Bible Survey - 1 & 2 Samuel

First and second Samuel, one of the things that we point out here early on is that, and by the way, we did pray for you, okay? One of the things that we point out here early on here is that 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles, those are apparently, by earlier records, those are apparently broken up into two scrolls because the original scrolls were really big and apparently a little bit unwieldy. So that's why they're broken up, 1st and 2nd, 1st and 2nd, 1st and 2nd, for a few different books there.

The time of the Book of 1 Samuel spans from the end of the Judges period, as a matter of fact, Samuel is the last judge out of that time, to the rise of King Saul, to the transition, just the beginning time, the transition from King Saul to King David. So that transition.

King Saul was a one-man dynasty. He was the start and the finish, and that's the end. And then with King David, we obviously have a dynasty with the promise that Christ will, as a descendant of King David, come and reign again. So that dynasty has not ended.

So we have on the map on the left there a numbered sequence. Let's first take a look at the first Samuel at a glance at the top of the page there. So what we have here is Eli. who is there at the tabernacle. You have Eli, and then Samuel, who is the last judge. And then you have the transition from Samuel, who anoints Saul as king, and then later anoints David as the subsequent king, that Saul's going to be replaced.

The book spans a period of almost 100 years. It says there 94 years, almost 100 years period of time in the book. Now one question that comes up is here's 1st and 2nd Samuel, how much of it did Samuel write? And the reality is since 1st Samuel records Samuel's death, Samuel is only one of the authors. of the book. We have there the prophet Nathan, who was a court prophet in the house of David, in David's court. And Gad, he's called a seer, also wrote about events in 1st and 2nd Samuel.

That's recorded in 1st Chronicles 29.29. So you have at least Samuel and Nathan and Gad were authors of most if not all of the book.

Okay, so now let's take a look on page two. One of the things that happens, things have declined during the period of the judges, and so one of the things that happens is the Ark of the Covenant, which by the way we're going to show briefly again in the main service, the Ark of the Covenant ends up being looked upon as something other than what it was intended to be. So what happened with the Ark of the Covenant during this period of time is...

Well, let's ask this question. I'll ask you. What was the Ark of the Covenant supposed to be for? What was it supposed to be for? Yeah? It's where they kept the sacred objects. And what were the objects? There were three of them, right? So you have Aaron's rod, that's one. Next. The tablets. You have the tablets that contain the Ten Commandments. And then you have some manna. So you have manna, tablets, and Aaron's rod.

These are all things from out in the desert. And they go into the Ark of the Covenant. And where's the Ark of the Covenant supposed to be? It's supposed to be in the Holy of Holies. And who goes in there? The high priest goes in there once a year, that's it, right? So, when they take it out into battle, is that the biblical use of the Ark of the Covenant?

No. Okay, problem. Problem. And so what they're doing, instead of doing it with it as they were supposed to do, they were using it as some kind of a good luck charm. Right? Boy, if we got the Ark of the Covenant, boy, we're invincible or something. Right? And so, they're looking upon it as this good luck charm, as some sort of magical object. You know, this will give us an advantage. Big, big mistake. Yes?

People often pervert that which is intended to be sacred. And that is some object of worship, and we can see that in Do we do that today among Christians? Yeah, and can you think of some examples of how Christians take something and use it in an entirely different way than what was intended? Pardon? Crucifix, right? First of all, these days it frequently has nothing to do with Christianity per se. You'll see people wearing it, they're just wearing it as some sort of decoration.

Yeah, an ornament. So that would be a misuse of what was originally intended. Think of some other examples of misuse of something. I think that people misuse the Bible in the sense that they have a certain favorite verse and take it out of context and use it in a way that God didn't use it in revealing the word. That's right. Multiple misuses of the Bible. Good, good. Any other thoughts on that? The accord? All in one accord? All in one accord, yes. Yeah, if you think about it, a lot of things end up getting misused.

How about what we call the Lord's Prayer? It ends up getting misused. That's out of the Sermon on the Mount. It was spoken to the Jews in the context of being under the law. And it turns out that the Lord's Prayer is actually a compilation of two regular prayers that the Jews use every day. A combination of two regular prayers that Jews use every day.

People misuse the Ten Commandments. Here it was, the Ten Commandments was given on two tablets to be put inside the Ark of the Covenant, and instead they make people think that that's God's top ten. You've got to hold to the Ten Commandments, right? Instead of recognizing that there's a problem with even one law. That's what Paul brought up as an example. The last of the Ten Commandments was brought up as a problem in Romans 7. So there's that. How about the Lord's Table? We take the Lord's Table and we think that that's supposed to do something to us, or baptism.

So there are a number of different ways that people can make the same kind of error that the Jews made thinking the Ark of the Covenant is some kind of good luck charm. God never intended it. I never intended that. Let's go and look at the map here. The problem is the Jews took it out to battle, thinking it was some kind of good luck charm. How did the battle go? Not good. And it got captured by the Philistines. That should never have happened. It should never have happened. Gross abuse. And it ended up really bad. The Jews lost the battle. and it ended up being captured. And the only reason that they got it back is the Lord brought plagues on the Philistines to the point where they said, take it back. Take it back.

So let's take a look through the numbers here. So the resting place of the ark at Shiloh until it was carried into battle. Shiloh was the place where the tabernacle was early on kept during the judges period till finally the tabernacle ended up in Jerusalem and then under Solomon, after David, under Solomon the temple was built. Okay, so you had that first part there. Where's number two here?

Over at Aphek, the Ark is captured by the Philistines in the battle near Aphek, and I'm sure they thought, hey, we've got some great magical piece. Not so much. After a while, they said, we've got to get rid of this thing. Bad things happen when we hold on to this thing. So while they think it's a point of victory, it's not.

So point number three, the Ark placed in the Temple of Dagon at Ashdod until the idol collapsed. Each of the major Philistine cities had a temple, and one of them there farther down in Gaza is the one that Samson destroyed in his last day. And by the way, Gaza is so paved over and covered with buildings, we can't excavate that, but we've excavated other temples of the Philistines.

Okay, so that's then number four, the men of Gath struck by strange disease when the Ark was placed in this city. Okay, so this is their plagues here. Number five, brief lodging place of the Ark at Ekron until removed to avoid the plagues. Let's get it out of here.

6. After the Philistines returned the Ark, it sat temporarily in a field near Beth Shemesh. Well, by now the Jews were afraid. They'd done the wrong thing with the ark, and now they're afraid, especially since that one young man was struck down dead. They thought, oh, we're all in trouble. Yeah, we've got a problem here, right? So first of all, the Jews misused it and put it out there where the Philistines could get it by thinking it's some kind of a good luck charm, which it was not. And the Philistines finally get to the point where they don't want it, so it's just laying out there in the field.

And then the seventh one there, removed to Kirgaz Jerem, the Ark remained here for many years until it was finally moved to Jerusalem in David's time. Yes? But you have to admit that the Ark was used when they were crossing the Jordan. Yes. And the priest did carry the ark. And they were supposed to, right? So they did the right thing with it there. It indicated that it was the ark and the presence of God that actually backed up the water on the Jordan. Yes.

So I can see why they would have extrapolated into this particular viewpoint. That's very interesting you bring that up, because think about that. here was a use of the Ark that was other than what was in the tabernacle, they would extrapolate that, hey, this thing does powerful stuff, instead of thinking we have a powerful God, right?

And so it is very high risk for Christians to drift off into, we've got this magical object, instead of recognizing it's God that's the source of the power and not the object. And that's a big deal. That's a big deal. It is real easy for Christians to start getting superficial and replacing some object or action or practice or anything as some sort of a substitute for relationship and fellowship with and obedience to the Lord.

Yes. And they were told specifically. Yes. Right. And they were told specifically what they were to do. They were not told specifically, take this out into battle and you'll do great every time. Right? Yeah. And it was also before they had a temple or any other place that it would be located. Yep. Yeah. Having the tabernacles kind of a lot of times was around Shiloh, but other times it just kind of float around. Yeah, I think that's a key lesson for us to learn.

It's real easy for us Christians to start looking at superficial things rather than what is God doing and realizing that it is obedience to the Lord and it is relationship with the Lord where the power is. Not in something. Not in some stuff. Not in some magic words. But in relationship with the Lord Himself.

They did use the ark, you make a good point, they did use the ark in a powerful way to cross the Jordan, but that was by specific instruction of the Lord, not just because, boy, every time we hold this ark, powerful things happen and we like the outcome.

Okay, let's take a look on page 3. This is the Philistine threat and the Philistines were a major problem during the judges period during the time of David and Solomon and Saul. During that time the Philistines were a major issue and especially early on there with King Saul.

We don't have the numbers here to work with but let's start by here's Gaza at the lower left there. So here's Samson, this is out of the Judges period. Samson destroyed the temple of the Philistine god Dagon at Gaza. And like I say, that has not been excavated because Gaza is so covered over now with buildings and pavement and concrete and things like that.

But what are some other things that you see here on page three in the Philistine threat? But one of the things that I'll point out here is you have some more general statements. Let's look at the one at the lower center, a confederation of five powerful Philistine cities. That was something that remained for quite some time. Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, Gaza, and Ekron during the period of the judges. So those were major Philistine strongholds there.

Yes, now what we have here is the next one up. This is kind of a third one up from the bottom in the middle. David killed the Philistine giant Goliath between Gath and Ekron. As a matter of fact, let me take a minute here to look through some slides. This is a good point to take a look at that. Here is Bethlehem and it's roughly about six miles south of Jerusalem.

Here's a black and white that's been colorized. I like a lot of the old black and white photos better than the modern photos because a lot of them don't have a lot of the modern, you know, things put over the top and built up. Here is the shepherd's field. So think about the shepherd's field.

What's this? Can you think of a couple times in scripture where that shepherd's field near Bethlehem would be significant, biblically significant? where the angels came when Christ was born. Okay, the angels came to Shepherd's Field when Christ was born. So that would be one. And what's another? Who was the shepherd near Bethlehem?

David. So you have David and then roughly a thousand years later the shepherds in the field. So that was an interesting connection. The shepherds are in the field in the same fields probably that David at times shepherded the flocks. And here is Christ a descendant of David. So when the angel came to the shepherds at Shepherds Field, there was one, this is where David used to shepherd his flocks. And two, a Savior is born unto you who is a descendant of David. announced to the shepherds who also were likely ones who raised sheep for the sacrifices in Jerusalem. So here are the shepherds that shepherd the lambs for the sacrifice. They're getting announced to them the Lamb of God being born in Bethlehem.

Yes? So would this then have been territory of the Levites because they're raising the sheep for the temple sacrifice? The Levites wouldn't necessarily be committed to that. One of the things with the Levites, they didn't have a land, right? They had a location to do something. Yeah, they had certain locations, and of course a number of them would be in some kind of reasonable travel distance, not always, but reasonable travel distance from Jerusalem, just because, okay, I've got to go there regularly, and I don't want to make this a long trip. But you might have some that would be involved with that. Certainly, all the sheep, if they're going to be used in sacrifice, have to pass in terms of being unblemished, right?

Here is the valley of Elah. This is the valley where David fought Goliath. And what you see there in brief is Kirbet Qeiyafa. We're going to mention that here in a minute. Here is Saul's camp looking at the Valley of Elah viewed from Azekah. So here's Saul's camp over here. Here's the Philistines camp over here.

That's it. That's the place. There's the creek. So that's the spot. This is the path of the Philistine exit when Goliath falls. We're getting out of here. That's the path that they went from their camp. They went right along there. So you see, these are the exact locations based on what's been identified. Here's the creek. David went down to this creek, picked up how many stones? Five. Five stones.

He used a sling. The guys who got good with slings were tremendously accurate. Hugely accurate. If they shot something, they were frequently within an inch of what they targeted. And they would shoot stones at something around 70 miles an hour. So you have a 70 mile an hour rock. Imagine a 70 mile an hour rock baseball coming at you.

That's going to impact you. So this is the place, that's the creek, right there. It's the valley, it's the creek. So here's David, he hurls this stone, it's probably going like this. Wham! Hits about 70 miles an hour. Hits Goliath there, just between the eyes. This was excavated at gas and it's a script obviously we're not going to read, but it says Goliath. Real interesting. Doesn't necessarily mean it was the Goliath, but here's an interesting name coincidence that what they dug up there, it fits.

Here is Hebron, and we're going to bring this up in the main service as well. Hebron, south of Jerusalem, you see there Bethlehem, and now roughly twice as far to the south as Hebron. Hebron is the place where it was first bought, the cave of Machpelah, was where Abraham bought a cave there to bury Sarah, and a number of the patriarchs were buried here One exception would be Rebecca, who was buried near Bethlehem. But a number of the other patriarchs, male and female, were buried here at this cave. Here is Gibeon, also mentioned here in 1 and 2 Samuel, not too far from Jerusalem. This is a little farther away than Bethlehem.

The pool of Gibeon is mentioned in 2 Samuel 2.13. This is the pool of Gibeon. Here's an aerial shot there. But what you see there is the pool of Gibeon was open.

They had to pull out 3,000 tons of debris rock. in order to get this thing open. So it was quite an archaeological project. And also with something like that having been filled up with rock and debris, when you take the rock you just don't dump it, right? Because it might have archaeological stuff in it. So you go through 3,000 tons of sorting and sifting. Lots of work, but they did get it open. One of the things, if you go there now, this lower portion, they've got lit because initially it was dug down here, the water table dropped, and so then they made the stairs go all the way down.

So that's the pool of Gibeon. There's the account, it's described, that's the place. Real place, real thing. Here's another shot of the pool of Gibeon. from people looking from up top. So now, here is the City of David in Jerusalem. City of David is a term that gets applied to two places. One is Bethlehem, but the other is in Jerusalem. And so here is the Temple Mount. here and the Temple Mount as it's constructed was from the time of Herod and then some reconstruction done under the Muslims because this is the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque of Omar here. But here is the outline of the City of David as it was during the time of King David.

It's been excavated right in here, particularly, and also other places. So here are the City of David excavations in Jerusalem, and they continue to, at various points, excavate different things. Eilat Matzar, who is a Jewish archaeologist, in recent years claims to have excavated David's palace.

That's not universally agreed upon, but she believes that she found it. But nonetheless, these since the 70s have been excavated in various parts. It was initially a major excavation work and a mapping of things and then from time to time since then.

Okay, here is Valley of Elah, Khirbet Qeiyafa. Here is Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortress city with two gates. Now something very interesting, this was built during the time of King Saul, just over the Valley of Elah, the same one there where David fought Goliath. So here at Kiribati Kayafa, you see the perimeter wall that was constructed there.

The fortress held about 700 people, but it's got an unusual characteristic. Most of the time, smaller fortresses like this would have one gate. This one had two. And it's the only one mention in the Bible that has two. And so when the excavator, the archaeologist who was going through this, and he found the second gate, he said, aha, I think I found it.

Because this is the one place that it mentions two gates, 2 Samuel 18.24, where David was when he got the news that his son Absalom had been killed.

Second Samuel 18.24 then records that.

So anyway, it's an amazing place. They only began excavating it about four or five years ago. So anyway, some real interesting recent discoveries there. So that's been fascinating. Yes, Dan? start off just being along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea? Yes.

Okay, so then as they got rid of some of this and stuff like that, they actually created a vacuum. So the Philistines then just moved in where the other people were defeated and moved out. Yeah, the Philistines were very aggressive. Their tendency was to set up these kind of fortress cities. But then they'd go out from there. They were very aggressive. The Egyptians have records of Philistine attacks. So the Philistines were, kind of by culture, a very aggressive people. And to even take on the Egyptians, I mean, that's quite an undertaking. The Philistine attack on the Egyptians is recorded in the Egyptian reliefs and walls and that kind of thing. So anyway, let's see, I think that's it. Let's continue through here. Take a look at the record there.

We see going farther up, and this is center left, Philistines occupied southwest Canaan, probably migrating here from Kaftor. We've got some early records of where they came from. or the island of Crete in the Mediterranean. Now notice it says this or this. The reality is that the origin of the Philistines is a bit puzzling, historically and archaeologically. Nonetheless, very aggressive people.

The next one over, Israel's Ark of the Covenant captured by the Philistines during Samuel's time. That's the one we saw on the previous map. The next one over to the right, so this is center right. David defeated the Philistines from Geba as far as Gezer. So you see Geba there marked right below there and then Gezer off to the left. So those two breaking their power.

And then the next one up from that, brief resurgence of Philistine power during the period of the divided kingdom. And then King Saul of Israel, mortally wounded by the Philistine forces at Mount Gilboa. So way up north there, not quite to the Sea of Galilee, but way up north there, the Philistines had enough forces to take out King Saul and his family and his forces. That was the end of King Saul.

And by the way, you ever heard of the term Palestine or Palestinian? That's a term that's even today used. That term is descended from the Philistines. It's one of the reasons I don't prefer to call Israel Palestine. Because why is that a problem? It honors and recognizes the Philistines. and not Israel as the rightful people to be there.

Okay, let's take a look at page four. So here's Saul, and I'll read the story of Saul, one of the saddest in the Old Testament, is one of good beginnings, but concludes an abject failure. So how much weight do we put on off to a good start? Not so much, right? Okay.

Anointed by the prophet Samuel is God's response to Israel's request for a king. So notice that, okay, we need a king. And now here's the first one. We need a king. How good was he? Off to a good start, but not a good finish. Saul enjoyed initial success in his military efforts. And 1 Samuel 11 records that. But a victory over the Philistines was darkened by his presuming to offer a sacrifice to God in Samuel's absence.

What's the problem with this? Samuel was a priest, he was supposed to do it. Yeah, this was not proper for a king to do. By the way, there was another king, King Uzziah, during the time of Isaiah, who also presumed to go in and act as a priest. And that came off badly.

So it's interesting, it's something that's like, hey, I'm never going to do this again, and then somebody else has to learn the lesson the hard way. For this transgression, Samuel warned Saul that his kingdom would not continue. You're a one-man dynasty. You're the start, you're the finish, that'll be the end of you. For this transgression, Samuel warned Saul that his kingdom would not continue.

Saul's failure to destroy all of Amalek and direct disobedience of God's command resulted in God sending Samuel to anoint the shepherd boy David as Saul's successor. Rejected by God, tormented by evil spirits, and frightened by the success of David, Saul slowly descended into madness as he repeatedly sought to kill David. Saul's military situation worsened and in desperation Saul even sought to consult the spirit of Samuel through a medium after Samuel had died. The next day Saul went out to do battle with the Philistines and having been severely wounded, took his own life. He took his own life, why? He was mortally wounded actually. He was going to die, but it wasn't immediate. Why would he go and take his life?

Because the culture at that time, if you had a king, they would take the king and they would cut his head off and do all kinds of stuff to him. Yeah, they would basically make sport of him in cruel ways. They would make him be a footstool. They would, you know, belittle him and do cruel things to him. And then they'd kill him, right?

So he'd said, you know, I'm just going to end this now. So it took his life. The chart in the middle of the page there, it says here's the causes of presumptuous sacrifice, loss of the kingdom is foretold, your one man dynasty. It's not even going to pass on to your sons. It's not like, OK, you're ended, but your son will take over. No. No, this is a one-man dynasty. You're the start, you're the finish. Yep. The thing that's pretty remarkable about that is that his son was John's best friend. Yes. Here's David's best friend, but he's not going to carry it on. Yeah. Not going to carry it on. And then a foolish curse, so a curse falls on Jonathan. The next one spared Agag and the flocks, the loss of kingdom. Now, something else about Agag when we get to the book of Esther.

Who was the bad guy in the book of Esther? Remember the name? Haman. And what was his family identity? He was an Agagite. So because Saul failed to carry this out here, the threat to the Jews centuries later came about. So a failure on Saul's part had impacts centuries later. Haman the Agagite, as we'll see when we get to Esther, was the result of Saul not doing what he was supposed to do. OK. And then the last one, lost fellowship with God. So he had unanswered prayer. You pray and it doesn't do any good. OK. Let's take a look at page five there.

Here's Saul's military campaigns. It highlights just a few. The first one, in his first campaign, Saul defeated a garrison of Philistines at Geba, and we've seen that name previously. And then the second one, Saul also waged successful campaigns against the Moabites, Ammonites, and the Edomites.

Now, Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites, who are they descended from? Lot. Lot is the father of Ammon and Moab through his daughters. So those are Abraham's nephew. And then Edom. Who's the father of Edom? Esau. So what you have here is the Jews are descended from Jacob and the Edomites are descended from Esau.

And today, how many Jews are there? A few? Millions of Jews. Today, we do not have identifiable Edomites. The last time that they were identifiable as a group was when a bunch of them went in and volunteered to fight with the Jews in 70 AD. And the Romans took them out. Isn't the city of Petra in one of these? Isn't that in Moab or something? Just where you see the word Edom, just to the south there is Petra. Right. Just to the south there is Petra.

And then what we see finally here, number four, Saul committed suicide at Mount Gilboa after suffering mortal wounds and a humiliating defeat by the Philistines. He knew he was going to die, but he also knew he was going to die slowly enough. He didn't want to do that, because then he'd be subject to ridicule and that sort of thing.

Okay, let's take a look at page 6. Now, here is 2 Samuel. And again, the breakup between 1 and 2 Samuel is just because the scroll was huge. You know, lots and lots and lots of chapters. So they just broke it up into two for that reason. Originally, just one book. First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles, all three of those, one book.

All right, so what you have here is a plot development diagram, which I think is helpful. One, you see David starting off in Hebron. That's where we saw the pictures there of Hebron. So there's Hebron. So David's reigning from Hebron, and first he has political triumphs that you see there, first several chapters, then spiritual triumphs, and then military triumphs, and then at the peak is David's transgression. And then troubles in David's house follow, and then troubles in David's kingdom follow as a result of that.

So rise and decline. So, 7 years in Hebron, 33 years in Jerusalem. By the way, an easy way to remember Saul and David and Solomon, 40-40-40. About 40 years of Saul, about 40 years of David, about 40 years of Solomon. That's also helpful for Moses, remember? Moses was 40 years in Egypt, 40 years out in the desert, being a shepherd, and then 40 years leading the Israelites. So, 40-40-40. Then what you have here, 2 Samuel at a glance, and you see those same things kind of charted out here. What was the situation, what was David's transgression that began his trouble? What was the transgression that began his trouble? Census. He took a census, that was one problem. It was that his only problem.

Bathsheba. Bathsheba. As a friend of mine puts it, he took a bath with Sheba. So how did that come about? Here's David and Bathsheba, how did that come about? He's taking a bath and he's walking the rooftops. Yeah, he's taking a bath out on the visible area and he's walking along the rooftops and looking down from his place there in the city of David. So he's at his palace looking down and that palace was likely somewhere about in here. So he's looking down and Bathsheba catches his eye.

And by the way, was Bathsheba a Jew? No. Bathsheba and Uriah, actually not Jewish. So then he goes and claims her for his own and then has Uriah killed. And so did he get away with that? Uh-uh. What happened? Nathan the prophet told him a story. Yeah, Nathan told him a story. And by the way, that's a parable, right? He told him a parable. And with the way Nathan told it, David said, boy, that guy did wrong, right? And Nathan turned to him and says, that's you. That's you. And what was the consequence? Bathsheba became pregnant, right? What happened to the baby? The baby died, right? So just a quick story. There were consequences to it.

And it was the beginning of troubles for David. It is interesting that when David recognized the seriousness of what he had done, He prayed so earnestly that God would relent and not have him suffer the consequence. And then the people were amazed that when the baby died, instead of going into great mourning, he could stop that and say, well, that phase is finished.

And so he learned the lesson about the consequences You can make choices, but you can't determine the consequences. That's right. We can we can make choices. We can't determine the consequences. Big, big lesson from this. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. But what's interesting, after that baby died, was not Solomon also the son of Bathsheba? Yes. Yeah. In 2 Samuel 7, 8-17, I want to hit just one part there. Verse 16, which is the second to the last.

And your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever. Your throne shall be established forever. This is the establishment of the line of David and the coming millennial kingdom. So this is also through Nathan. So interesting, the Lord would say, here's terrible consequences to what you've done, but I'm also going to make a promise to you. Let's ask this question. Did David deserve the promise? He did not. He did not deserve the promise that the Lord made here. Nobody deserves grace. I think that's key.

Let's look at the life of David on page 7. And these are numbered, so we'll go through them in sequence. To the lower right, David, youngest son of Jesse, was born in Bethlehem and tented his father's sheep there. And by the way, if you're going to have a king, who usually gets the kingship? The oldest, right? Now we can pick the youngest one, right? And by the way, were shepherds well regarded? The shepherds are not well regarded, so let's have the youngest one in the clan, and let's have the one who's the shepherd, let's make that guy the king.

What? You're kidding! Yeah? What's that? Yeah! Yeah! This guy hangs out with sheep all the time, and he's the youngest. You know, we've got a whole bunch of kids, you know, a whole bunch of boys here. You know, what are you doing? Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. And he was also short. I don't know if Greg Hedding had anything to do with it, but it was unusual. Yeah. So here's this guy. Would he be the one you picked? That's the one God picked. Here's a guy, after he blows it, the Lord makes a promise to him, a descendant of yours will be on the throne forever. Forever. We see the next one there.

David was a harpist in King Saul's court at the capital city of Gibeah. At that time that was the capital. Number three, David who served as a soldier in Saul's army killed Goliath in the valley of Elah. And then four, Saul became angry at David, even though he was a friend of Saul's son, Jonathan. David had hidden Nob, Gath, Calah, and other places. What happened is Saul started going after David. Did David go after Saul? No, David even had the opportunity to take Saul out and didn't. So it wasn't a mutual thing. David is hiding and running and trying to keep away from him until finally it's the Philistines that take Saul out, not David.

That's really cool because that's where the word anointed actually comes up because Saul was the anointed one from God and we see that word frequently even into the New Testament where Christ was anointed. Right. And the name Christ means anointed. Right. And Messiah in the Hebrew. Number five, David became king of Judah and his capital at Hebron. We've seen the picture of Hebron there.

6. Among David's conquests were Edom, Moab, the Ammonites, the Amalekites, and the Philistines.

7. As king of Israel, David reigned at Jerusalem. I'm going to make a bit of a jump. You've got David's kingdom in one shot there. I'm going to look at page 9. This is the family of David. Real complicated family. Why is David's family so complicated? Lots of wives and concubines, right? And not only was Bathsheba one who should have been hands off. Don't go messing with her, right? Not only was there that, but David and Solomon were both warned not to multiply wives and concubines.

And what did they do? Lots of them, right? And so what you see here in Hebron when he was just king of Judah, we see a number of seven there with some offspring from that. And then we have after that in Jerusalem is Bathsheba and other wives and concubines. So lots of kids, lots of wives and concubines, a messed up family. Puts the fun in dysfunctional, right? So you have a very complicated situation there, and what we see though is Bathsheba, Uriah's wife, is the one who births Solomon, child number 10, and so births Solomon, and Solomon is the one who is the next king, and it's through his lineage that we have Christ.

Another example of how the Lord makes good things out of messing up. The Lord makes good things out of people who messed up. Okay, one last thing on page 10. We have a couple of charts there. David's triumphs. King of Judah. King of Israel. Conquers Jerusalem. Begins the city of David there. He returns the Ark, the covenant with David in chapter 7, defeats the Philistines, defeats Moab, defeats Ammon, defeats Syria, and then David's troubles, the next and last part of the chart there.

Adultery, murder of Uriah, he doesn't directly murder him, but he gives orders to have Uriah put up in the heat of the battle so that Uriah is killed. Amnon's incest, and then Absalom usurps the throne and then the census, and then the effects of those. Bathsheba bears a son, the first one dies. Accused repents, but the child dies. Amnon murdered, Absalom murdered, and then finally from the census, plagues.

So triumphs and troubles, great ones. Now, let's think one last thing. We don't have much time here, but one last thing. One of the things I like to do with each one is to look at, okay, where does the Son of God and Jesus Christ come up in this whole picture here? And one of the main things we see, here is David. Triumphs? Yep. Troubles? Yep. Got both.

But the Lord makes a promise to him that through his line would be the Messiah born who would reign forever. And that could start as soon as seven years from now. Christ will reign for a thousand years on earth from Jerusalem. through a nation of Israel that would encompass what is now about eight different countries and go all the way to the Euphrates River. And then in the new heavens and new earth, Christ will reign forever in the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem, not the present one.

So that's one of the major things that we see there in 1 and 2 Samuel. Alright, we're about out of time, so let's pray. Lord, as we look at this, certainly lots of lessons learned and we see actions have consequences. We also see your mercy and your grace in the midst of these as well. And we also see your faithfulness, because even though David made many very serious mistakes, we also see your gracious promise to David. And there will come a day when David, resurrected, will see his descendant, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, reigning from Jerusalem over all Israel and over the entire earth. And that will be a glorious day. And we thank you for your faithfulness and truth shown, even with man's successes and failures, and your love and care demonstrated to us. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.