each of us involve running in the wilderness.

I promise you…If God is going to use your life, the way he has intended to, from the day you were born, you'll have to be willing for him to carve away whatever parts of you are self-serving and sinful…

If you're in a wilderness time right now in some aspect of your life… you can be thankful to God that he will use your "wilderness run" to shape you…if you submit to him

Conclusion:

1 Peter 5:5-11 …. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.