This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day three together of week five of our look through 1st and 2nd Samuel.
We've been looking together at the qualities of life that we can find from
people like Samuel and Jonathan and even Saul and his negative example. But in
1st and 2nd Samuel, the life that shines the strongest, the lessons that come
the strongest are in the life of David.

We talked a few weeks ago about the qualities of David's life that we can see in
1st and 2nd Samuel. We see the qualities, five specific qualities, faith,
submission, compassion, humility, and worship. Faith, David had the heart of a
warrior.

Submission, David had the heart of a servant. Compassion, David had the heart of
a healer. Humility, David had the heart of a child of God.

And worship, David had the heart of a singer, of a worshiper. When you see the
heart of David, you understand why he was a man after God's own heart. And we're
going to talk these next couple of days about the heart of a servant that we see
in David.

One of the strongest times that we see this in David's life is when he was going
through this battle with Saul. Saul was trying to kill him, so how was he going
to respond to Saul? And the Bible tells us that he decided, he chose to respond
with a heart of submission.

Now that word is a Bible word that to some of us is understandable, but to many
of us, most of us, we haven't come across it that much, and so the word sounds
like a threatening word. Submission makes you think of armies and barbed wire
fences, a forced service of some kind. But really in the Bible, that's not what
submission is all about.

Submission is about a loving relationship and a marriage. It's about a joyous
church. It's about a happy life.

It's about a growing love for God. That's the picture that the Bible gives us of
a submissive heart. Submission is one of the prime qualities of David's heart.

It's one of the things that made him a man after God's own heart. It's an
amazing attitude. God chose a man who would one day be king, not so much for his
ability to rule over others as his ability to submit to others, to be a servant
to others.

So how does this attitude come into my heart? How do I become submissive? Well,
first you recognize its importance.

It's not about giving somebody else the control of your life. It's about your
ability to recognize it's not about you, and that really you're giving somebody
else a gift of your life. You're giving yourself to them.

So for your marriage, submission is what makes marriage and families work. You
can read about this in Ephesians chapter 5, where we're all to submit to one
another in love. Not just think my idea is important, but also your idea is
important.

What I want is important, but also what you want is important. So husbands
submit to wives, wives to husbands, parents to children, children to parents.
It's a mutual submission to one another.

It's a mutual recognition that the other person is important. Submission simply
means I think that your needs are as important, and in many cases more important
than my own. So I'm going to give of myself to meet your needs.

The Bible says don't consider yourself so important. Consider others' needs as
important as your own. So in your marriage, in a family, submission is
important.

In a church, it's important. The greatest of all, Jesus said, is going to be the
servant of all. So the greatest person in a church is the most submissive person
in the church, the one who serves everybody.

In your relationship with God, submission is important. You cannot have a
relationship with God without saying Jesus is Lord, and you can't say Jesus is
Lord unless you're willing to submit your plans under his lordship. If you say
Jesus, I'll make you the Lord, the leader, I'll make you the one who calls all
the shots in my life except for, let me give you this little checklist of things
that I want to do first, he's not Lord, you're Lord.

You got to submit your plans to him, and when he says yes, then you go. How do I
become submissive? What does this mean?

Well, we could learn, obviously, from the New Testament about this, from the
example of Jesus in Philippians chapter 2 or the challenge that we have in
Ephesians chapter 5, but we're looking at 1 and 2 Samuel, and we're going to
learn about submission from David these next few days. There are three how-to's
for submission that you see in David's relationship with Saul that show us some
things about how you and I can relate to others, trusting that God's a part of
that relationship and not just us and the other person. What are these
abilities?

What are these how-to's? Number one, part of submission is the ability to leave
things in God's hands, in God's hands. David had some opportunities through his
challenges, his battles with Saul.

He had some opportunities to actually take Saul's life. There was one
opportunity when David saw that Saul went into a cave—actually, the Bible is
very clear here. It says he went into a cave to relieve himself, to go to the
bathroom.

And David happened to be at the back of this cave, and Saul didn't know it.
David's men said, "Go take his life. God has delivered him into your hands.

" And David said, "No, he's in God's hands. He's in God's hands. " That's what
made him a man after God's own heart.

You see, it seems like so much of our life is in our hands sometimes, but it's
not. And there is a danger of submission at that point when I think I can take
it to myself. David in answering his men that day says to them, "I'm not going
to put my hand against the Lord's anointed.

I'm not going to put my hand against my Lord. " It's an amazing answer because
David is being pursued to be killed by Saul at this time, because David
recognizes that he's still the king. He is still the Lord's anointed.

I'm going to let God deal with him. I'm not going to deal with him. If I try to
deal with him, it's going to hurt my life.

So I'm going to leave it in God's hands. The only way he was able to do this is
because he trusted God's hands. He recognized that Saul was in God's hands.

That's an absolute key to submission. Now believe me, I understand that God has
many things for us to do. He puts things into our hands.

He wants me to do this ministry. He wants me to do this act of love. So I'm not
saying you just sit back and do nothing in life, but I think we all understand
that there are many times when we want to make it work, when we want to make the
person hurt, when we want to make the thing happen, and we realize we're
pushing, we're making it happen and God's not really a part of it.

You see, if I don't recognize that life is in God's hands, I'm going to base my
submission on just human qualities. I'm never going to be able to submit to God.
I'm never going to find any place where he's worthy of my submission.

I always need to do it myself. Submission to God, saying, "God, I surrender it
to you. I recognize that you're Lord in this situation.

" It's only possible when we recognize that life is in God's hands. Submission
to another person, and sometimes you have to submit to your boss. Sometimes you
have to submit to a ministry leader.

You may not agree with them, but you have to go along with what they're saying.
I'm not saying that what they're saying is biblically wrong. You just have a
different opinion of how it should be done, but you have to submit because
they're the boss.

They're the leader. Submission doesn't recognize their perfection. They might be
wrong.

Who knows? But it recognizes God's control. Even if they are wrong, God's still
in control.

He's still in control. That's part of what submission is all about. A second
thing that it's about, we learned from David, is the ability to leave things to
God's judgment.

He says to Saul, "May the Lord be the one who judges between you and me. " You
can read about this in chapter 24. In verse 12, he essentially says, "If God
does the judging, he's the one who does the avenging.

" In verse 15, he says, "Since God does the judging, he's the one who pleads the
cause. " And also in verse 15, "Since God does the judging, he is the one who's
going to do the delivering. " Submission recognizes God is the ultimate judge in
the end.

I don't have to be. I do not have to be. So I can submit myself under this
person, under this situation, because I realize God's going to judge them in the
end.

You're working for a boss. They ask you to do something. You don't like doing
it.

It's not wrong to do. You just don't like doing it. They didn't listen to you
enough.

They didn't get input from anybody else. Why are they doing this? You begin to
think, "Well, maybe it's because they're selfish.

Maybe it's because they're trying to get a promotion. Maybe it's just their
pride that's causing this. " But you don't know that.

You don't know if it's their pride or there's some other reason. You can take
heart in the fact that you know in the end God will be the judge. God will be
the judge.

In practical terms, walking through what David went through, he talked about
avenging. He talked about pleading the cause. He talked about delivering in
chapter 24, verse 12 and verse 15.

So practically, what does it mean to submit? It means I'll stop trying to take
revenge. Do you know what peace that will give you?

If you decide God's the judge, I'm going to leave this into his hands. I'm not
going to live the rest of my life being controlled by my need to get revenge
against that other person. I'm going to let it go to God because I can trust him
as the judge.

That's what it means to submit, to see God as the judge. It also means that I'll
stop trying to plead my own case in life. Do you know what freedom that will
give you in life?

Let God plead your case. Ask him to plead your case, to bring the right person
at the right time. Now you tell the truth.

But pleading the case sometimes means you have to go back again and again and
again and again and prove you're right and prove you're right and prove you're
right. If you've had a wrong spoken against you that should not have been,
there's a criticism out there against you that has nothing to do with who you
are. Instead of spending the rest of your life focusing on that critic, say,
"God, would you plead my case?

Plead this case. God is the judge. You can leave things to his judgment.

" And it also means that I'll stop trying to deliver myself. You don't have to
deliver yourself out of your problems, out of the struggles of life. Do you know
what joy that gives?

To recognize that Jesus is the deliverer in life. That's what it means to have a
submissive heart before God, the kind of heart that David had. Let's take a few
minutes to talk to the Lord about this.

And just as we pray, I invite you to join me in prayer and say, "Jesus, would
you help me to submit my heart to you, to serve you? And Lord, if there's a
place where I've been trying to take revenge, to let that go to you, where I'm
trying to plead my own case to let you be the one who pleads my case for me,
where I'm trying to deliver myself to realize that you're the deliverer, the
only one, or where I've been trying to make life work on my power, help me to
realize that it's your power that I'm looking to. I look to that power right
now, and I ask that you help me to understand today in a deeper way than I've
ever understood before how much I can trust you.

In Jesus' name, I pray for this. Amen. Tomorrow we're going to look together at
the third quality of a heart of submission.