Hard Mode Pt 1 - What the Lord Sees
This sermon was preached at Immanuel Fellowship Church in Ellisville Missouri as part of our "Hard Mode" series within 1 Samuel, exploring David’s trials and growth from the time he was anointed King until he took the throne. For more resources on faith and Christian living, visit our website or connect with our community. You can email us at hello@ifcstl.com or call/text us at 636-431-4708
A Sermon on 1 Samuel 16:1-13
Good morning, church. What a joy to be together. When you just sit in a room and listen to God's church sing "Amazing Grace," you can just pack up and go home, right? What am I going to say that's better than what we just sang to each other?
I am excited for us to be together today. We're continuing our series in 1 Samuel, finishing out one mini-series and starting a new one. And as a pastor, I get to say this, but I genuinely experience this as a believer: Isn't God's word just refreshing? How privileged are we as a church that we get to do this—sitting in a room with air conditioning, standing together in unity to praise the Lord, confessing together, singing the truths of the gospel to one another, and now getting to read through God's word and reflect on His goodness to us? It is such an embarrassment of riches. We are blessed beyond measure.
Regardless of what brought you in today—whether you're encouraged or discouraged, whether this has been a joyful week or a difficult week or everything in between—right now, in this moment, you are gathered in a room with brothers and sisters who love you and want to see you flourish in your faith. We're celebrating the real gospel of the real Jesus, which is life for the dead, food for the hungry, water for the thirsty. God is good to us, beloved.
Introducing Hard Mode
We're starting a new series today that I'm calling Hard Mode. Yes, that's a video game reference, but I think it's helpful. We're going to spend this chunk of 1 Samuel talking about the movement in Israel from Saul's reign as the first monarch to David's reign as the second monarch. We'll be focusing on this incredibly awkward in-between time where Saul is still physically reigning as king, but God has rejected Saul's kingship and anointed David as his replacement.
I'm calling it Hard Mode because these texts cover about fifteen years of David's life—that awkward in-between from being anointed as king to actually taking on the kingship. What we're going to see is the work God does to sanctify and prepare David for his role as king. And spoiler alert: it's hard. It's difficult. It's through trial, through hardship, through sacrifice, through suffering that God matures and moves David from the young shepherd we'll meet today to the godly and strong king we read about later.
In Acts 13, the apostle Paul recounts Israel's history and says this about David: "After removing him, he raised up David as their king and testified about him: 'I have found David the son of Jesse to be a man after my own heart, who will carry out my will.'"
Thousands of years later, this is David's legacy in faith and Scripture: the king after God's own heart, who sought the Lord, who carried out His will. David was a man with sin, like all of us. But somehow this is how his life gets summarized. Why? Well, there are many reasons, but one of the big ones clearly presented in Scripture is that God himself intervened in David's life to form him as this king, to sanctify him, to make him holy. Even though it blew up David's life in really difficult ways, even though it was brutally hard, even though he lived literal years in pain and difficulty, he trusted God's purposes in his trials.
That's where the series name comes in. David lived his life on hard mode, and God used that to form him into this man after His own heart.
The Point of Difficulty
One of my favorite video games is Celeste. It's about a girl climbing a mountain, jumping on platforms, dodging spikes, avoiding getting squished by rocks. It's really fun, but here's the thing: this game is really hard. The difficulty of the game is actually the point of the game. You die over and over and over until you get the button combination exactly right. The difficulty is what makes Celeste fun.
James 1 famously says in the opening of his letter that it is through our trial, through our suffering, that we find both growth and sanctification that ultimately become our joy as believers: "Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds."
I'm not saying that the difficulties and trials of your life are fun—they're hard. But they are meaningful when they're submitted to Christ.
God Anoints the Normies
Within this overarching theme of God sanctifying us through difficulty and challenge, the main point today is this: God anoints normies like you and me.
I know that's a silly way to start, but I believe it's helpful because the work of God to advance His kingdom isn't done by superheroes and elites. The only superhero, the only elite in this world is Christ himself. But by God's grace, He works His kingdom work through us. Beloved, God anoints the rejects and the castaways and the weaklings—normal people, us, you and me. That's who Christ anoints. That's who Christ works through.
Beloved, you have a role in this. We're culturally trained to step back passively, to see the problems in this world, to see the needs of lostness and go, "I can't do that. I need the hero, the strong person to show up and fix that." But beloved, you are the one through whom the Holy Spirit works to advance His kingdom. You're the one He anoints and works through. He's the one doing the work, but He does it through you.
Beloved, you have a role to play, a part in God's work in this world. And trust me when I say this: you don't want to miss it.
The Text: 1 Samuel 16:1-13
Let's read together from 1 Samuel 16, starting in verse 1:
The Lord said to Samuel, "How long are you going to mourn for Saul since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go. I'm sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem because I have selected for myself a king from his sons."
Samuel asked, "How can I go? Saul will hear about it and kill me."
The Lord answered, "Take a young cow with you and say, 'I've come to offer a sacrifice to the Lord.' Then invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will let you know what you are to do. You are to anoint for me the one I indicate to you."
Samuel did what the Lord directed and went to Bethlehem.
Breaking Free from Unhealthy Mourning
Our text picks up some time after the events of chapter 15. We don't know exactly how long, but apparently not too much time has passed because Samuel is still mourning Saul's rejection as king. Remember, Samuel was the leader who sought Saul out and anointed him as king. Saul's rejection was a personal loss for Samuel—he loved Saul. His sorrow over Saul not following the Lord, over what this meant for Israel in their fledgling monarchy, over his own life and ministry and legacy—it was real.
Can we just stop for a second and think about how relatable that reality is? How many times in life have you had the plan or the relationship just completely let you down? How many times have you been really let down by a leader you trusted—a boss, a pastor, a politician, a celebrity? These things are real losses. We really feel these things. There is real mourning.
The problem is that mourning is important, but we can get stuck. We can be so let down and so disillusioned that we lose some of ourselves in the mourning. One person's sin, one person's failure becomes this dominating theme of our mind and thoughts. We come back to it over and over, and it can actually hold us up from living the life we're supposed to live.
Sometimes we need help to break out of that unhealthy mourning that has become brooding. And beloved, you need to hear this—if that's where you're at today, you don't have to live there. You can be broken free from that. You can mourn what you need to mourn, and you can actually take steps toward what God has next for you.
We don't know for certain how bad it was for Samuel, but it was bad enough that God himself intervened to bring Samuel back to reality: "How long are you going to mourn for Saul, Samuel? I have a mission for you. Fill up your horn with oil and go. I've chosen someone else. You've got to go anoint him king."
Remember back just a chapter ago, when Saul failed his mission, Samuel rebuked Saul for making excuses and not obeying. God desires obedience. Well, now Samuel has to live what he preached. He has to be the one to take Godat His word and obey.
And Samuel hesitates. Listen, in spite of Samuel's words to him, Saul is still very much king of Israel. I don't know if you've interacted with many kings—I haven't—but I've been told one of their defining characteristics is not wanting to be replaced as king. So Samuel figures if Saul hears that he's out recruiting his replacement, Saul's going to kill him.
God gives Samuel a cover story: "Go offer a sacrifice for the community. They need one anyway. Make sure you invite this guy Jesse. I'll let you know what to do from there."
So Samuel not only has to engage God's rebuke over his extended mourning, he has to take this step of real obedience. He has to go and do something difficult and risky. And he does.
A Time to Move Forward
I think as we dig into this story, it's important to consider what this means for us in our own mourning. Sometimes we should mourn. The preacher in Ecclesiastes says there's a time to mourn—that's part of life. Sometimes life in this world is just hard enough that mourning is the right and godly and necessary reaction when we're let down, when we lose something or someone precious, when life doesn't turn out as we planned.
But there's a time for our hearts to turn from mourning back to the Lord and to the work of seeking His kingdom that He has set for us. And sometimes it's hard to navigate how and when to do that.
This is silly, but I remember when I was 18, in the first couple months of when I really started to take my faith seriously. I had a couple people challenging me to really live out my faith and not have this two-faced "go to church and do whatever I want the rest of the time" approach. During that time, I put myself out on a limb with a girl I liked, and she totally shot me down. It blew up in my face.
I was someone who was already struggling with anxiety and depression, and this just wrecked me. I wasn't doing well. I was up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep. My spiritual leaders had been telling me, "If you want to take your faith seriously, you need to turn to the Lord when your heart is troubled." So as an 18-year-old, I picked up my Bible, opened it randomly, and started reading.
I opened to 1 Samuel and started reading the chapters we've been going through over the last couple months. At 2 in the morning, I'm thinking, "What the heck does this have to do with anything? Jonathan's killing people, they're killing people, God's mad—what is this?"
Then I got to this exact verse: "How long are you going to mourn?"
Now listen, this is not the main point of this text, but this is burned into my own story of faith and seeking the Lord. In all my immaturity, in all the stuff I was dealing with regarding my emotional and mental health and my spiritual life, the Lord grabbed me in this moment and said, "I'm calling you to something, and you need to see you have mourned enough. I'm calling you to something. You need to stand up and be a part of that."
God used that to break me through to a place of spiritual obedience, of actually beginning to live and walk out my faith. I know this is the teen drama application of this text, but the truth holds.
This is the heart of texts like Philippians 3:13, where Paul, speaking of his own story, talks about "forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead. I pursue my goal, the prize promised by God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus."
There's a time to move forward. That's not to say your past doesn't matter—some of us have the tendency to just stuff our bad and difficult experiences and pretend they didn't happen. Our experiences, our past, are incredibly important. They describe us and affect us in real ways. And because they are so weighty, sometimes we need the Holy Spirit's power to gently remind us to keep moving—that that moment describes you, but it doesn't define the rest of your life. God's call in your life, the direction of God's movement toward your sanctification, your participation in the kingdom, doesn't end because of something tragic or difficult.
Sometimes we need to be urged back into the steps of obedience. There is something so life-giving in being drawn back to movement when you've been bogged down, to not wallow in our sorrow but to actually take steps toward the kingdom.
Some of you need that encouragement today. The Lord sees you, beloved. He knows your mourning. He knows your story. He feels your sorrow with you. He mourns with you. And simultaneously, He has amazing work for you in His kingdom. It might be time for you to start taking steps toward Him again.
Samuel's Obedience and God's Surprising Choice
Let's read on from the middle of verse 4:
When the elders of the town met him, they trembled and asked, "Do you come in peace?"
"In peace," he replied. "I've come to sacrifice to the Lord. So consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice." Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and said, "Certainly the Lord's anointed one is here before him."
But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or his stature, because I have rejected him. Humans do not see what the Lord sees, for humans see what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart."
So Jesse called Abinadab and presented him to Samuel. But Samuel said, "The Lord hasn't chosen this one either." Then Jesse presented Shammah. But Samuel said, "The Lord hasn't chosen this one either." After Jesse presented seven of his sons to him, Samuel told Jesse, "The Lord hasn't chosen any of these."
Samuel obeys and treks to this unknown little community called Bethlehem. (Yes, I know you've heard of that town before—it's famous in the Bible. This is where Ruth's story takes place. Jesse is actually the grandson of Boaz and Ruth. And yes, Bethlehem shows up in the New Testament too.)
Jesse is a well-known, wealthy leader within this community, so it's not surprising that Samuel would invite his family to a community sacrifice. But notice—when Samuel arrives, he doesn't exactly get a warm welcome. He gets to town and people are like, "Why are you here?" One commentator said it perfectly: apparently the phrase "hacked Agag to pieces" had traveled ahead of Samuel, and people were curious what sort of ministry he was bringing to their community. They want to know if he's coming with a harsh word, a rebuke from the Lord.
But Samuel says he brings peace. The community gathers for the sacrifice and feast. Samuel consecrates Jesse and his sons—giving them instructions on how to prepare, making sure there's no reason that Jesse or any of his family would skip the sacrifice.
The Lord Looks at the Heart
Then we get to the famous part of the text. As they're preparing, Jesse's sons enter and Samuel sees Eliab, Jesse's oldest. Samuel gives him one look and thinks, "This is the guy. This is the dude." It harkens back to Saul's anointing. Kings are supposed to be strong, supposed to lead and fight and command respect. This is what Samuel sees in Eliab.
God hits the brakes: "Don't look at his appearance. I haven't chosen him."
God actually uses the word "rejected" here, and I think it's a way of reminding Samuel how well it went last time he saw a buff, muscular king and picked that guy. If we were picking the king of our church today, we'd all be tempted to pick the most impressive-looking person, right? That's where we'd go naturally.
But God stops Samuel because He doesn't pick by outward appearance. The Lord looks upon the heart.
This is a fundamental biblical truth. The Lord sees under the surface. God sees our real person. He sees behind our physical appearance, under the mask we wear for the world, because He knows the real us.
This leads Samuel to this strange experience where he works his way down the list of David's brothers by age. "What about this one? What about this one? What about this one?" And God doesn't choose any of them.
You Are Seen by Jesus
I think it's really important to pause at this truth for a moment, to consider this fundamental biblical reality: God knows us in a way that we don't know one another. He sees truths about us as people that we can easily hide from one another. God sees the real person.
We use this phrase at Emmanuel often, but it's so core to how we not just understand but experience the gospel: You, beloved, are seen by Jesus. He really sees you. The real you. The strengths and weaknesses. Everything about you is known by the Lord.
Hebrews 4:13 says, "No creature is hidden from him. All things are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account."
All of us are fully and completely exposed before the knowledge and judgment of the Lord. And here's the thing that is simultaneously scary and comforting. It's scary because it means God knows the real you—not the social media you, not the Sunday morning at 10:25 when you're shaking hands and getting coffee you, but you. All of you. The you that you hide, the you that no one else knows, the you that you're ashamed of.
That's scary to think that God knows that about you. The parts about you that you hate most, that you work as hard as you can to hide from the world.
But it's also comforting. It's comforting because here's the thing: We can actually trust God's love.
Think about that for a moment. He knows that about you. He knows you truly that intimately, warts and all. And He still loves you. He's crazy about you. He still seeks you out and chooses you.
Beloved, Jesus' knowledge of us is scary because it's exposing. But God is not like the people we know. He's not fleshly and flawed. He does not turn away when He sees our sin and wickedness. He doesn't hold your failures against you. He meets you in your vulnerability with love, with safety, with grace, with redemption. He redeems us in our weakness and brokenness.
God's knowledge of us—hear this, beloved—is one of the greatest gifts. It's a real comfort in the face of this painful world. God's knowledge of you is comfort to you in the brokenness of this world.
David: The Unlikely Choice
Let's read on from verse 11:
Samuel asked him, "Are these all the sons you have?"
"There's still the youngest," he answered, "but right now he's tending the sheep."
Samuel told Jesse, "Send for him. We won't sit down to eat until he gets here."
So Jesse sent for him. He had beautiful eyes and a healthy, handsome appearance.
Then the Lord said, "Anoint him, for he is the one."
So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully on David from that day forward. Then Samuel set out and went to Ramah.
I love this scene for so many reasons, but I really love the pure comedy of that moment when Samuel works his way down the list and just goes, "Do you have any more? Any more kids? Anywhere?"
Did Samuel mishear God? No. This is human error, right? Can you imagine Samuel looking over to Jesse: "Any others? Anywhere?"
There's a piece we easily miss here. We miss it because not only is this translated into English, but David is a legend. David is a hero of Scripture. We're predisposed to read his heroism into basically all the texts where he appears. So we can miss this. But the author really wants you to see here that David is not the pick. He's not the guy to pick.
At this point in Israel's history, shepherding wasn't really considered men's work. Here's what I mean: it took hard work, it took muscles, but it was dirty and lonely. On a small to medium scale, like most families did, it really did not take any skilled labor. It's where you sent people who couldn't get other jobs. And if you had a large enough family, it's where you sent your daughters. Families that sent their sons to tend the sheep sent them there until exactly the moment when the son was strong enough to do literally anything else more productive for the family.
It was not considered an honorable or good job.
But David is in the fields with the sheep. He's such a background idea to his dad that his dad either didn't think to call him in from his work for the feast or he actively didn't want him there. "This is the grown-up table. You're still at the kids' table." We don't know which it was, but either way, it's a bad look for David.
Samuel responds strongly: "Go get him. We're not doing this till he's here. No one can even sit till he gets here."
So David is brought in, and the text says he has beautiful eyes and is handsome. Maybe you're reading that and thinking, "Hey, didn't God just say that appearance doesn't matter? Why is David also getting compliments?"
But this is another example of cultural separation. These comments on his eyes, on his handsomeness—these were basically a way of saying he's like a cute little boy. That's functionally what the text is saying here. If Eliab is the impressive warrior, then David is the cute kid.
David is genuinely laughable as king material, especially when you set him next to his brothers. And yet David is God's man in this text. God speaks and Samuel anoints God's chosen one, David.
God Works Through the Unexpected
It's a really strange scene, but it points to this larger point of where we're going with this series. David is no king right now. He's not. He's not ready for this. He's young, he's inexperienced, he lacks maturity, he lacks skills, he lacks strength. All the things that Samuel knows to look for, David has none of them.
But God sees under the hood. He knows what is inside David. He knows the potential that is there for His kingdom. And in David's anointing, we see God working His will and bringing about His good future through a totally unexpected package.
God is not working through the hero Eliab the superstar, but through David the kid, the normie—you and me. That's what we're supposed to see here.
This brings us to this fundamental tension that we will experience over the rest of these David narratives, especially as we see him grow more and more in Christ-likeness. As we read David's story, we're going to be tempted to see ourselves in David. And to some extent, you are supposed to—the book is written that way. David is this normal person, like you and me. And God uses him in these amazing ways, so God can use us. We're supposed to see in David what it looks like to walk in faith, to trust in the Lord, and to find the life and the call that He has for us. That's beautifully true and it's a right understanding of these texts.
But it's actually not the most important aspect of David's story.
The text today wants to make sure that we know that above all of that, David is God's anointed one. And that anointing is important because it draws us to the deeper and more important truth: the truth that the normies like David and us point beyond ourselves to the real anointed one.
The Messiah: The True Anointed One
The tradition of anointing God's kings is really important for us and how we understand our faith. It's actually locked in to some of the practices and language of our faith. We get a word from this tradition of anointing kings that will be familiar to most of us: Messiah—or translated in Greek, Christ. It just means "anointed one."
When we call Jesus "Jesus Christ," that is not His last name. That either would have been the name of His father or the town He grew up in—Jesus bar Joseph or Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus Christ is His title: Jesus the Anointed One.
So what's an anointing? Why do Christians still use that term today?
Anointing is something we see in Scripture. Functionally, it happens when someone would pour a special anointing oil onto a person or a thing. That pouring out of this scented oil was meant as a physical analogy. Think of it similarly to how we understand communion or baptism—it's this acted-out physical parable that points to a spiritual truth.
Anointing—the pouring out of this sacred liquid onto a person or an object—harkens back to God's very creative act in the garden. This is what the rabbis tell us about these anointing practices in ancient Judaism. God spoke to the physical world and worked it and brought it into being. A big part of this is the story of the garden, when God harnessed these waters and put rivers in place. From that grew up the garden. That idea of water flowing the land and bringing about life, of channeled water and rivers feeding a garden, became this image in the ancient Jewish mindset of God working His will in the world.# Hard Mode: God Anoints the Normies (Continued)
So anointing—this liquid poured out on an object or a person—represents both God's presence and God's work in that person or that place. The text tells us that the Spirit of God came upon David with his anointing and worked through him the rest of his days. We'll see that play out in David's life and David's reign. He's a normal person, but God works through him. His anointing is an image of this, a parable of this. God works through David to do His work in the world.
And that is why this title Christ or Messiah is so appropriate. Because Jesus is the embodiment of anointing. He is God in the flesh working in this world to bring about His kingdom.
Jesus, as we will say often in the coming months, is the better David. He's a better version of David. And that's where this text gets so cool.
Jesus: The Better David
Because David's anointing was for David. It was to help him be a good king. The Spirit worked through him. But Jesus's anointing is different than David's and better than David's.
David was a normal person, like you and me. He was completely and totally dependent on God to pour out His Spirit on him and work through him. But Jesus, beloved, is God. Jesus IS the anointing, so He brings it with Him.
And it doesn't end with Him. Because of Jesus' accomplished work on the cross, God's anointing—that is a word for His presence and His action on earth—continues working through Christ into us as His followers and into the world.
Jesus called Himself the living water, the well from which we drink to find life. He is the anointing. And His anointing moves forward from Him, through the cross, through salvation, into us, the church. And we carry that anointing with us through the Holy Spirit within us, bringing God's presence and His work into the world and sharing it with more and more.
God moves His kingdom, His gospel, His redemption forward day by day, heart by heart, through normal people like us.
As Christ Pours Into Us, Christ Pours Out of Us
Come on, church, be honest for a moment. That's cool. But that also sounds really familiar. It sounds an awful lot like our mission statement as a church, right?
As Christ pours into us, Christ pours out of us.
I don't know if you've ever taken time to look at them, but in the back of the room we have these paintings. Kaylin Tennell, my sister-in-law who was a member of our church before they moved, made these paintings for our mission statement back when our church planted. I love these images. I think they're actually really helpful.
It's three paintings in order, and it goes through our vision statement as a church: the well, the cups, and the world.
The Well
In this first picture of the well, we're reminded of John 4—that Jesus is the living water, that He is the source of life. Jesus, in the language of our text, is the anointing of God living on earth. It's all about Him. He's the life, He's the power, the Spirit. We talk about the Holy Spirit—that's the Spirit of Christ who dwells within us as believers. We draw deep from the well of the living water.
The Cups
Below that you see the water pouring from the well. The second image is of these cups, because the anointing of Christ becomes our anointing. When we receive the power of Christ, when we find forgiveness from our sins, redemption, when we walk in obedience and participate in the kingdom, we are filled to the brim with Christ Himself.
The Spirit that rose Jesus from the dead dwells within us. That's how our sins are forgiven. That's how we're redeemed. That's how we're sanctified.
And so Jesus' anointing in a very real way becomes our anointing. The Spirit gives abundantly of His power and His love so that we're filled to the brim and we're able to share with one another as a church. When you show up on Sunday, when you show up to discipleship group, when you show up to small group, when you pray for one another, when you're doing this work, the Spirit of God which has been poured out on you is pouring out of you into your brothers and sisters. And that anointing begins working in the circle, building up our church, drawing us back to Christ.
The World
And the last image is the image of that same water being poured out on the earth, the world. Because eventually, as we continue to draw from Christ and be filled to the brim and overflow to one another, sharing the goodness of the Lord, sharing the reality of the gospel, the anointing of His Spirit with one another, we find that there's so much of Jesus—He's so gracious, so lavish with pouring out His Spirit on us—that there's enough to go around. There's actually too much for us to keep to ourselves.
And when you're finding life and freedom in Christ, when you're growing in your faith and finding joy in Him, you'll find that it actually overflows out of you into those around you. And that naturally you begin to take that same gift you've been given and give it to those around you.
And eventually this anointing that is Christ, that is moving through His church, pours out into the world, and more and more and more and more are brought into the life and freedom of Jesus.
And all this happens not because of cool paintings at our church, not because of a mission statement on our website, but because God anoints the normal people. Because that's the promise of the gospel—that God's Spirit saves and redeems and speaks through normal people like us to advance His kingdom in this world.
Beloved, does that not bring you joy? Does that not spark hope within you, that you have been invited into this wonderful work?
Seeking the Living Water
But here's the thing: Drinking deep of the gospel, of the living well, is not a passive experience. That's not something you just sit back and wait for. That's about seeking out the living water.
All of us, beloved, all of us are weak. All of us are sinful. If we are to be filled with Christ, it will be because we are choosing to seek Him out. Because we're taking the steps we can take. Not because we're some super Christian who has it all figured out with all our spiritual disciplines lined up and our Bible has more underlines than anyone else. Not because we're so amazing at this, but because in our weakness, we're taking the steps we can toward Christ—actually being active in our faith and seeking Him out.
Looking at the state of your faith now and going, "Man, this is a mess. But I know I can take this step toward Him. I know I can grow in obedience here," and taking those steps and seeing how, as we move toward Christ, He moves toward us and faithfully fills us up with Himself, brings about real life and real sanctification.
A life living into your anointing in Christ is unavoidably difficult because we are normal, because we are sinful, because we are weak, because we are David. We need help. It's hard. If it were up to us, we would fail. We would run away.
But beloved, we are not on our own. We are anointed by the very Spirit of God, the Spirit that rose Jesus from the dead and dwells in His children and dwells in you and me.
Hudson Taylor: A Life of Obedience
So what does it look like? What does it look like for you today to embrace the call and to actually trust the Spirit to form you?
I'm reminded of this legendary missionary, Hudson Taylor. If you've never read a biography of Hudson Taylor, it should be on your bucket list of books. Hudson Taylor founded the China Inland Mission. He was an English guy in the 19th century going to medical school to become a doctor. He began to understand his faith and then understand his call and then felt this weighty call from the Lord to step out in obedience and go and bring the gospel into the inner depths of inland China, where most Westerners weren't welcome, where there was no presence of the Christian church, where the people were completely and totally unreached.
He was totally unqualified. He had no money, he had no funding, he had no sending agency. He didn't speak Chinese. He didn't know anything about any of it. But he was almost a medical doctor and he thought, "That can probably get me somewhere."
As he started praying about this and bringing his church into it and speaking to his pastors about it, they were kind of like, "Yeah, I have no idea how you go be a missionary in China. I don't even think they let people in." But they kept praying about it.
And the thing I love about Hudson Taylor's story—he's in his 20s at this point—is he just begins training himself with zero clue what he's training himself for. And so he goes, "I bet people in China walk a lot. I'm going to stop riding the horse and carriage. I'm going to walk everywhere." So he just does. And then he gets in his head and goes, "I bet the restaurants aren't as good there, and I bet I'll be poor if I'm a missionary. I'm going to see how little food I can eat and still be strong enough to do my job." And so he starts training himself on what he's eating and his physical activity. And then he goes, "I wonder how hard it is to learn Chinese." And he starts seeking out—he does all these things with no clue what God is going to actually call him to, what the details are going to be. He begins physical and mental and spiritual training, just taking the steps he can take, living this difficult life.
And you know what's amazing? God used this dude to not just break the gospel into inland China for the first time in history, but to start one of the largest missions movements in church history that is still active today, still functioning today. And he ended up spending most of his life traveling throughout Europe and the United States, calling up young people and college students and high school students and married couples to go and say yes to the call and go on the mission field. Thousands of missionaries stepped into the field and preached the gospel and did the work because of Hudson Taylor's willingness to walk to work and eat an apple for lunch.
Come on, church. To say yes to Christ, to say yes to the anointing that Christ has poured out on you, the kingdom work He's called you to, unavoidably means your life will be harder. But it will be more fulfilling. It will be the kind of life you want to live.
The Application
And so, as we land out today, I'm going to ask you guys, as we always do, just to take a minute in prayer before we continue on in our response. And I want you to ask Christ this question as you reflect on His Word:
If Christ has faithfully filled you with His Spirit, if He has anointed you, if He has done the work of salvation in you, where is the place where you can take the anointing of Jesus today that no one else is going to take?
Because I'm here to tell you, beloved, that place exists. That person exists. They are breathing right now. That may be a kid, that may be a grandkid, that may be a neighbor. There's a reason that Christ has built the life for you He has built. He has put His Spirit within you. You—you are the missionary that He has raised up. You have His anointing to go and do His work. You do. That's not by accident. It's because that's exactly how Jesus works. He seeks out people like us to go and advance His kingdom.
So I'd encourage you to ask the Lord today: What does it look like for you to take a step forward in obedience? Where are you called to take that anointing, to pour out that living water so that someone else may drink and find life?
And when you've sat in that for a moment, when you maybe feel like the Lord has given you that next step of faith and obedience, I would encourage you, for those of us in the room who are in Christ, to continue your response through communion.
This sermon was preached at Immanuel Fellowship Church in Ellisville Missouri as part of our "Hard Mode" series within 1 Samuel, exploring David’s trials and growth from the time he was anointed King until he took the throne. For more resources on faith and Christian living, visit our website or connect with our community. You can email us at hello@ifcstl.com or call/text us at 636-431-4708
