Man After God's Own Heart — Redeeming The Time

By Tyler Vigue

What is your gravestone going to say on it? “Parent”? “Lover”? “Environmentalist”? “Arby’s premium club member”? Most of us have decently long lives. How do you boil that down to one single statement for people to remember you by? What is the title that you hope someone else would give you? I know what mine is.

If you couldn’t guess, I’m on a wicked kick about names right now. When we look at scripture, we find that it is packed with names. Some passages of scripture are literally genealogies that make your eyes glaze over thicker than a Krispy Kreme donut. Birth names lack depth, however; they are mostly just a sound and matching text that we use to associate with someone. No, what I’m really into are titles. The bible is full of titles as well, and those tend to have real meaning. Titles aren’t something that you are just obligatorily given at birth, they are earned by some action or trait. And so, with titles in the bible, we can read back and find out why people were given their titles.

Most titles in scripture are used for God Himself, but some are used for people. We’re going to see a lot of both in this article, but the central one is a title for a man who lived in Israel a very long time ago. His title was “Man after God’s own heart.” DANG! Is that a good one or what? As for a gravestone, I’ll take that one, please! “Man after God’s own heart” is probably the most precious non-divine title in the bible. When you hear it, I wonder who you think of? I’ve got a person or two. It certainly isn’t everyone. Like I said, it’s only used once in the bible. The people who you look up to as “God’s heart seekers” are powerful spiritual superheroes that we look up to and learn from all the time. Maybe you don’t have anyone like that. I sure hope that you do, but even if you don’t, that’s okay too! You know why? Because the eternal scripture is beyond just a single person who lived at one place and time, it records all the details we need to know about God and His people, and it will continue to be a source of knowledge and wisdom for the rest of life on earth. So instead of needing to look at people in the here and now, let’s look at the OG, the person who earned the title “Man after God’s own heart” before he had even accomplished a single thing in his life.

The man who I am speaking about is a guy named David. To give you a little background on David I need to explain when in the history of Israel he lived. To begin, the people of Israel had gone through with the exodus and left slavery in Egypt to live in the promised land, which is their modern home still on the east of the Mediterranean Sea. After they entered the land, there wasn’t really a government. The nation existed under a “Theocracy,” or God-rule. For the most part, the nation just existed going about their religious practices and lives. When times of war or other complications arose, God would appoint a temporary leader called a “judge” to follow His own commands and deal with the problem. That period and the lives of the judges are recorded in the Old Testament book of Judges (crazy how that happens, huh?).

Israel existed just fine like this, but the people eventually grew tired of it. The Israelites wanted a king like all the cool kids at school had. God was totally opposed to it. God showed the people what a king would do to the nation, like harsh taxes and army drafts. But the people wouldn’t relent, so God gave them what they asked for.

God chose a king named Saul, and Saul was everything the Israelites wanted, at least for a time. But things went downhill fast. Saul mixed doing the wrong with a little mess-up and a half-cup of failure, let it sit for an hour and then topped it with some screw-up sauce. It was a recipe for disaster, which is exactly what Saul’s reign was. After just a couple years as king, God revoked His blessing over Saul. Look at 1 Samuel chapter 13:

And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you. For now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom will not continue. The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be commander over His people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.” 1 Samuel 13:13-14, NKJV

Did you catch it? This is where God calls out on a new king, who hasn’t even been mentioned by name yet or done anything impressive in the slightest, as a man after His own heart who will rule over God’s people.

Notice how this title is presented though: It’s a direct contrast against the current king and his rule. Saul looked all impressive at first, but his rule ultimately accomplished little except for the things God warned Israel would happen. But when God chose a new king, He displayed the difference between the old and new, where the new king would rule not as an impressive king, but as one who sought after God. This king would put God before all, and he would lead Israel into its golden age. What a contrast with king Saul!

Continuing the account, Samuel, the prophet that God spoke through during these times, went out to a place called Bethlehem (a town in Israel you may have heard of) and sought out this new king that God had spoken of. God directed him to the sons of a man named

Jesse, so Samuel asked Jesse to bring all his sons. But Samuel didn’t find the king among them, so he asked Jesse the basic troubleshooting question, “Uh, are you sure you have all your boys with you?” To which Jesse replied, “Oh yeah, I’m missing one, aren’t I? The little guy, David, is out tending to the sheep somewhere.” Sure enough, when David was brought before Samuel, he was recognized as the future king of Israel. Yes, the greatest king to ever rule over Israel and the one man to ever be called “A man after God’s own heart” in scripture was literally overlooked by his own father! That’s how unimpressive this guy was.

Fast forward a few years and a lot of drama, and finally David was king, and he lived up to what God had laid out for him. Don’t get me wrong, David had his difficulties and failures too. But unlike with Saul, David was truly committed to God. So, what is it that made David so special, a man after God’s own heart? Well lucky for us, we have a book that tells us just that. Go find the nearest bible, an actual physical bible. Hopefully there’s one right near you. Okay, so now open your bible just a hair to the left of the center. Ninety-nine percent chance you just landed in the book of Psalms, where we are going to be spending most of our time here.

“Psalms?” you may be asking as you read. “I thought Psalms was just a book of cool (aka boring) poems and stuff?” Yeah, so did I, until just alittle while ago. But David wrote around half of that book, and it gets us deeper than we could go with history alone. Even though we have the historical account of what David did, the narrative style of the accounts of his life has its limits. But with Psalms, we can investigate what David’s relationship with God was like. But first, a bit more history (I promise, history class is almost over).

Once David was king, he wanted to build a temple for God. People had been worshipping God in what was essentially a giant tent called the Tabernacle. David, having captured Jerusalem and making it the capital of the nation of Israel, wanted to make a permanent home for God in the city. But God said not to, and instead to wait for David’s son Solomon to become king. Why did God say that? The most obvious answer is because of certain events in Solomon’s rule that God knew would play out. But God is super efficient, and this was at least dual-purpose. While one purpose was to have Solomon build the temple with his riches, the other purpose was to have David build a different kind of temple. You see, the temple was stone, wood, and gold. It was impressive, yeah, but any idiot with wealth and power could build a temple. And the temple would only stand for a few hundred years before being raided and obliterated by invaders. But David had more than just wealth and power, and God couldn’t waste David’s time building something that was merely physical and quite temporary. So, God had David building something else: The Psalms.

The Psalms of David were a literary temple, the place where God lived. His Psalms explained the mysteries of who God was and what life in a relationship with God looked like.

Fast-forward about 400 years. The Babylonian empire takes over the ancient world, including Israel. The temple is destroyed and the Israelites (now being called Jews) were brought into Babylon in exile from their homeland. No temple?!? What are they supposed to do now? Oh wait! They had a temple that was more than just physical and temporary; they had David’s Psalms! The Jews were able to continue a relationship with God without a temple because David was able to do it before the temple ever existed! And so, the Jews continued into that journey and wrote more Psalms, and during (or right after) the exile, they collected a bunch of psalms into one book, the book that we call Psalms today.

Most of the time I see people quoting Psalms, they quote a verse at a time and stick it on Facebook or something, but that causes it to lose some of its value. Not only is each individual Psalm constructed as one complete unit, the entire book of Psalms has its own progression and narrative. The book is so big that, depending on your perspective, you might find a few different patterns to learn from as you read it. In any case, I challenge you to read the book of Psalms this week. It’s a big book, so that’s a lot of reading, but you owe it to yourself to see what the big picture of Psalms is. As for this article, I’ll be doing the hard part for you, looking at Psalms as a guidebook for what it looks like to seek after God’s own heart.

To begin, lets look at the very beginning with Psalm 1. Now this Psalm isn’t one of King David’s, as it happens. In fact, remember last paragraph when I said that Psalms had its own narrative? I hope so because that was like, five seconds ago, come on. Anyways, the first two Psalms in the book appear to be written by the people who complied the book and are used as an intro to two main themes. The theme of Psalm 1 is what it looks like to follow the Lord, while Psalm 2 begins a long-running pattern of Messianic praises and prophecies. We’re focused on that first one for now, as it quite obviously fits what we’re looking for.

Blessed is the man

Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,

Nor stands in the path of sinners,

Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

And in His law, he meditates day and night. Psalm 1:1-2

Two notes right from the get-go. First, the word “Law.” We’re going to equate it to all of scripture, for numerous reasons, just know that Jewish culture regards the Law as both the words of God and their covenant relationship with Him.

Second is the word for “meditation.” The original Hebrew is often translated either as “meditation,” as we see here, or “mutter” in other places.

So, what does this whole thing mean? Well this is our first step in seeking God’s heart:

Step 1: Mutter the scriptures!

If you aren’t where you want to be with God, if “One after God’s own heart” doesn’t describe you, then start here! When the psalmist says “mutter,” it means to repeat it, slowly, quietly, and subtly. It’s a constant process, not draining and attention-consuming necessarily, more of a constant background process. This is how you’re supposed to read scripture. Notice how it doesn’t say that this ideal worshipper reads the scriptures night and day, it says he mutters them. Reading the bible isn’t about just sitting down and powering through another reading session.

The bible is like our DNA. How much do you know about DNA? Here are some fun facts: the length of a single strand (aka the amount in every single cell in your body) is around two meters (about six feet). And if you took all the DNA from every cell in your body, you could make a strand that ran across the entire solar system. Twice. How in the world did God fit that in every cell? I’ll tell you how: It’s folded in the most efficient way possible. The cell can’t use it while it’s stored that way. When your cell wants the DNA strand, it must unfold it and run the whole thing through a series of “machines” in the cell. Unfolding the DNA strand is a pretty difficult process, but it’s necessary to store that much information in such a tiny space.

The bible is the same way! God fit, curled, and folded tons and tons of information into the bible, and getting that information out isn’t a quick and easy process; it’s slow and deliberate. That’s what the psalmist is communicating here. To read scripture you must mutter it day and night, chewing on it and really getting everything out of it. You aren’t going to get that out of simply reading chapters upon chapters at a time. Start your day with a verse or two and just chew on them, think on them while you go about your day. Let me tell you, by the end of the day you will have a totally new understanding of those scriptures thanyou did when you woke up that day. And don’t keep it to yourself either. This isn’t a solo faith! Share what you’ve been muttering with other Christians and see what they’ve been muttering. If you’re trying to seek God’s heart, really take the time to understand His words to us.

Next! Head to Psalm 23. Psalm 23 is super short, but it has another title, just like our title for David, except this one is a title for God:

The Lord is my shepherd;

I shall not want. Psalm 23:1 NKJV

That’s just the first verse, but it’s possibly the most famous line in all the book of Psalms. Now, this psalm has its own merits. Firstly, David calls God his own shepherd, which is cool. David was a shepherd in the fields as a boy, and as a man he was shepherd over all of Israel as its king. So, there’s a lot of cool imagery here with David saying, “Yeah, I’m a shepherd, but He’s my Shepherd.”

But this isn’t what I want to focus on; as cool as this passage is, I’m mostly just using it as a quick reference. What I’m really interested in is the title. Psalms gives a load of titles for God. How many exactly? Well a not-so-brief readthrough of the book of Psalms turned me up with this list. This was done manually, and I looked for any instance of the phrase “The Lord is my…” or any similar phrases. Here’s what I turned up:

My shield

My glory

Sustenance

God of my righteousness

My King and my God

My Defense

Judge

Lord Most High

My Trust

My Refuge

My Portion

My Rock, Fortress, and Deliverer

My Strength

My Shield and Horn of my salvation, my Stronghold

My Support

My Strength and my Redeemer

My Shepherd

King of Glory

Lord of Hosts

My Light and my Salvation

Saving Refuge

Lord God of Truth

My Hiding Place

Ever Merciful

Living God

My Exceeding Joy

Mighty One

Our Refuge and Strength

I AM God

God of Jacob

Great King

Awesome

King of all the Earth

God of Abraham

Our Guide

The Mighty One, God the Lord

My Helper

God above the heavens

Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel

You his Strength

God of Mercy

Shelter

Strong Tower

Thirst of my soul

You who hear prayer

Our own God

Him who rides on the clouds

Yah

Father of the fatherless, Defender of widows

Him who rides on the heavens, which were of old

My Trust from my youth

He who took me from my mother’s womb

Holy One of Israel

The Strength of my heart and my Portion forever

My King from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth

Awesome to the kings of the earth

Most High God their Redeemer

Shepherd of Israel

He who dwells between the cherubim

The Glory of their Strength

My Father

Our Dwelling Place in all generations

Lord on high forevermore

The Lord our Maker

Great God

Great King above all gods

Most High above all the earth, exalted far above all gods

God their Savior

My Strength and Song

Your Keeper

Your Shade at your right hand

Maker of heaven and earth

Mighty One of Jacob

My Anointed (Messiah)

God of gods

Lord of lords

Doer of Great Wonders

The One who gives salvation to kings

Yeah, that’s a big list. Seventy-eight entries, to be exact, and I know that it’s inexhaustive. Did you read the whole thing? I hope you did. This was a powerful study, I certainly recommend it.

But what’s the point? Why would I do that? Literally, it was only to drive home this point: God should be your all. Every title you could imagine, you should be giving it to God.Think of it like this: nowadays when you say “Hey, google this,” in a crowded room, a bunch of phones come out and the internet answers you immediately. Our phones and the internet are the tools we turn to when a situation comes up that we can use them for. When your nose starts to run, the first thing you do is look for the tissues or a napkin or something else nearby. When you need to cut a cord or thread, you reach for the nearest scissors or a knife.

What’s the deal with this illustration? When we face a challenge or obstruction, we immediately react by searching out the right tool for the job. Now, think like this: God should be our first reaction to the challenges of life. Need comfort? He’s Comforter! Need protection from the storms of life? God is Refuge! Need an escape from the things that stress you out? God is your Hiding Place! Boil it down like this: if you want to be a person after God’s own heart…

Step 2: Make God your all and your first call, not your last resort!

But don’t just pop out God like He’s a tool that you get to use. A massive part of this idea is that you must give credit, all credit, to God. Look at Psalm 71:

I have become as a wonder to many,

But You are my strong refuge.

Let my mouth be filled with Your praise

And with Your glory all the day. Psalm 71:7-8 NKJV

You’ve got to give all the credit and praise to Him, especially when people are praising or complimenting you. Find a way to point it back to Him, or it’s all worthless.

On to the final step. To understand fully what I’m about to talk about, we need to go back into the life of David, picking up the account of his life in 2 Samuel 11-12. David had become king and was ruling over the nation of Israel. David was a good man and a good king, but he had become comfortable. Kings were supposed to lead the wars their nation waged, but David had put another man in charge and stayed in Jerusalem.

While he was home, he walked out to his balcony and saw a woman bathing on the roof, which is where baths often were; for the most part, rooftops were out of sight, and they could have a pool that collected rainwater. But the rooftops were low compared to the balcony of the palace, so David could see everything, and I mean everything.

David saw this woman, Bathsheba, and decided that he wanted her. Without another thought, he had her brought to him and they had an affair. Oh, but it doesn’t end there! Bathsheba was impregnated, and David needed to act fast to not get caught. So, David summoned Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, from the battlefront (you know, where David was supposed to be). He tried to get Uriah to go be with his wife, but Uriah was just too dedicated to his service to the king. David had to send Uriah back to war, but with a note for the commander. The note had orders to push Uriah to the front lines and have the rest of the army retract, leaving Uriah stranded in a battlefield.

A messenger returned from the battle with an update for David, and, could you guess, Uriah was dead! Oh, the tragedy! The horror! Well it clearly didn’t hurt David that much because, before anyone could blink, Uriah’s wife was conveniently remarried to King David. Yes, David, the man after God’s own heart that we’ve been following this entire time, committed adultery and then murder to cover it up.

Now, if this series of events was to happen in the modern American political jungle, it would be considered highly suspicious and be all over the news. But somehow, ancient Israel apparently was oblivious to this whole thing. But God wasn’t.

God sent a prophet named Nathan to David to call him out on what he had done. God phrased his accusation to David in a way that David even agreed that the man who had done such an awful thing should be punished, only for God to whip it around and turn it on David. Convicted, David realizes the error of his ways, and we pick it up in Psalm 51.

David wrote Psalm 51 as a prayer for forgiveness. Look at verses 3 and 4:

For I acknowledge my transgressions,

And my sin is always before me.

Against You, You only, I have sinned,

And done this evil in Your sight…” Psalm 51 3-4 NKJV

“Against You, You only, I have sinned”? How about Uriah who he murdered? Or Bathsheba who he dragged into this, all because he was dumb enough to build a balcony in Israel’s open-air locker room? But no, David recognized something that we often don’t discuss: sin, no matter its characteristics, is an offense against God first and foremost.The most famous part of this Psalm is verse 10, reading “Create in me a clean heart, O God,/ And renew a steadfast spirit within me.” David called out to God to do the fixing. David recognized that to fix things up, it wasn’t about “doing better next time.” David asked God to fix David on the inside, to clean the heart, where David couldn’t even reach. But even though this is probably the most famous part of this Psalm, it’s not the most interesting part to me. Look at verses 14-17

Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,

The God of salvation,

And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips,

And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.

For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;

You do not delight in burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,

A broken and contrite heart—

These, O God, You will not despise. Psalm 51 14-17 NKJV

Whoa, that’s some good stuff, right? David was making a pretty bold statement right there by dismissing the sacrifices. The sacrifices were the backbone of the Law, you had to make sacrifices for everything, particularly to cover sin. But David, having such a powerful relationship with God, knew that the sacrifices weren’t the goal; they were symbolic of something else: reconciliation.

Sacrifices were “Right-Makers” in ancient Jewish religious practices. But David is showing us something different, that what makes us right with God, our reconciliation, or sacrifice, is a broken and repentant heart.

Step 3: Confess and Reconcile with God!

That’s probably the most crucial step in having this special relationship with God. David messed up badly, but when he did, he stopped hiding it and brought the whole thing before God.

I think that all too often, the relationship between God, myself, and sin is akin to a mother out with her wild child trying to have a conversation with another adult. “So, it’s just been crazy, what with all this— HOLD ON ZACH! Yeah, crazy ever since— DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH THAT, YOUNG MAN! I’m so sorry, he’s not usually like this…” I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds themselves trying to keep sin under control while pretending it isn’t there. But David shows us another way, a better way. And it’s not just here either, look at Psalm 32:

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,

Whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity,

And in whose spirit there is no deceit.

When I kept silent, my bones grew old

Through my groaning all the day long.

For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;

My vitality was turned into the drought of summer.

I acknowledged my sin to You,

And my iniquity I have not hidden.

I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”

And You forgave the iniquity of my sin.

…

Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you righteous;

And shout for joy, all you upright in heart! Psalm 32:1-5,11 NKJV

See how David contrasts what it’s like when he won’t confess his sins against how he responds to God when he’s forgiven? Honestly, I can’t stress this enough, it’s so much better to confess than to hold it in, or ignore it, or pretend like your own sin isn’t an issue. Lay it all out before God, like David does in Psalm 51. “This is what I’ve got, God, and I don’t like it, but I’m powerless to fix it. I need You to do what I can’t…”

This has been an amazing study through a book I don’t often open. But my eyes have been opened to the Psalms and holy moly they make so much more sense now. I touched on a handful of verses by a couple themes I filtered through, but the book is mega-deep. If you’re like me and have never heard of how to really study the book of Psalms, I recommend heading to YouTube and finding “The Bible Project” channel. They use super amazing modern animation to explain the bible, and they have multiple different videos going through Psalms from different perspectives.

And that’s all from me, but not all from God. I can only write so well, I can only teach you so much. There must be something going on at your end or it’s all worthless.

I would love discussion on this, so please, by all means, tell me whatever you think in the comments to any post where I link this to.

Until I post again,

-Tyler