David & the Secret Place

I heard there was a secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord.

But you don't really care for music, do you?

That's from a song, you know the song.

In the morning, everyone knew what that song was.

Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen.

In this message, this is the fifth message of our Kings & Characters series, we're looking at the character David.

Throughout this series, the past four weeks, David has been a background character.

In the first week of this series, we looked at Samuel and the power of words.

Samuel was, of course, the one who anointed David as King of Israel.

In week two, we looked at the Ark of the Covenant and the presence of God.

David was the one who brought the Ark into Jerusalem and danced around it in worship.

In week three, David was the champion who defeated the nemesis Goliath of the Philistines.

And last week, we saw the decline of King Saul into self-deception and madness and insecurity, and David began to rise.

David has been an implicit character throughout this entire Kings & Characters series, but today, he gets his own message.

He becomes the focus of our message tonight.

David is an immensely significant character in the story of the entire Bible.

David gets to play a really significant role.

When you think Jesus, the Son of God, is called the Son of David, he's the messianic king from the line of David.

David gets to play a huge role in the story of the Bible.

But what makes David so special?

Why was he different from anyone else?

Why was he so fortunate as to be favored by God the way that he was?

What was David's secret?

That's the question that we're looking at in this message.

But I'm going to give you the punchline.

I'm going to give you the answer to the question.

David's secret was a place, the secret place.

We're going to, in this message, survey the life story of David.

And as we do so, I think this motif of the secret place is going to keep coming up.

So to warm us up to the idea and to help us reflect, Morgan and Locke have prepared an item for us.

Thank you, Morgan & Locke.

The Secret Place is a key motif in the life of David.

So we're going to survey all of David's story and in fact break it up into seven stages, which is the perfect number.

And as we do that, I think we're going to see the Secret Place is an interesting theme which comes out in the life of David.

Before we jump into David, I think the question is right to be asked, what is the Secret Place?

When we say the Secret Place, what specifically am I talking about?

Well, you can see we have this fancy board behind us.

Human life is lived on the front stage and the backstage.

You could conceive of a person as front stage and backstage.

If you've ever done mentoring training with us here at NorthernLife, you would have seen this diagram.

It splits basically a person's life into this front stage and backstage.

Backstage is everything that people don't see.

It is your private life just between you and the Lord or even just you and yourself.

And the front stage is your public persona.

It's the part of you that people can see.

I would put it to you that the Secret Place is within the backstage.

The Secret Place exists back here, of hanging out with the Lord.

In contrast to what you might call the public place on the front stage.

So, I put this here before us because I'm going to keep referring back to this the whole time and it's going to be painful if we keep having to go to a slide.

The story of David's life, I think, exists on this spectrum of the front stage to the backstage.

So, let's jump into David's life story starting in stage one.

David the Shepherd.

The first stage of the life of David that scripture tells us about is David the Shepherd.

We don't know heaps about this part of David's life.

The Bible doesn't tell us much, but what it does say gives us a significant glimpse into the character of the young David.

In 1 Samuel 13 verse 14, Samuel speaking on behalf of God says to Saul after he had done a terrible sin, the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people because you Saul have not kept the Lord's command.

The him is David.

David has been found by God to be a man after God's own heart.

And so the scripture is preparing us to expect a character who will come soon in the story who is a man after God's own heart.

A couple of chapters later, David finally makes his debut onto the scene.

1 Samuel 16 verse 10.

Jesse, the father of David, had seven of his sons passed before Samuel.

But Samuel said to him, the Lord has not chosen these to become the next king of Israel.

So he asked Jesse, are these all the sons you have?

There is still the youngest, Jesse answered.

He is tending the sheep.

Samuel said, send for him.

We will not sit down until he arrives.

So he sent for him and had him brought in.

He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features.

Then the Lord said, rise and anoint him.

This is the one.

So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers.

And from that day on, the spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David.

Samuel then went to Rama.

David, the shepherd, is stage one of his life.

A man after God's own heart.

One who was tending the sheep.

The scripture says he was good looking.

It's in the Bible.

When we step back and look at this stage of David's life, we see all of his life is lived on the backstage.

Being a shepherd was not a public profession, unless you count sheep as public.

David lived entirely as a shepherd.

Probably all day, every day, hanging out with the sheep on the backstage.

That's where David's story comes from.

But just like any good plot story, there is an inciting plot event which catalyzes David's story moving forward.

And that event was, Samuel came to Jesse's house in Bethlehem and anointed David as the next king of Israel.

Thus, we are brought to stage two of David's life.

David, the musician.

Immediately after the story of the anointing of David, in the very next paragraph, 1 Samuel 16 tells of the decline of King Saul's mental and spiritual and emotional health.

He was tormented by a spirit and David in that context moves into the role of musician.

1 Samuel 16 says, Now the spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.

Saul's attendant said to him, See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you.

Let our Lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the lyre.

He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.

Saul's attendant searched the whole land to find a suitable musician and find David, and bring David to Saul.

Verse 21.

David came to Saul and entered his service.

Saul liked him very much, and David became one of his armor bearers.

Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him.

Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play.

Then relief would come to Saul.

He would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.

David has moved from being a shepherd in the pasture to now a musician in the king's courts.

It would seem from the scripture that he was a gifted musician.

He was really good at what he did, which as a musician myself, I just love that detail.

I wonder if during his backstage years in the Secret Place, in the pasture, if he was just playing music, playing the harp and the lyre, hanging out with the Lord, and in that Secret Place, he gained the skills and the character which saw him get noticed by Saul's attendance and moved him into stage two of his life.

So the story of David has begun in the Secret Place, backstage, away from the public, and is beginning to move towards the front stage.

He's beginning to be noticed for his skill and his character.

So we come to stage three of David's life.

David, the champion.

The next paragraph in 1 Samuel is the story of David and Goliath.

Not only is this a very familiar story to most of us, I also read out the entire chapter two weeks ago, so I won't do that again.

But I'll give us just a paragraph of what I think is an interesting vignette in the David and Goliath story.

Chapter 17, verse 38.

Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic.

He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head.

David fastened on Saul's sword over the tunic and tried walking around because he wasn't used to them.

I cannot go in these, he said to Saul, because I am not used to them.

So he took them off.

Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag, and with his sling in hand approached the philistine.

I like this little tiny detail in the story, because Saul tries to prep him to have the best chance against Goliath, giving him the sword, the armor, the tunic and the helmet, all that stuff.

But David puts it on and it's heavy and it's bogging him down, so he takes it off.

And the reason he takes it off is because he never wore that stuff on the backstage.

The scripture says in 1 Samuel 17, David killed lions and bears with just a sling.

So he's not now going to put on all this armor because he's never worked like that.

David knows that the Lord is faithful to protect him against lions and bears with just a sling, and so he's not going to compromise that.

I just think that's an interesting detail.

David is moving from the backstage to the front stage, as the stages of his life progress.

He's moving from the Secret Place into the public place.

The next stage of David's life is David the Refugee.

After David defeated Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, he joins the military and becomes a highly successful military leader.

1 Samuel 18, verse 5.

Whatever mission Saul sent him on, David was so successful that Saul gave him a high rank in the army.

This pleased all the troops and Saul's officers as well.

When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with timbrels and lyres.

As they danced, they sang.

Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands.

Saul was very angry.

This refrain displeased him greatly.

They've credited David with tens of thousands, he thought, but me with only thousands.

What more can he get but the kingdom itself?

And from that time on, Saul kept a close eye on David.

From this point on, 13 chapters of 1 Samuel is devoted to the twisted story of David and Saul in conflict with each other.

Really, it's Saul trying to chase down and kill David.

And so David becomes, by necessity, a refugee, fleeing from King Saul.

And in these 13 chapters, at the end of 1 Samuel, Saul and David are anti-types of each other.

Saul is descending into insecurity and madness, driven by self-deception.

Meanwhile, David is rising and rising and rising.

So the motion that's happening here, again, is David is moving from the Secret Place into the public place over the course of his life, from the backstage to the front stage.

He's being noticed for his character and his skill that he earned in the backstage, and it's giving him recognition on the front stage.

The refugee stage of David's life was brought to an end by Saul falling on his own sword in 1 Samuel 31.

And so stage five of David's life began.

David the King.

Finally, after chapters and chapters and chapters of conflict and confusion, David becomes the King of Israel.

The promise, the anointing which was given to him way back in 1 Samuel 16, after chapters and chapters years and years has finally been fulfilled, and David becomes King of Israel.

2 Samuel 5 says, When all the elders of Israel had come to King David at Hebron, the King made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David King over Israel.

David was 30 years old when he became King, and he reigned 40 years.

As David ascends to the throne of Israel, God speaks a promise to him.

We call it the Davidic Covenant.

2 Samuel 7, this is God speaking to the newly crowned King David.

Now then, tell my servant David, this is what the Lord Almighty says, I took you from the pasture, think of this diagram, I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over all my people Israel.

I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off your enemies from before you.

Now, I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men on earth.

Down to verse 11, the Lord declares to you, that the Lord himself will establish a house for you.

When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom.

He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

David has finally made it.

He's finally sat down as king.

And as king of Israel, he does a lot of good.

Firstly, he captures the city of Jerusalem, and he establishes it as the capital city of the kingdom of Israel.

Then he goes and gets the Ark of the Covenant and brings it into the city and worships in the presence of God.

David was a great king.

There's a sense in which David did exactly what the kings should be doing.

He was faithful before God.

And so 2 Samuel 8.15 says, David reigned over all Israel, doing what was just and right for all his people.

And then this detail in 2 Samuel 9.1, this tells you the kind of king that David was.

David asked, Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan's sake?

Isn't that a cool question?

He's overflowing with blessing.

He's saying, who can I bless?

Anyone, anyone left that I could bless.

He says the same thing 2 verses later, verse 3 of chapter 9.

King David asked, is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God's kindness?

This is exactly what the king of Israel was meant to do.

The kingship, the monarchy, at its best is David right now in 2 Samuel 7 and 8, overflowing the blessing of God into the nation of Israel.

And so when we apply this Secret Place spectrum, David's journey from the backstage to the front stage is complete when he sits down as king.

He's gone from the pasture to the palace, from the backstage to the front stage, and now he occupies the most public place, position in all of Israel.

He's the king of Israel, fully on the front stage.

And he's a good king because he's a man after God's own heart.

He has that secret place relationship with God to sustain him on the front stage.

David is a good king.

Until...

Stage 6.

David the sinner.

2 Samuel 11.

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army.

They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Raba.

But David remained in Jerusalem.

One evening, David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace.

From the roof, he saw a woman bathing.

The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her.

The man said, She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.

Then David sent messengers to get her.

She came to him and he slept with her.

Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.

Then she went back home.

The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, I am pregnant.

Most of us probably know the rest of the story.

David, to cover up his adultery with Bathsheba, arranges to have Bathsheba's husband murdered.

So, to cover up a sin, he does a pretty whoppin big sin on top of that.

And this is the low point of David's life.

His whole journey so far has been up and up and up and up and up and up.

As he's moved from the Secret Place to the most public place, and now he has fallen from grace.

This is the low point, the low point of David's life.

And so we enter stage seven.

David, the repentant.

To David's credit, when the prophet Nathan confronts him, rebukes him for his sin, it would seem that David sincerely and genuinely repented.

Psalm 51 is the Psalm, the story of David's repentance.

He says, According to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me.

Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

So you were right in your verdict and justified when you judge.

Surely, I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

Yet you desired faithfulness, even in the womb.

You taught me wisdom in that secret place.

The Secret Place.

As David repents, there is a sense in which he returns to that secret place.

The last line of Psalm 51 says, you desired faithfulness in the womb, you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

David has moved from the Secret Place all the way to the public place and had a terrible fall from grace.

And in repentance, he comes back to the Secret Place.

And so the story of David's life are these seven stages.

David, the shepherd, the musician, the champion, the refugee, the king, high point, the sinner, low point, and then the repentant.

His life moved from the pasture to the palace, the Secret Place to the public place, the backstage to the front stage.

And the lesson, I think, that we learned from the life of David is that life falls apart when we do not have the Secret Place.

When any of us, no matter what the front stage looks like, and I know none of us here, I think, are Kings of Israel, all of us have a front stage, and our life will fall apart if we do not also have a backstage Secret Place relationship with God.

That's the lesson, I think, that David teaches us.

It's the lesson that I think many notable Christian leaders have taught us in recent years.

The list is growing of people who probably, as young men and women, had character and skill that was formed in the Secret Place.

And because of their character and skill, many Christian leaders that we know of were given opportunities by the Lord to minister, to do awesome things on the world stage, and they move into this front stage ministry, and they do amazing things, and God's favor is with them because they have the character.

But I wonder if when they enter that front stage, and they neglect the back stage secret place relationship with God, that's when it all goes wrong, and they have those terrible falls from grace that we've heard of.

Humans were not meant to be apart from the secret place.

We're not meant to live only on the front stage.

Without the secret place, we fall apart.

That's the lesson from the story of David.

But in the life of Jesus, we see the secret place perfected.

We see front stage, back stage living perfected.

There's this awesome story in Luke 5 that comes after Jesus has been doing crazy things in Galilee, teaching and miracles and deliverances from demons.

All on the front stage, just amazing ministry.

The scripture says this in Luke 5.15.

Yet the news about Jesus spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses.

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

He often stepped back from the front stage to go to the secret place with God.

The Greek word, which is translated lonely places here, is also translated wilderness in many other parts of the Gospels.

It's the word Eremos.

Frequently, the scripture says Jesus went to the Eremos.

He would spend a night in prayer with the father.

He would withdraw from public ministry to go to the secret place.

Now, think about this.

If there was any human being in the history of the world who could have had an incredible front stage ministry like Jesus had, with no backstage secret place relationship with God, and not fallen from grace, it would be Jesus.

He could have never gone to the secret place, and he never would have sinned, and he would have just only been doing amazing things on the front stage.

But, Jesus knew that humans were made to have a relationship with God in the secret place.

So God himself would withdraw from the front stage, and he would go to lonely places and pray.

If Jesus needed the secret place, I think we do too.

Every one of us.

So what about you?

What does the secret place look like for you?

How do you go to the secret place?

What is it that taps into your spirit, that enables you to connect with God?

For Jesus, it meant drawing back from public responsibilities to be with the Father.

It meant often actually losing a night's sleep, because he knew that prayer with the Father was more important than sleep.

Matthew 6 verse 5 says, When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.

Think of front stage ministry.

But when you pray, Jesus says, Go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.

Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Now, if you're one of the people from the first half of that list, that loves to pray standing in the church, maybe right here, you'd think, what reward could I possibly get if no one knows that I'm praying?

If I read my Bible and no one knows about it, and Instagram doesn't come and contact me and want to learn about my life story, what's the point?

Jesus says there is a reward in the Secret Place, and the reward is God himself.

When you go to the Secret Place, you get God.

You may not get the acclaim of the front stage in front of others, but you get something infinitely better, and that is God himself.

James 4 verse 8 says, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

The Secret Place is not hard to get to.

There's a thousand different ways to commune with God and to live in relationship with him, and to enter into that space.

But as we think about what it is to enter into the presence of God, I think we can take it for granted that we can just waltz into the presence of a holy God, whenever we feel like it.

Hebrews 4.16 encourages us in that pursuit.

It says we can with boldness, with confidence, enter the presence of God.

So we can do that.

We can walk into the presence of a holy God, but only because, Hebrews 4 says, only because we have a faithful high priest, Jesus, whose blood made away for us to access the Father.

Jesus died so that we could have a secret place relationship with God and a public place relationship with God.

The Gospel says that because Jesus went to the barren place for us when he died on Calvary's Cross, we can run to the secret place with the Father.

Because he shed his blood and made away for us to be reconciled to God, we can have a relationship with God.

We can enter his presence boldly to receive grace and find mercy.

More so, the resurrection of Jesus shows that because Jesus went into death and kicked out the back wall of the cave of death as it were, even death will not separate us from the Father.

So that at all times, in life or in death, we can be with God in the Secret Place.

That's the story of the Gospel.

And what I think is not more beautiful, but it's a part of the beauty of the whole thing, is that the way the story of the Bible ends, the entire Bible ends in Revelation with a picture of the Secret Place with God coming down and being everywhere on this earth.

The vision in Revelation is not humans jettisoning off a dying earth like an escape pod and going to heaven.

The vision is, because Jesus came down once, He will come down again and God with Him.

And God Himself will be our God and we will be His people.

He will dwell amongst us.

And so what used to be requiring you to go into the Secret Place and close the door of your room to commune with the Father, He will be everywhere, tangibly and powerfully.

That's the picture of the end of the world in Revelation, is the Secret Place comes down and dwells with us.

I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord.

Let's find what the secret chord is.

Let's run to the presence of the Father, enter the Secret Place, find out what pleases the Lord.

You and I were made for the presence of God.

We were made to do great things for God, to bear fruit, to minister in His name, and we were also made to hold on to the Secret Place in the other hand.

The band is going to come up as I pray and close.

Even now in worship, I'm struck by the fact that together with boldness we can come into the presence of God.

This is not a secret place, but the presence of God is here.

We believe that by faith.

So I'm going to pray to help us enter the Secret Place of worship now.

Our father, it is with fear and trembling and yet with boldness at the same time that we approach you now.

We long to encounter you, for you to speak to us, to draw near to us, that our lives may be changed.

For all of us who were made for the Secret Place, would you show us by your spirit what it means in our daily life to enter the Secret Place, that we would not seek to do life without you, but we would be running every day to that place where you are tangibly and powerfully present amongst us.

So now as we lift up your name, would you fill this room, fill our hearts, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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