“Though he were Son, yet learned he obedience from the things which he suffered” (Heb. 5:88Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; (Hebrews 5:8)). Messiah's sufferings were not necessary to teach Him to obey; He was by nature obedient, for He was holy. He never walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful, but delighted in the law of God. And whether He was like the well-watered tree, or as a root out of a dry ground, as He looked in the eyes of the unbelieving Jew, His obedience would ever have been perfect. He had no opposing will. He came into the world not as the first Adam, at once a man, but born and passing through all the phases of humanity from a babe to a full-grown man. He advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man (Luke 2), that is, there was a growth mentally and physically. If the Son were only a man such a statement is needless; if He were only God, it is incomprehensible. But the Sod is perfectly human and perfectly divine. As man He suffered, and increased in wisdom yet though made like unto His brethren He alone could say, “Before Abraham was, I am.” But having taken the place of man, He condescended as such to learn obedience. Oh, how perfect His obedience! He alone could say, I do always the things that please my Father. He did not seek His own will but that of the Father. This is the perfection of obedience. It was practiced in a path of suffering, the appointed path to the throne. There was no other way possible.
Learning was part of His humiliation when He deigned to become man. The humiliation was deepened when He learned from suffering. The depths of suffering and sorrow were due to Israel's sinful condition. They had learned disobedience, not through suffering, but in the midst of blessing. Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked. They were a perverse nation, and had become enemies. When the Son dwelt among such a people, suffering was inevitable. If He had come clothed with the thunders of Sinai, the suffering must have been theirs; but He came meek and lowly, and riding upon an ass, and the Jews despised Him. The suffering was His. A Messiah, Heir to the throne of God upon the earth, He was lifted up; but His own people rejected and crucified Him. He was cast down.
Messiah took all this from God; not in the mere sense of God permitting it, but as the direct and immediate appointment of God. “The cup which my Father giveth me shall I not drink it.” Thus He learned obedience. Suffering was a moral necessity both or His present path, and for His future glory.
When David was anointed, why was not Saul removed from the scene, and the man of God's choice seated at once upon the throne? If Messiah's path was necessarily through suffering, there was equal necessity for David, of else how could he be a type? It is David's glory to be in a measure suffering as did Messiah. He needed training for his coming exaltation. Saul had no such training; he had warnings as well as signal favors from God. But he was God's instrument for teaching David that he might learn obedience from the things which he suffered. And herein is the essential difference between the type and the great Antitype. David learned because he was taught. Christ learned without being taught. When the evil spirit came upon Saul, there was more than discipline for David; it was that he might answer somewhat to Him who endured the malice of Satan as well as of man. Saul henceforth is the symbol of Satanic hate.
Saul is now definitively rejected; and Samuel is sent to anoint another. Here let us pause and look at Samuel. He who so faithfully rebuked the wicked king, now fears to do Jehovah's bidding. No doubt there was in Saul a nascent hatred as a crouching tiger, waiting for its prey, ready to pounce upon the man whom God should. choose. Samuel knew this, and also that every one who, knowingly or not, assisted David would be exposed to the same murderous hate; as Ahimelech afterward proved. Hence Samuel says to God, “How can I go? if Saul hear of it, he will kill me.” Is this the language of confidence in God? Faith would have said, “What can Saul do against God?” This moment of feeble trust in Jehovah was followed by the mistake of judging from appearances. So clearly is one failure followed by another. Samuel seems to have been much impressed with Saul's magnificent stature. And when he looked on Eliab, who, though he was not of such commanding presence as Saul, was evidently a man of no mean appearance, Samuel admiring the man says, “Surely Jehovah's anointed is before him.” But God's choice of a man to be king depends not upon the adventitious advantages of nature. God had provided Himself a man from among the sons of Jesse, but had not named him to the prophet. The mere qualities of nature are nothing to God. “He taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man” (Ps. 147:10). Samuel is rebuked, and we are instructed. “Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature, because I have refused him; for Jehovah seeth not as man seeth, for man looketh on the outward appearance, but Jehovah looketh on the heart.” The calling of God is not according to human preferences. Here we have an instance of the truth declared by the apostle that God chooses the things that are weak and despised by man (see 1 Cor. 1:27, 2827But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; 28And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: (1 Corinthians 1:27‑28)).
The first word to Samuel was, “Fill thine horn with oil and go; I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided me a king among his sons.” Samuel is afraid. God has compassion on His timid servant, and then says, “Take an heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to Jehovah, and call Jesse to the sacrifice.” As if God said—since you have not sufficient confidence in Me, but fear for your life, I simply bid you call Jesse to a sacrifice, after that “I will show thee what thou shalt do, and thou shalt anoint unto me him whom I name unto thee.” God does not change His purpose, but all that Saul or others need know is that Samuel is gone to Bethlehem to sacrifice. The prophet's fears are allayed. But this was not to his honor. Often we ask for, and obtain, a smoother path; but we lose honor and reward.
But what a condition of Israel's when his coming made the elders of Bethlehem tremble. They knew who he was, and they had conscience of sins. He quiets them. “I am come to sacrifice to Jehovah: sanctify yourselves and come.”
Seven sons passed before Samuel, none of them chosen. David was the eighth. This number is connected with resurrection and glory. It was a national life of glory, a quasi-resurrection when David came to the throne. When the true David comes to reign there will be a moral resurrection and a new national life for all Israel. Their dry bones shall be brought together again, and the breath of Jehovah shall make them a great army. But this glory is not yet. As night before day, so suffering before the glory. David was not in much honor in his father's house; the chosen one of God was unthought of by his father, who had to be questioned before he remembered the youth away keeping the sheep. Who would have thought of him?
Although David is no type of Christ as Head of the church, but only of Messiah the King (though here and there in his life are circumstances which are characteristic of the church), yet the sufferings he endured from Saul mark the path of Him who is Head of the church as well as King of Israel. If suffering was a necessary introduction to the kingdom, it cannot be less so to the higher glory of being Head of the church. The glory of the kingdom is for and in the world—the age to come. The glory of the church is separation from this present world in which the church now is. The sufferings of the church take a deeper, (should we not rather say a higher character?) in having fellowship with the sufferings of Christ, the Head, than those of the remnant with Christ the King? The church is a witness for Christ in this world. If there be no suffering from this world, it has lost its true position, and has a different path from the Master, being no longer a true witness for Him.
Saul's anointing is annulled. There cannot be two anointed kings before God. The effect is immense for both Saul and David. From that day forward the Spirit of Jehovah came upon David, and an evil spirit from Jehovah came upon Saul. Upon David the Spirit was abiding, upon Saul the paroxysms of the evil spirit seem intermitted, though he was the constant instrument of Satan. And Saul, when the Spirit of Jehovah departed from him, did not fall back into the ordinary and common condition of man; he was as marked from that day forward as David. But how awful the difference! In the two men, as in types, we see the personal conflict between Christ and Satan.
Now God brings David prominently on the scene, and makes him from that day forward the point round which all else revolve; in every detail he is the central figure. Whether it be David the fugitive; or David the king, he is the object before the eye of God. Nor could it be otherwise, for David is showing, as far as an imperfect man could, the path of the Only begotten of the Father to God's throne.
The nation had failed under priest-rule and under prophet-rule. God is about to establish a king, and their sin and guilt will henceforth be measured by the way they treat Him. And David in this very thing is the type of Christ. The sin of the Jew is measured by the presence of Christ among them; all previous guilt is as nothing compared with their rejection of Him “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin” (John 15:2222If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. (John 15:22)). The judgment of the Jew, of the world, was involved in His presence; both Jew and Gentile united in refusing Him, and the solemn word is uttered, “Now is the judgment of this world.”
Little did Saul imagine that the youthful player on the harp was then taking his first step in his way to the throne; or that, when he sent for. David, he was sending for the man whom God had anointed to be king. As little did David know when he was soothing by his melodious strains the spirit of the man who would soon become his bitterest enemy, that he was entering a path where he must be disciplined for his high calling, and where in a higher aspect he was to be a type of Messiah. At first Saul loved him, greatly; but when he learned, which he soon did, that David was the chosen of God, then he hated him even to death.
How wondrous and wise the ways of God; how perfectly suited the means to accomplish His purposes, manifold as they are! The troubled soul of the king is refreshed, and for a time David remains in the royal household. But how soon man forgets those who have been in any way a means of good to him! only let self-interest stand in the way, and gratitude and honor, which man boasts of so much, are often cast to the winds. All is forgotten, and on the next occasion when David appears before the king, he inquires who he is. Abner might be excused, but Saul ought to have remembered who had played before him. But forgetfulness of his benefactor was not the greatest of his sins; this is simply human; he willfully opposed the known purposes of God.
The true David, even Christ, has played on His harp to the refreshing of many a troubled soul. He has played to many a sinner on the harp of His great salvation, and refreshed him with His grace. Wondrously sweet to Legion, to Mary of Magdala, when the evil spirits departed from them; and also to the weeping father when He not only commanded the evil spirit to come out of his afflicted son, but added, “and enter no more into him.” And how eventually He plays to troubled saints, refreshing them, and encompassing them with songs of deliverance. Alas, how soon we forget all His benefits! But here David causing the evil spirit to depart from Saul (it was only for a season) is a picture of Christ before Whom demons fly.
At first David was rather in a private capacity. But God's time for his public display soon came; it was in presence of the armies of Israel and of the dreaded Philistine. What a proof then was given that the Spirit of Jehovah was upon him. The giant foe defies the armies of Israel, and Jehovah the God of Israel. He comes in all the might and pride of man, with all the adjuncts of the world, a helmet of brass, a coat of mail, greaves of brass upon his legs, a target of brass between his shoulders, with a spear like a weaver's beam. It is material power of the world in array against the power of faith. This man is the expression of the world's might. His stature nearly ten feet; he is invulnerable before and behind. All is useless, for faith overcomes the world.
How in the pride of conscious strength he boasts against Israel! Saul, higher by head and shoulders than any in Israel, is cowed, and all flee from him. How the Philistines most have gloried in him, a confidence equaled only by their terror when he was slain. In his boast against the servants of Saul he did not reckon upon the God of Israel, Who, whatever Saul might be, would vindicate His own name, and in His own way. Not by opposing worldly means to worldly power, as Saul attempted to do when he clothed David with armor, as if faith in Jehovah could use like weapons as the world. Faith puts them off and goes to meet the foe in the name of Jehovah of hosts. That name was David's shield, and nerved his arm, and gave him victory. This manner of fighting raised the scorn and contempt of the world's power, and made the giant yet more insulting. “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith Jehovah.” His Spirit was upon David, and with the (in appearance) contemptible means of a sling and a stone, as against a dog, the giant falls, and receives his death-stroke from his own sword. The battle is won. The victory is by the Spirit of Jehovah. Israel does not contend, but pursues a flying foe, and reaps the fruit. But it is David the anointed, who becomes the cynosure of all eyes, the wonder, and for the time, the praise of Israel. Saul might slay thousands, but David his ten thousands.
The women of Israel meet the returning army with songs. Their higher praise of David connects him in Saul's mind with the kingdom; for he knew from the prophet that it was given to another. Therefore from that day and forward he eyed David: the chosen of God as such draws upon himself the fiercest and most implacable hatred of the rejected king. So did the Jew treat Christ. Upon His Holy Head fell the concentrated hate of the rulers. Nor is there any more cruel hate in this world than that of the rejected of God upon the faithful.
At this moment there is a bright gleam; the army is victorious, the women are jubilant. It is but a sample of the achievements of Messiah when He comes to reign. Here, as in other portions of the word, men by their action show the energy of the spirit within them, the women, the position resulting from the action, or conduct of the men. Here it is a scene of joy, of exultation; which gives a glimpse of the future, when all Israel will return with singing.
This is not the first time the women of Israel are prominent in song. Miriam and the women of Israel with instruments of music answered Moses and the men of Israel singing to Jehovah over the drowned Egyptians. Deborah was foremost when she and Barak sang at the destruction of Jabin's army; and here they come forth to meet Saul and his army. Though women are restricted from certain functions in service, both under the law, and now by apostolic command, certainly cordiality in praise was never forbidden them. And it was a grateful thing to the army to meet with a joyful welcome where all united in gladness, save one whose heart was filled with jealous rancor against the man whom God had chosen as the instrument of this glorious victory. The poor wretched king, outside the joy common to all beside, soon turned the glad scene into one of deepening distress and woe. As it were, the slain Philistine revives, and the end is the death of the rejected Saul but the triumph of the chosen David.