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Listen to sermons from Church of the Incarnation in Atlanta, GA.
Before we get started, I want to begin with a quick advertisement. Today's sermon is going to we're gonna be moving through a lot of chapters, and I'm gonna be leaning heavily on a book written by Jean Edwards called A Tale of 3 Kings. Now I don't know if any of you guys have read this book. It's become kind of an evangelical classic. I know especially in Pentecostal circles, Assemblies of God Circles, YWAM, Youth With A Mission sells this on their website.
Jon Ziegler:My father who was in Assemblies of God pastor reread this book every year, And when we hit this spot in the lectionary this week, I said, oh, I need to go back and read that book that I probably haven't read in, like 20 years. And I wanted to see, like, you know, with my, Anglican transformation, is it still gonna hit? Is it still gonna be good? And, I'm happy to tell you that it still hits, and that it's good. And, I think the most godly thing you could do, even better than listening to the sermon would be to just log on to Amazon right now and am serious and buy it for $7 and 76¢ with free shipping if you have Prime.
Jon Ziegler:Because sitting with this book will it prayerfully will do more for you than the sermon. Alright. That's the beginning of my advertisement. If you read it, you know it. If not, you're welcome to borrow it for me, after I make January read it, because we both need it.
Jon Ziegler:Alright. That's the advertisement. Now let's go on to a game. I like to start with games. Games are fun.
Jon Ziegler:We're gonna pray, get guess that German word. I don't know if you guys like languages. I'm into languages. Even if you don't know German, it could just be fun to to guess words, and German's got a lot of words that are their literal meaning is just kind of hilarious. And so this will be good for us this morning.
Jon Ziegler:I know I got some buddies that study German. I'm looking for our classic German scholar is missing this morning on vacation probably. Alright. Fernweh. What a good word for the summer.
Jon Ziegler:Anybody know what this means? Fernweh. The opposite of this word is Heimweh. Heim means home, weh means sore or sick. So it's the opposite of homesick.
Jon Ziegler:If you're in German, you could say, like, if you really just wanna go on vacation, like you're just dreaming of being somewhere else other than here, you've got Fernwe. It describes the feeling I don't want to be somewhere else. A lot of us have that in the summer. Right? You're you're watching your friends on Instagram as they travel to Iceland, and you're like, man, I wish I were in Iceland right now, as you melt at a hot birthday party for your kids.
Jon Ziegler:Alright. This 1 might be a little easier. Let's see if you can get this 1. Hanshu. What could hanshu mean?
Jon Ziegler:Well, these are gloves. And literally in German, it means a hand shoe. You wear hand shoes in German. It's just a it's a funny thing. Another really great word, stink tia.
Jon Ziegler:Man, I see a lot of folks took friends in Spanish here. We don't have a lot of German scholars. It's good though. You're learning. Of course, the word stink means stink, and the word tear means animal.
Jon Ziegler:This is a skunk. What a great word for a skunk. Why would you call it a skunk? It's a stink tear. It's a stink animal.
Jon Ziegler:That's what it does. Another great 1, gonna come up in the text today. Vild Pankler. The Vild Pankler. Of course, Vild means wild and penkler means peer.
Jon Ziegler:This is someone who pees in the wild. You pee outdoors. I don't know if you know it's very frowned upon in in Germany. They have very, like, very strict etiquette around how you should pee. And if you're wondering about that, it's because you're uncivilized Americans.
Jon Ziegler:If you live there, they will instruct you, especially for men. They're very strict on how that works. Alright. I'm trying to throw some easy ones now. Zeitgeist.
Jon Ziegler:You guys know this 1? Zeitgeist. It kind of is used in the English. This, of course, is the spirit of the times. So Zeit is times, Geist is spirit.
Jon Ziegler:The spirit of the times. Alright. The last 1, the 1 we really wanted to get to aside from all the jokes, Schadenfreude. Schadenfreude. You guys know what this 1 means?
Jon Ziegler:It's brought over to the English language. Oh, schadenfreude. So the word schaden is, like harm, and freude is joy. And so it's the joy you have, when someone, something bad happens to someone. So the definition, the experience of pleasure, joy or satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering or humiliation of another.
Jon Ziegler:This would be like when you have a certain football team that's your favorite, and then the other 1 is in the Super Bowl, and they blow a lead. You got a little schadenfreude. You're kinda happy at what just happened. In our reading from second Samuel chapter 1, there is a surprising lack of schadenfreude. Instead, we find David composing a lament for the loss of king Saul and Jonathan who died in battle against the dreaded Philistines.
Jon Ziegler:If you don't know, Saul had begun to regard David as his enemy. And for no righteous reason, Saul had become a jealous, a mad king, mentally unstable and was paranoid that David would usurp him. And so David had to flee. He lived in caves and was hunted by Saul and his army like an animal. Why?
Jon Ziegler:Why then is David composing a song to lament the death of the king who hunted him and wanted him dead? Why instead of schadenfreude is David expressing genuine heartfelt lament. What is it about the heart of this king David? That's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk to you about God's school of brokenness.
Jon Ziegler:The formation of a king in a cave. Just a little rewind, a little recap as we do. 2 weeks ago, the prophet Samuel anoints the boy David. Right? As God's king over God's people.
Jon Ziegler:And then a week ago, David defeated Goliath. Right? We talked about that. He defeated this Philistine giant, demonstrating that he is the true protector and deliverer of God's people. This week, what do we expect?
Jon Ziegler:What might you expect when God chooses you to lead God's people, when you slay the giant, you might just expect victory after victory after victory. That's kind of how I imagine things. Right? The story would go straight from anointing to ruling, but instead this morning we're gonna learn about the process by which God forms the heart of a king. It's in the school of brokenness.
Jon Ziegler:Let's talk about enrollment in the school of brokenness. This was actually first Samuel 16. Right? Remember? The prophet Samuel showed up in town and David was out there doing his job, tending his sheep like any other day.
Jon Ziegler:Had no idea that this day would be any different, and then he ended up being anointed as the king of all of Israel. What an exciting moment. And as Gene Edwards puts it in his book, A Tale of 3 Kings, quite a day for a young man, wouldn't you say? Then do you find it strange that this most remarkable event led the young man not to the throne, but to a decade of hellish agony and suffering. And that day, David was enrolled not into the lineage of royalty, but into the school of brokenness.
Jon Ziegler:I wonder about you. I wonder if you've ever had a word from God spoken over you. You are going to be a great dad. God is going to make you into an influential businesswoman. You are going to you are gonna be an influence in your neighborhood for the gospel.
Jon Ziegler:Your neighbors are gonna come to faith because of your witness and your efforts. God is going to use your scientific research to bless humanity, And we hear a word from God spoken over us, and often we expect it to happen quick and easy and painless. Why? Well, because God said it. Right?
Jon Ziegler:And he can do all things. But we see a different pattern in the Bible emerge. We saw it back in Genesis with the story of Joseph Joseph sold into slavery, wrongly accused, and put into prison before God's dreams would come true for him to be a great ruler. And we see it here with David. And Joseph and David, they ultimately point us to our lord Jesus Christ, who was anointed as the Messiah, the king of Israel, but that anointing led him through suffering, and as Hebrews 5:8 puts it, he learned obedience through the things he suffered.
Jon Ziegler:In holy week, we pray this prayer. Almighty god, whose dear son went not up to joy, but first suffered pain and entered not into glory before he was crucified. Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross may find it none other than the way of life and peace through Jesus Christ our lord. Gene Edwards puts it this way. David seemed to understand something that few of the wisest men of his day understood.
Jon Ziegler:Something that in our day, when men seem wiser still even fewer understand. What is that? God did not have, but wanted very much to have men and women who would live in pain. God wanted a broken vessel. And friends, often we imagine that pain and opposition mean that we have missed the will of God.
Jon Ziegler:Perhaps this story is here to remind you this morning that God uses the pain and the hurt and the injustices to shape you into a broken vessel. A person of great humility and trust and submission to the will of the father. And this is the kind of heart that god is looking for. God has a university. It's a small school.
Jon Ziegler:Few enroll and even fewer graduate. Very few indeed. God has this school because he does not have broken men and women. I had been hoping that God was looking for someone who had been to seminary because I had done that. It turns out that god really wants someone who is broken, who has suffered pain and isolation, and I had very little experience in those areas.
Jon Ziegler:And when God calls you, he is looking to enroll you in the school of brokenness. Let's take a moment to look at some of the courses offered in this school of brokenness. The first course is Spear Dodging 101. Anyone ever sign up for that course? We see this in 1st Samuel 18/19.
Jon Ziegler:David got anointed king and then he slayed the giant Philistine. And so this landed David a job in the palace. And actually, this job in the palace had 2 parts. It's really interesting. So the first the first job, role is mighty warrior.
Jon Ziegler:And for this job, he leads successful campaigns against the Philistines. He's really good at this. He goes out, he seems to win every time. So that's that's job number 1. Job number 2 is harp therapist.
Jon Ziegler:He plays music for kings that are struggling with anxiety, afflicted by evil spirits. Now I have 2 people in my family that are in these job roles. My older brother, Josh, is in the army and been a career soldier. He's been deployed to Afghanistan harpist, and she hangs out with harp therapists, and she's played, for people that need some peace. And in my mind, these are 2 very different kinds of people, you know?
Jon Ziegler:The 1 you want to be your harp therapist maybe isn't the 1 you want, to carry an m 16. But it turns out both of these people are found in the man David. And you might have guessed that the first job was the 1 that was more hazardous, like the warrior thing, but it turns out that the harp therapist had the most job hazards. Why is that? Well, because Saul became jealous of David.
Jon Ziegler:David was victorious and popular, and Saul knew that David would 1 day become king, but he didn't know the way in which David would become king. And so he was always worried that he was gonna do the wrong thing and try to usurp his his power. And so he became not only jealous, but driven to the point of madness. And he begins to throw spears. We see this in 1st Samuel 18, 1011.
Jon Ziegler:The next day, an evil spirit from God rushed upon Samuel, and he raved within his house. David was playing the lyre as he did day by day. If you don't know, the lyre is a harp. It's like this kind of u shaped harp, you know, that you see the the Cupids playing on the clouds or whatever. Right?
Jon Ziegler:It's that 1. And Saul had a spear in
Jon Ziegler:his hand. He was just kinda hanging out with that spear, and Saul threw the spear for he thought, I
Jon Ziegler:And David eluded him twice. And then the same thing happens again in chapter 19, so he eludes him a third time. Put yourself in David's shoes. It's your king, the guy that you love, the guy that you serve. You fight for him in battle.
Jon Ziegler:You play music to make him feel better. You're a 100% loyal, and yet he's throwing spears at you. Anyone here ever have a spear thrown at them? You were doing everything your boss ever could have wanted and she attacked you anyway. Maybe someone in your family got jealous about how things were going for you and how everyone was speaking well about you and they just started throwing spears for no reason.
Jon Ziegler:Maybe you were serving under a pastor, fighting their battles, expanding their ministry, and from out of nowhere, suddenly spears from the pastor. What do you do? What do you do when someone starts throwing spears at you? Well, the easiest thing to do is to take the spear and to throw it back. Right?
Jon Ziegler:Here's the only problem. Once we start throwing spears, we become like Saul the spear thrower. And if you don't know, the name of the game, the name of the sermon is how not to become a king in the order of Saul. David's job in life is to not become Saul. It's to protect his heart and keep his heart like the heart of God.
Jon Ziegler:God is looking for a king that is broken, not like Saul. God puts the unbroken spear thrower in your life to inflict pain. Notice the verse says that God had sent that evil spirit on Saul, and that suffering is what God uses to form you into a person of gentleness and into a person of peace and of self control. Edward says that David gradually learned the well kept secret of not becoming a spear thrower. 1, never learn anything about the fashionable, easily mastered art of spear throwing.
Jon Ziegler:David refused to become the kind of person who threw spears. It would have been so easy for him to take up the art. 2, stay out of the company of spear throwers. David would remove himself from the presence of Saul, and he worked hard to stay away from people that had his character. 3, keep your mouth tightly closed.
Jon Ziegler:Repeatedly David says things like, I refuse to raise my hands against God's anointed. David had so many bad things he could have said about Saul. He could have just gone out and told all of Israel, hey, you guys don't know what's going on there. This palace, this guy is crazy. He's throwing spears even though I did nothing.
Jon Ziegler:He could have done everything and rallied all of Israel around him, but instead, he kept his mouth closed. And Edward says, is it in this way that spears will never touch you even when they pierce your heart? The first course is, Spirit Throwing 101. Then we get to our second course in God's school of brokenness, cave life 201. And we find this in first Samuel 21 and 22.
Jon Ziegler:David flees for his life. He travels through the land of the Philistines. He goes where his enemies are, where Saul won't come looking for you there, and he settles into his new home in a cave, And it is here that he experiences the loss of home. He goes from living in the palace, the most dignified place that you can live in, to living in a cave, the place where animals live. 2 is the loss of reputation.
Jon Ziegler:He goes from being praised by all the people to being shunned by all the people. He's talked about he's now marked as the radical subversive rebel who got on the wrong side of the law and he rightly now lives on the edge of town or with those enemy Philistines. And parents are now saying to their kids, you better be careful. You better live you better live right. If not, you're gonna wind up like that guy David who lives in caves.
Jon Ziegler:3 is the loss of community. When David leaves, he leaves all alone. He doesn't raise a coup. He doesn't take his most loyal soldiers with him. He flees all alone and he trusts the future to God.
Jon Ziegler:Yes. It's true. Men of bad reputation, men in debt, and criminals will come and join him in that cave. He's gonna have a band of brothers after a bit, but not at all because he was trying to start a revolution. They just came out to find him.
Jon Ziegler:Homeless, without a reputation, all alone, in a cave. And this, my friends, is where God forms David, the hymn writing king, the 1 who knows how to lament and cry out to God when he is being hunted. How will the king administer justice to the poor? He became poor. Why will the king provide housing for the homeless?
Jon Ziegler:He lived in caves. Why will the king care for those who are mourning and on the margins? Because from the cave, David could write lyrics like we find in Psalm 6. I am weary with my moaning. Every night, I flood my bed with tears.
Jon Ziegler:I drench my couch with weeping. My eyes waste away because of grief. They grow weak because of all my enemies. Maybe this morning you are living in a cave. God has you in the least comfortable spot imaginable.
Jon Ziegler:But don't imagine that being in this cave is a place where God has forsaken you. The cave is the place God has brought you to form you. God is looking for broken men and women, and this cave is His special school for you. 2nd course was cave life 201, and the final course we're gonna talk about in God's special school of brokenness is radical submission to the will of God 300. It's an upper level class.
Jon Ziegler:You gotta pass them to get into this 1. First Samuel 2425. Saul was hunting David with his men in the wilderness. I'm gonna read a little bit of this to you. Saul was told that David is in the wilderness of En Gedi.
Jon Ziegler:And so Saul took 3, 000 chosen men out of Israel and went to look for David and his men in the direction of the rocks of the wild goats. The rocks of the wild goats. I don't know about you, that just sounds incredibly unimportant. Like someone is hiding out there in the rocks of the wild goats and you're gonna bother, right, to take 3, 000 people and go after these guys in the rocks of the wild goats. And Saul came to the sheepfold beside the road where there was a cave.
Jon Ziegler:And Saul went in to relieve himself. Saul is a. I've been waiting the whole sermon to say this. He's a wild peer. Do you remember?
Jon Ziegler:He's doing the thing that Germans frown upon. Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. By the way, I have nothing against the Villed Pinkler. Right? My son is definitely a Villed Pinkler, will pee anywhere he can in our yard.
Jon Ziegler:We're working with him on it. The men of David said, hey, here is the day in which the Lord said to you, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it seems good to you. As it seems good to you, David. Then David went and sneakily cut off a corner of Saul's cloak. Afterward, David was stricken to heart because he had cut off a corner of Saul's cloak.
Jon Ziegler:And he said to his men, lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the lord's anointed to raise my hand against him for he is the lord's anointed. Think about this. You're being hunted by this man that has treated you so unfairly that has literally ruined your life. Now you caught him taking a piss in a cave and you have a chance to kill him. And instead of killing him, you just cut off a little piece of his cloak, and then you have a heart that feels bad about that.
Jon Ziegler:Because you know in your heart that God has anointed this man as king, and if he's not gonna be king, it's gonna be God that's gonna do it, and it's not gonna be you to be the 1 to undo it. Who has a heart like that? And so Saul comes out and David holds up the the cloth and he says, hey, look, I got a little piece. I got a little piece of your robe. Why are you hunting me?
Jon Ziegler:Verse 10, this very day your eyes have seen how the Lord gave you into my hand in the cave and some were urging me to kill you, but I didn't. I spared you. I said I will not raise my hand against my Lord for he is the Lord's anointed. This bad king is actually anointed of the Lord. See, my father, see the cloak of your hand in my hand.
Jon Ziegler:For by the fact that I cut off the corner of your cloak and did not kill you, you know for certain that there is no wrong treason in my hands. I have not sinned against you, though you were hunting my life. May the Lord judge between us. May the Lord avenge you, but my hand shall not be against you. As the ancient proverb says, out of wickedness comes forth wickedness, but my hand shall not be against you.
Jon Ziegler:Against whom has the king of Israel come out? Who do you pursue? A dead dog? A single flea? May the Lord therefore judge and give sentence between me and you.
Jon Ziegler:May he see it and plead my cause and vindicate against you. Notice, it's the Lord that vindicates David, not David vindicating himself. When David had finished speaking these words to Saul, Saul said, is this the voice of my son David? Saul lifted up his voice and wept. He said to David, you are more righteous than I, for you have repaid me for good, whereas I have repaid you for evil.
Jon Ziegler:Today, I have you you have explained how you have dealt with me and what you did, how you did not kill me when the Lord put me into your hands. For who has ever found an enemy and sent the enemy safely away? So may the Lord reward you with good for what you have done to me this day. Now I know you shall surely be king and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in your hands. Swear to me therefore by the Lord that you will not cut off from my descendants after me, and that you will not wipe my name out from my father's house.
Jon Ziegler:And so David swore this to Saul, and then Saul went home, but David and his men went up to the stronghold. David knows that God wants David to be king. David knows that Saul is trying to kill him, and David has the opportunity to save his own life and to become king, to kill Saul. He could do it all. He could get the outcome that God wanted, but by the wrong means.
Jon Ziegler:And David refuses to raise his hands against god's anointed. This is a radical submission to God's will. This is David giving space for God to be God. David says, if God wants to take Saul out, he will do it. But God puts Saul there, and it's not my job to remove him.
Jon Ziegler:And this, my friends, really got David's fighting men angry. They too are being hunted by this man, Saul. And they're literally risking their lives for their leader David that they dearly love. And yet David won't finish off Saul when given the chance. He had 2 chances, by the way, and gave it up twice.
Jon Ziegler:David chooses God's ways even when they are unpopular. David chooses God's ways even when there is a sinful shortcut that would achieve God's promises. This course seems to be the hardest 1. Isn't it? It's a hard course.
Jon Ziegler:It's so hard for me to let God be God. I'm so American. I'm just so ready for action. I'm so ready to take things into my own hands and to make sure justice is served. And Jean Edwards reminds us that we never really can judge the heart of a king.
Jon Ziegler:We actually never really know if we're dealing with a Saul or a David. And he says, hey, if you think you know for sure that you know when you have a Saul, you can be thankful that you weren't living in the time of Jesus' crucifixion because they were all sure they had a Saul on their hands and worthy of death. David trusted that God wanted him to be king, that God would bring about this rule without David having to sin, without David subverting the authority that God had put in place. How does the story end? Well, David let God be God, and God was God.
Jon Ziegler:And God gave Saul over to the Philistines, and they took his life. And David could mourn the loss of Saul because David truly was a man after God's own heart. Like God in Ezekiel 33, David could say, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Like Jesus on the cross, he could say, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. David refused to have a hardened heart towards Saul, even though Saul's heart was hardened towards him.
Jon Ziegler:David must have known that if he let his heart harden towards Saul, it would eventually harden towards God as well. And David would have become a king after Saul's own heart, instead of a king after the heart of God. The heart of the king was formed in the school of brokenness. In poverty, in mortal danger, in hunger and homelessness, David learned humble obedience to God the father. And friends, here is the beauty and the goodness and the truth of this story.
Jon Ziegler:David becomes king without becoming a soul. God's path of suffering led him to becoming the righteous ruler that Israel had always wanted. The suffering wasn't in vain. It would bring joy to an entire nation. David's rule would inspire generation and ultimately point us forward to Jesus, the Christ, the suffering servant who would be made lord of all.
Jon Ziegler:Anyone here wanna go to school? God has a university. It's a small school. Few enroll and even fewer graduate. Very few indeed.
Jon Ziegler:God has this school because he does not have broken men and women. In God's sacred school of submission and brokenness, why are there so few students? Because all who are in the school much must suffer much pain. And as you might guess, it is often the unbroken ruler, the Saul, whom God sovereignly picks, who metes out the pain. David was once a student in this school, and Saul was God's chosen to crush David.
Jon Ziegler:Anyone here hoping to enroll in this school? The good news this morning is that we have a king. King Jesus, who has gone before us into the school of brokenness. He was David on the big stage. He lived in poverty, and it was the Lord's will to crush him and to allow him to be given over to the souls of Jesus' day.
Jon Ziegler:But God raised him up, and through his suffering, we are forgiven for all of our sins and all of our Saul-ish ways. And he sent his spirit to live inside of us and to guide us and to comfort us in the cave. And we can say yes. We can say yes to the school of brokenness and suffering with great hope that our God is a God of resurrection who lifts us up from the pit and puts a song in our hearts and forms us into his instruments of beauty and goodness and truth for the sake of the world. Amen.