Thus the judgment of God lies upon him, and an evil spirit from the Lord comes to trouble him. (xvi.) And now the time has arrived for revealing again “the secret of God.” For in all the seasons of man's destruction of himself, there has been another thing going on in the plans of the blessed God. Thus of old, the promised seed is sown in man's field of briers and thorns. (Gen. 3) While his brethren are filling up their sins and sorrows in Canaan, Joseph, unknown to them, is growing up in Egypt for their help: while Israel is in the heat of the furnace, Moses is preparing to be their deliverer in the distant solitudes of Midian: And again, while disasters follow sins in quick succession, the Judges are brought forth as God's deliverers for the people; and at last, when the priesthood was defiled, and the glory gone into the enemy's land, Samuel the child is brought forth to raise the stone of help.
Thus had it been before, and so is it now again. Saul and the kingdom are bringing ruin on themselves, but David, “the secret of God,” is under preparation to set the throne in honor, and the kingdom in order and strength. And what are all, these things but notices to us of Him who is the true secret of God. For as such, the blessed Son of God is now, though flesh and blood decay, the hidden seed in the believer, that is to burst forth in the resurrection a plant of glory. And as such He will by-and-by bear up the pillars of the earth, when all things else are dissolving. He will then come forth out of His secret chambers, as Joseph or as Moses, as Samuel or as David, and shall be as the light of the morning, after a dark and dreary night, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds.
And this is always the way of grace: it comes into exercise after man has been convicted of entire insufficiency. It speaks on this wise: “Except the Lord had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.” Man makes Jerusalem a Sodom, a filthy rain, and then out of that rain, God in His own grace and strength builds again “a city of righteousness.” (Isa. 1) And this grace ever takes for its instrument the weak thing and the foolish thing of this world. Such was Jesus of Nazareth, such was Paul with a thorn in his flesh, and such is David now. “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh upon the heart.” Man had already, as we have seen, looked on the outward appearance, and found his object in Saul, who in person was the goodliest of the children of Israel. But God's choice was not to be ordered by such a measure. (Psa. 147:1010He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man. (Psalm 147:10).) A rod out of the stem of Jesse is His object, a root out of a dry ground in which there was no comeliness before the eye of men, the one of whom his father, “according to the flesh,” says in scorn, “there remaineth yet the youngest, and he keepeth the sheep” —the one, who like a greater than he, man was thus despising and the nation abhorring. (Isa. 49:77Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, because of the Lord that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee. (Isaiah 49:7).) This one, this youngest son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, the keeper of a few sheep in the wilderness, is now God's object. “Arise, anoint him,” says the Lord to Samuel, “for this is he.”
And here again I must notice something that seems to me to have great moral value in it. I allude to what appears to have been the different condition of Saul's house and David's house, when they are severally brought before us. Saul's house, as we have seen, was of no repute in Israel, but had made a fortune as people speak. David's, on the other hand, had once been in honor, was of the tribe of Judah, and in its genealogy bore the distinguished name of Boaz, who had been, perhaps, the first man in his generation. But now it seems to be otherwise with them, for David and his father and his father's house have no distinction now, but simply take their place among the many thousands of Israel. But what of all this the world finds its object in Saul ("for man will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself”), and God, in David. And these things teach us, beloved, that it is safer to be “going down,” than “getting up,” as the word. is, in the world. And they tell us also that whom God will exalt, He first abases; whom He will glorify, He first humbles. He puts the sentence of death in the children of resurrection. But with the wicked there are no bands, their strength is firm. (Psa. 73) Saul went through no sorrow up to the throne, as David did. Esau, the man of the earth, had dukedoms in his family, while Jacob's children were still homeless strangers on the earth (Gen. 36), yet it is written, “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated.”
God's way is according to this, hard indeed for flesh and blood to learn, and God's hand thus found its object in David, and we now have accordingly a new feature in the scene before us. We have David, God's chosen, as well as Saul within, and the Philistine without. David is before us in the strength of the Spirit of God, and he soon gives proofs of his ministry both upon the rejected king and upon the uncircumcised. Both are made to own the power of the Lord that was in him. Whether it were the harp or the sling, his hand is skilled to use either. The king had an evil spirit in him, and the uncircumcised is breathing out slaughter, but David stands above both in the strength of the Lord. The unclean spirit goes oat from the king at the bidding of his harp, and the Philistine giant falls under his sling. (16, 17) It might be thought that king Saul's evil course was interrupted by this, but it soon appears that this was rather only another stage in his downward way. The sow was to return to her mire. The unclean spirit goes out only to gather and bring in seven other spirits more wicked than himself. This quieting of the evil spirit was but a flattering of God with the mouth, for the king's heart was not thereby set right with Him. He was not estranged from his lusts by it. His love of the world and its praise, his self-will, and hatred of the righteous, rule him still, and God and His word and His glory are as little regarded as ever.