Thursday, February 7, 2008

Hebrews 11:32, Psalm 23

IDEA: David’s experience as a shepherd shaped how he worked as a king and how he related to God.

PURPOSE: To help listeners realize that God does not waste our experiences.

Let me introduce myself.  My name is David Jesseson.  Most people don't know me by that name.  They simply call me David.  Or Your Majesty.  Nobody ever calls me Dave. 

Let me tell you something about myself.  I grew up in a fairly difficult situation.  We had a large family.  I was the last of 8 sons, the last of 10 children.  So when I was born, my father Jesse was old.  In fact, very old.  You sometimes talk about the generation gap.  But between my father and me there was a gap that was as wide as the lake of Galilee.  The truth is that my father favored my older brothers and I was left to tend the sheep or run errands.  I don't know what you'd make of that except that I had to deal with that all of my life.

In my growing up years, my father sent me out to take care of the sheep.  That's a lonely job, and not one that most people would aspire to.  But it had some advantages.  I found that that's where I developed my interest in music.  When I was alone out there with the sheep, I learned to play a crude two-string instrument, but later on I learned to play a harp.  Playing a harp proved to be an advantage.  My first touch with the kingship came when I was invited to the court of our first king, Saul, to play for him to sooth his nerves. 

Being a shepherd also helped me look at the people.  People are like sheep.  They were dependent on me as a leader and I did my best to care for them.  In fact, you'll find that in much of the scriptures kings are called shepherds.  Not all of us did that well.  But there's something you learn about leading people when you lead sheep.

Something else that developed out there with the sheep was that I learned to fight.  The flock was always threatened by predators—lions, bears.  Sometimes a lion would attack the flock.  On a few occasions a bear attacked the flock.  I used my rod .  That's a club, a bit like a baseball bat with stones hammered into the end.  Sometimes when there was a predator on the other side of the flock, I'd throw that rod, that club pretty accurately.  More often I'd use my slingshot.  I always carried some stones and with my slingshot I would hurl that stone across the heads of the sheep and bring down any attacker.  And sometimes I had to fight those animals by hand.  They were close, they were hungry, and they would just as soon have torn me apart as get one of my lambs or sheep.

I used the skill of the rod and slingshot often.  It was part of being a shepherd that prepared me for what God had in front of me.

Something else I learned out there with the sheep.  That is that I came to realize, not early in my life, but later on, that what I was to the sheep, Jehovah our God was to me.  That all that I did for the sheep – taking them to good pasture, seeing to it that they had grass to eat, leading them through dangerous places to better ground, even taking them to places in dark valleys we had to go through—it was something that God did for me.

I told you I was a musician.  I liked to compose songs.  I wrote a number of songs that you call Psalms in praise of God.  I wrote some of them when I was discouraged, and when I was afraid.  I wrote some of the psalms when I had sinned against God and sinned against other people.  But they were all summed up in one of the psalms I wrote in which I recognized that I was a sheep and Jehovah was my shepherd.  Maybe you have read it or even heard it sung: “The Lord is my Shepherd.  Therefore I shall not want.” 

I don't know if you've thought about it, but when I called God my shepherd, I was also saying that I was a sheep.  Frankly that did not seem like something that the king of a nation would write.  Kings like to portray themselves as lions or eagles or great horses.  As far as I know there's never been another king who described himself as a sheep.  Sheep are so helpless, so dependent, so stupid.  They're everything that a great king does not want said of him.  We want to project a stronger image. 

So all of that is to say that I was often given the task of taking care of the sheep because I was the youngest boy.  And frankly, I think my father thought more highly of my brothers than he did of me.  But I have found that God has a way of putting us into situations which at the time we don't appreciate, but looking back, it's like a school, a classroom, in which God is teaching you, even though you don't know his lesson plan. 

And there is something else I need to tell you.  Sheep go astray.  That was also true in my life.  Sheep just wander off, one tuft of grass, another tuft of grass until a sheep doesn't even know where it is.  There came a time in my life when I wandered off from God.  You can't imagine how far away I got.  I got involved with the wife of another man and as a result she got pregnant.  And then to cover up what I had done, I had her husband – one of my mighty men – I had him murdered in battle. 

I wish I could tell you that on my own I came back to God, but if you know anything about sheep, they wander off and they don't have the good sense to come back again.  No, God, like a good shepherd, sought me out.  He sent a prophet by the name of Nathan.  Nathan and I were friends, but he came to confront me to tell me what I thought was a secret.  Do you know how he began?  He told me a story about a wealthy man in the kingdom who had flocks and herds and across the road from that wealthy man was a poor man who had only a little ewe lamb.  The lamb was like a pet for him.  That little lamb slept with the man at night.  Nathan told me that that wealthy man with flocks and herds, when he had a visitor coming, went across the road, and instead of taking from his own flock to prepare a meal for his visitor, he took that little ewe lamb who belonged to that poor man.  When I heard that story, I was furious.  In fact, I roared, "The man who would do that deserves to die!  He will restore 4-fold what he has taken!"  I thought Nathan was talking about lambs and sheep.  He was talking about me.  He looked at me and in a quiet voice he said, “Sir, you are that man."  So before I ever returned to God, God sought me out.  And that too was part of his being a shepherd to me.

Well, I've got to go.  But I hope sometimes as you read the story of my life, you'll be aware of the fact that while I was a shepherd for my people as their king, before God I was just a sheep and he was my shepherd.