June 15, 2008 Sermon

David Appears
I Samuel 16:1-13

Saul has ruled as the King of the Israelites for only a very brief time. Yet the Lord has already discarded him. Oh, he will remain king for years. But he has lost the Lord’s favor. And the Lord has already sent the prophet Samuel to name his successor. Samuel has anointed a young boy named David with oil (a ceremony of consecration and dedication, a ceremony that proclaims its recipient has an important role to play in the Lord’s plans).

The saga of the Samuels, this story about Samuel, Saul and David, raises hard questions. Nothing about it looks fair. Why would God set Saul up to fail? Why does God severely punish Saul for his failings, yet apparently overlook similar weaknesses in David? We Christians, living 3,000 years later, have the benefit of New Testament eyes. We can see that God’s plan created a family line through David that led to Jesus. We can see that God’s prophets spoke God’s truth when they predicted the Messiah would appear from the “house and lineage of David.” And we can see that God’s grace ultimately prevails. God’s harsh judgment of Saul leads to God’s offer of salvation to all.

But what could poor Saul see? He did not have the benefit of New Testament eyes. What can any of us see about the purposes of God? We do not live long enough to see the big picture. We can only trust God. We can only hope that our passage speaks the truth when it says, “(Mortals) look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” We can only strive to have good hearts, and then trust that God will use us well.

Does it comfort us to think that God sees the heart? It can—but only if we understand the difference between a pure heart and a good heart. A pure heart has no defect, no sin. It loves as Christ loves: perfectly, unconditionally, purely. Is there such a thing as a truly pure heart? The Bible teaches that the answer is no. “There is not one righteous (one),” the New Testament book of Romans tells us. This is a loose quote of the Old Testament Psalm 14, which reads, “There is no one who does good, no, not one.” The Reformed tradition, to which this Presbyterian Church belongs, emphasizes the sinful nature of all people.

Our passage tells us that God sees into the heart. God looks into our souls, into our inner beings. What does God see? God created us, and everything, good. But God gives us freedom. We can act purely or we can sin. Sometimes we do the one; sometimes we do the other. But—and this is key—God does not compel us to behave ourselves. Both Saul and the soon-to-become-king David acted well at times. At times both sinned, and boldly. But according to I Samuel, God saw something in David’s heart that Saul was missing. That something was not purity. Whatever it was, it pleased God. People will say of a young actress, “I don’t know what “It” is, but whatever It is, she has It.” We need to strive to have “It” in our hearts. We need to have the goodness that comes from trying to obey and to worship God over the spans of our lives.

Why does God do this? Why does God look for “It” in our hearts? And why does God leave us to grope for it? The image of God as a loving parent helps us to understand. We recognized our high school graduates earlier in this service. We see their intelligence, their athletic and artistic prowess. We respect them. We have high hopes for their futures. But every adult in this room has knowledge of life that can come only from living. They do not. It makes us no smarter, no better. It simply reflects a hard truth: life teaches lessons. As loving parents (and in church, through baptism, we become their parents), we might want to protect our children from having to learn through pain. We might want to build a protective bubble around them that would prevent them from getting hurt. But that would be fruitless and unwise.

The human heart learns many lessons only through pain. God, who understands us better than we understand ourselves, has chosen to permit us to experience the consequences of our own sin. God has chosen to allow us to learn the hard way. And God longs for us to grow wiser because of it, to gain what I called, early in this sermon, “good” hearts. If God built that bubble, if God did not permit us to get hurt, our good behavior would result from being God’s robots. We would follow the track to which God had fastened us. We would have no choice. But God gives us choice. We use it. When we choose poorly eventually we hurt. Usually others hurt because of our poor choices, too. Do we learn from the pain? Do we gain “good hearts”?

Early last week a tornado ripped through western Iowa. One hundred eighteen Boy Scouts and leaders were spending that night at the Little Sioux Scout Ranch. They were attending a leadership training event, for “These were some of the top scouts in the area,” according to Homeland Security spokeswoman, Julie Tack. Earlier that day they had participated in an emergency drill. They had learned where to go and what to do in case of threatening weather. As the tornado approached they did exactly what they had been taught to do. Each patrol ran to its designated shelter. One group of boys entered a lodge in a low spot on the ranch. Tragically, its old dry-stone chimney collapsed when the high winds came, killing four boys.

Tragic is the word. How do you ease the grief of those boys’ families and friends? How do you explain that God’s good purpose even in this horrific event will eventually become clear? Words mean nothing to those who suffer that kind of pain. But we, at our distance, can draw important lessons from this story. First, nobody but God knows how long his or her life will last. We must therefore live in a state of constant preparation. “Be prepared” is, of course, the Boy Scout motto. Being spiritually prepared is part of its meaning. Are you spiritually prepared? How close to God’s Spirit are you? Do you need to get right with God without further delay? Do you need to ask Jesus to come into your heart, to save you, to give you the peace that passes understanding and marks the start of your walk with Christ?

The second lesson from this tragedy also has to do with being prepared. The camp staff had prepared those Boy Scouts. When the storm came that very evening, they did not fail to do their duty. Boys all over the camp remembered to turn off the master circuit breakers in case power lines had blown down. The lines did come down—and it is likely that the boys’ action saved more lives. Other boys and leaders began counting up. The boys in the collapsed lodge discovered they were missing not just the four boys who had died, but a number of others. They started digging through the wreckage and found nearly a dozen trapped boys. Several of them were unconscious when found. A couple of older boys saw that the only access road into the camp was blocked by fallen trees. On their own initiative they ran to the maintenance shed and got chainsaws. They broke up the deadfalls and cleared the road just in time for the ambulances, coming from a town 10 minutes away, to get through. One EMT told a New York Times reporter that this heroic work saved “more than three” lives.

When God looks into these young hearts God will undoubtedly see grief from the loss of friends. God will see the usual good and bad that fight for space in any teenaged boy’s heart. But God will also see good hearts, stout hearts, hearts for action, hearts for service. Prepared hearts. These young men’s hearts have been tempered by pain. They have learned horrible lessons. But they have also learned that doing the right thing in the midst of crisis saves lives.

God uses good hearts. Hearts tempered by pain. Impure, human hearts. Prepared hearts. If you yet must, take the first step toward making yours a good heart. Ask Jesus into your life. But if you already have done that, prepare for greater usage, greater responsibility. God uses good hearts. God used David’s heart in many productive ways, as we will see as we work through his life story. From that story we will learn that David was no saint. But praise God for that: it means that God can use us, too. No matter when and how hard the storms hit.