Anointing - God's Decrees in Action

Prayer for Preaching and the Reading of 1 Samuel 16

Now before I read or even announce the scripture from which we will preach this afternoon, let us pray. Heavenly Father, here we are once again assembled in your presence. We leave our hands open before you, your needy people.

We need, Father, your word. We need your direction. We need your Spirit, Father, to open our eyes to the wonderful truth of your words. We pray, Father, by your Spirit you would do this work in us. Give us anxious hearts to know you, to know Jesus Christ better by looking to this, your holy word, to us.

So, Father, bless the preaching, bless the hearing, and as we transition to prayer, hear us as your children come to you. For you've called us to this very purpose, and for this purpose we are assembled, and we ask all these things in Jesus' name.

Amen. I'll turn your Bibles, please, once again to 1st Samuel chapter 16. As you know, a few weeks back I started sort of an abbreviated, a short narrative or preaching through the narrative of David's life, and I say abbreviated and short because I'm not going to preach every verse in his life.

We're going to take some of the major epochs of his life, if you will. You recall that we started this back in February before the vacation which the church so generously granted myself and my wife, but we're looking at how David was called out of the sheepfold, as it were, he having been his father Jesse's shepherd of the sheep, and brought into this knowledge that he is going to be the next king of Israel.

Last time we preached this, we looked at election, and that's what we're doing in this short series on David, is we're looking at these major portions of his life, and then we're going to draw out the doctrine that stands behind what God was doing in these, and here it is, David's, the announcement, if you will, of David's royalty, his kingship, the fact that God has chosen him to replace King Saul.

It's interesting to note as I read this that here in 1 Samuel 16, which I will read in a moment, it's only the second time that David's name is mentioned. The first time he's mentioned is at the end of the book of Ruth, and Jesse fathered David.

This sort of tells you the reason that the book of Ruth was written, so we know where David comes from, and here's the next time his name actually appears, and then not until after the anointing, which is going to be really the main focus of the preaching this afternoon.

So with that brief introduction, please stand for the reading of God's Word, 1 Samuel 16 verses 1 through 13. The Lord said to Samuel, how long will you grieve over Saul since I've rejected him from being king over Israel?

Fill your horn with oil and go, I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king from among his sons. And Samuel said, how can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me. And the Lord said, take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord, and invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do.

And you shall anoint for me him whom I will declare to you. Samuel did what the Lord commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him, trembling, and said, do you come peaceably?

And he said, peaceably. I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice. And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, surely the Lord's anointed is before him.

But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I've rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel.

And Samuel said to Jesse, the Lord has not chosen these. Then Samuel said to Jesse, are all your sons here? And he said, there remains yet the youngest. But behold, he is keeping the sheep. And Samuel said to Jesse, send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here.

And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, arise, anoint him, for this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers.

And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah. And please be seated. You know, if we just read through this as I did, one of the things I think we miss, I know I missed it most every time I read this chapter, which I've read several times, we miss the significance.

We miss the moment, if you will, of the moment of what has just happened here. What has happened here is God's elect king has just been announced as God's elect king. Now when did God elect that king?

When are God's decrees made? Chapter 3 of our Confession properly teaches that God, according to his own good pleasure and according to his own sovereign will, unfettered by any other will or any other requirement upon him, now of course I'm paraphrasing, determined from eternity past all things whatsoever should come to pass.

Which tells us that when did God decree David to be the king? When he decreed everything else in eternity past. And yet here we have this public announcement, this implosion into history, if you will, of God's will, which prior to that moment had been his secret will.

Deuteronomy 29, 29 says that secret things belong to God, but those which have been revealed belong to us and our children forever. Here is his revealed will in the anointing of David as the next king of Israel.

You see, this has much to do with the Christian. This has much to do with us today as we stand in the faith of Christ Jesus on what we call the north side of the cross, if you will, the south side being BC before Christ, the north side being AD and Odominant, the year of our Lord, and so forth.

But in much the same way, God's will is made known in time and space, in history. What God willed is made known, is made public, much as it was for David. So reading through this so quickly, when he says, arise, anoint him, for this is he, and what happens next?

Samuel pours the oil on his head, and what happens next? Well, the Spirit of God rushes upon David. And if you're waiting to hear about the Spirit of God, these afternoon messages are much shorter than the morning message, and so we're not going to deal with that.

So you're gonna have to wait with bated breath till we come back to it, and then we'll talk about the Spirit of God rushing upon Saul and leaving Saul, rushing upon David, and not leaving David. But for those of you who are aware of that issue, you're not going to get it this afternoon.

We're going to talk about God making his secret will known in history, through the anointing of David and through the anointing of you, the church, the faithful in Christ Jesus. There are many ways we are described in Scripture, many of them we're comfortable with and familiar with, and we're used to hearing them in our circles.

You are beloved, you are the beloved. Pastor Brian uses that term quite a bit. I use it sometimes, not very often, but you are beloved, and it doesn't shock you to hear that. You are saints, you are the redeemed of the Lord, you are God's adopted children, all these descriptors.

How often do we in our circles hear ourselves called or call ourselves this? Anointed. Anointed. Oh, that makes us pull back a little bit. You turning all Pentecostal on me? You're being anointed by the...

No, I'm being biblical. The anointing of God's people is God's announcement in time and space, in history, of his secret, of his previous secret will. That's how he announces it. And the sheer brevity that we have here, Samuel rose and went to Rome.

Where's the trump from heaven? Where's all earth standing still for a moment? This is a major moment in redemptive history. This is David, the one whose name was Jesus' favorite appellation. Jesus, son of David.

This is David, the first king from the tribe of Judah, the one was prophesied by Jacob in Genesis 49. May he bless this. The scepter shall not depart until him to whom it belongs comes. And this is David who began that line which ends up in Jesus.

This is this big moment in redemptive history. And what happens? Pour in the oil and he goes home. We lose the sheer majesty and momentousness of the moment. So I preach this afternoon to you who believe in Jesus Christ, who in time and history have been made, have had God's will for you made known by anointing, by the anointing that God brings about.

I preach to God's anointed. Yes, you are anointed. You, you quiet, timorous, low Christian who likes to stay in their background, you have been anointed as much as was David. And you, you confident, well-spoken, eloquent Christian, you've been anointed no more or less than that timorous one, or that average one, or that David one.

Anointing was, anointing is, an act of consecration by which God sets something or someone apart to his service. So I want to talk a little bit about anointing. Just what it is, what does it mean, where does it come from, what is this whole concept of anointing?

Anointing, just as a simple definition, just means to smear something with oil, just to smear it with oil. And if you do a concordance search, you will find, I didn't count how many times anointing comes up, but you'll find that virtually every one of them has to do with consecration, has to do with worship of God, has to do with setting aside to holy purpose, divine purpose.

Only occasionally is it ever used for simply rubbing something on something, which is the base meaning of the word. Anointing is just a smearing with oil, in the Bible it's mashach, where we get Messiah, means the same thing as Christos in the Greek, they both mean anointed ones.

So this is what it means to be anointed, this is the base definition of it. Now I said a little while ago, it sets apart something or someone, and again you can read in Exodus as the tabernacle was being constructed, that the implements, the physical things that were to be used in the worship of God were anointed.

They're anointed with oil, they're consecrated to God's use, they were set apart for that holy use. The gold on the gold altar had to be anointed, it had to be consecrated, and in the book of Exodus we find in chapter 29 verse 36 that anointing has to do also with atonement, the setting aside, this reconciling its impurity to God so it could be used for God.

So there's the gold altar with barely a speck of anything in it that wasn't pure gold, but that one speck is enough to require this anointing, this consecrating, this atoning oil put upon it. Anointing, this setting aside, was so important and it made something holy unto God's use in such a way that to replicate the oil and to use it for a common purpose would result in the second worst penalty in the jurisprudence of ancient Israel.

You are cut off from the people, you are not one of us. Now if you read, again you can read this in Genesis chapter 30, the formula for the oil is pretty easy. They said get some of this and get some of that and all these different compounds and these different spices and such, mix them together in equal parts and voila, you've got the anointing oil.

Pretty easy. But to do so and to use it for common purpose would result in being cut off from the people. You were proven by that that you weren't really an Israelite because it was so disrespectful of God.

Another reason for that, and I want us to think about this as well, I think anything in the Old Testament that is so typologically important, focusing forward to Christ, has a special meaning to it, has this special penalty.

By going forward several centuries from where we are here, think for just a moment on King Uzziah, who went to offer incense to act as a priest in the temple and he was given leprosy for his offense against God.

Why such a severe penalty? Because to be king and prophet and to be king prophet and priest, to have all three is reserved only for Jesus Christ. And so for a king to take upon himself the mantle of priest as well would result in such a penalty.

This anointing oil speaks forward of Christ. The beautiful scent like an incense and it's in the same chapter as making the incense in the Exodus, talking about the sweetness of service to God, talking about the beauty of what it means to be consecrated unto him, to be made holy from the rest of the world so that we can serve a holy God.

To use that oil in a common way speaks poorly of Christ Jesus for whom it was ultimately intended. And so when Jesus was anointed by Mary and the disciples were offended in one gospel, it is Judas who was offended in another gospel.

They were all offended but there was offense at it because it was so expensive. Why waste it by pouring it on none other than the Son of God? I mean how mixed up is that? And yet what did Jesus say? Leave her alone for she's preparing me for my burial.

That's why in ancient times, though they knew it not, the penalty was so serious. Oil consecrates something to God and it is also his announcement in time and space of the revelation of his secret will.

So with David, so with David, we had him elected last time we came to this. That God made his will known to Samuel, said this is the one. Not this one, not this one, not this one, through all seven sons until here comes David.

This is the one. This revelation by the Word of God to his prophet at the time. Much as we have the revelation of the Word of God in its entirety now in Scripture, made known. God's secret will, that part of which is no longer secret, made known to us.

This is he, he said. And so David was anointed called out from all of Israel, called out from his brothers to be the king. So who is anointed? I said at the beginning, I'm speaking to the anointed of God and I kind of felt a few little shudders at that.

I made a little bit humorous, you know, are we turning Pentecostal, anointed with the Holy Spirit? Well, not in an excessive way, but absolutely yes. Not just your pastor when he preaches well, not just people who go out and evangelize and have success in the Lord.

It is you, the people of God, it is we together, the people of God, who are anointed. Taken as you are, taken as David was. David was called out of the smelly fields. Can we go back and think about this for just a moment?

Just think about this for a minute. So David's older sons all rejected, not him, not him, not him. And the first one, God says, I've rejected this one, much as he rejected Saul. Samuel finds out that there's one more son and he's out watching the fields, or the sheep in the fields.

And so they sent a messenger out and let's think about this for a second. Here's David, he's watching the sheep, he's smelly of sheep, he's smelly of the field, he's been perspiring, he's been working hard.

And someone comes out to him and says, hey David, you gotta come back to town, gotta come back to Bethlehem. Why? Well, Samuel's there. Samuel? You mean that prophet who called down the thunder and scared the daylights out of all Israel?

Yeah, he's there. Well, he wants to see you. Well, I'll stay with the sheep. No, Samuel wants to see you right now. What's he doing? He's gonna figure out who's the next king of Israel. Okay, I'll stay here with the sheep.

No, what would you do in a situation like that? Well, David came. David went. We don't read about him having time to put on nice clothes, deodorant, shave, shower, anything like that. Taken just as he is, and anointed with the oil, and announced to be king of Israel.

And so with all of us, taken as we are, brought out of the smelly fields, as was preached this morning, taken out of this world that is so racked with sin that we stink of it. We don't know the stench that we are before God, and yet cleaned up, taken out, and made whole in Christ our Lord.

I speak to the anointed people of God. They've always been called the anointed. Habakkuk 313, you went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. See, God has gone ahead of his anointed people, his set-aside, his consecrated people.

He went so far ahead of them. There's Ephesians 1, 4 says he chose us in him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world. As eternity passed, you can't get more ahead of your people for their salvation than that.

Habakkuk speaks here of the exodus out of Egypt, where God goes ahead with the cloud by day and the fire by night, going ahead for the salvation of those whom he had called out, those who were consecrated to his purpose.

This kingdom of priests, his anointed, he went out for the salvation of his people, as he always has, as he has for us. God has to go ahead for our salvation. Again, as was preached this morning, dead people don't reach out to God.

Dead people don't respond to the gospel. Only by the Spirit of God can we be brought to this life. And so God goes ahead for the salvation of his anointed for you, if you know the Lord Jesus Christ, because he's the one who went ahead, went ahead to the cross where he died for your sins, went ahead to the cross where he died and he came down and was buried, and on the third day rose again.

God does go ahead for the salvation of his anointed, for his consecrated ones, for those whom we will consecrate. God doesn't just leave it there, where he calls you anointed. The precious anointed gold has been poured out upon the Christian.

John chapter 3 verse 34 says that God gives his Spirit and the Spirit is the one who is spoken of by the anointing oil, and most of the time we read of oil and clean waters in the Bible, it is speaking forward to the Holy Spirit and his work after the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.

John 3 34 says he gives his Spirit without measure. Not where we're anointed and anointed and anointed. I believe anointing is a one time calling out and anointing upon you, consecration to God's service.

But God gives his Spirit without measure, this anointing that brings you to Christ. You know, some of you know I have the habit of having a hot cup of herbal tea every night, and I stopped using sugar and honey a long time ago.

I use a little dispenser of monk fruit. Anybody familiar with monk fruit? It's really sweet, but it comes in this little bottle and you have to squeeze it out a drop at a time. Just drip, drip, drip, and you get like seven drops to a big cup of tea.

That's all you can take. It's pretty sweet stuff. I was thinking about that when I was preparing for this message and last night when I was putting my monk fruit in my tea. I said, well this is a measure.

I need a little drop. Well, I need six little drops. I count them pretty carefully. If I get seven, it's a little bit too sweet. But God gives a Spirit without measure to his anointed. God has poured out his Holy Spirit in the hearts of his people, in the hearts of his anointed.

So the Old Testament people were called the anointed. You went out for the salvation of your people for the salvation of your anointed. Psalm 28 verse 8 says the Lord is the strength of his people. He is the saving refuge of his anointed.

Again, who is his anointed? The people of God, the church, the saved, the redeemed, the beloved, the adopted children of God. However you want to describe it, it also has to fit with this idea of being anointed, consecrated, and set apart.

God is your strength. He's a strength. He's the saving refuge of his anointed. A refuge, a place to go, a fortress if you will, a stronghold. First Corinthians 10 13 speaks directly to this, I believe.

No temptation is overtaking you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

Psalm 28 verse 8 was written centuries before that. His strength to his anointed, the saving refuge of his anointed, the one who keeps his anointed, his consecrated and holy ones upon whom he has poured out his Holy Spirit, able to resist the temptation.

It doesn't say we don't fall into it, doesn't say we don't have constant need to repent, because we do. We confess our sins, as John writes, which assumes that we have sins to confess. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

He is the saving refuge constantly of his anointed. What is that way of escape? How do we endure it? Maybe a brother or sister who's gone through the same thing that you're going through. Maybe an answer to prayer that fits the need, that's Hebrews 4 .16.

Maybe God provides in his providential care of his anointed an arrangement of your circumstances that allow you to resist or even escape the temptation. He is the saving refuge of his anointed church.

That's you. You are his anointed and we needn't fear that terminology. It is biblical. You know, my wife and I, in our vacation, found that out. I'm gonna try and make this as short as I can because it could be a very long story about what happened, but we were gone for about five days.

We were in southern Oregon, heading up into central Oregon, intended going very much further than that. A number of circumstances had held us back, so we were only in central Oregon instead of up near Washington.

Well, God was our saving refuge because at three o 'clock on the 14th, my wife's nephew Brian called to tell us that his mother, Chris, Sue's older sister, had had a serious stroke. Now, was God our saving refuge?

He absolutely was because had he not given us such a good time in southern Oregon at the place that we were, we would have been so much further that we might not have been able to get back in time to be the help that my wife was for her sister.

Now, I have a little diary. I'm not gonna read it to you now, but we had all the God sightings, if you will, all these saving refuges that he was for his anointed, in that case, my wife and me, that saw us through that whole journey that he put us on there.

So God is indeed, for his anointed, for you, the saving refuge. This is what it means. Many of us can remember similar times. God does protect his anointed. God has set you aside as his own, just as much as he did David in exactly the same way.

Psalm 105 15 says, touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm. I preach that to anointed ones. I preach that to God's anointed, God's set aside. He takes special note of those who deride and persecute his anointed.

We think of persecution as the big things, where we are put on a cross or burned at the stake or something like that. Persecution comes down to a much more mundane sort of thing, being teased at the water coolers, we used to call it, and I don't know how to correlate it to today because there's no office water cooler anymore, really.

But do my prophets no harm, my anointed ones. And it's also God's special care. Ezekiel 16 8 and 9 says, when I passed by you again, he's speaking to Israel, and saw you, behold, you're at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness.

I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. God's special personal tender care is for his anointed.

And we think of God seeing this dirty, disheveled child in such need and so helpless to satisfy their needs, what do we think of? We think of the good Samaritan who saw the man had been beaten by robbers and left for dead, and the care that he gave him, how he anointed him with oil and carried him and left him at the inn at his own expense and told the innkeeper he would return and pay anything more that needed to be paid.

God's care for you, his anointed. Have you known this kind of care? Have you ever seen yourself, like my wife and me, have to turn around for something that was so important as what happened to us and look back say, you know, if God hadn't done this yesterday and protected us or protected me or so arranged my life that such-and-such happened in such-and-such a way, we all have stories like this.

I wouldn't have been there to help. I wouldn't have been there to minister Jesus Christ to those who were in need, because we would have been there. It's God's tender care for his anointed, and lest anyone think that this is just Old Testament terminology and I'm just gonna force-fit it into the north side of the cross, Paul says in 2nd Corinthians chapter 1 verse 21, and it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

Now the anointing is by the Holy Spirit, and that's really kind of another subject which I'm trying to hold off for the next message. But anointing, as I said, remember, is that setting apart that consecration that made holy and brought into God's purposes.

And in the anointing, we also read of God putting his seal, giving you the assurance of salvation, God going ahead of you for your salvation. God having sent Jesus Christ ahead, he's our elder brother, he's the one who's been resurrected, and we shall follow in our own resurrection?

No, in a resurrection like his, because he's gone ahead. God's established us in him, his anointed are in him, the anointed one. The Israelite kings were called anointed ones, but this special tie, the way I said it, the anointed one is Christ Jesus and him only.

You are anointed. 2nd Corinthians 1 verse 21, the anointed has been sealed by the Spirit of God. 1st John 2 20, but you have been anointed by the Holy One. There's the anointing of the Holy Spirit, this act of God wherein his secret will for you, which had been previously secret, I should say, is made known in time and space.

It's anointing, and you have all knowledge. Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you know and believe in your heart that he died for your sin, that he was dead and buried, and on the third day God raised him up from the dead, and he lives forever?

Do you know that? Boy, I should see a head or two nodding yes. I know that. You have all knowledge, and there's a knowledge given to God's anointed, to you who know the Lord Jesus Christ, the anointed ones.

Is God's will made known in history, this anointing? Otherwise, how would we ever know? If God chose you for salvation but never announced it, if God chose you before all time for salvation but never gave you the Holy Spirit to give you a new heart to believe the gospel and repent of your sins, how would you know that God has entered into time and space through the Lord Jesus Christ in order to announce to his anointed just that?

Would anybody have known that Jesus Christ was the Son of God had he not at his baptism had the Holy Spirit land upon him and rest as a dove? Believe that that's the final confirmation that John the Baptist had.

He could see something in his life and know that this was God's anointed one. Have you been baptized? I believe that correlates to our anointing, that act that we take, that act that God has decreed, whereby we say, yes, I am God's and he is mine.

I preached this morning or this afternoon, I should say, to the anointed ones, to you, the anointed, to you who have known God's will determined before the foundation of the world in your own personal history.

When God by his Spirit came upon you and gave you a heart to believe, brought you to the Lord Jesus Christ, and, shall we say, anointed you in the baptism that he himself decreed so that in time and space you could stand say, yes, I am one of these and he is mine and I am his.

God's will made known in time and space. God letting you know what had previously been secret and now you his anointed brought to the Lord Jesus Christ and able to come and worship him, able to pray to him as an anointed one, as one set aside to that very act, that holy act of prayer, which we shall so, in the next couple of minutes, we shall soon engage.

As God anointed David, he anointed you if you're in the Lord Jesus Christ. As God's people in times of old were called his anointed, so today both the Apostle Paul and the Apostle John call the church his anointed.

And so as anointed ones, we continue and worship in our prayers. As anointed ones, we come to God as holy and consecrated and set apart for just that service. Amen?