David - the Anointed of the Lord — Devern Fromke

I wonder this morning, how many are here for the first service? Would you raise your hand? Oh, you were here in the earlier service. How many have come in since I spoke last? That's what I'm trying to...

I'm wanting to lay some background in case... All right, thank you. Many hands. We have said thus far in sharing and fellowshipping with you that we've been led in the last year or two to give some thought to David and the lessons and the principles that come out of his life.

Lessons From the Life of David

I don't think it's just something of a natural desire, but I'd like to believe the Lord has been saying to me that for the days that are ahead, there are some lessons that I need to learn. So we've decided, as we've been asking the Lord, what we would share these days.

Maybe we would consider the life of David, some of the principles that govern God's working in and through him. And we read the first evening, and focusing our attention, we read in Acts 13. I think we'll just make sure that everyone's up to date and caught up with us.

If you'd like to bear with us a moment. In Acts 13, we were reading a little bit of the background of God's working with Israel, and we spoke of the uniqueness of the place that David fills in fulfilling his ministry and his generation.

Then we went on yesterday morning to consider the contrast between Saul and David. Let us just read in chapter 13, beginning with verse 21. And afterward they, that is, Israel, desired a king, and God gave unto them Saul, the son of Seth, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years.

And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king. We were showing yesterday how God removed Saul because he was not a man prepared. He was more the choice of the people and how they had given him position.

And out of the position there was the opportunity for him to get experience and to be the thing that he could have been. He could have been established in his kingdom, but he failed and God removed him.

Then by contrast, we spoke of David, how God had been preparing him. And in due time, out of what he was and the reality of inner being, the experiences that God had brought him to, he was finally positioned.

He was raised up of the Lord. And I've been trying to say that there's something that has stuck in my heart for years, this little phrase where he says, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will.

That verse says haunted. I don't say haunted. But it has surely caught in my heart for years. And I suppose if in the hours of groaning unto the Lord we've used any one phrase more than anything else, it has been this, oh God, what does it be to be a man after your heart?

What's involved? We did read from another translation something that gave us a little larger view. I'll just read that phrase out of the Berkeley that we used that first evening where he says, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man agreeable to my mind, who will carry out my whole program.

My whole program. And we have been saying that, as our brother Kong went on to say yesterday afternoon, all to have in us the sense of moving under the fullness of that which God is really after. Not being willing to settle down or settle short.

Anything less than all that God has planned in purpose. This morning I want to go on one step further in something that marks the life of David and the awareness, I think, that you read and are aware that there was a destiny consciousness in him, that he had been raised, that he had been laid hold of by the Lord.

But we catch another phrase over in Psalm 89 that I want to take this morning as a springboard. Psalm 89, it is spoken of David, beginning with verse 19,. Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy one and said, I have laid help upon one that is mighty, I have exalted one chosen out of the people, I have found David my servant, with my holy oil have I anointed him.

David’s Anointing and God’s Hidden Preparation

It's quite comforting to realize, dear heart, that you may be out in a very insignificant place, hidden among the sheep coats, walking with your heart entombed with the Lord, out of the stream of what we call a lot of religious activity, but God knows where you are.

God knows where you are. And he knew where David was in the passing scene after all of the other sons of Jesse had been looked over. You know how finally David is summoned. The Spirit seems to signify, this is the one I'm choosing.

I have found David. But we go on this morning to the next phrase, not merely as we were saying yesterday, the sense of God's raising, God's laying hold, God's calling out, but this phrase, with my holy oil have I anointed him.

I'm so hesitant this morning to get into something that I really sense we only know in a very small measure. For that reason, we're speaking beyond our experience. But I guess we know a little of it. Does that give me permission to talk about it?

At least I have a yearning and a hunger for the fullness of it, the reality of it, as we consider this morning some of the statements that are through the Psalms as David seems to sense that he was the anointed of the Lord.

I think it's one thing to know that there's an awareness of God's hand upon you, called, raised up, for a unique or distinct thing. It may not be clear as to what it is. Then there's another sense in which you know that the anointing of the Lord accompanies it to make it possible, the realizing of it.

Now, dear hearts, in this hour in which we live, all over the breadth and length of the land, there is so much concern about the Holy Spirit's ministry for power, for service, filling us for a walk and all that's involved.

I don't know your background. I don't know from whence you've come or the diversity of concern and interest. But what I want to share this morning grows out of a real concern for hungry people. The more hungry and the more open we are to know the fullness and the ministry of the Spirit of God in our life, I believe the more we have to understand this thing of the anointing and those peculiar features that govern or that are coexistent or that are incipient in the anointing.

Maybe this will give us some real solid ground to move on. It'll give us confidence. It'll hold us when we might tend to move off on some tensions or we might be eager to get off into areas that will lead us into dead ends.

God’s Preparation Versus Man’s Pursuit of Position

I was saying yesterday that, and I think I'll have to get the background before us. I was saying yesterday that man's way is so different from God's way. I fear that there are lots of folk like Saul who are interested in a position for they feel if they have a position, a place or a sphere in which they can really function for God, then they can get something done.

We were saying yesterday that the people gave to Saul a position, an unprepared, untried, untested man. We went on to show how in this way he was to get experience. He was to come into knowing how to be the king and how to be established and how to lead the people.

He'd had no previous background or experience. And finally, out of it, he could come to really to be the thing that he needed to be. But this is man's way, giving position, thrusting into position. And so often there's the eagerness and the itch to be that we're seeking the position ourselves.

But you don't do that more than once or twice at the most. Then we went on to say that God's way, God's way is that of working in our inner being. He starts this pattern of building in life within us something as our brother Sparks reiterated last night, the reality of the Lord.

And out of this, out of this there comes light. In him was light and the light became the light of man. Out of this there comes the experience that has meaning and we know how the principles of God work and are governed.

And finally, then out of this there always flows the position. Any position, any position that issues out of what we really are gives God the opportunity to really function and to work. Now I think it's interesting.

We did draw one tree over here yesterday. We were, I don't know that I'll do that here this morning. We'll leave that for a little bit. We were saying that when Saul got into an hour of crisis because there had not been the previous union, acquaintance, there had not been that intimacy with the Lord.

He got down to Gilgal. He needed direction. He needed a package of knowledge. But he didn't know how. He only knew the outward aspect of what you go through there to wait for Samuel and there to get some understanding, some direction for the people, how they should go.

But by contrast, what God has been doing, what God has been doing in David from the very beginning, then to build within him something of the source itself, a union with the very source. Not so much with him a matter of going off to get a package for each occasion, but there is the sense that he's in union, he's in connection with the very source of life itself.

He learned it from a boy in the sheepfold when he took on the first lion. Then he took on the next lion, Goliath, that inward preparation. And so we're wanting to make a contract this morning. I think I see something.

And I pray that if there be any straining to make it say something it doesn't, then my brethren will be very quick to caution or very quick to correct. But I think I see something. You remember we pointed out in passing yesterday that when Samuel went down to anoint Saul, he took a vial of oil.

Did I mention that to your attention? But when he went to anoint David, he took a horn of oil. We read in another place in the Psalms where he spoke of the horns of the wicked he will cut off, but the horns of the righteous he will exalt.

And I think we said, we meant to say it, that to get a picture of the representation, and I believe God is quite meticulous in the things that are representative. Maybe I read into it, but I believe there's very much care.

And I questioned for a long time, why did he use a vial in one case? Why did he use a horn of oil in another case? We went on to say, as I illustrated, that the cow in a herd that has the longest horn seems to have the most authority.

You remember? She gets her way into the feed rack. Those horns give her something of extra punch, extra authority. I used to hear dear old Grandpa say so often, we're going to dehorn that cow. He's been bossed in the herd long enough.

Well, there's something about an authority, the horns that come, that grow out of life. Horns grow. I know you might try to glue some on. But horns are supposed to grow out of life. They're supposed to issue out of life.

That's why I'm picturing the fact that in the progress and the growth and the development of the prepared man, the man whom God said, I will prepare me a man after mine own heart, there was this, the growing of the horn, the development, the preparation, that in due time, having raised him, positioned him in the place he wanted, the anointing oil could be forthcoming.

But a vial, you don't, I think in your translation, maybe the middle margin, you can look in places, and the vial is like a bowl. You don't grow bowls. I don't think. You make them. They're suitable for the occasion.

But they don't grow. Does it say anything? It does to me that in this particular way, a man by the name of Saul, who was to be anointed to fulfill an occasion, and you remember we said yesterday it was the people who had desired and the people who had chosen, but God going along with it says, go down, Samuel, and anoint them.

And he takes a bowl of oil, and he goes down to anoint Saul for this specific occasion. I don't think that we, could any of us say that this little parenthesis of Saul coming in for this three and a half year period, I don't think that we could say that it's in the fullest, highest program of God.

But it's something of an expediency. It's something out of necessity that's included. He goes down with a bowl of oil, and he's anointed. Well, what I want to say first of all this morning is this. I do believe that there are times in the economy of God when there will be an anointing from a bowl, sort of an expediency, an occasion that requires it.

But God's highest thought, that which is in line with the fullness of the working of his purpose is the growth of an olive tree within it. That which springs out of the very source of life itself. And anything less than that we have merely a bowl for the occasion.

It's of God, but it's not the highest. It's not that which is supreme in his intention. The thing that rather interests me as I look back into some of the statements, David said, if you'd like to turn to Psalm 52, let us begin to read with verse 7.

Lo, Psalm 52, verse 7. Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and strengthened himself in his wickedness. But David says, but I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.

Go ahead, boast, David, but I don't know what else to say about you. I think you're a man conscious not only of being raised for the particular thing that God wants to do, but there's the awareness of the sense, there's the awareness of the anointing of the Lord.

I'm a green tree, a green olive tree. I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever. I will praise thee forever because thou hast done it. And I will wait on thy name for it is good before thy saints. The first thing, then, that I want us to get a hold of in this feature that to me is governing in God's purpose in the anointing, I'd like to say is that God wants to develop within us the olive tree, a green olive tree.

That which brings us into the continuousness, the continuousness of the flow, the source of life itself. I'm not counting out the blessedness of having the vial for an occasion. How can I say it? I remember some years ago being in a community down in the south in a school, a rural school.

The Anointing for an Occasion and the Abiding Anointing

One afternoon, some of the ladies gathered for prayer and they told me a few years before of a young man who had grown up in that community. From his early days as a boy, he had stuttered and stammered.

And it was quite difficult to listen to him. Then at about the age of nineteen, he was saved, really converted. And out of a real desire to go on with the Lord, he went off to Bible school, came back that next year to his home community, and he said he wanted to hold a meeting for the people.

He wanted to tell them, share a little bit of what God had done. They looked at him and shook their heads and said under their breath, Well, we think a meeting would be fine. But they didn't see how he could possibly ever get through the first message.

He stammered and stuttered, stuttered. It was so difficult to listen. But out of honor to his deep concern and his interest, they allowed him to rent the local school for a week. The whole community came out that first night, a lot of them out of curiosity, wondering what this would be.

Stammering, stuttering young fellow that he was. The ladies told me his tears coursed down their cheeks. They were still filled with the remembrance of it. They said that he started, opened the book, and he began to stammer and stutter.

Then he looked up with something of that helplessness as if to say, God, I've got my toes in the water now. I've gone this far. I'm a fool, but here I am. The rest depends on you. They said that there was something of a peculiar, wonderful sense that came over the whole audience and over him.

His tongue straightened out and he spoke as the voice of an oracle that night. And everyone knew they'd heard from God. The next night it was the same story. He stammered and stuttered, but he looked up with that helplessness.

Lord. And God answered. They said the meeting went on for several weeks and stirred the community. I could tell there was still some of the overflow and the evidences of it. Now strange as it may seem, and I'm sure you'll understand what I'm trying to say, the young man in that particular occasion was moving out of an anointing, that is, something God had wrought.

But you go back and follow him and you begin to realize that it was a bowl for the occasion. The tree had not yet been developed. You follow me? It's not doing any injustice. It's not belittling. It's just simply saying that for this occasion, I believe that one of the things that has shattered so many of the lives of Christian workers who have gone out in the beginning phase or in an opening time, God in a very sovereign way has given for that occasion the bowl.

But there's something better than the bowl. There is. God wants to work within us the tree, the olive tree, that which issues out of life it grows and it becomes something that is expressive of life. Could I say in passing now, I think that lest we get caught into some snares, there is sweeping through our country today different ones, servants of the Lord, individuals who may at opening phases in different times, they may know some anointing.

But when we try to reproduce or to continue or to get the next bowl, God's very sovereign. He's very sovereign. Especially in this thing we call the anointing. And he will be satisfied and I don't think we should be satisfied with anything less than the olive tree growing up within.

The anointing that abideth. Men have called the different things through the years. Ever read the book Practicing the Presence of God? I think that's another term for it. That continuous sense of moving always with an awareness of the Lord's direction.

You see, one of the things we're trying to say this morning is that I think it's possible for many of the children of the Lord to settle for fillings, anointings, to be anointed. But I think that there's something of not just the anoint for occasion, but the anointing.

You always feel it. That is, you always sense it. It's a continuous thing that abides. It's there all the time. It ought to be. You see? You don't move in and out of it so much. There may be measures and degrees, but I wonder if this is what David is meaning when he said, I'm like a green olive tree in the house of God.

He says over in Psalm 92 .10, he's anointed with fresh oil. Fresh oil, the freshness that comes from a tree out of which there is life. Life itself. So we're saying, first of all, that if there's any difference between a vial and a horn in representation, one speaks to us of that which has the continuousness, the abiding effect, the moving in, the continuous flow of the life of the thing itself.

Knowing God Personally Rather Than Living on Others’ Overflow

I think there's another aspect, another feature that governs in the anointing that we must get a hold of. Go back with me to the day when Jacob and Esau were still back in the home of their father Isaac.

Do you recall how the mother was conniving to get her favorite son blessed? And how the whole thing sort of backfires? And finally, it is Jacob who is blessed, and then there's great antagonism between Jacob and Esau.

And Jacob has to flee from home. And now here he is, the first night, moving away from home, out on his own. I think we do well to remember that up to this time, he had known the God of Abraham and Isaac, right?

He had known the God of Abraham and Isaac. But all that he knew of God, really, was the overflow which touched him from another tree, another olive tree. He was enjoying some of the fruit and the extending of the blessings anointing, but he was still the God of Abraham and Isaac.

And it's a blessed hour when you get chased out of home, and you get out on that first night, all alone and away, and suddenly, oh my, I have to know God for myself. I have to know Him in an intimate way for myself.

Father's God, Grandfather's God, they're not sufficient. And I believe it's at this night when, you know, he lays his head down and the ladder is extended. And it seems in that dark hour that God begins something of what I like to call the continuity of purpose.

And Jacob comes into the wonderful realization that he's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I know when that happened to me. I thank God for parents who guided and directed and their prayers and their concerns.

So it's quite a thing, not to just speak of the God of my father, quite a thing to come into this kind of an awareness that you've entered into something of a peculiar relationship with him. And it's my concern these days, it's been already echoed by everyone else, that we don't go home with just some of the fruits, the overflow that have come from other lives because of lives that have walked with God.

And we get ahold of an apple here, it's a revelation, an illumination. We tuck away another apple in our basket, I say it, I don't know how else to put it, but I hope none of us go home with a basket of apples, but we can go home with a tree.

There's a difference because, you see, if all I have is the basket of apples, when I get into that hour of crisis and the fruit or the apple that I got, the illumination of that moment might have been quite wonderful, but then I go back.

Let me see, what page on the notebook was that? Yeah, I do this. I've got a principle, but it's pretty hard, it's pretty cold, it's pretty stiff. It's not something that's workable and working. I've got an apple, but God's desire for it is to so come to know the growth and the development of the tree itself within.

And this will only come, this can only be real in our lives when there's that openness, that honesty, that something that cries out with a conscience that's been cleared. The door to our inner spirit is open.

We're saying, Oh God, I thank you for every past apple or blessing of all that you've given. But God, I don't want to live by the overflow of others. I want to know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and that'll be the God of Jacob.

This is what's wrong in our churches today. We live by the overflow of others, the fruit that has come in others. And God's raising up in this day, I tell you my heart rejoices. He's raising up people who are coming to be more than spectators and apple pickers, the lives that have come into something of the fullness of knowing that you have an anointing to teach with you.

There's one within you. There's a tree within. I used to be quite alarmed. This is an awful confession to make. I used to be quite alarmed that earlier years when I would be ministering in a conference and at least eight or ten people would come up after the service and say, Oh, bless the Lord.

God showed me that several years ago. And I began to realize that I wasn't sharing much of anything new with anybody. And here I thought I had a private little, you know, it was giving them something they'd not seen.

Then I began to realize and thank God. Well, thank you, Lord. You're building these trees in everybody. You're building these trees in everybody. The anointing that teaches, the freshness, the something.

And it's very wonderful and true. I say it so often in the meetings. It is the work and the ministry of the anointing, the teaching of the Spirit of God to keep at the periphery of our consciousness. So many of these things and just at these moments they break through.

And you can see the light bulbs go on together all over the audience. People say, Yeah, I knew that. Now, but it's sort of a corporate thing. You see, God doesn't let us enter in on our own private ways so much as we think.

It's quite wonderful to see how, you know, how you've gotten away, pastors, you've gotten away on the mountain to dig out some messages and to get some private things, only to find quite close you might get an apple or two here and there.

But so often it's in the midst of what's needed for all of the people that there's something of the corporate unfolding and the unveiling. God doesn't just feed you, but he's ministering to the group at large.

Continuity of Purpose and the Corporate Work of God

But let's go back. This is the feature I want us to get a hold of now. There is something in the governing feature of the anointing that shuts us up to this thing we call the continuity in purpose. Here's Abraham.

Here's Isaac. Here's Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and right on. And this statement has been so often coming to me these last couple of years. As I said unto Moses, as I said unto him. You see, you see the connectedness, the relatedness.

Of course, Saul can stand over here and say, I have the Spirit of the Lord. I have an anointing. But he didn't have the continuity of background so much. And he's removed. There's nothing of the continuity.

It doesn't follow on. Let's not confuse that which is an occasional or that which is in the expedient. It's wonderful that God is so concerned for the needs of people. And you read about Saul when he was anointed that he was needed to deliver the people at that occasion out of the hands of the Philistines.

But I believe there's a further higher governing feature. And this thing we call the olive tree that works within, the life-giving sense of direction will relate us to that which is past and it will keep us related to that which is in life.

That's one of the first things I become sensitive to when I hear men in movements or groups. Are they isolated? How are they related? Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't help but say, what's the relatedness?

God's so much bigger than we think. And in his total program, what's the relatedness? How does it fit in? And so he became the God of Jacob as well as Abraham and Isaac. There's the continuity that's involved.

Then there's another feature that I think we have to get a hold of and it is that the anointing, the tree that comes to full blossom and growth will never be inseparable from authority. They are like strands of the same rope.

The Anointing and Submission to Authority

We were saying yesterday that it's quite something to give a man a position. Young lady, to give your lover the position of head in your home. Quite something. I don't know, but it seems to me as though in order for anointing to come to its fullness and its sharpness and the intention of God, God honors and recognizes what we call line of authority.

One of the first things we sat down to do this last year when I went to the school to help for the year. We sat down. I had known the brother who was to be the administrator for several years and I said, well, we must settle one thing now because God's a God of order and I believe you know this, but we'll have to understand what we call the stream and the channel of authority so that we don't get some governmental bypass and get all fouled up.

And it was simple and it's just this. And it became quite manifest in our working. He was the administrator who was responsible to the board, the board of directors. The board setting the policies and the principles would give them to him.

He would pass them on to me. I would pass them on to the teachers and the teachers would pass them on to the children, to the students. Now, it's quite a thing when people don't know proper order. You've ever been in the army?

Well, you get stuck with it. This is a natural principle, but it also functions and it's a real problem today in lots of groups. I've gone into schools and churches and places, gone in where there's been complete confusion simply because people have not understood certain things.

So we agreed that he was not going to go to the teachers as the administrator. He was not going to bypass me in the chain of authority. He would not go to the teachers. I never go directly to the students as such, bypassing the teacher.

Nor when the moments of grumbling and complaining because of things, never would I go directly to the board. Oh, we get involved and touch the ground. We had a wonderful and a beautiful year because it functioned.

It worked. It worked. Let me illustrate. Here's a secretary who came to me not so long ago. She said, I work in an office where it's complete confusion and bedlam. She said, in the morning, my supervisor lays out the plans for the day, gets us all organized in the things that I'm to do, and about half an hour later, the boss comes in from the office and puts a whole bunch of things for me to do.

Says, type this out. I want it right away. It's got priority. Who's head? Well, he's boss. Two hours later, my supervisor comes to get her work. But I spend all the time on the boss's work. And I'm always in the midst of the fire.

Who am I really working for? You see the confusion? Very difficult thing. Very difficult thing. I do believe that there's something quite wonderful when God begins to function and to move. The Lord begins to set out what we call proper order.

I believe that this thing we call the full function of life and anointing requires that we understand something of the chain of authority, the misfunction, and all that's involved. May I say to you, dear wife, this morning, how can I couch it that you will not think me hard?

I believe there are lots of precious, precious wives who are very eager and zealous and hungry to move on with the Lord. It's so easy to get out of order, to get out of order. And I don't doubt that for an occasion when you move over to such and such a home and here's a desperate need, God may give you a bowl of oil.

But if the tree's going to grow, if the tree is going to function as it ought to function, it will be because we have come to sense this thing of the proper submission and the line in which authority really functions and works.

I know, I've known it for some years. It's not easy. But I've known for some years that the reason heaven closes and the reason darkness comes and confusion comes is because I kind of like to be a freelancer.

That's right. And I've often wanted to say, well, Lord, it's so wonderful. I've got direct access, real priesthood of the believers. And I do have direct access. But so often he has had to slip in and remind me, son, I gave you a Moses, but I don't like Moses.

Moses needs some adjusting too. I know your husband needs some adjusting. You don't need to tell me. My administrator needed it all year long. And lots of things. One day I had four sixth graders slip into my office with their complaints about a certain teacher.

I don't know how they got in the office. My secretary always screamed, but she must have been gone for a minute. There they sat down with their list of complaints. And I took one look and I said, I'm sorry, I don't know how you got in here, but I cannot receive you.

I haven't yet, and I won't do it now. I'm sorry. Don't tell me goodbye. Do you think that's strange? They went out mumbling and groaning. And I didn't know what it was. About 15 minutes later, I was walking down the hall, and here was another whole contingent of young people, a group that really loved the Lord.

They came up to me, and I was caught in the hall, and they said, we want you to know, Mr. Franke, we don't agree with the other group at all. We stand with our teacher. I thought, well, I guess it's time that I go to the teacher.

Find out. You see? Well, I may be losing. I just want to impress upon us one thing. If God has made anything real to my own heart, it is that the olive tree only grows, and it only brings forth, it becomes a continuous thing when I know what it is to stay, first of all, in the sense of the continuity of purpose, that thing which is primary with God right now.

It doesn't mean that there won't be bowls and things out here. It doesn't mean that there aren't anointings for all the kids. But God is quite jealous for that specific and that primary and those things that are central to his heart.

He's moving along the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and so on. And this is why I can say now, I think it'll have meaning, when I am under authority, I have authority. I learned years ago when I would go into my teachers complaining and grumbling and say, well, the board did this.

And they catch the spirit that I was at odds with the board. Then I'd wonder a few days later why they felt they could grumble against what I was doing. You follow me? When I am under authority, I have authority.

I think you get this in the picture of the centurion. You remember how Jesus comes to the home. He has a servant that is needing healing. He sends word when he's a ways off. And the implication is, Lord, you don't need to come.

All you have to say is just say the word of authority. And he gives us this lovely little principle. He says, I am a man under authority. Therefore, I have authority. I say to one, go, and he goes. To another, come, and he comes.

Do this, and he does it. He's in the stream. He's merely backing up that which has already been settled. That's all a cop does when he stands out here with a badge. Where did he get his authority? It's invested.

It has its reservoir at source back at police headquarters. Police headquarters goes back to government. The state government goes back, you see. It's in the line. It's in the stream. I remember several years ago, we were up in Highland Lake over New York State at a Bible conference.