David and Jonathan enter into a parity covenant, exchanging robes and weapons to signify their life-long bond of loyalty to each other. The covenant they cut includes Jonathan’s young son Mephibosheth, whom David seeks out to bless even after Jonathan dies. Thereafter, Mephibosheth is invited to eat at the king’s table forever, unworthy though he may be. David shows Mephibosheth hesed (loving-kindness) because of his covenant with Jonathan, who served as his son’s covenant representative head.
This historical episode illustrates well the concept of representation. As Jonathan was Mephibosheth’s covenant representative head, so Jesus is the covenant representative head of the entire human race. Moreover, like David looking for Mephibosheth, God is searching for us, wanting to lavish upon us all the riches and blessings that come from being in covenant with him through Christ. He invites us to eat at the King’s table forever, unworthy though we may be. God’s hesed (lovingkindness) now flows to all who acknowledge Jesus by faith as their covenant representative head.
Have you ever had a cow on your plate? Probably, but it was broken down into a hamburger first, which you then had to chew. Your body broke it down even further through digestion into proteins, amino acids, and other nutrients that could be absorbed into your bloodstream and used as fuel for life. Inside that cow, then, was energy for life—but it had to be broken down again and again to be of any value to you.
How do we handle the pressures of life in a fallen world—especially if we believe that God is for us not against us (Rom 8:31)? How do we reconcile the goodness of God and the aches and pains of this world he calls us to endure? David’s relationship with God as revealed in Psalm 57 gives us a clue.
One day King Saul tried to shish kabob David to the wall with a spear while he was playing his harp. When that failed, Saul dispatched his soldiers to capture him, but that didn’t work, either. In fact, every attempt by Saul to lay a hand on him was frustrated. Eventually, David escaped to the cave of Adullam as a fugitive. According to Psalm 57:6, David’s spirit during those days was “bowed down in distress.”
Despite the pressure he was feeling, 1 Samuel 22:1 tells us that when David’s family found out where he was hiding, they met up with him there, including “all those who were in distress…and he became their leader.” That’s a noteworthy rendezvous. Four hundred people who are stressed out seek after David, who himself is stressed out. They want to be with him. They recognize that God is still with him in a unique way. Moreover, they want him to be their leader even though he’s on the run.
How many people do we know whom we can honestly say we want to be around when they’re stressed out? Most of us aren’t so sure we like being around ourselves when we’re stressed out! But David handled the pressures of life in such a way that people wanted to be around him even when he himself was under pressure. Why? David tells us he ultimately took refuge in God (Ps 57:1), not the cave. Indeed, he recognized that despite his many challenges in life, God was still fulfilling his purpose for him (Ps 57:2).
This sermon looks at the great “why” behind our distress, a word, incidentally, that means “to pull you apart slowly; to stretch you or draw you tight.” It’s an image that comes from the ancient rack torture. In other words, distress is when life is ripping you apart, tearing at your soul, and causing you grief or pain. The good news is that God’s people don’t go through distress only to come out the other side with nothing but a scar. No, for the child of God, every trial we face is Father-filtered. There’s a “divine why” behind it and a supreme good coming out of it, even if we don’t know at the time what that may be.
We do know that the testing of our faith leads to spiritual growth (Jas 1:2-4; 1 Pet 1:6-7), and growth requires eating. Not only eating but digesting what we’ve eaten. Digestion, of course, is a process of breaking down the food we eat into a form our bodies can use. It’s a process that’ essential to life itself. Now, we can read a book about digestion, and even become a gastrointestinal doctor, but unless we actually eat, we will starve to death.
Likewise, believers can read our Bibles until we’ve memorized them, but unless we “digest” life as it unfolds, activating our faith in the process, we will spiritually starve. David’s trust in God while under pressure is a reminder for all of us to digest life with faith in order to truly live. Anything less would be IN-digestion. So, by all means, have a cow. But eat it in faith. Energy for life awaits you.
Eric Liddell famously said to his sister in Chariots of Fire, “I believe that God made me for a purpose—for China. But he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.” While the screenplay is likely embellished (or even apocryphal) at that point, the line is rich and insightful. There the “Flying Scotsman” articulates an elusive and hard-to-describe aspect of calling (or “vocation”).
Liddell’s insight was this: Whenever people live out their divine purpose, they tend to sense God’s blessing and affirmation in the process, even if there are deep struggles along the way. As David wrote in Psalm 16:11, “You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.” David, of course, was no stranger to trouble. On more than one occasion, the spears of King Saul whizzed past his ear, twanging into the wallboards of the place where he was hiding at the time.
It is significant that David connects being in God’s presence to being filled with joy, not groveling in the dust as a miserable sinner before an angry, implacable God. While epochal moments in redemptive history sometimes require dramatic theophanies for prophetic or revelatory reasons (cf. Exod 19:18-19, 40:34; Isa 6:1-5; Matt 17:5-6; Acts 2:1-4), God has a track record of delighting his people, not debilitating them.
As such, I have slightly adjusted Liddell’s observation to make it my own: “When I learn, I feel his pleasure.” That’s one of the reasons it’s such a joy for me to be a teaching pastor and a seminary professor. It seems that God has made me for this. My calling can often be difficult, but it aligns well with how I’m wired. And if others can learn a few things along the way because I learned them earlier—whether in life or in libraries—so much the better. Such a venture has filled me with joy in the past, and it continues to do so today.
Thare’s a caution, however, that’s never far from my thoughts in this regard: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1b). Our calling, then, must encompass the good of others, not just ourselves. That makes sense theologically because we’re relational beings, made in the image of God—the One who is true comm-unity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). But, oh, what a challenge to see our lives and calling in connection to others. I can be awfully selfish sometimes; how about you?
Our calling must encompass the good of others, not just ourselves.
I’m not sure I could articluate an inviolable or unassailable personal mission statement, but I do know that God is inviting me to embody his beauty, truth, and goodness as a pastor-scholar in the 21st-century church of Jesus Christso that others can discover their lofty status and calling as image bearers of God—reveling in the good news of his redeeming grace.
This “reveling” by others can take myriad forms, but the common core is culture-making that leads to human flourishing in this life, whatever joys the next life may hold. Historian Will Durant once wrote, “Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end.”
My own calling is part of the “social order” of which Durant speaks, centered mostly in the third element he cites (viz., “moral traditions”)—though grace must always be part of the equation, as moral ideals often collapse under the weight of our own fallenness. If God is not gracious, then all of us are toast in the end.
Indeed, my own particular “tradition,” as Durant uses the term, is one that is Trinitarian, evangelical, and gospel-centered. That is why I seek to help inspire others to overcome their own insecurities and become “fully human,” even as they come to know and enjoy their Creator—the Logos who became human for the sake of love and liberation. As Durant noted, “When fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and [hu]man[ity] passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.”
Grace must always be part of the equation, as moral ideals often collapse under the weight of our own fallenness.
That sounds to me like purpose and pleasure go together—even if the former leads the latter in priority. Both gravity and gladness can play together nicely in the sandbox of life. Indeed, they must play together nicely, or it’s not even rightly called “life.”
David and Jonathan enter into a parity covenant, exchanging robes and weapons to signify their bond of loyalty to each other. The covenant they cut includes Jonathan’s young son Mephibosheth, whom David seeks out to bless even after Jonathan dies. Thereafter, Mephibosheth is invited to eat at the king’s table forever, unworthy though he may be. David shows Mephibosheth hesed (loving-kindness) because of his covenant with Jonathan, who served as his son’s covenant representative head.
This historical episode illustrates well the concept of representation. As Jonathan was Mephibosheth’s covenant representative head, so Jesus is the covenant representative head of the entire human race. Moreover, like David looking for Mephibosheth, God is searching for us, wanting to lavish upon us all the riches and blessings that come from being in covenant with him through Christ. He invites us to eat at the King’s table forever, unworthy though we may be. God’s hesed (lovingkindness) now flows to all who acknowledge Jesus by faith as their covenant representative head.
