The Blank Spaces

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Today, Pastor J.D. finally introduces us to the person of David.

You say, it's about time, let's get this story going. But David's first appearance is hardly a commanding one. He is overlooked before being quietly anointed as king and then seemingly forgotten immediately afterwards. That was a tough experience for David, but it provides an important pattern for us. Most of us have gone through periods where we felt like God had forgotten us. What we'll learn, however, is that those moments when God seems completely absent, those blank spaces, often turn out to be the places where God does his most transformative work.

So let's join Pastor J.D. now in the book of 1 Samuel chapter 16. I have an idea for a book that I might try to write over the next year if I can free up the time. I'm going to call it The Blank Spaces.

My daughters will be disappointed that it's not a reflection on my favorite Taylor Swift song, for all of you T-Swizzle fans out there. But it's about those little spaces in the Bible, little spaces in the Bible that I call blank spaces. They're between narrative sections in the Bible where all the activities that I'm talking about are the ones in the Bible where all the activity seemingly stops. There's one right in the chapter we're going to look at today. Sometimes those blank spaces represent large gaps of time. And typically when you're reading the Bible, you rewrite over them and don't think anything about them. But I always wonder when I read over them, how the people in the stories we're looking at, how they must have felt in those blank spaces. Like, God, where'd you go? You were just writing something, you were doing a lot, and then you just stopped and you kind of disappeared on me.

You've forgotten about me. We're going to see one of those today in 1 Samuel 16 right after verse 13. God sends Samuel, Israel's most famous prophet, to anoint David, this young shepherd boy, to be the next king of Israel. The Holy Spirit rushes upon David mightily. That's verse 13.

And then blank space. Then when verse 14 picks up, the narrative shifts to somebody else. David's not going to become king for at least another 15 years. David goes from his anointing to a little blank space. David did not immediately become king.

He did not even go down to the palace to start trying on robes or doing interviews about his vision for the country with the Jerusalem times. He goes from this incredible moment of anointing back to the pasture, to the pasture to do what shepherds do in a pasture, chase sheep around. And that whole time is represented by that little blank space. You see, I've got to ask, what did that feel like for David? As a pastor, every week I have to interpret sometimes lots of difficult passages.

I will tell you by far the most challenging parts of the Bible for me to interpret are those little blank spaces. Times of apparent inactivity. Where did God go? He was there. It's like he suddenly just ghosted you. Ever felt like you got ghosted by God? Did he forget you? Is he distracted with something more important, somebody more important than you? Or sometimes you might think this, sometimes you're like, well, maybe he's not even real.

Maybe what I thought was him working in my life was just a string of coincidences and emotional moments, but he's not really real. And those periods of silence, please prove that. Let me just ask, let's all get on a page of a page of honesty here, okay? Have you ever been there? You there right now, some of you? Blank spaces, I will tell you, have been some of the most frustrating times in my life.

But here's what I've learned about them. Those moments, those blank spaces where it seems like God is not doing anything, those are often the places that he is doing his best work. And that's what you're going to see today. Chapter 16, verse one. The Lord said to Samuel, how long will you grieve over Saul since I have rejected him from being king over Israel?

You all remember, this is what we covered last time. Saul looked great on the outside, but his character was compromised on the inside. And that made Saul rely on himself instead of God, and that cut Saul and Israel off from God's power, so God rejected him from being king. And he said to Samuel, Samuel, go and fill your horn with oil, and I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite.

Bethlehem is like the backwoods part of Israel. For I have provided for myself a king among his sons. So Samuel goes down to Bethlehem, and he finds Jesse at this big community function. And he says, hey, Jesse, may I have a word, sir? And Jesse recognizes Samuel.

Samuel's a celebrity in Israel. And then Jesse says, well, sure. And Samuel says, God told me that one of your sons is supposed to be Israel's next king.

And Jesse thinks, oh, I know exactly which one that is. My firstborn, the pride of our home, Eliab. So he sends for Eliab, and Eliab walks over, verse six. When they came, Samuel looked on Eliab. And he thought, surely the Lord's anointed is before him. Eliab just looked like a king.

He was tall, he was good looking, he had a commanding presence, he had those blue steel eyes. Verse seven, but the Lord said to Samuel, no, no, no, do not look at his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I've rejected him too. For the Lord sees not as a man sees, because man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. Y'all, Samuel of all people should have known better, right?

And this is Saul 2.0. Just because you look like a king on the outside doesn't give you the heart of God's king on the inside. And of all people, Samuel should have known this, but to be honest with you, this is actually a little encouraging for me, because evidently even great prophets can get swept up by charm and charisma sometimes. So God says to Samuel, no, no, no, listen, no, I'm looking for something different in my king. I'm not looking on the outside, Samuel, I'm looking on the inside. By the way, if you go through 1 Samuel, you trace Eliab's story, you're going to see that Eliab turns out to be rather arrogant and critical and untrusting of God at very key moments. Sure, he's the all-American athlete, he's on the starting lineup, he's the valedictorian, he's most likely to succeed, he's on everybody's who's who list, but he's not the one that God is looking for.

Sadly, by the way, those people rarely are the ones he's looking for. And so Samuel says to Jesse, he's like, hey, you got any other sons? And so Jesse sends for his second born. This guy's a little less impressive than Eliab, but he still fits the profile.

He's tall, he's good looking, he's smart, he's athletic. But God says, nope, not him either, send for another. And they do this seven times, verse 10. And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. Samuel said to Jesse, the Lord has not chosen any of these.

You know, at this point, it's starting to get a bit awkward. I mean, imagine the latest girl in The Bachelorette, I have no idea who she is, but imagine they're at the rose giving ceremony, and she proceeds to go through the room and to explain, and she begins one by one to explain why she's not giving the rose to this guy, and why she's not giving the rose to that guy, dismissing each one as she goes, until finally she's dismissed all of them, and it's just her and, what's the host's name, Jesse Palmer? Just her and Jesse Palmer standing there in the room. At which point, Jesse Palmer says, you can't dismiss all the candidates.

You gotta pick one. That's the whole point of this show. Well, see, that's Samuel in this moment. All the sons have been dismissed, and he's still standing there with the rose.

I love this next question, verse 11. Then Samuel said to Jesse, are all your sons here? Jesse, you got any kids you've forgotten about? And Jesse's like, oh yeah, there is one more.

I totally forgot about him. Let's just be honest. How many of you, this was, or is you in your family?

Raise your hand. This is me. Middle children always seem to feel like this sometimes. Sometimes the youngest feels like this.

Parents sometimes, let's be honest, we're to blame for that. When we first had Kara, she's our firstborn. Y'all, we took pictures of everything. Oh, the first time she sped up Cheerios. Let's get a picture of that. Oh, here she is, her eighth first steps.

Let's get a picture of that, right? For the second kid, you start slowing the picture roll down. Now it's more about actual big events, her actual first steps, her first night in a big girl bed, first day of preschool. Our third kid comes along, Raya. We're even more selective in the pictures that we're taking. By the time we get to Addon, my fourth boy and my son, his kindergarten teacher asked for a headshot and we're like, do we have any pictures of Addon yet?

By the way, Veronica wants me to assure you that exaggerated we have pictures. But some of you understand that. You know what that feels like. That's how David was. And Jesse said, there remains yet the youngest, but behold, he's keeping the sheep. Youngest, by the way, is the Hebrew word haketon. Another great word.

How can I say it? Everybody say haketon. That's right.

You gotta hear that in the background. Haketon. Youngest is probably not the best translation of the word. Haketon is a very rare word in Hebrew. It's actually a conglomeration of two other words. One word is young and the other word is unimportant. Some scholars say the best translation is runt. I mean, the word just sounds like an insult, right? Haketon, haketon.

Use that one on your friends. The point is we've gone from the who's who list to the who's he list. And what is David out there doing? He's out there keeping the sheep, which was considered the lowest job in Israel. The kind of job that needed to be done by somebody, but nobody wanted to be that somebody. Think of the guy in the circus who is following along behind the elephant with the giant pooper scooper.

I mean, you're glad somebody's doing that, but you just don't want to be that somebody. And Samuel said to Jesse, send and get him, for we will not sit down until he comes here. By the way, is it me or is it, does Samuel strike you as a bit ornery here? Like Jesse, clearly I asked you to bring all your sons and you didn't, and now you're wasting my time and your time.

So we're just going to stand here and wait until you go get and do what I asked you to do at the beginning. And get you to get away with stuff like that when you're an old prophet. Verse 12, and he sent him and brought him in. Now he, David, of course, was ready.

He had beautiful eyes and he was handsome. Ready, like the word haketon, is an unusual word in Hebrew. Some translators say that it means redheaded and freckled. Other translators say it means dirty, disheveled, tanned, and stinking of the pasture.

How one word could potentially mean both things, I have no idea. But whatever it means, David was ready and he had beautiful eyes. By the way, some of your wimpy translations say he was a fine appearance. If you have the NIV, it's what it says. But literally in Hebrew, it says he was of beautiful eyes.

I vote to keep the literal translation. Beth Moore says that one of the great advantages of being a woman is that as a woman, when you see another woman that you think she has beautiful eyes, you can just tell her. Even if you don't know her.

You're standing in the checkout line at the grocery store. You think the cashier has beautiful eyes. You can just say to her, hey, has anybody ever told you that you got beautiful eyes?

And the lady will appreciate it. It's not weird. We men can do that, can't we?

Hey, man. Has anybody ever told you you got beautiful eyes? In fact, guys, if there's a guy sitting by, you look at him right now and just say, hey, man, I think you got beautiful eyes.

Can do that, can you? David had pretty eyes and he was handsome. He's cute.

He's cute. But the point is he doesn't look like a valiant warrior or a king. When you're choosing a warrior king, you want a dude who looks like he can kill other dudes. For example, we don't know for sure how big William Wallace was. He didn't look like Mel Gibson, but the real William Wallace, the guy Braveheart, we know his sword was five foot six. So the sword was about that tall.

That's gigantic. That means William Wallace had to be at least 6'6 or 6'7. That's what a king's supposed to look like. David is the opposite of this.

He's just a runt kid with a baby face. Verse 12, and the Lord said to him, arise, anoint him for this is he. And from that day on the spirit of the Lord rushed upon David. This is Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. We'll get back to today's teaching in just a moment, but first I wanted to let you know about our brand new featured resource, and it's a perfect companion to our current teaching series. It's an eight week Bible study focused on the life of David to expand on what we're learning here on Summit Life. Each of the eight studies will give you an in-depth study of a key moment in David's life, and the scripture passages are followed by application questions to make you think about what you've read, as well as prayer prompts to help you reflect on your study and ask God to help you apply it to your life. There's so much to learn from David, both good things to do and some things to maybe avoid, so he's a perfect character for us to spend some extra time learning from. You don't want to miss it, and it's yours with your gift of $35 or more to support this ministry.

To get your copy, call us at 866-335-5220, or you can give online at jdgreer.com. Now let's get back to today's teaching on Summit Life. Once again, here's Pastor J.D.

Why all this drama and rigmarole? If God knew he wanted David, why not just say to Samuel, hey, go to Jesse. It's the youngest son. He's going to be out in the pasture. Call for him.

His name is David. Why go through this whole charade and all the drama? Well, it's to emphasize what is our first lesson from this story. Number one, God chooses the unlikely. That's why God set this whole thing up. While the drama attaches, he wants us to understand that God always chooses the unlikely. Y'all, this is one of the most consistently recurring themes in the Bible. God chooses the unlikely.

It literally runs from the front of your Bible to the back. In the book of Genesis, in the very first chapters, God chooses the meager, humble offering of poor Abel, not the rich offering of prosperous Cain. God bestows the blessing on the younger, wimpier Jacob, not the firstborn man's man, all-county athlete Esau. God promises the messianic lineage to the plain Leah, not the beautiful Rachel. When he chooses somebody to lead the exodus, he chooses the stammering Moses, not the silver-tongued Aaron. As the mother of Israel's greatest prophet, Samuel, he's going to choose the barren Hannah, not the fertile Peninnah.

Secular human history has always favored the most beautiful of women and the strongest of men, but God consistently chooses Jacob's and Leah's and Hannah's and puny David's to build his kingdom. There was an old Southern Baptist pastor named Adrian Rogers who was speaking at a leadership conference one time, and it's filled with pastors and church staff and church leadership. There's probably 3,000 people in the room. And remember, he looks out at the audience and he says, he says, how many of you graduated valedictorian or salutatorian in your school? Stand up. You know, a group of 3,000, a handful of people stood up.

There was some light-scattered applause. He said, okay, remain standing. How many of you went to school, went to college on some kind of merit scholarship? You know, academic, athletic, and a bunch more people stood up. He said, how many of you were a senior class president or you're on your student council? Stand up.

More people stood up. He said, how many of you made the who's who list? How many of you graduated with honors? You made the dean's list. He goes through all these different honorifics, and when it gets done, there's about a third of the audience that's standing. He said, okay, this is who we all recognize, right? This is societies. These are the ones that have the promise. Let's put our hands together and rejoice.

And they clap their hands. And he said, okay, for those of you who are standing up, he said, I've got good news and bad news for you. He said, the good news is that God can use you also.

That's the good news. He said, the bad news is you're not his first choice. His first choice are those who are seated around you because God chooses the overlooked, the underdog, those who are weak and despised in the world so that the power and the glory will belong to him and not to them. Which leads me to the second lesson. Number two, in God's kingdom, character is paramount. Verse seven is for sure the key verse. The Lord sees not as a man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but God, the Lord looks on the heart. This is a repeat from our study of Saul, but when God looks for leaders, he does not value what we value.

God prioritizes character over charisma. And that's because what we need in a king is somebody who can restore us to God. You see, our main problem is not that we're not powerful enough or smart enough or pretty enough. If that was our main problem, God could just have supplied us with a king who could supply us with those things.

Those things though are not our main problem. Our main problem is that we have been separated from God by pride and disobedience, and that means what we most need in a leader is somebody who can reconnect us to God. You see, God does not want us to find identity, security, and happiness. Those three words we've used throughout this series, those are just a way of saying salvation.

That's the existential kind of feeling of salvation, identity, security, and happiness. God does not want us to search for those things apart from him in a Saul or an Eliab. He wants us to find those things in him because he is power. He is beauty. He is security. He is significance in abundance.

So when God is choosing his leaders, he's not saying, wow, great dresser. I need that guy. Impressive resume.

I need her. Stunning IQ. Look at how tall and strong that guy is.

Look at how beautiful and winsome and articulate that girl is. He doesn't look any of there. He looks here because he's looking for somebody who will listen to him and let his spirit work through him because we're not supposed to find identity, security, and happiness apart from him. We're supposed to find them in him, which is what happens in verse 13. Because of David's humble heart, the spirit of the Lord rushed upon him and stayed on him. I explained the very first week that Israel's search for a king is representative of all of our search for salvation. You want to understand the book of 1 Samuel?

You got to understand this. Israel's search for a king is representative of all of our search for salvation. All of us are searching for identity, security, and happiness in something. And we see a Saul or an Eliab and we think, that's what I'm looking for. A king.

And obviously this is a metaphor. A king who is tall and good looking and strong and who will make us stand head and shoulders above everybody else. Maybe that king is looking a certain way. I'm not talking about an actual king.

I mean, that king is like, if I could just look that way, if I could look like that. If I could get into that school, graduate from that school. Maybe it's having a particular job or making this amount of money. Maybe it's getting married. Maybe it's having a family.

Maybe it's receiving some recognition, being on some team. The question is, what do you look to to give yourself identity, security, and happiness? All of you have something that you're doing. You're all pursuing some key. What makes you feel significant? What wouldn't make you feel secure as you go into the future? You just think, well, if I could just have that, if I could just be this, well, then I would feel good about myself and I would feel confident about my future. Again, being good looking, married, recognized as a great athlete, professionally successful, rich.

What is it? All of us choose a king that looks good to us and then we give ourselves in pursuit of that king. But all these kings let us down. In fact, y'all, this might be the primary plot line of the Bible. We look for identity, security, and happiness, in other words, salvation, in all the wrong places. Since the very beginning, we've been attracted to the Sauls and the Eliebs, but that's not where salvation is found.

I mean, think about it. How were Adam and Eve deceived in the Garden of Eden? What does it say? It says they saw the fruit. They saw the fruit. It looked good for food and they saw that it would make one wise and so they ate it. Their eyes and heart said what Samuel's heart said when he looked at Eliab.

That looks great, but it leads to death. They evaluated the fruit the way that Israel evaluated potential kings. It was pleasing to the eyes. They were trying to find identity, security, and happiness apart from God in this forbidden fruit. Y'all, the book of Proverbs says it plainly. There is a way. There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end is the way to death. This is like the anti-Disney verse.

Don't follow your heart. Don't look within because there's something in you. All of us. It looks so good. It looks so promising and so fulfilling. It's good for food. It'll make me happy. It's good for the eyes. It will make me wise.

It's Saul. It's Eliab, but it only leads to death. The universal human mistake is to look for salvation in the wrong places. What God was teaching Israel through this whole ordeal was that salvation came from being united to him. When it comes to being united to him, character is paramount. That's the main lesson.

That's the main lesson, but there's a side application. The side application for you is that when you are evaluating people, whether you're talking about a potential boyfriend or a potential girlfriend or a potential spouse who you're going to put into your circle of closest friends, who you're going to room with, who you're going to hire as an employee, who you're going to hire as a pastor, the side lesson is you should also prioritize character. We still tend to evaluate people mainly by the way that Israel evaluated potential kings, who are what looks the best, who is head and shoulders above everybody else, who's going to give us the most status, who's going to make me the most money. That is a terrible way to go through life because character will bring you far more blessing than beauty. How many times you ever heard a guy say something like this? Y'all, it feels so, it sounds so romantic. Oh, y'all, the moment I saw her, I knew I was going to marry her.

Y'all, that sounds romantic, but it's horrible. You don't know what she's like. Is she a woman of integrity? How does she handle conflict? Does she hold a grudge? That is not romantic.

Quite frankly, that's stupid. Men or women, I will tell you, I guarantee you 20 years into your marriage, it is not that pretty face or great body that is going to bless you most. It's whether they love and obey God, whether they're a person of grace, integrity, and character. So the side lesson here is prioritize character in your evaluation of people. Do you feel forgotten or overlooked? Let today's teaching serve as a reminder that God never forgets about you.

And more importantly, He's not done with you. As I mentioned earlier in the program, our study here in The Life of David has a companion Bible study working specifically through the book of 2 Samuel. Pastor JD, can you boil it down a bit more for us? What are the themes that we'll see as we work through this study guide?

Yeah, great question, Molly. I think we're going to see five themes over eight weeks of study in this guide. The first one is we're just going to understand David's heart. You know, we've heard David called a man after God's own heart, but we're going to see where he got that title from. The second theme is submission to God. David had this posture of submission to God's will. The role of mercy. David becomes an extremely merciful person because he seems to be aware of the mercy that God has shown to him. Another theme is seeking God's glory instead of David's.

In fact, I'd almost say, Molly, that's kind of his secret superpower. Lastly, handling disappointment and how to maintain joy in the midst of that. So grab a copy of The Life of David Bible study that goes along with this teaching series, even if you're like, I'm listening to the series too late.

It's still great. Go get it and just take a journey through the life of David on your own. Go to jdgrier.com. Thanks, Pastor JD. We'd love to send you a copy of this brand new Life of David study guide. It's our gift to you for your one time gift of $35 or more to this ministry. To give, call us at 866-335-5220, or you can give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch.

We'll see you tomorrow as we continue filling in the blank spaces. That's Wednesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.