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[0:00] We're going to be in 1 Samuel chapter 16 and then we're going to go to 1 Samuel 17. So we're going to be right in this little area here, but there are quite a few scriptures, so try to read fast here.

[0:12] 1 Samuel chapter 16, beginning in verse 11. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and behold, he keepeth the sheep.

[0:26] And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him, for we will not sit down till he come hither. And so this is the setting is probably familiar to you.

[0:38] This is when the Lord sent Samuel to bless a new king for Israel, to anoint a new king for Israel. And Samuel arrives at Jesse's house and he has many sons and they're all there around the house.

[0:52] And he went to each son and the Lord had not chosen any of the sons that were present. And so Samuel asks, Are there any other children?

[1:04] Is this everybody? And Jesse says, There remaineth one young, the youngest, and he's out keeping the sheep. And so Samuel said unto Jesse, Go get him.

[1:14] Get him here, and we're not going to even sit down until he comes here. And so just about 12 verses later, we're reading and understanding more about David.

[1:28] And we go to verse 23, 1 Samuel 16, verse 23. And it came to pass when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp and played with his hands.

[1:41] And so Saul was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him. And I would like to jump all the way to 1 Samuel 17, verse 40.

[1:55] 1 Samuel 17, verse 40. And we're going to read until 50. 1 Samuel 17, verse 41.

[2:32] 1 Samuel 17, verse 41.

[3:02] 1 Samuel 17, verse 41.

[3:32] And he will give you into our hands. And it came to pass. Then the Philistine arose and came and drew nigh to meet David that David hasted and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.

[3:45] And David put his hand in his bag and took thence a stone and sling it. And it smote the Philistine in his forehead. And the stone sunk into his forehead. And he fell upon his face to the earth.

[3:58] And so David prevailed over the Philistine with the sling and with the stone and smote the Philistine and slew him. But there was no sword in the hand of David.

[4:09] And for just a little bit today, I just want to talk to you from this thought, the shepherd, the singer and the slinger. Let's pray, Lord Jesus. I thank you, God, for your word.

[4:20] I pray it helps us. God, I pray it has free course to our hearts, our spirits. Lord, today I pray, Lord, that this is a word that gets us through life going forward, Jesus.

[4:33] That's something that we can always refer back to in our way that we live for you, in the way that we connect to you, Jesus. And I pray, God, that you be in the rest of this service today. Let your perfect will be done.

[4:44] In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. You may be seated. It is wisdom for a disciple of Jesus Christ to study the word of God, to think on the word of God, and to apply the word of God to their life.

[4:58] One way to do that is to study the examples that God gave us in his word. One thing about the scriptures that I appreciate is that the people in the Bible are real people.

[5:11] Amen. They're real people. What I mean when I say that they're real people is that they're not people with superpowers.

[5:22] They're not perfect people. Although they may have made themselves very available to God, maybe more available than we make ourselves to God. Maybe they have had better devotions to God than we do, better spiritual disciplines to God than we do.

[5:39] And we look at them as some great people, and they are by doing that. But it was all their feats and all their successes that they have and all the examples in scripture is not something that they did on their own.

[5:53] It was God through them that made them great people. But really, the reality of it is that they're no different than you and I. They have the same restrictions as we do as imperfect humans in that, you know, a human can only run a certain speed, even up to the fastest man on earth.

[6:12] It can only run to a certain max speed. This is part of how a human is designed. We can only hold our breath so long underwater. We can only jump so high. We can only do certain things.

[6:23] There's a certain level of feats that we can accomplish as humans in our own powers and wills, no matter how well you train or whatever. But anything beyond that would be supernatural.

[6:35] And any time you see in scripture where we read of these supernatural things, you have to know that they were regular humans just like you and I. But there's something different about them.

[6:46] And granted that it was that God was moving through them. God was using them. And they were allowing God to do that. They make mistakes. They're not perfect. They get themselves into trouble.

[6:59] They're just like us. They're not whole until they have allowed God unrestricted access into their lives. And we're not going to be made fully whole until we allow God unrestricted access into our lives.

[7:13] And so the Bible doesn't use perfect people as examples, but God uses imperfect people. And so I and maybe you can relate and have hope.

[7:25] And so it is wisdom to recognize the lessons in these people that are recorded in the scripture. They are here for a reason. And David is absolutely, of course, one of those people.

[7:38] I believe the Lord wants to help us today as disciples of Jesus Christ by the example in David. In 1 Samuel, chapter 13, Samuel, the prophet told Saul, the very first king of Israel, that the Lord would have established Saul's kingdom forever.

[7:55] But because of his disobedience to God's word, Saul's rule would soon end. And instead, Samuel said, God has looked for and has found a man that is after God's own heart.

[8:08] And the Lord has set it up that he will be the leader of his people. And that man after God's own heart was David. And that's saying something.

[8:19] When God said he looked for and found a man after his own heart, it's in both Testaments, the Old and the New, David was said to be a man after God's own heart.

[8:30] In Acts, chapter 13, verse 22, it says, And when he had removed Saul, he raised up unto them David to be their king, to whom also he gave testimony and said, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all of my will.

[8:48] No other man, not Abraham, not Moses, not even the prophet Samuel himself, or any of the New Testament apostles, or anyone else ever is given that description and title that David was found by God to be a man after God's own heart.

[9:06] That should cause us to take note of David and to study David and to see how the example of David can help us today as disciples of Jesus Christ. I don't expect I'll ever be given that same title, and you probably won't be either by God if no one else in the Scripture was described that way.

[9:26] But if I can learn something from the only man described to have a heart after God, then I want to learn what that is and apply it to my life. Up until the Lord began to talk to me and work with me on this sermon today, whenever I thought of David, I thought of two things.

[9:43] One, mainly, he was the one that slayed the giant. We hear that from Sunday school and growing up in church. You're going to hear many messages preached and lessons taught on how David confronted the giant and killed Goliath.

[9:59] And so that's obviously one thing that we probably all know about David. And the other thing that came to me later, the second thing is that what I'm talking about in a sense, is that he was found to be a man after God's own heart.

[10:13] That's something that stood out to me in Scripture. So these two things are how I've always thought of David, the two primary things and two very impressive things to have on your resume.

[10:24] But God showed me, and it's right here in the Scripture, that before David was famous for killing that nasty old giant, he was a shepherd.

[10:36] He was a shepherd. He tended his father's sheep. He wasn't afraid to get dirty. He wasn't afraid to be out in the field doing work while his brothers were hanging around the house.

[10:49] We found that when the prophet of God showed up. That's exactly what was happening. David was out in the service of his father tending to the sheep. He wasn't a comfort seeker.

[11:01] He was willing to do work. He was willing to put in the effort it took to advance his father's, you could say, kingdom or house, right?

[11:12] And so he had this, he was a shepherd, and he wasn't selfish. A shepherd can't be selfish. A shepherd has to look to the health and well-being of something or someone else.

[11:26] And so there was no selfishness there. He wasn't egotistic. If he had an ego, he would think that he wouldn't have to be out.

[11:36] And if you've ever herded sheep, I haven't, but I've studied it in the past for other messages. It was a dirty job. You actually got down with the sheep, and you were dirty, and you were out in the wilderness, and you were dealing with all the things that come with sheep.

[11:53] And there's a lot of stuff there. And so it takes someone without ego to be a shepherd. And he wasn't prideful. He wasn't full of pride.

[12:05] That pride keeps us from the service of being others-minded. And he had that heart after God's own heart. He was a shepherd. He cared for others.

[12:16] He took care of things. He was a responsible man or young man. And he wasn't lazy. He wasn't filling his time with his own personal pursuits. But he was constantly in the service of doing his father's work, taking care of business.

[12:32] And I believe that every disciple of Jesus Christ should have a shepherd mentality. It's not just reserved for a pastor. It's reserved for everyone that has God's spirit dwelling inside of them.

[12:44] If you have the Holy Ghost, you have the spirit of a shepherd inside of you. Amen. He is the great shepherd. And I believe every disciple of Jesus Christ should have that shepherd mentality.

[12:55] Every disciple of Jesus Christ should be selfless. In Philippians 2, verses 4 through 5, it says, Look, not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.

[13:08] Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. I mean, to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, we have to have the mind of Jesus Christ. We have to have his spirit controlling our minds in a sense that we would submit to his leading and guiding.

[13:23] And I promise you, it will be in the way of a shepherd. And David was a shepherd. And we need to all have to have that shepherd attitude and mentality. Another thing that I learned in Scripture is that David was a singer.

[13:37] I've heard it before. I've heard messages on this before, but it was never very prevalent to me when I thought about David, as I mentioned earlier. But I'm recognizing now that it's important that David was a singer.

[13:53] The book of Psalms were songs and poetry written by men moved on by God. And there were 150 Psalms, and at least half of them were written by David.

[14:03] 73 of them specifically say a Psalm of David. At least two others are credited to David in other Scriptures, bringing his minimum total that we know of to 75 out of 150.

[14:16] So we can safely say that he wrote half of the whole book of Psalms. And David was a singer. He was a worshiper. He always seemed to have a song to God in his heart.

[14:29] Miles, David, was always making melodies in his heart. He was known for it. When King Saul was vexed by evil thoughts and confused and suffering from anxieties, it was David they called for to come and to play and sing for Saul.

[14:46] And Saul would be soothed by David's songs and harp playing. In 1 Samuel 16, verse 23, it says, When David played, Saul was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

[15:01] We have to be exuberant worship in our worship. Because exuberant worship, it reaches others and it brings light to their dark situations.

[15:11] There could be people even in a small group as us that come in and they're dealing with darkness and dark things. Not that they're dark, not that they're evil, but there's darkness and evil all around us all the time.

[15:26] And if you walk through the mud, you're going to get mud on you. It's just the way it is. I just had washed my truck. And I was not even 300 yards from the hotel.

[15:37] And it was a mess already. And Taylor pointed it out. She said, you should have waited to wash your truck when we got to Turlock. Because by the time I got to Turlock, you could not even tell that I had washed my truck.

[15:48] It's just the way it is going through life. You're going to catch bugs on your windshield. And it's because there's nastiness all around us all the time. And we are not of this world, but we're in it now.

[16:00] And we're here to be a light, etc. But what I'm trying to say is that there could be, even within the confines of a small group, people that come in here and they're dealing with dark situations.

[16:13] And we have to come to church and have exuberant worship because it reaches others and it brings light to dark situations. If we could create an atmosphere of praise and worship in our services, even if two or three are gathered in his name and worship him, there's a promise.

[16:33] It doesn't even matter if there's two or three. You could be by yourself. Two or three establishes a word. But the Bible says that he inhabits the praises of his people.

[16:44] There's no minimum number of that. You can be by yourself and you begin to worship God and sing a song. And make melodies in your heart to the Lord. And God will be there.

[16:55] It's a promise from his word. Amen. He inhabits the praises of his people. Amen. And so we have to have that exuberant praise. We have to become a church known for singing and praise.

[17:08] It doesn't matter if we have an instrument, but it helps when we have instruments. But it doesn't matter if we do or we don't. We need to have exuberant worship. And if we want to be blessed enough to allow God to use us to be a light in this city and blessed enough to be trusted by God for him to send someone to us that is in need.

[17:27] We're going to have to first learn how to be worshipers and praisers before he does. Your praise and your worship is a song service unto the Lord.

[17:38] It is a refreshing light to those around you. You can help someone overcome the darkness in their life by praising the Lord with your singing and your excitement about the Lord.

[17:50] David's worship and praise affected the person next to him and yours will too. David's praise was public. It was wholehearted and it changed the atmosphere around him.

[18:04] There's so many scriptures on this. 2 Samuel 6 and 14. David danced before the Lord with all of his might. David was a dancer for the Lord, not just a little bit of foot tapping or clapping a hand.

[18:17] But it says he danced before the Lord with all of his might before the Lord. He wrote Psalm 34 and 3. Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us together exalt his name.

[18:33] And verse Psalm 40 and verse 3. He that hath put a new song in my mouth, many shall see it and shall trust in the Lord. When we sing a song of joy unto the Lord, others are going to see it and put their trust in the Lord as well.

[18:50] Psalm 101 through 2. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. It's appropriate and it's biblical to come to a church service that has singing and worshiping and dancing.

[19:05] Psalm 149 and 3. Let them praise his name in the dance. Let them sing praises unto him with a timbrel and harp. Psalm 151 through 6.

[19:15] Praise him in his sanctuary with every instrument. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. In 1 Chronicles chapter 16, we see it says, Give thanks unto the Lord.

[19:28] Make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him. Declare his glory among the heathen. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Amen. Ephesians 5.19 says, Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

[19:44] Singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. That's New Testament. Colossians 3.16. Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spirit. David was a singer.

[19:56] We have to be singers. We have to be praisers. We have to be worshipers. Another thing that I've learned to know David as a little better is one of the main things that I always known him as, and that's that he's a slinger.

[20:13] I remember when Brother Baglin, I don't know if he had went to Israel and came back. I think he did. When I was probably about six or seven years old, he brought back some stuff from Israel, and one of the things was David's sling.

[20:33] You know, we thought it was David's sling, but it's just, it was, they sell different biblical type things. And obviously they're made today, but they're made to represent and look like how they would have been back then.

[20:44] And it was a sling like David had, and I was so excited. I wanted that so bad. And I don't remember how it happened, but I got it. It was in the middle of the service they were handing out. And I got it, and I loved that thing. I don't know what happened to it.

[20:56] I wish I still had it. That made me think of that very fond memory again. I felt so, like, awesome that I had David's sling, thinking it was actually David's sling.

[21:10] But, you know, the takedown of that giant is what David's known for, right? And as a kid, when you hear those stories, it's something awesome. But something that I've always known but never considered much until now is some of the conversation between David and that nasty old giant.

[21:32] I call him a nasty old giant because that's what Hulk Hogan called Andre the Giant. He's a nasty old giant. I mean, I lifted that nasty old giant over my head and slammed him down.

[21:42] So I think of Goliath as a nasty old giant. And David, in his own way, even a better way, slammed him. But something I've always heard or never really considered was that conversation between them, which I had read to you a good portion of, but there was more.

[22:02] 1 Samuel 17, 26. Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? And it is the fact of life that there are going to be people who are not a part of the kingdom of God that will deny and defy the God that we serve.

[22:23] They're going to question the way we live. They're going to question that exuberant worship that I talked about. They're going to question the way we worship.

[22:34] They're going to question why we pay tithes. You're wasting your money. You know what you could do with that money? Add that money up and think about how much more money you would have.

[22:46] They're going to question why we dress a certain way and why certain things we do and certain things we don't. And more often than not, it isn't a question that comes from a heart of true curiosity, right?

[23:00] It's that they're demeaning questions, ridiculing questions, and questions designed to try to create doubt in you about what you stand for and the power and anointing that comes with practicing those things that they think are foolish.

[23:17] And so they challenge our God in their questions. They challenge your faith in those questions and those statements. In 1 Samuel 17, verse 16, the Philistine drew near morning and evening.

[23:32] He would go down there every morning and every evening and presented himself for 40 days, the Bible says. And he taunted the people of God in the morning and the evening, twice a day for 40 days.

[23:44] 80 times he came out and mocked the people of God and defied God to their faces until David came along. David didn't wait for someone else to answer the challenge against God and God's people.

[24:00] He could, the whole Israelite army, including King Saul himself, put up with someone defying their God and their standards and their way of living to their faces two times a day, 40 days, and not say anything or do anything about it.

[24:18] David only had to hear it once and that was enough for him. Amen. Amen. A disciple of Jesus Christ today stands for truth and holiness. We're not to be ashamed of holiness.

[24:30] We are to be a people set apart who will not bow to the criticism of the world. We don't mind the honest questions, but if someone's doing it in a demeaning way, we need to stand up to those things.

[24:48] and we're to be holy, not worldly. You can see how holy or worldly someone is on the inside by the way they are on the outside. It doesn't start on the outside and go inside.

[25:02] It starts on the inside and comes out of them in the way that we think, in the way that we talk, the way that we act, the way that we dress. All of it is seen on the outside, right?

[25:16] Those things, all of our actions, our words, our attitudes, our dress, those are outward things. And it's seen on the outside, but it represents what we have on the inside.

[25:30] If we are to be separate from the world, we need to be able, I can pick, I've shown Andy. I've been places with Andy doing different jobs and whatnot, Andy Trevino.

[25:44] And with others too, not just Andy, but I can say, I bet you those people over there are of our faith. I can pick them out in a crowd every single time.

[25:56] And it's because of how the women, mainly how the women dress. And sometimes a good Christian guy has his long sleeves on. You can just kind of tell, clean cut, everything. But it's our uniform.

[26:09] You go to work at McDonald's, you're going to wear that uniform or you're not going to work there. There's certain attire you have to wear at different jobs, right? And so not that living for God is a job.

[26:24] To me, it's an honor and that we're in the kingdom of God. But there, I'm not ashamed to say there's uniform involved in that. And it goes a long way as a witness. And so I could pick us out of a crowd and you can too, usually, right?

[26:38] And so I would try to always make, prove my point to them. And at some point, we would finagle our way near them. And I would say, what church do you go to?

[26:50] And they'll say, oh, we go over here to this church. And every single time, it's one of our churches. And it just makes me feel so proud and happy inside to see it.

[27:00] And then to be able to use that as a witness and proof to those from the world that I'm with that we are separate from the world. You can pick us out in a crowd.

[27:12] And that's a good thing. We should be able to be picked out in a crowd, not because we're weird. The word peculiar that we're supposed to be doesn't mean that we're weird. It means that we're a treasure to God.

[27:24] Exodus chapter 19, five through six says, you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me, a kingdom of priests and an holy nation. Leviticus 20 and 26 says, you shall be holy unto me for I am the Lord, am holy and have severed you from other people.

[27:42] He has intentionally severed us from the world. He wants us to be separate. He wants us to be different. And it's an honor of him. And it brings him glory.

[27:53] Deuteronomy 14 and two, the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself. Second Corinthians 6 and 17, come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord.

[28:04] Romans 12 to be not conformed to the world, but ye be transformed. James 4 and 4, the friendship of the world is enmity with God. It means it's enemy of God.

[28:16] And I'll explain that a little bit more. It doesn't mean we don't have friends that are in the world. It means being a friend to the things of the world, not the people of the world. And Ephesians 6 and 13, take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand the evil day and having done all to stand.

[28:35] Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. Acts 5, 29, we ought to obey God rather than men. Right? We can be ridiculed.

[28:46] We can be questioned. We can be torn down or made to feel demeaned or degraded because of what we do, but we should not worry about what other people think.

[28:59] We should just rather worry about what God thinks of us. Daniel 3, 16 and 18 says, we will not serve that God. It's not worship the golden image. That put Daniel in a lot of trouble with the people that ruled the place, right?

[29:14] But they stood up for truth and what was right and was separate from the people that was in power at that time. So the disciple of Jesus Christ should not bow to the pressures of worldliness or participate in worldliness, but we should fight back and defend our holiness standards and our way of life as a slinger, someone that defends the teaching of God and stands up against the mockers, the nasty giants that come and try to mock us, not fear and cave in and stand idly by it, but we have to be slingers to defend our beliefs and our God's teachings, and David did that.

[29:55] He was a slinger. The shepherd, the singer, and the slinger, and I think we can all get something from those three aspects of David today. King David was a shepherd, a singer, and a slinger.

[30:07] King David knew how to take care of others and not be focused on himself. David knew how to serve and do his father's business. He knew how to sing praises, and him doing that, it affected others around him in a positive way, and David knew how to fight and defend for truth.

[30:30] He took a stand in defending God and the ways of God, and so I believe that those are all aspects and qualities that we can find, and just a regular man example that was in the Bible that wasn't perfect.

[30:45] If you read the whole story of David, he was a murderer. He murdered out of, he was an adulterer, and then he tried to cover him up with murder, and that's probably a little more, more of a criminal history than hopefully we have in this building today.

[31:05] But God was able to use him mightily, and his failures in those areas cost him. He paid for it, and there's consequences to our sin and things like that, and so I'm saying I'm pointing out David's trash a little bit too because I'm trying to tell you that even though he was greatly used and mighty and renowned and a man after God's own heart in the Bible, we can't think that.

[31:33] We can never equate to those things. It may be true. We may never obtain those kind of statuses in the kingdom of God, but in our own ways, we need to be growing and getting as close to the mark as we can.

[31:47] Aim for perfection, understanding that we're not perfect and we'll never achieve it, but when we fall, we get back up, and we go again, and we don't give up on God, and God doesn't give up on us, and so let's all stand.

[32:04] I wonder if just before we leave today, we can pray one more time. Let's find a place to pray and connect this word to our hearts and minds today, and let's take the word and grow from it.

[32:19] Amen. Let's be disciples of Jesus Christ that are about our Father's business and willing to put in the time and work even when others aren't and being concerned and worried about others more and being worshipers, praisers and worshipers and creating an atmosphere of praise when we come together and then also defending our values and truth and principles that God teaches us in his word.

[32:51]  Amen. Let's apply it to our hearts today. Let's find a place to pray.