David.com/comparison/1samuel16.1-15
Adam to Eve: “Do you love me?” Eve: “Yes.” Adam: “I mean, really love me?” Eve: “Yes, Adam.” Adam: “Really and truly?” Eve, looking around: “Adam, who else?”
Something within each of us wants to know
whether we are OK,
whether we are good enough,
whether we measure up.
Speaking of Adam and Eve, someone has suggested that they had an ideal marriage. He didn’t have to hear about all the men she could have married--and she didn’t have to hear about the way his mother cooked.
Many people battle an inferiority complex, a feeling of not measuring up, always feeling less than others, less than some ideal they sense they should live up to.
A woman who went to a psychologist and said, “I have an inferiority complex.” The doctor spoke with her a while and then administered a battery of tests. She went back to the psychologist and he said, “Well, it’s no complex. You really are inferior.”
We often receive the message, in one way or another, from the different people in our lives, that we are inferior. Differences become yardsticks by which we are measured.
We are not like a co-worker.
We are not as bright or as attractive or as athletic as an older brother or sister.
Perhaps Mom and Dad weren’t so subtle in the way they favored one child over another.
The teacher had pets and it wasn’t us.
They always picked someone else to be on the team instead of us and we came to believe we were not as good.
We did not have as much as someone else had.
We did not get ahead as quickly or as far as other people or made as much money or we weigh more or we’re not as intelligent or as socially smooth.
Maybe no one said it out loud, but we kept getting the message, “You are not quite good enough. You should be like other people. You do not fit in. Why can’t you be like so-and-so?”
David lived nearly a thousand years before the time of Christ. He was the youngest of eight sons born to Jesse, his father. As a boy and a teenager, David’s job was to care for sheep.
When David was growing up, Saul was the king of Israel. (This is not the same Saul we read about in Acts, whom we know as Paul, who wrote so many New Testament letters hundreds of years later.) But King Saul was disobedient to God and displeased him so much that God decided to remove him as king. God then directed Samuel, the prophet and spiritual leader of the time, to anoint a new king.
God sent him to Bethlehem, to the house of Jesse, because God said one of Jesse’s sons would be the next king. Samuel told Jesse that he was coming to his home to offer a sacrifice and worship God, which would have been a great honor for Jesse. It would be like the bishop or Billy Graham coming to your house. So Jesse gathered all his family, including his sons, or, as it turned out, most of his sons.
Samuel was anxious for God to reveal which one of these sons would be the future king, to take the place of Saul, the failed king. So he had the sons come before him. He looked them over, listening for the voice of God to identify the chosen one. Eliab, the oldest, stepped up first. The Bible says that Samuel “looked at” Eliab. That’s significant because like many of us, Samuel was impressed by what he could see. He looked at him, but with his physical eyes, he could only see his appearance, the externals. “Surely this is the one,” he thought. He just looked like king material. He was no doubt tall and impressive and an imposing physical presence. We also know that Eliab was a military man because when David later visited the front where the Israelite army facing off with Goliath, Eliab was there.
But while Samuel looked at Eliab’s appearance, he could not see his heart. He could not see his character, his thoughts, his attitudes. He did not see, for example, that Eliab was negative and critical. We get a glimpse of Eliab’s attitude and heart later when the Israelites are battling the Philistines. Eliab the solider severely criticized David his little brother for coming out to the battlefield instead of being in the field watching the sheep.
Samuel, like many of us, would have stopped at the surface, with the physical, the outward, except God made it clear to him that Eliab was not the one. That had been the problem with Saul, after all. Saul was tall and impressive, a head taller than anyone else, but the problem was deeper than eyes could see, a heart filled with self, fear, paranoia, and cunning instead of a heart after God.
Then, Samuel assumed the chosen king would be the next brother, or one of the others, but as they all passed before Samuel, God did not speak. However, God had said specifically that one of Jesse’s sons would be the king. So, believing God’s word, Samuel asked if there were any others. As an afterthought, Jesse said, “Well, there is the youngest, and he is tending the sheep.” Samuel said, “Go get him. We’ll wait.”
Imagine that. When it came to assembling his sons for the visit of the prophet of God, his father did not even think it important to have David there. Jesse saw his youngest as nothing more than the one who tended the sheep. But therein lay the essence of David’s heart, the man God chose. It was the heart of a shepherd whom God would choose to lead and care for and protect and feed and guide God’s people. Also, David’s heart was a humble heart, relegated to tending sheep, out of sight, out of the limelight, but a task he fulfilled obediently and humbly. It is a picture of a surrendered self, not concerned for selfish glory or popular recognition, yet in a position where he could hear God’s voice and God’s plan and purposes.
Samuel and the others had to wait for him to get there because David was not pushing to the front of the line seeking glory. He was just doing his job tending sheep. Even after he was anointed, he went back to tending the flock. When Saul sent for him later in this chapter, David was “with the flock.” When he went to fight Goliath, his brother criticized him for being away from the flocks.
But that shepherd heart was exactly what God was looking for: someone who would lead his people as gently and wisely as a shepherd would care for his flock. That was the man after God’s heart.
He was not in the parade, this procession of sons passing in front of Samuel.
But he was prominent in God’s sight, and perfectly positioned and possessing prerequisites for being king -- the shepherd of God’s people.
Finally, David arrived. Unlike Saul, the first king, and unlike Eliab and the older brothers, David was remarkably average, nondescript, nothing extraordinary to look at. But now, Samuel understood God’s standard of selection, (16.7) “Do not consider his appearance or his height, ...The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” While David was young, average, and smaller than the others, his heart was large toward God. And so it was that God said to Samuel, “He’s the one. Anoint him king.”
How often and easily we use external things to evaluate ourselves and other people. We forget that God has an entirely different way of looking at us. We may judge ourselves and each other by our net worth, by what we do, our achievements or degrees or honors, the kind of house we live in, the car we drive, the job we have, the clothes we wear.
What young person does not know the peer pressure around fashion, to wear the right designer labels or the right name on gym shoes. Why is it that we feel so much better about ourselves when we are driving a new car? I can remember a few times when I was in school facing a dilemma: the good news being that I had a ride to school instead of the bus, but the bad news being it was with my parents in our old farm truck, hoping no one would notice what I got out of in the parking lot.
Two cows were grazing in a pasture. A milk truck went by on the road. On the side of the truck were the words, “Pasteurized, homogenized, standardized, vitamin A added.” One cow turned to the other and said, “Makes you feel kind of inadequate, doesn’t it?”
When we lose our focus and get hung up on how we look next to someone else, we lose ourselves. We end up like a chameleon, always changing and drifting away from what we really are until we are no longer sure what is really us and what is our surroundings. We forget our true worth, our gifts, the singular place in this world that God in his loving wisdom has made for us. This is why God removed Saul from the throne. Saul was so concerned to please the voices of the people that he could no longer hear the voice of God.
Comparison is a trap and deadly game that people play. The road of comparing ourselves with other people is hard and unyielding because no matter how we may strive and achieve, there will still be someone somewhere who is bigger, brighter, faster--or at least someone we think is bigger, better, and faster. At the end of the road of constantly comparing is bitterness, resentment, and jealousy.
Also, comparison robs us of contentment. Steve Farrar, who is the founder of Point Man Ministries and a popular Promise Keepers speaker, writes of this experience.
“We moved from California where we had a small backyard and I had a little push mower. Well, we moved to Little Rock, and suddenly I had a backyard a third of an acre. The first day I mowed the grass was in August. The temperature was over 100, and the humidity was over 90%. But when I was done, I had a real sense of contentment. Our house was about ten years old, had a fresh coat of white paint, and with the manicured, green grass, it looked great!
“I went in to get some iced tea and sit down. I was just flipping through a magazine to relax, and I saw this article about a couple in Des Moines who had redone their kitchen. It had all the before-and-after pictures: from old, stained countertops to beautiful ceramic tile, from hardly any cupboard space to French doors with a rotating pantry. I flipped the page, and there was another article about a couple in Boise who had redone their back deck, and it was incredible. It followed the contour of the land and had a barbecue area.
“I was out of tea at that point. I went into our kitchen to get more, and as I walked in, I stopped cold and looked at our kitchen--the old countertops. I went to the pantry to get some Sweet ‘n Low; it didn’t rotate. There weren’t any French doors.
“Suddenly, I wasn’t pleased with our kitchen. I thought, Why do we live in a roach trap like this anyway? I looked out at my deck, which I’d enjoyed all day, and I thought, You know, I’ve seen firewood in better shape than that deck. In about a seven-minute period, I went from a state of contentment to being discontent. All from looking at a magazine. I looked at better kitchens and better decks, and I was suddenly discontented with what I had.
“Years ago I had heard Howard Hendricks say that comparison is the favorite indoor sport of Christians. Whether I compare my ministry, my house, or my car to someone else’s, it’s just endless. There’s always something better than what we have. Influenza used to kill people; now we have to deal with affluenza. Comparison kills contentment.”
In professional sports, every year there are some superstars who think they aren’t paid enough. They are dissatisfied with their salaries, even though they make more money in one year than most of us do in a lifetime. Their discontent is based on comparison. Each player considers himself the best at his position and therefore thinks he should receive the largest salary.
C.S. Lewis made this observation, "We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking, there would be nothing to be proud about."
On the road of comparison, inner peace is always a mirage, because the truest peace comes only through growing content with how God has made us, that God sees us as we are, and though he does not leave us as we are, he loves us as we are, and starts with us where we are.
Jesse, whether intentionally or not, compared his sons and ignored his youngest tending the sheep. Parents, the greatest contribution we make in the lives of our children, aside from introducing them to Jesus as Savior and Lord, is to help them see that they have worth and value. They need to know they have something unique to offer, just like every other member of the family, just like every other child.
Do you communicate to your children the message that they might be the one God will choose to use in a special way? Or do you play favorites, keeping some out in the fields with the sheep? It is not in God’s plan to make us all kings. But we still should robe our children with a sense of value and crown them with self-worth so they can accomplish great things for the King of heaven.
God does not choose us and use us on the basis of how we measure up to someone around us. He chooses and uses any one of us whose heart is given over to Him.
A Russian proverb says, “If I try to be like him, who will be like me?”
In the church, the body of Christ, every part, every member is valuable. The Bible says, (1 Cor 12:22-25) “...those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor...God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.”
You have great value, and you are indispensable, because God took good time to make you like you are and put you where you are by his grace. When you begin to feel unimportant or less than because you are not as visible or prominent as someone else, or “I am not as useful as ___________,” remember that the body’s really vital organs are those that are not seen.
Comparatively speaking, David was a nobody. ** Compared with Saul, compared with Samuel, compared with his brothers--he was younger, he was smaller. But he was not too small for God to use, because he had a God-sized heart, and a God-sized faith.
It is the same for us. True success can never be measured against someone else because that standard is always faulty and inconclusive. We will always be on shaky ground if our standard is people and the standards of this broken, sinful, time-bound world. The only true standard is of God, of heaven. True success is being who God created you to be. It is opening your heart to God, doing what he has called you to do and to be, and doing it for his glory, whether or not it is as good as someone else, or like someone else, or less than someone else. God is looking for God-sized hearts where he can reign, through which he can work.
Make an estimate of your worth according to God’s value system. How do we know what that is? Two things mainly: 1) God created us in His image. No matter who you are. No matter what you look like. God made you just the way he planned, in his very own image. 2) Jesus Christ died for our sins. No matter who you are. No matter what you have done. God wants to give you the gift of a new life and live in you and help you and encourage you and walk with you--just because he loves you.
Refuse to compare yourself with others. Stop looking at those around you and start looking at the Lord. God loves you--he is not through with you yet, he is working on all of us as we allow him--but he loves you and he is calling your name today to be his and do something he has chosen just for you, especially for you.
