This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to week 9, our last week of
looking through First and Second Samuel. This week we're going to focus on the
last several chapters of Second Samuel and as we do that we're going to be
looking together at David as a man of worship. David who is this man after God's
own heart, we've seen together that he's a man of faith, he's a man of humility,
he's a man of compassion and he's a man of worship.

That's what it means to be a person who's after God's own heart. You have faith,
you have humility, you have compassion and this week we're focusing on worship.
Now David, you know he's a man of worship, he wrote much of the book of Psalms,
he obviously has a heart for worship and we're going to look at one of his songs
later this week.

But today we get a glimpse into David's prayer life and through that into his
attitude towards God. We see that in Israel there was trouble, there was a
famine happening. In chapter 21 verse 1, during the reign of David there was a
famine for three successive years.

So David sought the face of the Lord and the Lord said, "It is on account of
Saul and his blood-stained house, it is because he put the Gibeonites to death,"
something the former king had done. So David finds out in his prayer life that
there is a reason that they're facing this famine in their life and in their
country. And he does something that causes that to happen.

As you walk through the life of worship of David here, I want you to notice
several things in this passage. First, notice that all of this that's going to
happen happens because David made a decision. He decided to seek the face of the
Lord.

Now what does that mean? What does it mean to be a person like David, to learn
how to worship from David? What does it mean to seek God's face?

The idea of seeking God's face is that God's face is turned towards you. You're
looking attentively toward a God who is attentive towards you. To seek God's
face is to look at God, to look for his opinion, to look for his emotion, to
look for his heart on something.

And that's what David does here. He doesn't just go to God and say, "God, here
is my face. God I want you to see my face.

I want you to see how I feel about this. I want you to see what I think about
this. " When you talk to someone, sometimes you're concerned that they see your
face, that they hear your opinion.

But when you, in a conversation, stop talking and you start to look at their
face, you start to look for their emotion, you start to be interested in what
concerns them, that's what David was doing here. He sought the face of the Lord.
He said, "God, what do you think about this?

What is your heart about this? I don't know about you, but many times in worship
I'm very concerned about God seeing my face. I'm not as concerned as I should be
about seeking God's face, about looking for God's heart in the situation,
looking attentively into the emotion, into the heart, into the opinion of God.

" And as David does that, he finds out the reason they're facing this famine is
because Saul had unrighteously put a group of people called the Gibeonites, some
of them, to death. Now I'm not going to get into that whole story. It's just
very clear though that what Saul did was wrong because God says it's wrong.

Bad things were happening because of a bad thing they had done. Now, by the way,
that's not always true. Sometimes in this world we face bad things in our lives
just because we happen to live in a world where we face bad things in our lives.

Other people do evil and we face the backwash of that in our lives. But David
had the courage to seek God's face and to ask. And when things seem to be
falling apart around you, have the courage to go to God and say, "God, why is
this happening?

I don't know why this is happening. Is it something I've done? " Instead of
going to God and convincing him that there's no way it could be something you've
done, David had the courage.

And sometimes worship takes courage. He had the courage to seek God's face. So
the Bible says that because this happened and God told him, David did something.

In verse 2, the king summoned the Gibeonites and he spoke to them. Now the
Gibeonites were not a part of Israel but were survivors of the Amorites. The
Israelites had sworn to spare them.

But Saul, in his zeal for Israel and Judah, had tried to annihilate them. David
asked the Gibeonites, "What shall I do for you? How shall I make amends so that
you will bless the Lord's inheritance?

" They answered the king in verse 5, "As for the man who destroyed us and
plotted against us so that we've been decimated and have no place anywhere in
Israel, let seven of his male descendants be given to us and be killed and
exposed before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the Lord's chosen one. " So the king
said, "I will give them to you. " Now the important thing for you and I to
notice in application is David acted on what God told him to do.

But before we get there, before the application, it's hard for us to get past
the circumstances here. Why would Saul's family have to suffer for something
Saul had done years before when Saul was already dead? In our more individual
age, it's very hard for us to grasp the culture, the times of the Old Testament,
where entire families, entire tribes often faced blessing and punishment
together for what somebody in that tribe had done.

Families and tribes were seen as one, not as individuals. That's hard for us to
see, but that's the way it was in Old Testament times. And so Saul's family, who
had been so blessed because Saul was king, also has to face punishment for some
of the decisions that he has made.

Now the application for us, once we get past that, we may never get past that.
We don't think like they thought. The application for us is that David acted.

He acted on what God had told him to do. He went and he got the Gibeonites. He
said, "What should we do?

" And he talked to those who had been harmed, and he acted to bring about
justice. When I see God's face and I sense God saying something to me, our
immediate response is often, "I'll do something about that someday," not, "I'll
do something about that now. " David was a man of worship, and being a man of
worship, he acted on what he heard from God.

That's what it means to be a person of worship. You don't just talk to God to
ask his opinion so that you can be interested in it, "Oh, I'll add that into all
the other opinions I've got. " No, you act on what you sense God is saying to do
in your life.

That's what grows out of worship. Now as you look at David, there's a third
thing that happens here. David eventually, in this story, commands that the
bones of Saul's family be buried.

After killing Saul's family, the Gibeonites don't bury this family. And David
finds out what has happened, and that, by the way, Saul and Jonathan had never
had a proper burial and who had been killed in a different circumstance, and so
he acts. In verse 13, David brought the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan from
there, and the bones of those who had been killed and exposed were gathered up.

And they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the tomb of Saul's
father Kish at Zala and Benjamin, and did everything that the king commanded.
David has a funeral. He honors the dead.

And the Bible says in the last half of verse 14, "After that, God answered
prayer in behalf of the land. " So look at David as a man of worship here, and
you see that in humility, the humility to seek God's face, in obedience, doing
something about what God had told him to do, and in compassion, the compassion
to go and get these bones and make sure that a proper burial happens, to care
about even those who have been killed and those families and their hurt and
pain, that those three qualities, humility, obedience, and compassion, they open
the door to answered prayer. Now, in a twist, as we end this study, I want you
to think with me about how this relates to Jesus.

Because the truth is, for you and I, we realize that Jesus is the one who has
opened the door to answered prayer in our lives, humility, obedience, and
compassion. Jesus humbled himself, and he came to this earth. Jesus obeyed.

He obeyed to the point of death, even death on a cross. He didn't condemn
others, as David does here. He gave himself.

That was his obedience. And he did it all out of compassion. He did it all
because he loves you, because he loves me.

So even in this story of David's actions on behalf of the Gibeonites here, you
see a shadow of what Jesus is going to do for us someday. Even in this answering
of the prayer for the land and God opening the doors again, his heart again, to
answer people's prayers, we see what's going to happen someday in the fact that
Jesus is going to come. And by humbling himself, obeying exactly what the Father
had told him to do, all because he loves us, you and I now have an open door to
God.

We can talk to God anytime about anything. The door has been opened for us by
Jesus, by what Jesus has done for us. So let's thank him.

In fact, let's thank him as we request of him today. Let's pray together. Jesus,
thank you.

Thank you that you opened the door. Thank you that we can learn from a man like
David about the need to humble ourselves and about the need to obey God in our
prayer life and our life of worship. But Jesus, you're our example.

You're the one who empowers us to do this. And thank you that you led the way.
Thank you that you humbled yourself for me.

Thank you that you obeyed to the point of death. Thank you that you love me. And
I pray out of that, you would give me the strength to seek God's face, to look
for your opinion, Father, your heart on the matter, and then to do what you've
told me to do.

Give me the strength, Jesus, to do what you've told me to do. I ask for this
strength in your name. Amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to look together at David's song of praise.