Great Lives: David: A Man of Passion and Destiny

Publications by Charles R. Swindoll

ADULT BOOKS

Active Spirituality

The Bride

Compassion: Showing We Care in a Careless World

The Darkness and the Dawn

Day by Day

Dear Graduate

Dropping Your Guard

Elijah: A Man of Heroism and Humility

Encourage Me

Esther: A Woman of Strength and Dignity

The Finishing Touch

Flying Closer to the Flame

For Those Who Hurt

God’s Provision

The Grace Awakening

Growing Deep in the Christian Life

Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life

Growing Wise in Family Life

Hand Me Another Brick

Home: Where Life Makes Up Its Mind

Hope Again

Improving Your Serve

Intimacy with the Almighty

Joseph: A Man of Integrity and Forgiveness

Killing Giants, Pulling Thorns

Laugh Again

Leadership: Influence That Inspires

Living Above the Level of Mediocrity

Living Beyond the Daily Grind, Books I and II

The Living Insights Study Bible—General Editor

Living on the Ragged Edge

Make Up Your Mind

Man to Man

Moses: A Man of Selfless Dedication

The Mystery of God's Will

The Quest for Character

Recovery: When Healing Takes Time

The Road to Armageddon

Sanctity of Life

Simple Faith

Simple Trust

Starting Over

Start Where You Are

Strengthening Your Grip

Stress Fractures

Strike the Original Match

The Strong Family

Suddenly One Morning

The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart

Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

Victory: A Winning Game Plan for Life

Why, God?

© 1997 by Charles R. Swindoll.

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com

All Scripture quotations in this book, except those noted otherwise, are from the New American Standard Bible © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1971, 1973, 1975, and 1977 by the Lockman Foundation, and are used by permission.

Other Scripture quotations are from the following sources:

The New International Version of the Bible (NIV), © 1983 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

The Living Bible (LB), © 1971 by Tyndale House Publishers,

Wheaton, Ill. Used by permission.

The Modern Language Bible, The Berkeley Version in Modern English. © 1945, 1959, 1969, by Zondervan Publishing House.

Used by permission.

The King James Version of the Bible (KJV).

ISBN: 978-1-4002-0224-9 (trade paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Swindoll, Charles R.

      David: a man of passion & destiny: profiles in character / from Charles R. Swindoll.

          p. cm.—(Great lives from God’s word: 1)

      Includes bibliographical references.

      ISBN: 978-0-8499-1382-2

      1. David, King of Israel. 2. Bible. O.T.—Biography. i. Title. ii. Series.

      BS580.D3.S95                                   1997

      222'.4092–dc21                                                     97-9020

      [b]                                                                                  CIP

Printed and bound in the United States of America

10 11 12 13 14 EPAC 5 4 3 2 1

Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

DEDICATION

It is with much delight

that I dedicate this volume

to the four men in our family:

My sons, Curt Swindoll and Chuck Swindoll

My sons-in-law, Byron Nelson and Mark Dane

May each of you, like David,

become a man after God’s own heart.

May your lives, like his,

be marked by

humility, dependability, and integrity.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 God’s Heart, God’s Man, God’s Ways

2 A Nobody, Nobody Noticed

3 Soft Music for a Hard Heart

4 David and the Dwarf

5 Aftermath of a Giant-Killing

6 Every Crutch Removed

7 For Cave Dwellers Only

8 Life’s Most Subtle Temptation

9 What to Feed an Angry Man

10 Cloudy Days . . . Dark Nights

11 Two Deaths . . . A Study in Contrast

12 New King, New Throne, Same Lord

13 David and the Ark

14 When God Says No

15 Grace in a Barren Place

16 The Case of the Open Window Shade

17 Confrontation!

18 Trouble at Home

19 Riding Out the Storm

20 Friends in Need

21 Being Big Enough to Forgive

22 A Song of Triumph

23 When the Godly Are Foolish

24 The End of an Era

Conclusion

Notes

INTRODUCTION

David: A Man of Passion & Destiny

Our world is desperately in need of models worth following. Authentic heroes. People of integrity, whose lives inspire us to do better, to climb higher, to stand taller. This has always been true.

Maybe that explains why biographies of great men and women have fascinated me throughout my life. I can still remember the first Bible I owned because of the colorful pictures of various characters interspersed through its pages. I spent many a Sunday morning, sitting beside my parents in church, fighting boredom by leafing through that Bible, staring at those strong-hearted ancients. Each one loomed larger than life as I relived each drama, imagining the sounds, entering into the action-packed scenes portrayed on the pages.

• There was Noah, surrounded by every animal in the zoo, riding out the storm.

• There was Jacob, wet with sweat, wrestling with an angel who had a pair of huge, mysterious wings.

• There was Joseph with his coat of many colors, looking at the angry faces of his brothers.

• Next was Moses, leading the Hebrews across the dry bottom of the Red Sea as the waters were miraculously pushed aside.

• Then came one of my all-time favorites, Samson with bulging muscles, arms outstretched between two marble columns.

• Esther, with her glistening queen’s crown, was pictured in an opulent setting as she knelt before the king, pouring out her heart on behalf of her people.

• Amidst a treacherous sea, Jonah was being swallowed by a giant fish.

• Mary was pouring ointment on Jesus’ feet.

• Peter, with the reflection of a fire flickering off his face, stood in the shadows as a rooster was crowing in the distance.

• Paul, under a laserlike light from heaven, was blinded as he stood beside his mount on the road to Damascus.

There were others, all intriguing . . . all igniting one’s imagination to take over and live the scene yet again.

My love for biographies has intensified as time has passed. While building my library over more than forty years, I have taken special delight in collecting and digesting great biographical works, most of them no longer in print. I still find delight in reentering those scenes from antiquity. My soul is stirred and my heart inspired as those saints of old, people of whom the world was not worthy (Heb. 11:38) play out their lives, make their mistakes, accomplish incredible feats, and finally pass on into glory. What encouragement, what enrichment!

The words of the Russian poet, Boris Pasternak, come to mind, It is not revolutions and upheavals that clear the road to new and better days, but someone’s soul inspired and ablaze.¹ Because that’s true, I have remained a serious student of the great lives woven through the Scriptures. For more than thirty years in the pastorate, I found the lives of those inspiring men and women to be rich sources of sermon material. Again and again I found that people were ministered to in deep and meaningful ways whenever I spoke on the characters of the Bible.

Interestingly, each time we would broadcast my biographical pulpit messages on our radio program, Insight for Living, the interest among our listening audience was invariably heightened. People appreciate hearing about those who have gone on before us . . . leaving us models to exemplify, teaching us lessons about life. In fact, no series we have aired over the radio since 1977 has received a greater response from our listening audience than my studies on the life of David.

Realizing the inspirational value of biblical biographies, for years I have wanted to write a series of books based on the lives of various men and women who appear on the sacred page. My desire has been to provide a set of volumes that would acquaint readers with each individual, helping them see how relevant and realistic those lives are . . . and how closely they track the situations and struggles of our own times. I am delighted to see this long-awaited desire become a reality.

It is with profound feelings of gratitude that I express my thanks to several of my friends for their vision and commitment to this multivolume project: Byron Williamson, Kip Jordon, David Moberg, and Joey Paul . . . true friends, long-term friends. And it is also appropriate that I state how greatly I appreciate the hard work of two very faithful ladies: Judith Markham, for her splendid editorial assistance, and Helen Peters for her tireless efforts in preparing my manuscript with such personal care and excellent attention to detail. Thank you, ladies, for your outstanding work. You have no peers!

Back in the late 1930s, Carl Sandburg finished a four-volume masterpiece, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years. It is among my most treasured volumes and has afforded me hours of reading pleasure. As the author sought for an appropriate title of the seventy-fifth chapter, covering the events immediately following Lincoln’s assassination, he settled on a quaint line from an old woodsman’s proverb, A tree is best measured when it’s down.²

In Sandburg’s opinion, not until a life is down can we adequately measure its length of significance, its breadth of impact, its depth of character.

What is true of a once great president named Lincoln is equally true of a once great king named David. The only one in all of Scripture to be called a man after God’s own heart, this single individual is mentioned more than any other Old Testament character in the pages of the New Testament. Poet, musician, courageous warrior, and national statesman, David distinguished himself as one of God’s greatest men. In battle, he modeled invincible confidence. In decisions, he judged with wisdom and equity. In loneliness, he wrote with transparent vulnerability and quiet trust. In friendship, he was loyal to the end. Whether a humble shepherd boy or an obscure musician before King Saul, he remained faithful and trustworthy. Even in his promotion to the highest position in the land, David modeled integrity and humility. What a man of God!

But, as we shall see, he (like us) was anything but perfect. Having earned the public’s trust and respect, he forfeits it all in a brief season of sensual pleasure. Then, as the consequences kick in, we discover another side of the man’s makeup—lustfulness as a husband, weakness as a father, and partiality as a leader. It’s all there, written for all to learn, preserved for all to remember. A great man, though far from perfect, nevertheless lived a life with strengths worth emulating. Since our world is desperately in need of models worth following, here is one deserving of our time and attention: David, a man of passion and destiny.

CHUCK SWINDOLL

Dallas, Texas

CHAPTER ONE

God’s Heart, God’s Man, God’s Ways

On the surface, there seemed to be nothing about David that would have impressed God. Nothing caused Him to say, Wow! That’s my man! David didn’t look much different from any of the other Jewish boys his age. Samuel simply said, He was ruddy, with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance. That’s the only physical description we have of young David. So we know he was handsome, had beautiful eyes, and had a healthy complexion. He may have had red hair or, more likely, he was reddened or bronzed from the hours he spent out in the sun and the wind. David’s outward appearance didn’t seem to set him apart in any way.

He was nothing more than a shepherd, and a very young one at that, living in the little village of Bethlehem. Yet God said, in effect, You have what I’m looking for, young man. You are the future king of Israel.

If we had been living in the farmhouse next door to David’s family on the Judean hillside, we might not even have known the name of Jesse’s youngest son. After all, his own father didn’t even think of including him until Samuel asked, Are these all your sons? Then Jesse rubbed his beard and said, Oh, yeah, there’s my youngest. Almost forgot about him. He’s out in the field tending the sheep.

Go and fetch him, Samuel said.

And suddenly, this young nobody, a boy even his own father forgot about, became somebody.

But before we get to David the king of Israel, we need to go back about forty years and get a sense of background and history, so we can appreciate the world in which he lived.

G. Frederick Owen, in his book Abraham to the Middle-East Crisis, describes those ancient times perfectly in one sentence: The people were on a long drift from God.³ That was the world into which David was born.

Eli, the high priest, and his wicked sons were gone. His God-chosen successor, Samuel, the last of the judges, was an old man. The people had heard all the stories about the days when Israel was a great nation and about the years when Samuel was at the zenith of his career, when he subdued the Philistines and judged the land wisely and well. But most of them knew nothing of that personally.

They knew only that Samuel was an aged man and that he had appointed his sons to judge Israel. And what a mistake that was! Look at what the Bible says about them:

And it came about when Samuel was old that he appointed his sons judges over Israel. . . . His sons, however, did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after dishonest gain and took bribes and perverted justice.

1

Samuel

8

:

1

–

3

So the people were disillusioned, and they wanted something done about it. What they really wanted was a king.

Actually, Samuel’s wayward sons weren’t the only reason for their demand. The elders of Israel held a summit meeting at Ramah—a place in the hill country about five miles north of Jerusalem—and they said, Samuel, there are three reasons we want a king. First, you are old. Second, your sons don’t walk in your ways. And third, we want to be like the other nations. So appoint a king to judge us like all the nations (1 Sam. 8:5).