Shepherd to King

February 20, 2019

Psalm 22:1-3a

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?  O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.  Yet you are holy,”

When I study the life of King David, there is so much to admire as a young boy, a shepherd taking care of his father’s sheep.  His dependence on God as the lion and the bear came to kill the sheep, and David knew it was God who gave him the ability to stand and protect the sheep entrusted to him by his father.  Later as he stood fearless before the giant Goliath, do you recall what the boy David told this mighty warrior?  You will find this record in 1 Samuel 17:45-46, ^“David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.  This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.”  

And that is what happened to Goliath and the Philistine army on that very day. 

Do you recall Saul trying to kill David and David leaving out the window on bed sheets tied together by his wife, the daughter of Saul?  Yes, so much to admire, but after David got wealth and power he had a loyal soldier killed to cover his sin of sleeping with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah.  David had trouble in his own family and did not deal with it, and it later came back on him when his son Absalom conspired to take the kingdom from him.  With all that said, we find that “David was a man after the heart of God.”

David had great faith in a big God, and often I find myself having small faith in a big God.  I, like David, am a mess, and usually all I want is God to speak in a way that this pea brain will understand for I also have discovered I’m very needy.  God has called me into His family; I’m not my own; I was brought with a price, a high price, the blood of Jesus Christ.  And I do not find peace in this upside-down world, my rest I find in Jesus Christ, and the finished work of the Cross.  And like King David I proclaim, God is Holy!

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice