The Spirit Rushes to Success

The Life of David and God’s Secret Will

Well, our message this morning will be from 1 Samuel 16, and just verse 13, though I'm going to read in a moment verses 1 through 14 of that chapter. You may recall some weeks ago, I began this sort of abbreviated series in the life of David.

And by abbreviated, what I meant was, we're not going to go through every part of his life. I'm not going to read or even preach each chapter and each aspect of his life. But we're going to choose some of the major epochs, some of the major happenings or events that occurred in his life, and not so much just to understand the narrative, though the narrative is very important and we will talk about the narrative, but to look for and to see and understand God moving behind the narrative.

The Lord God and how he is pushing a long redemptive history through this history that we have with David, that great prototype or precursor of the Lord Jesus Christ. The one who has the name, which was one of Jesus' favorite appellations, son of David.

The one who Matthew, in the opening of his book in the genealogy, takes such pains to make sure we know he, in his physical humanity, was descended from. This man, this King David, the one to whom the promise of a king who would sit forever on the throne was made.

So this is now the third in that short series. And what we are, in 1 Samuel 16, looking at is this idea of God's secret will. Deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to the Lord our God. But that which has been revealed is ours and our children's forever.

So God's secret will, that a man should replace Saul, was not known until he made it known to Samuel. And so Samuel went and effected the election, the elective will of God, by drawing out David from among the sons.

He sanctified that. He commemorated it, or formalized it, when he anointed him with oil. And now we're going to come to the final step in that process, where the Lord God comes down and confirms that all this has been in line with what had previously been his secret unknown will.

Election, this is the one. Anointing, anointed his king. And now God, from heaven by his spirit, will confirm that all this has been in accordance with his will. So that brief introduction, please stand for the reading of God's word.

I will read 1 Samuel 16, 1 through 14. The Lord said to Samuel, how long will you grieve over Saul since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your home with oil and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king 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'll show you what you shall do.

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

And he said, peaceably. I've 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 anointing is before him.

But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have 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 until he comes.

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. Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul. And a harmful spirit from the Lord tormented him.

May God bless the reading of his word and now the preaching of it. Would you please be seated? Let us pray and ask God's blessing upon what I just said, the preaching and the hearing of his holy word.

Our Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord. And may the words that I'm about to speak proclaim the truth of your word. And may they be pleasing in your sight and you by your Spirit, Father, would drive them into the hearts of those who would hear.

And Lord, you'd be glorified in this place by transforming such as us more and more into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we ask for these blessings, amen. So the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward.

The Mystery of the Holy Spirit’s Work

You know, the working of the Holy Spirit, as we just sang in that hymn, it's among the most mysterious and difficult doctrines really to get our arms around. I love that hymn, number 712, I Know Whom I Have Believed, it has to be in my top six favorite hymns.

And I know not why, I know not how, I know not, I know not, I know not, you know not, I know not, the how of the Spirit's working. It's a difficult doctrine, it's a mysterious doctrine. And yet it is so important that we understand the reality of the Spirit's work in us.

That it's not just an idea, that the Holy Spirit is not just a power or something out there, it is a person of the Trinity, Father, Son, Spirit, all equally God. All persons of God in their eternal existence, in their omnipotence, in their working towards our salvation.

And yet, as Jesus Christ himself told Nicodemus, it's a terribly hard and mysterious doctrine, really to gather up and to put into simple propositional truths that we can take away and understand. Though it doesn't mean we don't try, but Jesus Christ himself said to Nicodemus, the wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit. So we don't know the how of the Spirit's working. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? I hope to God you do. I hope to God you have been given that new heart that has faith to believe the gospel, to repent of your sins and trust in Christ and him alone for salvation.

How did that happen? Well, we can go to Ezekiel 36 and say, well, God gave me a new heart. He took out that stony heart. He removed that black heart, what was impervious to his word that wanted to sin.

And he replaced it with a heart of flesh. And I would answer you, okay, that is what the scripture says. How? Too often it's that we can't understand the how that leads people to take a lot of variance with the what.

I can't explain how he did it. And if it's that subjective, then the what that he produces in me, the what of any decision I make at any given time is sort of subjective and up to me since I can't explain on the other side.

So we feel free to do what we want with what we think the Spirit of God might lead us. How often have you heard a Christian say that they are on this or that course or has decided to go left when the word of God is actually screaming to them?

No, turn right. You're going the wrong way. Turn around, repent, get away from that. That's against God's will. You show them with good reasoning with scripture that they're on the wrong course, that the word of God, the Spirit of God having inspired this word would say different than where they're going.

And how often have you been able to show them that? And they answer with you this trump card. Ah, but I prayed. And the Spirit of God told me that I go this way or that. Have you heard that? I have more times than I can count.

And I have to ask you, how many times have you or I done the same? Where we determine I want to go this way and I'm gonna find it in the word and I'm going to perhaps mangle the word but I wouldn't do it intentionally or consciously.

And some brother or sister comes along and tries to advise us. And even though we would detest this in others, we ourselves say, oh, but I've prayed. And I feel that dangerous word, I feel. I feel that the Spirit of God has led me in this directions.

How many times do we attribute to the Holy Spirit what I want to do? And having done that, ignoring the goads of conscience that he, the Spirit, gives us in his ministry to us. So we're in 1 Samuel 16.

1 Samuel 16, where Samuel brought the will of God into history when he anointed David as Israel's next king. Now anyone could have said, here is the Lord's choice. Anyone could have poured oil on him and anyone could have done all the pomp and ceremony of an anointing, but only God could confirm that Samuel had followed his will when he took David from amongst his brothers.

And this is where we are in the narrative as I explained before. And I want us to look at this working of the Holy Spirit. I want us to understand this day how the Holy Spirit works. And though our narrative is short on details and we're just in this one verse, 1 Samuel 16, 13, it really does have a wealth for us in understanding this working of the Spirit within us and what that impinges then upon us in terms of following his will and knowing his word.

So I want to look at this in three sections. It's just one verse, so it's not gonna be divided up into long passages, but the first thing we're gonna deal with is how the Holy Spirit rushed upon David.

The Spirit of God rushed upon him. And the second thing is going to be the permanence of this work of the Spirit in the believer's life, in your life, if indeed you have the Spirit of God. And third and finally, what does this mean to us in our life with Christ, this rushing of the Spirit upon us?

You see, it is by the power imparted to men by the Spirit of God that God accomplishes his purposes for men. Let me say that again. It is by the power that is imparted to men by the Spirit of God that God accomplishes his purposes for men and through men.

And often he intervenes by miraculous changes in the natural order of things, such as when the son stood still so that Joshua could finish his battle against the Amalekites, but those are rare. In the normative sense in our Christian life, it is the Spirit of God who's working through men, by which I mean men and women, through Christians, through you, through me.

By that power imparted to us by the Spirit of God, God accomplishes his purposes here in your life, here in this church, here in this world, in the entire universe, really. Even Jesus, when he went into the wilderness, he was driven there by the Spirit of God.

That's Luke chapter four, verse one. And after his temptation, he went forth where or how? In the power of the Spirit. It was no different for David, and it is no different for you or for me or for anyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This rushing of the Spirit of God upon you. We need to find out what this means. We need to look into this brief verse. Then the Spirit of God rushed upon David from that time forward, rushed upon him.

It sounds like a wind, like a strong wind that suddenly appeared and went whoosh! And there it was, upon David. Now we're not told what Samuel or anyone else actually saw. We don't know what they heard.

We do know that the Spirit of God did this. He rushed upon this one, upon David. But it's sort of like Acts chapter eight, verse 17, where you read of Peter and John who went to Samaria to see if Philip the Evangelist's evangelism had truly brought conversion.

And we read there that they saw the Spirit of God fall upon the Samaritans. And that's all we're told. We don't know what phenomena they saw. We don't know if the Samaritans suddenly sang out in chorus and gave praise to God, if they spoke in tongues, if they bowed down before him, prayed, we don't know what happened.

But it was something that the apostles, Peter and John, saw, and it was confirmable. In Acts chapter 11, Peter reported that he knew that this meant that God had given the Gentiles the same gift of the Spirit that he'd given to them.

The Lord had confirmed that the Samaritans had truly been saved, that his will had been rightly discerned by Philip the Evangelist when he reported Samaritans had been saved. What did they see? We don't know with that any more than we know with David.

By some confirmable phenomenon, the Lord certified that David was indeed the one he intended. Rushed, the Spirit of God rushed upon David. He'd been elected, drawn out from the brothers, he'd been anointed, and now the Spirit of God rushed upon him, and it's from the Hebrew word salach.

Salach, and that means to be strong, to be effective. It means to be powerful. It means to be prosperous. It means to accomplish satisfactorily what was intended. All in that single word, salach, rushed upon him.

Now, an early example we have of that in King Saul's life is in 1 Samuel chapter 11. In there, King Saul, early in his reign, heard that the Ammonites had attacked the city of Jabesh Gilead, and we read that the Spirit of God rushed upon him.

The same phrase that we have in chapter 16 with David. It rushed upon him, and the next thing we hear is that the Ammonites had been scattered by Saul's army, and that city had been saved. Abraham's servant, when he was sent to find a wife for Isaac, he wondered if the Lord would give him prosperous success, if God would give him salach.

And I'll just give you one more example. I want you to understand how important this word is here in understanding how the Spirit works in you or in me. It's in Isaiah chapter 55, familiar to most of us.

For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth.

It shall not return to be empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose. It shall succeed, it shall salach. It shall succeed in that for which I sent it. So success, prosperity, strength, power, all those words there, the Lord's intentions are accomplished.

And the next thing we know of David, in 1 Samuel 17, which God willing will open up beginning in the afternoon in a couple of Sundays here, but the next thing we hear of David, where do we see? He's standing over the dead body of Goliath, having had power, having accomplished God's intentions and God's will that that giant be slain and prospering in taking his armor, his sword and his shield particularly.

There are a lot of terms that we use for the Spirit of God and they're good terms, they're proper terms. We call him our paraclete, which means the one who walks alongside of us. We call him our comforter, those are very common.

We call him our helper, we call him our advocate. It is he, the Spirit of God in Romans 8 26, who looks at our weakness and intercedes for our prayers. It's the Holy Spirit who translates God's secret will into human experience.

Just as I've been explaining from 1 Samuel 16, God's secret will brought into history. Chapter one, verse four of Ephesians says that God, the Father chose you, the believer to be in Christ and he made this decision, this election of you before the foundation of the world, his secret will as to who will be saved, his secret will that you might be saved.

But then Ephesians 1 13 to 14 tells us that the Spirit of God rushed upon you, that's my word, it doesn't say that in Ephesians, but the concept is correct, rushed upon you and made it known to you. Our theological word for that is simple, he applied salvation to you.

So God's secret will as to who would be saved, just as God's secret will as to who would succeed Saul, made known when he speaks that word, spoke it personally to Samuel and anointed David, speaks it to you in the word and we have his word that men would be saved and then the Spirit of God applies it to you.

He makes known to you that previously secret will that you will be saved. So we can call the Holy Spirit by another name. It's not in scripture, this is my name for him, from Selah that he rushed upon, he brings success, he's our achiever.

The Holy Spirit is the one who achieves in us that which God would have us to do, that which would bring us to Christ's image, those things which you or I in our own power could never even come close, never even begin to accomplish.

The Holy Spirit brings that success, brings that prosperity, brings that power. He brings success and prosperity, God's will, by revealing it to those to whom it was intended, to you if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

How did that happen? Again, it's inexplicable. Did that happen? Do you know that you know that you know that Jesus Christ is Savior, that he is your Lord, that he truly did save you from the agonies of eternal suffering, which he on the cross took upon himself in your place?

Do you know that you know that you know? How do you know this? Can't tell you. Do you know this? Yeah, you can know that objectively because the Holy Spirit witnessing to your spirit that you're truly children of God, he is our achiever.

How did that happen? My favorite hymn, I know not how this saving faith to me he hath made known, but I know whom I have believed. I don't know how, but I know he did. Explain it to me objectively. I cannot, but I know he did.

You can't prove it to me. You know, brother, sister, the Spirit of God witnesses within me, and I have an answer to you for the hope that lies within me, but I can't prove to you how God did this, only that he did.

Titus chapter three, verse five, he saved us by the washing of regeneration, renewal of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, I wanna repeat what he said to Nicodemus because he said, we're never going to understand this.

Remember this, the wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. You know, back then, they didn't have barometers.

They didn't have satellites that could track or even know of the jet stream that has such effect on the wind. They didn't know high-pressure zones that would blow wind into the low-pressure zones. It was mysterious to them, and it's just as mysterious to us today, the working of the Holy Spirit.

If the way of the Spirit is a mystery, the confirming fruit in a life of repentance, of growth and holiness, of taking ever greater strides in moral excellencies, mercy, and grace, these are observable, objectively observable proofs of the Spirit's invisible operations.

To display from the depth of our being, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, one description of the Christian and what he works in you. How? Can't tell you, but what?

Love, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, kindness, goodness. If God succeeded, if God salok, if you will, in saving your eternal soul by infusing in you faith to believe and faith being that indispensable cornerstone of salvation, faith being that thing that is totally foreign to you.

You're not born with faith. You don't put your faith in Jesus Christ. God gives you faith in Jesus Christ. How did that come about, this cornerstone? Well, if he succeeded in giving you something so different than your natural state, can we not say he will also succeed in completing that work that he began when he gave you that faith to believe in Jesus Christ, that he would complete this work also through faith?

Philippians chapter one, verse six says, he who began a good work in you, that is salvation. That's the start of the journey. That's when the Holy Spirit rushes upon you and makes you able to believe, makes you want to believe.

You can say, I chose to follow Jesus. And in our circles, no, you didn't choose. God chose you, that's true. How did I choose to follow Jesus? Because God gave me a heart that wanted Jesus. God gave me a heart that wasn't mine.

God gave me a heart that I would have detested until he yanked out the old heart and gave me the new one. He who began that good work in you, who made you want to be like Jesus, he will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Romans 8, 29 says that God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his son. How is all this work in you? It's worked by that invisible, mysterious operating of the Holy Spirit within. He rushed upon you to make you able to believe.

He rushed upon you to give you the power to conform yourself more and more to his image. Do you conform yourself to his image? Yes, you do. Can you do it without the spirit? No, you can't. Do you have responsibility to follow the word, to obey the word, and to do it?

Yes, you do, because that is transformative. Can you do it on your own? Absolutely not. It all works hand in hand together. It is God who is doing this work. It is God who makes you able to accomplish this work.

It is God who, when you obey his word, uses that to transform you more into his son, into the image of his son, and that by spirit. Not of me, not of you, but we do the working. But God gets all the glory.

God alone has that power to save you, to transform you. Jesus said that without him, we can do what? Nothing. Let me hear that. Without him, we can do what? Nothing. He said it's all by his spirit. It's all as we are attached to him, the true vine.

But Jesus Christ himself also said in that same vein, in that same discourse, he said, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do, because I'm going to the Father.

That's early in that discourse. As you read that for homework this afternoon, read all the way through to chapter 17 of that discourse, which ends just, and then he goes to be arrested and to the cross.

You'll see that what he's saying here, the greater works that you will do, how will you do these? Well, you're gonna lift up your hand, and you're gonna do the work. You're gonna put your hand to the plow.

How? By the power of the spirit. By that invisible, mysterious working of the spirit, you actually do that work that transforms you more and more into his image. All by God's spirit, all to his glory, and yet we have to put out the effort.

You will indeed succeed in growing into Christlikeness. You will indeed do greater works than even Jesus did, not by might or power, but by my spirit, says the Lord. Now, oftentimes, we let a humility, and I would call it a false humility, overshadow this great promise that Jesus gives.

You and I get no credit for it, only Christ does, but to not strive for this spiritual prosperity, this spiritual success, this submission, if you will, to the power of the spirit, and to do the things that the spirit would lead you, which are given to us in his word, is a false humility, to not strive for that prosperity.

It's almost to say that God's word will not have the success in that for which it was sent. How many times have you known a Christian who says, well, I've gotten saved, well, now I'm gonna go home and just live the way I want to, because I've got Jesus, I'm going to heaven, and now Sundays are for carousing, for my pleasure, for my recreation, and now I can continue in the way I wanted to go and whatever I want to do, whatever carousing kind of life I had before, good to go.

How many times have we seen that? No, to stop there is as false as the false humility, which says I can do nothing, and therefore I will do nothing. No, we can't have it both ways. If the power of the spirit is in you to have transformed you and made you believe in Jesus Christ, that same spirit wants you to be in the image of that Lord who saved you, to grow more and more like him, to obey the word, to know the word more, and to follow it more closely.

That's success, that is selah. That is why the Holy Spirit rushed upon you. He's given us the means of success, what we call means of grace. He's given us prayer that flows freely and often. He's given you service in ministry that steps forward.

You can step forward, and even in this place, you say God has provided this church with a foot or a hand, and it's me. God has provided an ear that is needed to listen to someone's sorrows. Whose ear is that?

It is mine, a hand of mercy to the hungry. Here is mine, all led by the spirit, but in time and space, in history, done by you, and it's transformative to obey, to step forward, put your hand to the plow, and to do the works that the spirit would lead you.

Paul wrote to Titus that Christ's purpose in redeeming a people of his own was for them to be zealous for good works, not for the sake of the works themselves, but for the transformative power of faithful obedience as we walk in the works that God prepared in advance, and that's Ephesians chapter one, verse 10.

So he's given you service. He's given you preaching and the Lord's table. Sitting under solid biblical preaching is to sit at Jesus' feet in that sense. It is to encounter the living word, and in that word, our risen and living savior.

May we never come away the same as we began, James 125. May we never look at the law of liberty and then forget what it said, what your pastors plead for you to remember and to apply, and why do we do this from this pulpit?

So we can compare your progress to a predetermined measurement, and so be assured that we've succeeded, that you're having success, that you're having selach? No, not at all, because your pastor's plea to God before we preach and to you as we preach is that the Holy Spirit will bring success to the word that God in Christ has sent, that what is preached so far as it is true to Christ will bring the success and prosperity of spiritual growth, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

I was asked just recently, how is it that the catechism says that the Lord's table and baptism are means of this sanctifying grace, of this growing in the Lord? My answer, my answer to you, if you've ever wondered that, is because by those ordinances, not just in obeying them, obedience being a good thing in and of itself, but by those ordinances, you see the gospel played out.

I call it a living parable, that's just my term. When we take the Lord's table in a little while, you're gonna remember the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, his suffering on your behalf and the broken bread, his life given for yours in the wine, which is his blood of the new covenant.

When you see a baptism, you see someone join Jesus Christ going into the earth, under the water, and rising again to new life, you're confirmed again in that gospel. And that's transformative, as again and again and again, you see that played out.

And remember, okay, this is not just a skit, this is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, played out before my eyes, him, once again, as Paul told the Galatians, clearly portrayed as crucified and risen and living and returning.

That's a means of grace. He's giving you repentance and daily doses that trust God's forgiveness and restoration, 1 John 1, 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

You know where Jesus said that the Holy Spirit will come and convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment? Do you know that's not just a one-time shot? When the Holy Spirit, Selah, when he rushes upon you, did he not convince you of your sin and of Christ's righteousness and of the judgment to come?

Would you have escaped that fire? You've been plucked as a burning brand from it by the power of the Spirit? And so repentance and daily doses is constant transformative desire to be like Jesus as we recognize our sin.

You see, the Holy Spirit's success in overcoming your sin has to be followed by progressive success, prosperity even, in growing into Christ, of conquering one sin after another after another after another, in basking in the sure knowledge of Jesus's pleasure in seeing us follow in his footsteps.

Here's a gospel success. Here is your best life now. Here is health for your soul. Here is prosperity for your spirit. Here is a treasure trove in heaven guarded by God against any rust or moth. To become like Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, not a moving target.

He's the same. He is God. He is Yahweh Tzva 'ot, the Lord of hosts. It is by him and through him and for him and because of him that all things are created. And it's by him and through him and because of him that you are saved.

And by him and through him and because of him that we grow into more Christlikeness. Now the Holy Spirit who rushed upon David and brought him success is the same as he who brought you to faith and brings success daily to God's word within you, growing you into his image.

The Spirit’s Permanence and the Fear of Losing Him

Well, the last verse I read, 1 Samuel 16, 14, that's one that causes trouble for a lot of Christians. It causes terror to some Christians if we're honest about it. And it says, now the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and a harmful spirit from the Lord tormented him.

So we ask, will the spirit leave me? If only by the spirit I could do anything that would happen to me if he departs or when he departs. The spirit left Saul, of that there is no doubt. In Ezekiel 10, the glory of the Lord departs from the temple consigning it to destruction by the Babylonians.

And therefore from that, from many other passages and verses, we might conclude, well, if I grieve the spirit, if I commit that unforgivable sin, whatever that might be, well, he's gonna get fed up with me and leave.

He's gonna depart from me. In Psalm 51 verse 11, David pleads that God won't take his spirit away from him. And therefore we conclude, well, God can remove and does, in fact, when he's fed up with us, when he's just lost all patience, remove his spirit from me.

And now, 1 Samuel 16, 14, the spirit who had rushed once upon Saul just as he had David is done with and rid of Saul. And so that is what could happen to me. So I walk through life with my head down and my hands over my head to protect me from a lightning bolt that God might smite me with from heaven because I might do something bad.

I might tick him off for the last time. His patience has run out and he's just gonna do away with me, take the spirit away from me and consign me to destruction. Do these kinds of thoughts ever trouble you?