In order to understand the discipline to which David was subjected, we need to bear in mind the great elements of character which he typified, and which, through divine teaching, and the mortification of his nature, were expressed and foreshadowed by him. He was, as to his position, constantly a type of the Lord Jesus Christ; but, being a man of like passions as we are, the higher his calling, the more he required to be self-mortified, in order that he might be in a state of soul corresponding and suited to his elevated position: and therefore we shall see that the great aim of all the discipline which he undergoes is to fit him for the place to which God in His grace appoints him.
And is it not thus with us all? Do we not need to be disciplined and prepared for any place which grace confers on us? The higher we are raised through the same grace into the apprehension of the grace itself, the more do we require to be subdued and purged: and how this is done, our own private histories, if faithfully recorded, would detail. In order, therefore, that we may learn to note and observe this His discipline with ourselves carefully and accurately, our blessed God presents to us a recorded history of His ways with others who have gone before us; and that of David is a striking exemplification of that wondrous nurture and admonition by which He educates—subduing and mortifying in order to suppress what runs counter to His grace and purpose.
The first notice we have of David is where Samuel is sent of God to anoint him king instead of Saul. (1 Sam. 16) Here, in the first circle of his life which is presented to us, we trace the elements of the character and position of one who was so largely to engage our attention afterward. We find him, the youngest son of Jesse, absent from home, caring for his father's sheep in the wilderness; and his countenance, that true index of the innermost being, announcing what manner of man he is— “ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to.” “And when Samuel anointed him, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him from that day forward.”
Typically, David as anointed represents our Lord after the baptism of John, when the Holy Ghost descended from heaven and abode upon Him. And as the Lord entered on His public ministry, consequent on this anointing of the Holy Ghost, so also does David, the type, enter on his. As to our Lord, the concentrated goodness in Him exposed the evil around: or, rather, the perfection of the witness supplanted all shadows and figures of it. So now, as soon as the Spirit of God comes upon David, “the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.” David, doubtless, little knew, when the Spirit came upon him, that his first essay as God's man would be to assuage the violence, the spiritual violence, of the head of the kingdom. Saul had been advised to seek out a man who was a cunning player on the harp to chase the evil spirit from him; and the very man recommended to render this service is David, who is fitly described as one “cunning in playing, a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him.” “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp and played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.” What an apparently humble service for God's anointed king, one might be ready to say! But what moral pre-eminence! It seems but a small thing to play on a harp; but small services done under the power of God's Spirit effect the most remarkable result. The Lord, while on earth, filled this place with reference to the evil and violence of all power that surrounded him; but to David it was also discipline. Whether he understood what the anointing in its full bearing indicated, we are not told; but coupling this with the fact of the Spirit of God coming upon him, he must have felt that he had abilities for a higher office. But here the genuineness of true power and subjection to God are proved. It was God's appointment that he should fill the place; the king required his services, and he rendered them without gainsaying; nay, rather, he discharged it with consummate ability. Faithfulness in the least proves competency for the greatest; and David is taught in his first public start to use the great abilities which God had given him to promote the greatest good required at the time. And what can be more noble or kingly!
Though David was greatly beloved by Saul, and became his armor-bearer, it appears that he was only occasionally with him, and that he had not surrendered the care of his father's sheep in the wilderness; for when Saul gives battle to the Philistines in the valley of Elah (chap. 17.) David is not with him, and we are expressly told that he had returned to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem, and that it was from thence that he, by his father's instructions, came to the scene of the battle—I suppose about forty days after the commencement of it. I note this, because it shows us the alterations so useful and necessary for divine discipline. David had been an inmate of the palace, the king's armor-bearer, greatly loved by him, and, moreover, had rendered him the most signal services; but he passes from this to the humble place of caring for his father's sheep in the wilderness, and in obscurity serves with as much zeal and satisfaction as in the highest sphere; thus proving, by the facile way in which he passes from one to the other, the true metal of his soul, and the singleness of his purpose, as a faithful servant, in whatever he is called unto.
A more signal and glorious service is, however, now in store for him; but it is brought about in a very humble way; for he emerges from the wilderness and the care of the flock by order of his father on a very simple mission, viz., to take supplies to his brethren and see how they fare. But while diligently executing this order, an opening or demand on him arises for testifying for the glory of God. And for this demand the man of God is ever ready. David, having just discharged the object of his mission, is arrested by hearing the Philistine defy the armies of the living God, and his spirit stirred within him—like Paul. He immediately determines to encounter him. How prompt and self-possessing is the power of God! Though commissioned for so simple an errand, he is ready at a moment's notice to enter on the most notable, with the utmost zeal and prowess, though at the same time with the greatest simplicity. Refusing Saul's armor, which he had “not proved,” he takes what is most natural to him—five smooth stones from the brook; thus indicating that he need not be invested with any greater circumstances than those in which God had placed him, or with any greater means than those which came within the range of his calling. So, with the simple equipment of a shepherd he is content and fearless, and can face the terrible foe with a staff, a shepherd's bag, a sling and five stones—smooth ones, too! What a grasp divine power must have had on him! And how full was his possession of it, to be able to apply it with such quietness and composure! David meets Goliath as calmly as he might have met a child, and returns his challenge with all the dignity which invests a soul which knows that the divine power, which it implicitly rests on, will thereby be a weapon in its grasp. And dependence on that God, whose deliverance it has proved in its own private wilderness-conflicts with the lion and the bear, renders it fearless and calm in facing a more terrible adversary, before whom the whole host of Israel quailed. One stone sufficed, and the giant fell! David, still equal to the moment, though he had rejected Saul's armor as means of vanquishing, is now rightful possessor of that which he had vanquished; so he took Goliath's sword, stood upon him, and “cut off his head therewith” —in all of which action we notice the adroitness and wisdom of divine power. He must have had a glowing sense of what God had wrought by him; and it must have been an immense gratification to have to be the means of so great a deliverance; yet, like the greater than David, no popular honors are decreed him. And it must have been discipline to him to find, after all that had passed, he was unknown to Saul; and though taken into his house, it is without any promise of favor. True, Saul had set David over his men of war, and the women celebrated his exploits in songs; but none of these in any way expressed a due sense of the services rendered or the deliverance wrought by him—none, save one, and that one God had prepared as a solace for David's heart, amid all the ingratitude and violence which was to be displayed in the very scene of his service and victory. The love and devotion of Jonathan is as yet his only compensation. Like the Lord Himself, he must find his greatest services unacknowledged, save by the little remnant attached to His person; and who, like the poor woman (Luke 7), felt that He was everything to her, while the Pharisee and the great ones were hollow and irresponsive to Him. The Lord surely valued the love of His disciples, and it cheered Him in His course here, while so slighted and unknown of men. David was allowed still more solace, in the wonderful and touching attachment and devotion of Jonathan, who ever remained faithful to him; but he had also to learn that this is all he must reckon on, let his services be ever so great. He must not depend on those whom he has served, but only on the one whose affections he has won. It must be heart-allegiance, not popular or royal favor—a blessed lesson for any servant, a fine and holy line for the soul to be led into!
But ingratitude soon gives place to enmity. Saul now envies David, and “eyed him from that day forward.” “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house.” He seeks David's life with the javelin in his hand. Saul, I apprehend, is a type of the world, assuming a religious title, just as Christendom is sustained by the world: and the more faithful we are to it, the more do we provoke its enmity. But how useful is this enmity to the man of God! It eventually, if he continues faithful, drives him away from all association with it; for, however he may serve, he can never win. I do not say that David had no right to go to Saul's house—he, typifying the Lord, was there as the deliverer; but that, in the end, he is compelled to abandon it: as every faithful servant will find ere long that he must either fall or abandon all association with the world.
Various are the methods which Saul resorts to for David's destruction. And such bitter and undeserved hatred may surprise us; but it only discloses to us the malice of the worldly professor, which no amount of goodness or service will disarm. While David presents to us the picture of one who likes to serve in the midst of his people—a noble desire, and most fully exemplified in the true David, who served the most, and was the most social of men.
Saul now tries to entrap David by offering him his eldest daughter, on condition that he should fight the Lord's battles; for he is not yet so hardened in iniquity that he would publicly lay hands on him: but he said, “Let the hands of the Philistines be upon him.” David never gets Merab, though he evidently would have regarded it as a most unexpected honor; but it was not to be realized. “It is the continual dropping which weareth the stone,” and this was always the character of schooling necessary for David. How he must have winced under each vacillation and deceit for which he was so little prepared, when he entered the royal circle! And the noble and strong can ill brook the meanness of envy; but David was being taught thereby the deceitfulness of this present evil world. Saul, contrary to all probity and honor, bestows Merab on Adriel; but still intent on David's destruction, he offers him Michal as a snare, on condition that he should obtain for dowry “an hundred foreskins of the Philistines.” David readily acceded; and not abiding by the limit of the contract, he, according to the greatness of his nature (for he will be no man's debtor), exceeds the condition, and “slew two hundred men.” But the more we are above the spirit of the world, the more it will hate us; and Saul now “becomes David's enemy continually.” And this faithful servant must now have learned that all the goodness and service in the court was for naught; for increase of nominal honor only brought more deadly and inveterate hatred. He must have experienced, at a distance, the feelings of Him who said, “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin.” “They hated me without a cause.” There is now no longer any cloak to this hatred; for “Saul spoke to Jonathan and all his servants that they should kill David;” and the latter is warned of this intention by Jonathan, “who delighted much in David.” Touching and gracious are God's ways with His people! If He sees it needful to teach His servant by a bitter process the evil of association with the world, and that he must needs separate from it, He, at the same time, provides for him a devoted heart, in which He could entirely confide. David had one green spot, one fond enclosure, which, like a guardian angel, preserved him from the machinations of malice and all uncharitableness—a resource which David's antitype knew but little of on earth, though none appreciated it more than He. Jonathan warns David, mediates with his father, and Saul relents, and “he was in his presence as in times past.” All these alternations of discipline are necessary. When we are brought so low as to “hide in a secret place,” the reality of our resource in God is not only proved, but ascertained for ourselves; but when prosperity is again renewed, the soul can contrast the quality of its rest, when apparently resourceless, with that which it experiences when natural resources are abundant: and this produces, I doubt not, if we are faithful, a growing depreciation of the natural, in comparison to the divine; for, however we may try, we can never find in the lower resource that rest which we have in the higher.
David, restored to favor, serves with diligence, but is soon assailed again, and only escapes by a stratagem of Michal, of her whom Saul had provided as a snare for him. And now, convinced that he cannot abide in the royal house any longer, he flies, renouncing his position, and everything dear to him as a man except his life. And whether does he flee? Where does the break with Saul naturally drive him? To Samuel at Ramah. Samuel, after undergoing another line of discipline, had also, from godly sentiment, retired from association with Saul. And now the true king, after every effort to serve and win the existing power, being forced to retire also, he cannot fail, as he walks in the divine path, to meet the one who had already traversed it. David and Samuel, the servant and the prophet, are congenial—the one just entering into, the other emerging from, the School of God: for David was as yet a youthful, while Samuel was an aged and well-trained, learner in that school; but being of kindred spirit and aim, they meet and dwell together. And this is the true, holy, and divine way to attain association with the godly. If you have traversed the divine path, and I enter thereon, we must meet and walk together, for though man's paths are many, God's is but one.
But what had David learned in all this? When obliged to flee for his life, he seeks shelter and sympathy with the separated prophet? He had learned by experience what it was to endeavor to maintain his place in the world which professedly owned God; and now convinced of the futility of his attempt, and still more of the wickedness which opposed him, he enters on a new line, even to learn what it is to walk under God's hand alone, and separated from all whom he was ready to serve, as he had tasted of the world's acceptance, so dangerous and uncertain in its nature; so now he must be disciplined in the sorrows of rejection. We must remember that David was God's own selection for the throne of Israel; and not only so, but that in the very commencement of his course he had been anointed for this high post; but in order that he should occupy it according to God, he must be educated in the qualities which become God's king. It is always God's way to appoint first, and then to qualify. With man it is the reverse: he requires qualification before appointment; but we may rest assured that God will fit us for whatever office He has destined us, after he appoints us thereto. This is the divine principle, as one has so fitly expressed it: “First wears the laurel, then begins the fight.” Thus God's first action towards David was to appoint him king, and from thence date all his experiences, exploits, and difficulties; for I fully believe that it was after this that he killed the lion and the bear; but how long a process of probation did he require before he was fit to enter on the high place for which he was destined! At the stage of process which we are now considering he had passed through two courses of education; one at home, feeding his father's sheep in the wilderness, in which he had proved himself most valiant and successful; and the other in the highest position in the world, and withal the religious world—loved by some, the people's delight, but envied by the king, the object alternately of favor, deceit, and enmity, and at length compelled to surrender his position and escape for his life. The first circle in cur histories will always be found to embrace and disclose the chief qualities which will distinguish every subsequent circle of our lives; consequently nothing is more important to a Christian than how and under what guidance he commences and describes his first circle. David's was of a fine order and contained all the elements of moral beauty which the succeeding circles so amply developed, as we shall see. He now entered on his third course, which extends unto the death of Saul, and may be designated the period of his rejection, when the ruler of Israel thirsted for his life; a time of peculiar suffering, but of ample, manifold, and blessed experience of the goodness of God, and at the same time of the weakness of his own nature.
( To be continued.)