The Lord's Anointed (2 Samuel 1)

Benedikt and Zane discuss the death of Saul and David's reaction.

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SPEAKER_00 0:06

Clear Path Scripture. Here we are. Another week. Zane here as usual with the great Benedict.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hello, we kids.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Yes, Benedict just got back from Germany, so that's what he sounds like now.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

That's a good trip.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

You always have an accent, but I was wondering if you'd come back with more of one.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Well, initially I was told by my German friends that I now speak German with an American accent. That makes sense. Yeah. I'm healing. I'm now reversing into the other direction again. That's funny.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Well, we're gonna read a little scripture today, as always, and Benedic Benedict and I will have a little conversation about it. We'll see what God has to show us today. I'm gonna read out of the NIV anglicized version because I have decided that this is my favorite uh Bible app translation because the reader for it is awesome. Like if you ever listen, Benedict, do you ever listen to Bible on audio?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

I'm gonna sound really dry here, like New King James version and just play. When I drive to Dallas, that's what I listen to.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

It's fine, but I don't I usually like to read the Bible over listen to it, but I've been listening to it a little more often lately just when I go on a walk or something. And the people that were reading were just killing me. And I found this guy on the British version of the NIV, and he's got he's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Does it have music in the background?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Man, the Bible hits harder with like a good synthesizer.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Good synthesizer. Well, all right. So we're gonna start. Um we just started reading the book of 2 Samuel, and I'm gonna start right here in chapter one, because as I read chapter one, it really uh a couple things really jumped out to me. So David is hanging out with his men here. I'm gonna start at verse three. This guy shows up to David's camp, and David says, Where have you come from? He answered, I have escaped from the Israelite camp. What happened? David asked. Tell me. The men fled from battle, he replied. Many of them fell and died, and Saul and his son Jonathan are dead. Then David said to the young man who brought him the report, How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead? I happen to be on Mount Gilboa, the young man said. And there was Saul leaning on his spear with the chariots and their drivers in hot pursuit. When he turned round and saw me, he called out to me, and I said, What can I do? He asked me, Who are you? An Amalekite, I answered. Then he said to me, Stand here by me and kill me. I'm in the throes of death, but I am still alive. So I stood beside him and killed him, because I knew that after he had fallen he could not survive. And I took the crown that was on his head and the band on his arm, and have brought them here to my Lord. Then David and all the men with him took hold of their clothes and tore them. They mourned and wept and fasted till evening for Saul and his son Jonathan, and for the army of the Lord and for the nation of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword. David said to the young man who brought him the report, Where are you from? I am the son of a foreigner, an Amalekite, he answered. David asked him, Why weren't you afraid to lift your hand to destroy the Lord's anointed? Then David called one of his men and said, Go strike him down. So he struck him down and he died. For David had said to him, Your blood be on your own head, your own mouth testified against you when you said, I killed the Lord's anointed. So this may seem like a strange passage to some of you that are listening, uh, that it would be one that would jump out to you. The Old Testament is pretty crazy, pretty brutal sometimes. And I'll tell you the first reason that this passage stood out to me is that I'm kind of amazed that David seems to always really want to have God's perspective on other people, not his own. And when I read this, of course, David's David's mourning for the loss of his best friend Jonathan, but he's also mourning for the loss of Saul. And when I read this and started thinking about David mourning for the loss of Saul, I thought, man, why would you why would you mourn for the loss of Saul? This is a guy, Saul tried to kill David over and over in 1 Samuel, which by the way are the same book, just broken up. I think 1st and 2 Samuel and maybe 1 and 2 Kings were all one book that got broken up into four historically. That could be wrong. So you guys can can uh go look that up, but I think that's true. Anyway, so in the book of 1 Samuel that we read earlier this year, we see that Saul tries to kill David multiple times. He grows to hate David because David is blessed by God. And of course, we see David get anointed as the next king. But David seems to be in no rush to claim this throne that has already been promised to him by God and by the prophet Samuel. Instead, he just refuses to stop honoring Saul. And there are multiple times when Saul is seeking to kill David, that David is hiding, and then he sneaks up on Saul and has an opportunity to kill to kill Saul. And he always says, No, there's no way I'm gonna touch Saul. He is the Lord's anointed. And so I'm just constantly amazed at David's respect for God's opinion of Saul and his hesitance to touch someone that is, you know, anointed by God in this moment to do a certain job.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

That's really good. Like what it also reminds me of is like Paul encouraging later in the New Testament, if you're a slave or somebody who works for somebody who is cruel to you or you're under their under their authority, he still encourages them to honor authority even though it doesn't seem to the outside like the best authority.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

And that seems to be something that God is looking for in the heart of a person, and David being somebody after the heart of God clearly seemed to embody that. But it also confronts me with my with my own desire, somebody, and sometimes and even if I feel like the Lord is saying yes on something, I equate a yes or a sense of the blessing of of God on something with like, okay, immediacy, now it's go time. But like you just said, even though David knew the throne was going to be his, he still was patiently waiting for the time to flow in accordance to whenever God had it ready for him. Um and took the time to grieve versus saying, Okay, now it's now it's my time to be king. Um he he rather honored honored the anointing and the blessing that Saul had, uh, despite it being an open door for him to become king. The other thing that stood out to me is I don't think we know how Jonathan died. Um the report is just about Saul. Um and David doesn't seem to inquire about Jonathan, which also shows that his focus on the anointed one, which Saul was anointed by God. Not that Jonathan wasn't, but there was an external sign of the anointing of Saul.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Yeah, and that and that's really interesting too, because well, you made it, you made a couple great points there. One about the the timing thing. I definitely think that God's timing is his own. And whether it's a prophetic word that we receive from someone or something we feel like God tells us in prayer, or even something we feel like God gives us from some for someone else, there's always the timing element. If we screw up the timing element, then what happens a lot of times I think is that we become the one to make things happen instead of waiting and allowing God to actually do it.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Yeah. Yeah, seeking the Lord is one thing, and then waiting on the Lord is another, and you kind of you kind of do need both.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yeah, he's he's the one who starts things and he will prompt us to do things, but he also is the one who finishes things, you know, and a lot of times we allow God to be the one who starts things and then we become the ones who finish it. Yes, and then we screw it up in the process. But but to go back to to go back to your comment about Saul being the one who we hear how he dies, I mean, obviously it's a big deal because he's the king of Israel. And but yeah, the interesting thing about that is that David already has the anointing of God on him. And Saul, early in his kingship, definitely has the anointing of God. But then along the way, it tells us that the that God removes his uh his presence from Saul basically, and he allows him to start even being tormented by evil spirits because of the choices that Saul makes. And so you could easily say, Well, you're not anointed by the Lord anymore. I am.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

It's almost like cancel culture in the New Testament and David, David refusing to cancel Saul. Yes, sure.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

So I'm just I'm amazed by that because we live in a culture that when a leader, especially a Christian leader, a pastor or something, if they make a mistake, yeah, dude, we the church will destroy them sometimes. And we have people whose quote ministry all over YouTube is to point out all of the ministers who are imperfect or have made a mistake or who they think are a little bit off. That is the most terrifying ministry that I could ever imagine having. The last ministry that I want in 2026 is to be a person on social media pointing out all the mistakes that other Christian leaders have made.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Yeah. Please know. Giving people the final push into their into their death.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

I try really hard whenever people say, What do you think about this minister? And maybe even I am a little concerned about that ministry or that person. I'm not saying that I, if I know have something obvious and you know, a member of our church asks me, should I listen to this person? I might say, I wouldn't suggest you listen to that person.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Right. But I'm not gonna, I don't want to judge or dishonor that person because me as a pastor and or just any of us as a Christian, like I've made my share of mistakes, I'm not perfect. And I think that most of the people that are, you know, out there representing God, they want to be doing it with a good heart. They're not intentionally doing it wrong. Yeah. And I don't want to be judgmental, like I want to judge with a rubric that I would like to be judged by. Yeah. And so anyway, if any of you listening run a social media ministry where you point out all the ministry's mistakes, I think that you should get a new ministry.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Um there's two more things that stand out to me. Yep. Um, one is I'm wondering if maybe it just speaks to David's faith. I'm not sure, but he he does view it as as if the man killed Saul. And from a rational perspective, you could say, I mean, Saul was going to get killed anyway. Yes. Did that really make that big of a difference? But maybe David is saying, like, you don't know that. Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 12:33

The guy seems to be offering a mercy. Like Saul requested it.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Yes. And Saul said, I am going to die anyway. Can you can you help me die an honorable death that I want to die? And David, David views it as murder, maybe partially because he's a he was anointed by God. Maybe God would have come through and helped him, or death wasn't certain, despite in a situation where we would look at it, it's like he would have clearly died. So I think I think that's admirable of David. The other thing is more like an encouragement that I'm taking to be discerning of other people. Because in the end, in the passage he read, um David is basically um sending the message to the guy. So David said to him, Your blood is on your own head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, I have killed the Lord's anointed, which is technically not what the guy said.

unknown 13:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

But that is what David is saying that he said, even though the the man initially reported Saul and Jonathan are dead, he didn't say, I killed them, but David is just looking through the action of what actually happened, and he's saying, This is what you're actually saying to me. And he's he's calling a spade a spade. And I think I sometimes have a challenge with like really calling people out like that. Um, but I think David here is using like really good discernment of what the what the actions of the main actually reflected. And he's he's telling him, hey, this is this is actually what you told me. This is what the truth is. And I think he's I think he's just holding the truth up very high in the words of other people.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Yeah, and I I have to assume in this situation that David is right that that's how God felt about it. It seems really harsh to hear, right? And thankfully, in these New Testament and uh post-New Testament days that we're living in, we don't normally kill people whenever they come uh confess to sin, thankfully. But yeah, I have to assume that here that David is correctly dividing what how God feels about this moment. Um I think that I think that that has to always be our question is God, how do you feel about this, right? Yeah, because this is actually a great example of how our human discernment can be flawed and come up short. I might would, in my own judgment, I might would think that uh David is in the wrong here, but that's really God's to decide. Yeah. Obviously, I mean maybe one week we'll do a uh something on the topic of violence or something. I'm I'm not condoning violence or, you know, obviously people can be violent and then say, well, God told me to, and that can be a huge mess. So I'm definitely not getting into that right now, but but I am getting into that. We really need God's perspective on things in every single moment because the wisdom of man or what we might first understand to be right, we might be wrong, you know?

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

And the other, you mentioned a New Testament application of this earlier. One that jumps out to me in my mind right now is that we're supposed to no longer view anyone according to the flesh, but to know every man by the spirit.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

And I think that although David lived in a different time, I think that that's what he's trying to do is to know every man by the spirit. That maybe he knew this man's intentions by the spirit, that he knew Saul's intentions by the spirit, that he knew Jonathan's intentions by the spirit, which I mean, hard to be best friends with the guy with the son of the guy who wants to murder you, right? And and he knew God's intentions by the spirit.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

And so if we can just always be aware of God's intentions and be trying to ask God constantly as we deal with other people, God, what do you see when you look at this person? How do I see this person according to the spirit instead of according to the flesh? Man, that will help us so much in life.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

So that's good.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Um, hey, we're gonna close this thing out. Uh, Benedict, will you just you want to just say a prayer? Whatever you feel like the Holy Spirit brings to your heart for us and for everyone listening of just what God wants to do in us through this reading.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Lord, I'll just I'll pray for a new desire for truth uh to arise in us, Lord. Truth for when we look at people, situations, decisions that other people make, Lord. Just give us the sermon to know what is true and to know what you say and to know what you say about other people and how you look at them, Lord. And also give us the grace that we need, not our own grace, but your grace for other people, Lord Jesus. Um if David was mourning for Saul, Lord, how many more people could we be mourning for that have done wrong to us or other people in our life, Lord? Just pray that we are slow to anger and quick to love and to grace and to just more and more adapt your eyes and what you see in other people versus our view of other people, Lord. Holy Spirit, I just pray that you that you bless us. Um pray for more of you and less of us. Um just thank you for your word and thank you that your word speaks, thank you that your word is relevant in our every day, every week, Lord. Um just pray that you plant it more and more in our hearts and in our minds, Jesus. Pray all this in your name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Amen. You know, you prayed something there. I'm gonna give one little last thought for everybody. You prayed something that made me think of this. I don't know if anyone else likes to use reminders or alarms in their phone, but I use them a lot. And I have a reminder that pops up every morning in my phone, and it says, remember how forgiven you are. Be that late, be that lenient with others.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

That's so good.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

And I don't there are days that I certainly fail at this, but every morning when it pops up, if I stop and think about that for a second, I'll think about how many mistakes I've made in my life and how much God has forgiven me. And I will think about how I've wronged other people and how other people have forgiven me. Yeah. And I'll just it makes me want to change the way that I view other people and to offer people the same mercy that has given been given to me by God and by other people. And so that's an encouragement to you guys. Hey, set yourself reminders sometimes if you need to remember things and uh be lenient with other people and forgive a lot. Forgive yourself, receive God's forgiveness. That's it. Love you guys. Have a good week.