What greater praise and honor could a person receive from God than that which King David received when God referred to Him as a man after His (God’s) own heart (1 Samuel 13:14) (Acts 13:22).
David was anointed king of Israel by the prophet/priest Samuel after God had deposed King Saul, Israel’s first king, who had shown himself to be more concerned with doing things his way rather than God’s, more concerned with his honor and glory before the people, than God’s (1 Samuel 15:10-11) (1 Samuel 15:26-29). At the time of his anointing as king, David was likely a teenager, the youngest son of a man named Jesse. David had the lowly responsibility of shepherding the family’s flock of sheep, a challenging but non-descript employment. David had done nothing we know of up to that time that was “king worthy”; however, it is David’s heart that appears to have been the determining factor in God’s selection of him as king (1 Samuel 16:1-12).
There were a number of reasons why God would honor David with the designation of a man after His own heart, as well as a number of reasons why such a designation could be questioned.
King David was certainly a courageous and mighty warrior in defense of the honor of God and the protection of the nation Israel. We see this first in his response to Israel’s arch enemy the Philistine’s and their champion warrior Goliath, who had defied the armies and blasphemed the God of Israel (1 Samuel 17:45-50). David continued to distinguish himself as a fearless and mighty warrior throughout His reign and was beloved by the nation for his valor (1 Samuel 18:5-14).
He was an extraordinary man in many ways; intelligent, handsome, abundantly gifted as a poet, musician, and administrator of the affairs of his kingdom. At the same time, David walked humbly before the Lord, recognizing that all that he was, all that he had and all that he accomplished was by and from the gracious hand of the Lord, undeserved, unmerited – by grace alone (2 Samuel 7:18-27) (1 Chronicles 29:10-16) (1 Corinthians 4:7).
Yet King David, in many other ways, was an ordinary man, a person like you and I, at times gripped by pride and selfishness, fear and insecurity as well as destructive passions displayed most prominently in his seduction or rape of Bathsheba, and murder of her husband, his friend, Uriah, all of which brought great suffering to himself, his friends and family and the nation. And keep in mind, all of this occurred subsequent to David being proclaimed by God to be a man after His own heart.
So, just what was it that God saw in David that made him a man after His own heart?
The heart in the Bible refers to the core or center of our being from which our thoughts, affections, desires and motivations are formed and proceed. I would thus suggest that what motivated God’s proclamation of David as a man after His own heart was just that – David’s passionate desire to know and understand God intimately and personally, at the deepest level of God’s being – His heart (Psalm 27:4) (Psalm 63:1-8) (Psalm 42:1-2).
David would not settle for a superficial relationship with God, of just knowing about God, living a life of dutiful and legalistic obedience as so many of us who call ourselves God’s people then and now live, with no real knowledge and understanding of God’s heart (Isaiah 29:13) (Matthew 15:7-9). David, by the grace of God, understood that it was only through knowing God in a heart-to- heart relationship that he (and we) can come to see God’s infinite worthiness to be feared and loved, trusted and obeyed, worshiped and glorified as the object of our deepest love and source of our greatest joy, which God both commands and deserves (Deuteronomy 6:4-6) (Deuteronomy 10:17-21) (Proverbs 3:5-6) (Luke 4:8) (Psalm 43:4-5) (Psalm 37:4).
God’s great indictment against Israel, the nation He miraculously redeemed for a heart-to-heart relationship with Himself, was revealed in Jeremiah 4:22, where God speaking through the prophet proclaims, “For My people are foolish, they have not known Me. They are silly children, and they have no understanding. They are wise to do evil but to do good they have no knowledge” (Exodus 6:6-8).
God, again speaking through the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 9:23-24, commands, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord.
This passage has many implications regarding a right relationship with God, beginning with the command here that we know and understand Him for who He is in all that He has revealed about Himself in the creation, in the scriptures and most importantly in David’s greater son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, God the Son, calls us to Himself not just to know about Him, but to know Him – heart-to- heart, and who will as part of the “new covenant” give us a new heart that desires and is able to do so (Matthew 11:25-30) (John 17:1-3) (Jeremiah 31:31-34) (Jeremiah 24:7).
More on Knowing God in my next post.
Grace and Peace ×
🙏
Thanks Jim
🙏🏼🙌🙏🏼👆