Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

And SAUL eyed David from that day and forward.

And there was a javelin in Saul’s hand.

And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David even to the wall with it. 1 Samuel 18.

And the soul of JONATHAN was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. 1 Samuel 18.

And Jonathan, Saul’s son arose and went to David in the wood … and said to him … Thou shalt be King of Israel, and I shall be next to thee. 1 Samuel 23:16-17.

And MEPHIBOSHETH the son of Saul, went to meet the King, and he answered, My lord and king … All my father’s house were but dead men before my lord the king: yet didst thou set thy servant among them that did eat at thine own table. 2 Samuel 19.

David, the son of Jesse, was chosen of God to be the saviour, shepherd and king of His ancient people Israel, and in these respects he foreshadowed our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only Saviour of men, and the coming King. Being God’s chosen man, it followed that all in Israel who were subject to God would think well of him and yield him obedience; indeed, he became the test in his day as to how far every man understood the thoughts and ways of God. There were three men — Saul, Jonathan, and Mephibosheth — who were brought into direct contact with him, and the way they treated David is illustrative of the way men are treating our Lord Jesus Christ in our day; and this is my subject.

David was not the man whom Israel would have chosen, for he was but a shepherd-lad, without any pretension to greatness. They chose Saul because of his outward appearance, and even Samuel, the prophet of God, would have repeated their mistake when sent to the house of Jesse, by pouring the anointing oil upon the head of Eliab, because of the beauty of his countenance and the height of his stature. But “the Lord sees not as man sees: for man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

To the natural eye there was “no beauty” in Jesus, and so “He was despised and rejected of men,” but He was infinitely lovely and lovable in the eyes of God, for He loved the Lord His God with all His heart, and the heart is the mainspring of every action.

Yes, Jesus was the Man after God’s own heart, His Anointed, who fulfilled all His will.

Israel discovered in the day of their distress that God’s chosen man was the only one who could deliver them. When the great Goliath threatened them, and Saul and Eliab trembled before him in their helplessness, they had need to look elsewhere for salvation. It was then that David appeared, and girded with the strength of the God of Israel he overthrew the giant and set the people free. Then they proved what was stated of the shepherd-lad at his anointing, that he was “goodly to look to.”

The enthralling story of David’s victory is recorded in 1 Samuel 17, and shows us, in figure, the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ over our mighty foe, the devil — a victory told in the words of Hebrews 2:14-15: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

How complete was David’s victory, and how glorious; yet how surprising to both Philistine and Israelite, for Goliath was a man of war, invincible as he thought, and armed to the teeth, while David was a stripling, with no other weapons than five smooth stones and a simple sling. But by these was that huge mass of boasting flesh brought to the dust, and there, “by his own sword,” was the giant spoiled of his head, so that even the most fearful and timid in Israel might join in the glad shouts that rang out triumphantly from the heights of Pas-dammim. The Lord was crucified in weakness; He went out against the powers of darkness and the devil on our behalf, and as He hung rejected and gibbetted upon a malefactor’s cross it seemed as though He had met with utter and irretrievable defeat. But it was —
“By weakness and defeat
   He won the meed and crown;
 Trod all our foes beneath His feet
   By being trodden down.”

And by His death, death’s dominion has been overthrown, and the devil’s power annulled, and this so completely that our risen Lord can say, “Fear not I am the first and the last: I am He that lives and was dead: and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and death” (Revelation 1:17-18).
“Triumphant saints no honour claim,
 The conquest was His own.”

SAUL.

After the overthrow of the giant, David got a measure of recognition in Israel, for we are told in 1 Samuel 18 that “he was accepted in the sight of all the people” (verse 5); the women sang his praises (verse 7); all Israel loved him (verse 16); and “his name was much set by” (verse 30). But Saul stood out in base and brutal contrast to the rest of Israel; there sprung up in his heart a bitter and undying hatred towards the people’s deliverer; he eyed David with a jealous eye, and sought to destroy him (verse 9, 10). Saul represents the unconverted man, the man in the flesh. We read a great deal about the flesh in the New Testament. It is that evil principle within the heart of man that shuts out God and Christ, and will always make SELF the supreme object of the life in opposition to Christ. The flesh will have religion, and meetings, and sometimes tolerate Christians, but it will not have Christ. When He came into the world it betrayed Him for the price of a slave; spat upon His sacred cheek; and nailed Him to a cross. It has not changed in the course of the centuries, and the Christ of God is still rejected and hated by it. The unconverted man is in the flesh; he has no love for our Lord Jesus Christ, and his position is terrible, for the Scripture says, “If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema; maranatha” (1 Corinthians 16:22).

Indifference to Christ and His rights may seem a small matter to some, and they may be surprised that it should call down the anathemas of Almighty God upon them, nevertheless it does; and the justice of it will be evident to you, I believe, if you see its baseness illustrated in Saul’s attitude towards David. Israel owed everything to David, for the Philistines threatened not only to seize their lands and wealth, but to make every one of them — men, women, and children — their absolute slaves. And Saul could not deliver them, nor Jonathan, nor Abner, and the people were at their wits’ end. It was then that David appeared, and, taking his life in his hand, he overthrew the great foe and delivered the people from his power. David was undoubtedly the one man in the realm whose right it was to reign, and Saul’s conscience told him so, but in his selfish pride he refused to surrender to David. Saul was first in his own thoughts, and he hated David because he knew that David ought to be. Yet David did not suffer in the fight that he waged for Israel; protected by the mighty hand of Jehovah he came through it without a scar. How different it was with our Lord Jesus Christ when He came to deliver men; His visage was so marred more than any man’s, and His form more than the sons of men. His hands and feet were pierced and nailed to the tree; every sorrow found its centre in Him, and He drank to the dregs the bitterness of death. He has won an everlasting deliverance for sinful men at great cost to Himself — a deliverance from Satan’s power, from the fear of death, and from eternal hell; and the preaching of the wonderful love that made Him do it should have prostrated the whole race at His feet. How base is that ingratitude that refuses to love Him! How sinful that selfishness that will not yield homage to Him! How terrible the pride that will not have the blessing through Christ crucified!

Alas! “All of self, and none of Thee,” is the answer that thousands are giving to the claims of Christ.

JONATHAN.

Saul hated David, but Jonathan loved him as his own soul; and no wonder, for he had watched the fight in the field of Elah, and as he saw David go forth against the enemy he could say, he has undertaken that conflict for me; and when the victory was completed, he could say, he has destroyed the foe for me. He had also beheld him in the tent of the king with the head of Goliath in his hand, and there David won his heart, so that he stripped himself of everything that distinguished him, and made a full surrender to him. David was victor in the battlefield; he was also victor in the tent of the king; the trophy of his first victory was the head of Goliath; the trophy of the second was the heart of Jonathan. Have we known an epoch like that in our lives? has the Lord Jesus captivated us? Do we love Him and have we made a full surrender to Him? Four lines from Charlotte Elliot’s sweet hymn express this surrender perfectly:
“Just as I am, Thy love I own
 Has broken every barrier down;
 Now to be Thine, yea, THINE ALONE,
   O Lamb of God, I come.”

How beautiful was the devotion of Jonathan to David! And we learn how greatly David prized it by his touching lament at Jonathan’s death: “I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been to me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26). Yet Jonathan was slain in Saul’s company by the hands of the Philistines, and he did not see the glorious kingdom of his well-loved friend. I have often wondered why this was; why the one who shone like the rising of a brilliant star in his love to David at Elah should have set in darkness at Gilboa. I believe I have found the reason in 1 Samuel 23:16-18.

We have a heart-moving scene there. David and Jonathan met in the wood, as they had met before in chapter 20:41-42, and there they bade each other a last farewell; and Jonathan, moved by love to his friend, and the knowledge that God was with him, renounced all claim to the throne in the words, “THOU SHALT BE KING … AND I SHALL BE NEXT.”

It was there that the strength of Jonathon’s devotion declared itself; it was there also that he betrayed its weakness. David first, but “I NEXT.” Oh, why did he not put a full point after he had declared that the kingdom was David’s, and then been silent as to himself! Why did he not leave the appointment of his place to his king? for surely the king alone had the right to say who should be next to him. It was the introduction of the capital “I” — his thought for himself — that was the undoing of Jonathan. This carried him back to his father’s court, where his friend was hated, and where in former days he had been persecuted for his friend’s sake. How different his history might have been if he had said: “David, thou shalt be king, and I will share thy rejection until thy rights are publicly owned; whither thou goest I will go. I am wholly thine, command me as thou wilt.” It would have meant for the time being the cave, and the mountain-side, and the scorn of all time-servers instead of popularity and the palace of the king. But it would also have meant a place of honour in the kingdom of David instead of ignominy and death at the hands of the uncircumcised Philistines.

How solemn is the lesson that this story teaches. It is possible to begin well and yet to fail in that full-hearted response to the Lord’s love which alone is right and well-pleasing to God; it is possible for thought of self to come in and make us careful for our own ease and safety, and, as we often falsely judge, our own present advantage.

The believer is not in the flesh but in the Spirit (Romans 8:9), but the flesh is still in the believer, and whenever it is consulted or allowed to control us, it will find room for self, and in so far as it does this our lives are not wholly for Christ.

David in his rejection prefigured Christ in His rejection; and be it clearly understood that Christ is just as much rejected now as when men cried, “Away with Him.” His rights are not acknowledged; the world does not put its crowns upon His brow; men do not want His interference in their affairs, and those who truly follow Him must heed the words of the One whom they follow: “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My sayings they will keep yours also” (John 15:19-20).

This is our life, and the treasure we have found in His love should make us welcome it.
“Love so amazing, so divine,
 Demands our soul, our life, our all.”

And “if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.”

But I must add here, that all who love the Lord will see His glory, and in the day when He reigns they shall be with Him, and He will remember every pulsation of love to Himself, and every act of faithfulness to Him, and this should constrain us as well as His love to us, to live wholly for Him, and to refuse all the clamouring of self and the flesh for a place.

MEPHIBOSHETH.

The good start in devotion to David that Jonathan made was carried on in perfection in his son Mephibosheth. He was a very different sort of man to the Gadites with “the faces of lions,” who were “swift as the roes upon the mountains,” and “could handle shield and buckler,” and were “fit for battle” (1 Chronicles 12:8). David needed such men as they were, for he was a man of war, but he was also a man with a heart, great and tender, and he valued above all things devotion to his person; and who shall say that the crippled son of Jonathan did not give him more pleasure in the long run than the fearless veterans of his old guard.

One thing is certain. David found great pleasure in showing him kindness “for Jonathan’s sake.” He called what he did “the kindness of God,” and seemed happier in doing it than in slaughtering his foes. In this one incident he stood out prominently as the man after God’s heart, for we know that God finds His delight in bestowing blessing upon needy, helpless men. That part of Mephibosheth’s contact with David is beautifully told in 2 Samuel 9.

The question is, How did Mephibosheth react to David’s great kindness? He could not do great and brilliant things, he would have been useless and a burden on the field of battle, yet there was something he could do — he could appreciate David’s kindness and he could keep a heart loyal to him. He certainly seems to have been grateful to David for all the benefits he bestowed upon him, but sometimes a man may appreciate favours and have very little true love for the benefactor. It may even be so with us; we may value the blessings that come to us through Christ and yet not have much loyalty of heart for Him. It is a sad thing to contemplate, but it may be so, and assuredly the test will come.

The test came to Mephibosheth. Absalom, the favourite and spoiled son of his father, rebelled against him, and David had to flee the city of Jerusalem. There never had been such a day of sorrow for David in all his chequered career, he reached then and there the very nadir of his fortunes, and the strange thing was that Jerusalem seemed glad to see the back of him, and to welcome the traitor son. What would Mephibosheth do? When the full story is told we learn that he would have shared the sorrow and evil of the king if he could have done so, but it was not to be. Robbed and slandered by his servant, he was forced to remain behind in the city that had cast off David. The city rejoiced, it held high revelry, but Mephibosheth did not join in the festivities; he held himself in strict separation from it all and mourned for the absent king. He “neither dressed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes, from the day the king departed until the day he came again in peace” (2 Samuel 19:24).

Do we realise, O Christians, that the true King is rejected by the world, and that the devil has usurped His throne, and is both god and prince of the world? This the Scriptures teach most plainly, and since this is true, what should we do, who are left in it? If we are devoted to the Person of our Lord as Mephibosheth was to David we shall feel that a great moral gulf lies between us and it, that we have nothing in common with it, and that practical separation becomes us.
“Its grand fete days, and fashions and ways
   Are all but perishing things.”

Yet not because of this only, but because it is enmity against God and Christ, and lies in the wicked one, we must go through it as Christian and Faithful went through Vanity Fair in John Bunyan’s book.

It is exceedingly interesting to see what Mephibosheth said to David when he returned in triumph to his throne and city. He rejoiced that the king had come back to his own, and he wanted nothing for himself. The king’s rights and not his own were everything to him. He claimed nothing for himself, but he made his boast in David’s grace and in David’s word. Hear what he says, “All of my father’s house were but dead men before my Lord the King.” Dead men have no place or rights; they cannot claim anything, especially when they are dead under the sentence of a righteous law. And it was this that this grandson of Saul, David’s great enemy, meant, so it seems to me. But if he could claim no place in the King’s palace and favour because of what he was, he could rely on David’s word and boast of his kindness. “Yet,” he said, “didst thou set thy servant among them that did eat at thine own table.” David had said that he should eat bread continually and always at his table as one of the King’s sons, and he knew that the King’s word would stand and he wanted nothing more.

Moreover, Mephibosheth declined to put in a claim for any possession in the land, for when the question arose as to Ziba his servant sharing the land that formerly belonged to him, he said, “Yea, let him take all, forasmuch as my lord the king is come again in peace to his own house.”

He struck the right note, and it is happy for us if we can tune our boasting to the same key. We had no claim upon God, for we were all dead men before Him, but He is rich in mercy, and for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, He quickened us, and saved us, and set us among them that eat at His table. In the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness toward us He has made us His children in an unchanging, everlasting relationship. Shall we not boast in this? Mephibosheth could not forget David’s kindness. In this last incident in his life’s story it stands out as the one thing that dominated him and expressed his relationship to his king. And can we forget? It would be a strange and unnatural thing if we did.

As we consider Mephibosheth, his moral greatness grows upon us. He was no whining, time-serving sycophant, thinking only of his own advantage. His loyalty to David in rebellious Jerusalem was great; the entire absence of self-conceit and self-seeking on David’s return increases our admiration for him, and his reliance on David’s word and his boast in what David had done for him were evidence of true gratitude. His joy at the King’s return in peace was so great that he does not even ask that his slanderous, thieving servant should be punished. He desired no property, he sought nothing for himself. The person of the king was everything to him, and that the King should have his rights was all his desire. Everybody may not agree with me, but I set Mephibosheth, lame and apparently useless to the King as the greatest of all the King’s men, and I am inclined to think that in those closing years of the king’s life he found more pleasure in Mephibosheth than in any other.

We are looking for the time when our Lord will come into His rights, when the long years of His rejection shall close, and the nations shall own Him as King of kings and Lord of lords. It will be the day of His glory, and a happy day for us if some of the traits of Mephibosheth are showing themselves in us now. Glorious and happy day will this be for all those who love Him.

But how do we stand in this matter? Let us put the treatment that David received from these three men together and test ourselves as to our attitude to the Lord Himself.
SAUL — Saul everything, David nothing.
JONATHAN. — David first, Jonathan second.
MEPHIBOSHETH. — David everything, Mephibosheth nothing. In one of these classes we stand.

Lord —
“Take Thou our hearts, and let them be
 For ever closed to all but Thee;
 Thy willing servants, let us wear
 The seal of love for ever there.”