Our society likes big things and big bangs. One hundred day plans. Transformational change. Slow and steady might win the race in the past, but today bigger is better. Incremental growth and change is insufficient for the supposed fast pace of the world we live in. We look down on small beginnings.
Yet David’s ascent to kingship was a small beginning. While we expect that his anointing by Samuel as Saul’s successor would lead to his almost effortless slide into the top role, David had to take the first small steps towards becoming king over Israel. In the meantime, David also experienced opposition from the world to his rightful reign. For David, even his kingdom had to start from somewhere. For the Church, for individual believers too, the same principle applies. We should not despise small beginnings.
After an appropriate period of mourning for the late King Saul and his son, Jonathan, life had to move forward. God’s People were without an officially installed leader, which as the Book of Judges reminds us is not a good thing. Samuel had privately already anointed David as king (1 Sam 16), but it was time for things to become public.
Now that Saul was dead, David and his men could move freely in Israel without fear of attack. So David inquired of God about whether to leave Ziklag for Judah (v.1). God directed David to go to Hebron, which was the most prominent of Judah’s towns.
Obedient to God, David cut ties with Philistine Ziklag and moved to Hebron, together with his wives and his men (and their own families, vv.2-3).
When he arrived there, the tribe of Judah gathered to publicly anoint David as their king (v.4). Which was a small beginning. Judah was only one tribe of Israel. David’s long-expected kingship was finally inaugurated, but had not reached the full extent that Samuel’s ordination and God’s anointing promised.
However, while this was only a small beginning, the first deposit on the full transfer of the kingdom to David’s hands, it was clearly at God’s leading. It was God who had set David apart. It was God who had protected David all those years from Saul’s hands. It was God who had led David to Hebron, that he could be anointed king.
The next step is to build on the small beginnings. David was told of the deeds of Jabesh-gilead, who marched through the night to rescue Saul’s body from the Philistines and give it a respectful burial (v.4, cf. 1 Sam. 31).
David contacted them, asking a blessing on them for their act of bravery and respect of Saul (v.5). Then David suggested they take another risk – by acknowledging him as their king (vv.6-7). Effectively, David is suggesting that since they are godly folks who respect the Lord’s anointed, they ought to recognise the Lord’s anointed successor to Saul, now enthroned in Hebron.
We do not know the response they gave. But we do know that if they had agreed, they were taking a risk. Because to the north, General Abner was plotting a coup against God. He took Saul’s remaining son, Ish-bosheth, and installed him as king over Israel (vv.8-11).
While some could forgive Abner for placing Ish-bosheth in the hot seat; after all, from a worldly perspective he was the heir apparent after Saul and Jonathan died, in reality this was an attack against God’s plan. Everyone knew that David was God’s anointed successor to Saul. Even Saul had publicly admitted it himself (and Abner would have heard it).
Abner was refusing the kingship of God’s anointed one. He was refusing the Great Kingship of God. He was placing himself in rebellion against God. The inevitable civil war (and what is really civil about war?) was a consequence of Abner seeking to have it his own way.
This theme of rejection and unbelief carries its way through history. The Jewish leadership and the masses rejected King Jesus before Pilate, declaring they had no king but Caesar. Others in the world today still rage in vain against the Lord’s anointed (Ps. 2), seeking anyone but Jesus as their master.
The Church exists in that tension. Like David, God’s Kingdom is inaugurated, but has not yet reached its greatest extent as it soon will. We, like Judah, are the seed of the Kingdom which will one day grow into a great mountain and crush the worldly kingdoms to dust.
Our call as Christians is not to despise the small beginnings. The often lowly place of the Church, especially in our days here in New Zealand and elsewhere. The slow march of holiness as the Holy Spirit works in our lives, making us bit by bit more like Christ and less like the world.
Instead, we are to witness and call others to repent of their rebellion and join God’s Kingdom. Jesus is calling the worldly citizens of our Jabesh-gileads to acknowledge his kingship through our words. Though it begins small, God’s Kingdom will eventually reign over all. We should not despise small beginnings.
