J. Paterson Smyth

Lesson III

David—His Youth

1 Samuel Chapter XVI. 1-13, Chapter XVII.

§ 1. Was His Religion Real?

W E have studied the sad lessons of the life of Saul. We begin now the lessons of the life of David. Very different lessons. I don't at all mean that David was an entirely good man, or Saul an entirely bad man. No, they were both men with good and evil in them. But they differed greatly in the attitude of their hearts towards God. The Bible speaks of David with decided approval, and of Saul with decided blame. But you must not therefore think it your duty to look only for good in the one, and for evil in the other. That is not real Bible study. You will miss the best of the Bible teaching unless you are quite honest and candid, giving full weight to the evil and the good in each of its characters.

I don't like troubling you with so much introduction before the story, but I am so much afraid of your making any mistake. I have heard people object that David should be called in Scripture the "man after God's heart." They think of some grave faults and sins in his life, and they have an uneasy feeling about his beautiful psalms, that they are the utterances of a man whose religion is hardly very practical. They say, "He could say very beautiful prayers, and write very beautiful psalms, but with all this he could do actions that were by no means very beautiful." And it troubles their conscience that God should approve of any man for beautiful beliefs or beautiful prayers. They say, "It is the man's life that ought to count with God." Are they right? Surely they are right. Conscience and Scripture are both from the same God, and unless something is wrong they should correspond with each other. It would be horrible that you should ever learn to think that the Bible encourages any unreal religion, or considers sentimental piety or sentimental beliefs in God any equivalent for a clean, righteous, faithful life. The Bible knows of no righteousness except doing and striving after right.

But what the Bible values is the whole bent and aim of the life. It says, it is the relation to God that matters, that the first and last and supreme duty of every man all his life is to strive after right, to put God first. A man may be silly and stupid, and awkward and unattractive, yet if that aim of his life is right Scripture approves of Him. Even if in some great crisis of temptation he falls into a great sin, the verdict of Scripture does not alter. The man's life aim is still after God. He hates and despises himself and bitterly repents for his sin. He is on God's side still in spite of it.

I think David was a true and real man, longing to be good, longing after God in spite of his sins. His cryings after God are at least as real as yours and mine when we have sinned. We are bitterly ashamed. We have greatly sinned. But that does not make it unreal or hypocritical that we should express our desires for God. We do want God really and truly. We would not give Him up for all the world could give us, though we do sin shamefully against Him. Try and judge David as you judge yourself, and perhaps you will learn how, in spite of his sins, this man through the depth of his sorrow and the earnestness of his struggle may have been more after God's heart than many a careless critic who judges him.

Away in the old heroic days of the world, before Romulus and Remus were suckled by the wolf, before Homer wrote about the siege of Troy, there lived amongst the hills of Bethlehem a farmer and weaver of sacred carpets. His name was Jesse. A hundred years earlier the Bible story tells of Ruth, a Moabite girl, who was loved by the rich farmer Boaz. This farmer Jesse was their grandson. Jesse had eight sons and the youngest was David. So you see David had the blood of the Moabite girl in his veins, which I suppose explains why, long after this (ch.  xxii. 3, 4), he sent his father for shelter to the King of Moab. Perhaps it explains, too, his broader outlook in his Psalms. I don't think he regarded Jehovah as the God of Israel only, caring not for other nations.

The little David had seven brothers all older than himself, and two sisters or step-sisters oldest of all. These sisters were probably mothers of children before the younger brother David was born, so that David's young nephews were as old as himself. I think of the little boys playing soldiers together, David and Joab, and Amasa and Asahel, and then I think of sad days in their later lives when they played soldiers in earnest. Sometimes if little boys could see the later life it might spoil a good deal of the play.

I don't think David was of much account in the family. He was the sheep-boy away out on the pasture fields all the day long. But he was of much account in God's plan for the world. God was preparing him for great things by-and-by. It is very wonderful that mystery of God's preparation of the men who are to help Him by-and-by in putting the poor world straight, the silent influences playing around them all unconsciously to themselves. That is what makes the story of a great man's childhood so interesting.

Look at this boy, the bright, handsome, ruddy, young shepherd, all unconsciously educating himself for his great future. Not merely for being King of Israel—that was but a small thing—but for being the great inspired Psalmist who for 3,000 years past has helped the world more than any other man. He did not know that God was training him, but He was. His bodily powers were braced by the hardy open-air life, his courage and self-reliance brought out by dangers to his flock. Then the solitariness of the long day, the absence of distracting cares and excitements encouraged reflection and quiet thought. I have been reading lately about a little shepherd boy on the Welsh hills wondering and thinking all day long while the genius of a great sculptor was growing within him. So with David. All day long practising with his harp, singing to his sheep, thinking in his solitary life those strange, deep thoughts that come to lonely boys, And all the time, though he did not know it, by these thoughts and deeds God was preparing him to be one of the world's greatest helpers.

God is doing the same thing to‑day, preparing children for some life plan that He has for them. I often watch with wonder the young minds growing, and wonder what God is training them for.

I suppose in all the after memories of the lad that was the supreme day of his life. There are certain days like that in many of our lives, days that we look back on as being more important than all the days before. Then David went back to his sheep with the dangerous secret locked in his heart. It would be death to his family and ruin to Bethlehem if Saul suspected it. So the boy went back to his old work.

But how different life must have seemed to him now. How fast his mind would grow. Think of him wandering through the pastures hearing ever in his ears the whisper of the prophet, "God anoints thee king." How it would bring the wonder into his heart and the far-off look into his eyes as he thought of God's great life plan for him. Ah, that is what would make all boys grow high and noble—the conviction that God had a life plan for them. And He has, I think, for each of you as well as for David.

Let me repeat again that you must not think of this as some great miracle of Bible times. That gift is much commoner than men think to‑day. It would be more common still if people would but crave for it. The feeling that comes to the girl at her first Communion, the resolves of the young student on his Ordination Day comes from God's Spirit. And, do you know, I think God's Spirit is teaching even careless people who do not pray for it at all. When I see a thoughtless young mother with her first little baby in her arms feeling the whirl of new strange impulses and desires about the child, I think, like as on David, the Spirit of the Lord comes mightily upon her, and she learns what love means, and how deep are the depths of self-sacrifice. She finds out wonderingly that she would give her life for that child's life—her heaven, if possible, for that child's heaven. And, perhaps, thus she learns the meaning of God's love and God's self-sacrifice, that what she would do for her child by the necessity of her motherhood, God must do for all of us by the necessity of His fatherhood. Remember in such simple common ways may come the Spirit of the Lord.

So, I suppose, God's Spirit came to David and showed him, as it shows that mother, deeper things than he ever saw before. In the morning as he led out his sheep to the green pastures he would learn to think that his care for the sheep was a little parable of God's care for him and he would feel:

As he looked out into the glorious eastern dawn God would seem to him visibly present, and he would sing:

I suppose it is at this great crisis of his life when "the Spirit of God came mightily upon him," that the keynote of his whole life was struck. All through his life, all through his psalms, that note is ringing. What is it? This. That God was close to him and took an interest in him and had a life purpose for him. That he was weak and helpless without God. That he could do anything by the help of God. 

Think of the power it was in that boy's life to feel God thus standing about him. Look at him when he had faced the lion and the bear. "The Lord delivered me from the lion and the bear." Don't you think a lad like that would be ready now to face Goliath?

It is the battle-field of the Valley of Elah. The camp of Israel is on one slope, the big tents of the Philistines on the other. The Israelites are rather small men, lithe and clever. The Philistines are big men; big, stupid, thick-headed giants, the same as when Samson used to fool them and laugh at them long ago. There is great excitement on both sides. And David watches and listens wonderingly. Goliath of Gath, their champion, is swaggering in the Philistine lines, "defying the armies of the living God," challenging any man to come across and fight him. And all Israel stands cowed and silent before him. King Saul is in his tent moody and despondent. There was a day when he would have made short work of Goliath. But that day was past. The Spirit of the Lord was departed from him. He will not go. Nobody will go. The whole camp seems to have lost faith in God, and to have sunk into a fog of torpor and despair Suddenly, like a fresh mountain breeze scattering the fog, comes the shepherd lad's frank, simple faith in God. David cannot understand this cowardice if God is so near. If one is on God's side, he thinks, one could fight anybody. The whole issue of this campaign was turned by this lad's faith in God. Not in himself, or his courage, or his skill. No. He is but a modest shepherd lad with only a sling and a stone. But he trusted, he said, in the might of the living God. If nobody else will fight the giant, said David, I will. "Nay," said King Saul, "thou art but a lad." This was the reply:—"The Lord who delivered me out of the paw of the lion and the bear will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine." That ended the objections. "Go," said the king, "and the Lord be with thee!"

Of course the whole camp turned out to watch this strange young champion with the empty sling in his hand, and the deep faith in God in his heart. It did them all good to feel the contagion of such faith. Down the slope they watch him to the stream in mid-valley. They see him choose his stones carefully, and then walk on. The Israelites are not a humorous race, but it must have been amusing to watch the attitude of the great giant standing in his full armour utterly thunderstruck as it dawns on him that this unarmed boy is being sent out to fight him. How dare they offer such an insult to the greatest warrior of Gath! "And the Philistine cursed David by his gods." Then said David, "Thou comest to me with a sword and spear. I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts. The battle is the Lord's." Ah, how the two armies held their breath now as they watched. It was over in a moment. The raging Philistine rushed at David. David, undaunted, rushed at him. The sharp stone left the sling with unerring aim and lodged itself deep in the brain of Goliath. Oh! what a shout of wonder and triumph rang through the camp of Israel. And David ran and stood on the Philistine, and in a moment he had faced the shouting host with the head of the dead giant in his hand!

This is the thought in my mind as I watch him:—What a training that boy must have got in his religion! What a glorious reality God was in his life! It is humiliating for us in the full light of Christianity that many of us are so far behind that Old Testament boy. But it is a grand lesson of the power that consists not in armour and strength, the power that comes to a man who believes that he is nothing, and puts his trust in the might of the living God. You too will have your giants to fight. You have them in some measure now, the fear of your comrades' opinions—the strength of your many temptations. Don't be afraid of them. Trust in God. David was a great man in God's scheme for the world, and that simple trust in God was the secret of his greatness. All through his life it was the same. Look at him before the lion and the bear—look at him before Goliath. Hear him in his later wars: "God teacheth my hand to war, and my fingers to fight. My hope and my refuge, my fortress and deliverer," etc. (Psalm cxliv. 1). Hear him in the 57th Psalm said to be written when fleeing from Saul. "Be merciful unto me, O God, for my soul trusteth in thee. Under thy wings shall be my refuge till this tyranny be overpast." Hear him in the deep despondency of his life. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Trust thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God" (Psalm xlii. 5).

This is the end of David's young days, his happiest days!

(Read the necessary parts of 1 Samuel xvi. and xvii.)

When did he first hear that he was to be king?

Tell of his fight with Goliath.

What was the secret of David's courage?

Quote any verse in the Psalms expressing his feeling towards God.