A Different Heart

01 · Everything goes right

Saul's story starts with lost donkeys, just like any good biblical story. His father's donkeys wander off, and Saul and a servant go looking for them for days. They end up at the door of Samuel, the prophet, just hoping he can tell them where the donkeys went.

Instead, Samuel takes a small jar of oil, pours it on Saul's head, and tells him the Lord has chosen him to lead his people. What a turn in the story. You go out looking for donkeys, and you come home anointed.

Samuel gives him signs so he'll know it's real. The donkeys have been found. Three men will meet you, carrying goats and bread and wine. Then you'll meet a group of prophets coming down from the shrine with "harps, tambourines, flutes, and lyres." And then:

Then the Lord's spirit will come over you, and you will be caught up in a prophetic frenzy right along with them; it will be like you've become a completely different person.
(1 Samuel 10:6)

Every sign happens, that same day:

And just as Saul turned to leave Samuel's side, God gave him a different heart, and all these signs happened that very same day. When Saul and the boy got to Gibeah, there was a group of prophets coming to meet him. God's spirit came over Saul, and he was caught up in a prophetic frenzy right along with them. When all the people who had known Saul saw him prophesying with the prophets, they said to each other, "What's happened to Kish's son? Is Saul also one of the prophets?"
(1 Samuel 10:9–11)

Hold on to three things from that story: a spirit that came over him, a prophetic frenzy, and the lyres. You'll see all three again.

And notice what God gave him: a different heart. When the Bible talks about the heart, it isn't mostly talking about feelings, the "I love you with all my heart" kind. It means your inner self: how you think about yourself, how you see the world, the center your whole life is formed from.¹ As I said on Sunday, if we're really honest, "our inner self does not always mirror our outer self." God gave Saul a different center.

This isn't a story about Saul being saved and then lost. Commentators read it as a real change God gave Saul for the job in front of him.² It was real. The question is what he did with it.

02 · And then he went home

I know something about a day like that. Right after college, I spent six weeks at an orphanage in Honduras, near Santa Barbara. My grandparents were missionaries in Honduras for a long, long time, and my dad spent a lot of his early life there, so it was almost a double trip for me. The kids there were what you'd call economic orphans: they still had families, but their families were so poor that the orphanage cared for them.

When you spend that much time with kids who have literally nothing, and you see the joy on their faces, your life gets flipped upside down. One boy had just joined the program when we got there. He was closed off and barely talked. By the time we left, six weeks later, he was latching onto everybody, with tears in his eyes. He had found a love that transformed him. I'd say it transformed me more.

You don't come back from a trip like that the same way you left. But I came back to consumeristic America, to youth ministry and church life, and one day I realized I had to ask: "where did that spiritual high go?" I'd shared what God had done. But within a couple of months, it had "all kind of fizzled out," to the point where nobody looking at me would have known that trip happened.

Now watch what Saul does with his different heart. He goes home, and his uncle asks where he's been:

"He reassured us that the donkeys had been found," Saul answered. But Saul didn't tell his uncle what Samuel had said about the kingship.
(1 Samuel 10:16)

Not a word. A little later, Samuel calls all Israel together to name the king in front of everyone. The lot falls on Saul, and they can't find him. They ask God where he is, and God says, "he's hiding among the supplies." This is a man who stood "head and shoulders taller than anyone else" (10:23), a commanding presence, hiding in the supply closet at his own coronation.

One old commentator put it this way: Saul "became another man, but it may be questioned if he became a new man."⁴

Another man. Not a new man.

Later, after Saul has disobeyed God more than once, Samuel confronts him, and Saul says it twice: "I have sinned." The second time, he adds this:

"I have sinned," Saul said, "but please honor me in front of my people's elders and before Israel, and come back with me so I can worship the Lord your God."
(1 Samuel 15:30)

It sounds like one of my kids. I have sinned, but. Everything before the but doesn't really count. What he means is everything after it.

Something happened on the inside, and it never truly made it out. And if it never makes it out, has anything really changed?

03 · He does nothing

So God sends Samuel to find another king, to a little town called Bethlehem, to a man named Jesse, who has a lot of sons. I can barely handle two. The oldest walks in, and Samuel thinks: that's him. He looks the part. Tall, just like Saul.

But the Lord says the line at the top of this page: "Humans see only what is visible to the eyes, but the Lord sees into the heart." Seven sons go by, and none of them is the one. The youngest is still out working with the sheep. (I'm a youngest, so I especially love this story. It's all about me.) They send for him, and Samuel pours the horn of oil over David in front of his brothers, and "The Lord's spirit came over David from that point forward."

Same words as Saul's day. The Spirit came over him, just like Saul.

Now watch what happens next. When the Spirit came over Saul, the whole town saw it. There was a frenzy, and a proverb. When the Spirit comes over David, he does nothing. No frenzy. No miracle. He goes back to the sheep.

One commentator puts it this way: "After God's spirit bursts on David he does … nothing."⁵

The books of Samuel mention the Spirit and David together only one more time, in his very last words: "The Lord's spirit speaks through me" (2 Samuel 23:2). Everything in between, the story keeps saying one thing about him.⁶ One of Saul's servants says it before Saul has even met David: "The Lord is with him" (16:18).

Saul had the moments. David had the presence.

And then this:

Now the Lord's spirit had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.
(1 Samuel 16:14)

The Bible says it came "from the Lord" because Israel saw everything as passing through God's hands.⁷ It isn't saying that someone who struggles with their mind is being punished. Saul's problem wasn't the torment; it was that he never turned back.

Saul's servants go looking for a musician to calm him. And who do they bring? A shepherd from Bethlehem who plays the lyre. "Saul would relax and feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him alone" (16:23).

I think a lot of us go looking for the big, flashy moments with God. When we don't have one, we decide God isn't doing anything. And when we come down from one, everyday life comes back, the old habits come back, and we start asking God whether he really changed us at all, and why the old thing is back. So we go chasing the next big moment. That's what Saul did.

David never chased those moments. He went back to what God had put in front of him. All through this series we've been talking about the Spirit as God's breath filling our lungs. We keep asking for a big wind in our sails, when the deeper way God moves is, as I said on Sunday, "the everyday rhythm of breathing life with Him." Two weeks ago we saw God fill the skills and work that are already in your hands. David's work was sheep. And there, God was with him.

04 · Same words, now with a spear

David goes to work for Saul, and David is good at everything Saul gives him. He faces Goliath when no one else will. When Saul tries to dress him in his own armor, David says, in effect, this isn't me. He goes out with a sling and some stones, because he has seen God at work in his ordinary life.

Then one day the army comes home from battle, and the women of Israel come out dancing and singing: "Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his tens of thousands!" (18:7). Saul hears it. "So Saul kept a close eye on David from that point on" (18:9). And the very next day:

The next day an evil spirit from God came over Saul, and he acted like he was in a prophetic frenzy in his house. So David played the lyre as he usually did. Saul had a spear in his hand, and he threw it, thinking, I'll pin David to the wall. But David escaped from him two different times.
(1 Samuel 18:10–11)

Remember the three things? A spirit came over him. A prophetic frenzy. The lyre. Same words as chapter 10. Now with a spear.

Saul had those Spirit moments again and again. God's spirit came over him three times (10:10; 11:6; 19:23). And it didn't make his heart any different.

I've had to sit with that this series. I wonder what would have happened if, when I came home from Honduras, I'd let what God did there really sit with me. I told you last week about 2015, when I wasn't sure I believed anymore. As I said on Sunday, "what burned me out was I stopped seeing the big flashy stuff." I had all my chips on those moments. When life started to crumble, I forgot that God was right there with me. He never left. Even when, deep in my heart, I felt completely disconnected from him, he was there.

That's what Paul is talking about in the passages I promised on Sunday I'd put out for you. In Philippians 3, Paul lists everything he used to point to: "I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews. With respect to observing the Law, I'm a Pharisee" (3:5). And then:

But even beyond that, I consider everything a loss in comparison with the superior value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have lost everything for him, but what I lost I think of as sewer trash, so that I might gain Christ and be found in him.
(Philippians 3:8–9)

So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!
(2 Corinthians 5:17)

Don't be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God's will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.
(Romans 12:2)

That's the difference when the Spirit comes. It isn't a flashy moment. It's a change on the inside that takes hold. And it isn't shame. It's more like: wow, this stuff doesn't belong here anymore.

If you've had the moments and you still fail, you might be wondering: am I Saul? Here's the thing. It's not that David never failed. David failed spectacularly. He took Bathsheba, another man's wife, and when she became pregnant, he arranged for her husband Uriah to die at the front. Other soldiers died with him: "some of the people from David's army fell. Uriah the Hittite was also killed" (2 Samuel 11:17). God had already promised David's family, and the promise held even after all of it:

But I will never take my faithful love away from him like I took it away from Saul, whom I set aside in favor of you.
(2 Samuel 7:15)

As I said on Sunday, "That's a powerful statement from God." It was never about getting the outside perfect. God told Samuel at Jesse's house: I look at the heart. If the heart changes, if God's Spirit floods it, you start to live differently, whether anyone sees it or not.

That's why we started Sunday with Psalm 51, the prayer the CEB connects to "when the prophet Nathan came to him just after he had been with Bathsheba." It's the prayer Saul never prayed:

Create a clean heart for me, God; put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me! Please don't throw me out of your presence; please don't take your holy spirit away from me.
(Psalm 51:10–11)