Your Gentleness Made Me Great

Your Gentleness Made Me Great.  King David had been named king but hadn’t become king until this occasion: his coronation (Psalm 18). Not merely because Jerusalem, which David established as the seat of his new government, was several thousand feet up in elevation, his coronation was an uphill battle in every sense of the word for him to assume the throne of the unified nation of Israel. He had to conquer Jerusalem. He had to conquer Saul’s tribe and allies. But mostly David had to conquer himself before he was ready to become king, a battle he would famously, and in some ways repeatedly, fight. He theoretically ought to have been the first one to know about being one’s own worst enemy.

For the lion’s share of a decade, he ran from King Saul. Although David was clearly revealed by the prophet and openly revered by the people as the Lord’s chosen king, he wouldn’t dispose of the Lord’s outgoing king by his own doing. He could have but would not. In contrast to the two times when Saul attempted to pin David to the wall of the palace with his spear (1 Sam. 18:11; 19:10), twice David had Saul in his grasp and twice he let Saul go, saying: “I would not put out my hand against the Lord's anointed” (1 Sam. 26:23, see also 1 Sam. 24:10). Yet both times, David’s men did not understand David’s great humility, misinterpreting it as David’s great folly for forfeiting a potentially God-provided windfall. But David approached humility, or gentleness, from the other direction. Gentleness was (and is) the mark of greatness instead of the absence of greatness or a hurdle to accomplishing it.

We often repeat the same mistake of David’s men and David’s predecessor when we step on the neck of gentleness in our greedy grasp for greatness. I can still hear one accuser scoff at me while figuratively stepping on my neck, “You are too ethical to succeed” (direct quote). But he, like we all, got it horribly backward. (Yet, it is a relief to know that God will sort the goats from the sheep.) Gentleness/humility is success, not the price of doing business.

Strikingly but not surprisingly, David spoke more of God at his own coronation than himself. “Your gentleness made me great” (Psa. 18:35). Wouldn’t we like to say to our enemies, when we finally are vindicated, some version of: how do you like me now? Paradoxically, God’s gentleness/humility was what made David rise, not God’s greatness that made David humble (i.e., forced compliance). Voluntary gentleness/humility is the essence of greatness in God’s kingdom. “Many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Matt. 19:30).

After Saul fell, after all of Saul’s allies dispersed, and after all of Saul’s sons (except for one grandson, Mephibosheth [2 Sam. 4:4]) were removed from Israel, David might have concluded that his need for gentleness/humility had also expired. But that was simply not true! He needed even more humility sitting on the throne than slinking through the caves.