Hank Smith:                      00:00:00             Coming up in this episode on followHIM.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:00:04             When assignments come to us or when maybe we’re going through a difficult time, we don’t know what that’s preparing us for coming down the road. From that, I want to embrace every chance I get. I don’t care what it is, how maybe significant or insignificant it may seem, embrace it all because it may, you never know what that is preparing you for.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:27             Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my cohost, John Bytheway, who is more righteous than I.

John Bytheway:               00:00:38             Does righteous mean old? Yeah. If righteous means old then…

Hank Smith:                      00:00:42             John, it is true and I’m okay with it. Thou art more righteous than I. That’s what Saul says to David in 1 Samuel 24:17. Saul, who was struggling by this time, says, oh, David, you are more righteous than I. And John, you are. John, we are honored today. I’ve been looking forward to this for a really long time to have our friend, Brother Mike Madsen with us. Mike, welcome to followHIM.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:01:08             Hey, thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:11             This is going to be a treat. You don’t usually remember the month and year where you meet someone, but I met Mike in May of 2002, because I had just been hired as a brand new seminary teacher and he was one of those people that welcome you to the program at that point, welcome you to the job and make you feel like a million bucks. John, we’re looking at the story of David today. Specifically, there’s David and Goliath and David as a king and David at his height before his difficulties. What do you think of when you think of David?

John Bytheway:               00:01:44             I remember somebody saying once that when you encounter a name in the scriptures, they’re usually either an example or a warning. An example is do what this person did. A warning is don’t do what this person did. And then he said, and if your name ever ends up in a book, make sure it’s an example, not a warning. I feel like most of us are a little of both and we can’t be too disappointed if somebody isn’t perfect the whole time, also, assume somebody’s bad the whole time. There’s some heartache that goes with the story of David, as you just alluded to, but there’s also some great things we can get.

Hank Smith:                      00:02:19             I love that. In our church history year, we talk about Martin Harris quite a bit and what are you known for? I like the idea of let’s point out people’s strengths and, you know, learn from their difficulties. Mike, as you’ve been prepping for this among all the other thousands of things you do, what are you looking forward to today?

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:02:38             There’s a reason why this incredible story is one of the most well-known stories of the Hebrew Bible. We’re going to have some fun learning about David and we’re going to watch the downfall of Saul and it is tragic, but I think we can learn. We can learn a lot about Christ. David’s a type of Christ and we got Abigail and some really cool things.

Hank Smith:                      00:02:56             John, now I know Mike well, you know Mike well, but I don’t know if our listeners do. You may meet someone in this church who you don’t know has blessed your life. They’re a stranger to you, you wouldn’t know it on the street. If you met them, you wouldn’t know, but Mike has blessed every member of this church and that’s a big deal to me. John, tell us about Mike.

John Bytheway:               00:03:20             Yeah, well put. Mike taught for 13 years in seminary and institute, but for the last 21 years has been in the priesthood and family department to help create and manage church programs such as Come, Follow Me. Video series like the Mormon Messages for Youth and large broadcasts like Face-to-Face. He’s currently, the exact title is Program Manager for Gospel Learning and Teaching. Mike and his wife Tiffany have six children, nine grandchildren. Seven years ago, they began a charity where they helped children in West Africa and in Papua New Guinea learn to read. Tell us more about Come, Follow Me and how that all began and all that.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:04:04             Thank you, John. Thank you so much for having me here. Before we get too far, I want to give a little disclaimer. While I work at the church offices, I want to state that I am not here representing the priesthood and family department or the church in any official way. I’m just excited to share my personal thoughts and feelings about these great stories in 1 Samuel. It’s just an honor to be here. And can I just say that I’m so grateful that the two of you read the opening paragraph in Come, Follow Me every week in your broadcast. We have a member of our team that’s a brilliant writer and we leave those to him. Sometimes we’ll even try one and we’ll just give it to him and say, can you do your thing? Can you fix this, please? In fact, he knew I was coming today and wanted to make sure I didn’t use his name, so and that tells you even more about him, right?

                                           00:04:50             He’s just, he’s incredibly humble. He’s so good. That opening paragraph’s like poetry. I remember one time I was sitting there in our little Come, Follow Me corner desk and laboring over a question or an activity and I looked up and said to my team, I’m like, do you think anyone ever reads this? It was about two months after that experience, I was in Papua New Guinea. If you go to Brisbane, Australia, and then get on a plane and fly four hours straight north, you come to this last island in the Indonesian island chain, only 13% of the people in this country have electricity, that gives you an idea, about 11 million people. I was in this far away place. I have a picture here of this family. I’ll describe it to you. They live in a container and there’s seven of them. This container is 10 feet by 10 feet and had a little Come, Follow Me manual there.

                                           00:05:43             They sit outside of their little container, the little home as they read. I said to them, what is Come, Follow Me, you know, what is scripture study like for you? And they just smiled and she opened the manual and she pointed to one little paragraph with the bolded doctrinal statement above it and she said, well, every night we open the manual, we read this little bolded statement, we read through the questions, we open our scriptures, have a discussion, go to bed. I was just like, in Papua New Guinea, in this very remote place, seeing this little, what this little family is doing every day, and it’s happening all over the world. Isn’t it beautiful what the Lord is doing with scripture study? John and I are probably old enough to remember the days when a Sunday school teacher would stand up and say, hey, anyone read this week’s lesson? And like two people raise their hand and always, the same two people every week and there’s 40 people there. Knowing that this year that the Hebrew Bible will be opened many hundreds of millions of times in a year is so exciting.

                                           00:06:39             And here’s another picture I brought. This is another example. This is Fiji. There’s a beautiful, wonderful matriarch here in her family. She’s got, I think if I remember, eight children, they’re scattered all across the Pacific. One’s in Hawaii and one’s in Fiji, one’s in Tonga, one’s in New Zealand. Every Sunday night they Zoom and they have Come, Follow Me. They have their scripture study. You don’t miss grandma teaching her children through Zoom every Sunday evening. Well, it’s just beautiful to see what’s going on in Africa. They gather on Wednesday night. This is not a church program. They just gather on Wednesday night and they call it midweek and they study the scriptures together and in Philippines, they do it on Sunday night and they call it Come, Follow Me and they just gather and they read the word of God and they get blessed from fellowship.

                                           00:07:26             What Heavenly Father is doing is incredible. Isn’t it fun to have a seat in this moment? When Come, Follow Me was created, we didn’t foresee a lot of things. We didn’t see this podcast where hundreds of thousands of people every week are doing this. We didn’t see the alignment with seminary. It’s quite a sacrifice for seminary to align with this because during the summer months, they miss those scripture blocks. And every now and then we hear someone will say, well, isn’t this a little too much, you know, you get it at seminary at home and at church? What we’re finding out is that one of the great things that’s happening is gospel conversations in the home have increased and they’re increasing. Can you imagine a mom and dad sitting down and trying to get your kids there and you say, well, we’re going to talk about David and Goliath. One of the children is like, hey, we learned about this in seminary. Take it away. Tell us what you learned. And then all of a sudden, this outcome of a youth telling stories, bearing testimony, sharing what they learned, that’s incredible.

Hank Smith:                      00:08:17             Yeah.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:08:18             Thank you. Podcasts are certainly a part of the success of what we’re seeing and there are a lot of them. We’re so grateful that so many people are taking their time, their talents, and what God has blessed them with to try and strengthen faith and testimony every week. We would hope that listening to a podcast doesn’t supplant scripture study. I’m sure you would agree with that.

Hank Smith:                      00:08:39             Oh, absolutely.

John Bytheway:               00:08:39             Of course.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:08:41             In fact, I had an experience when I was a seminary teacher that really shaped the way I taught. I was a young seminary teacher. We were teaching actually next week’s scripture block, 2 Samuel 11 with David and Bathsheba. I prepared as, I was so excited to get in the scriptures, but I’ve been taught about using look for skills. The idea with a look for skill, if you’re a teacher out there, instead of reading the scripture or saying who’s got quote one or whatever we do, you can say, hey, why don’t you search 2 Samuel 11, verses one to four and look for where you feel David went wrong? And this sweet young lady raised her hand, she goes, yeah, I found one in verse one. I’m like, verse one, verse one. What do you mean verse 1? There’s nothing, you know, there’s nothing in verse one. What are you talking about?

                                           00:09:22             I said, please share with us what you found. She goes, yeah. Well, David sent Joab and his other trusted servants away from him to battle and he was alone in Jerusalem. I learned from that that I need to keep my trusted friends close. How cool is that? This is what we want. For whatever reason, Heavenly Father had a message for her that day and it was keep your good friends close to you. If I’d have just gone in and said, hey, go to verse two because we’re going to see something, David did, if I’d have done that, that wouldn’t have happened. Well, we want that to happen every week.

Hank Smith:                      00:09:57             That’s exactly what we’re after is we bring on some people who hopefully their excitement for the scriptures is contagious and people think, I want that.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:10:07             The Savior rarely invites us to read the scriptures. He uses different words than that. These words are meditate day and night, feast, treasure up continual, lay hold, hold fast. You know all those beautiful invitations by the Savior to get into the word of God. And with every one of those, there’s a promise, prosperity and good success and God will tell us all things that we should do, power over the adversary and Helaman 3, lead the man and woman of Christ into a straight course, land their immortal souls on the right hand of God. There is power in the scriptures. We’re so grateful that you’re inviting people to go into the word of God. Back in the day, our manuals used to be very prescriptive and we had a script that essentially a teacher would read and it served us well for that time.

                                           00:10:54             Maybe our members needed more of a script. Then we moved to this philosophy of we want to, during our class, get people into the scriptures, let them discover and identify truths together and have them share, which was really great. Then as we continued to develop Come, Follow Me, we realized something. I think there was a great study done at BYU that talked about conversion and the church has studied conversion a lot. One of the greatest indicators of lasting conversion is personal religious behavior. Scripture study being on that list and a very significant portion of that list, if you study the scriptures on your own, you have a greater chance of lasting conversion. The study also showed that the greatest indicator of personal religious behavior and personal scripture study was family scripture study. For all the parents out there that are trying, way to go and keep it up, because if families will study together, that’ll be passed on to children and that can lead to lasting conversion.

                                           00:11:54             The invitation is for you as an individual, you as a family to study all week and come to church almost in a celebration. Here is what God has taught me this week from my scripture study. We’re really excited about what we’re seeing and what’s happening. Thank you for all you’re doing to help people get into scriptures every single week.

Hank Smith:                      00:12:15             Oh, John, you and I have a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit of a public role. When I get to talk to people like Mike who have done so much work, it honestly brings out a little bit of an emotion in me because I have so many friends who do so much work for millions of people, members of the church. They love doing it and they don’t mind one bit of going home afterwards and not having their name on the cover of the manual written by, all right. Mike, thank you for what you do.

John Bytheway:               00:12:50             I was getting a ride from a bishop down in Arizona and he told me this is just another way that Come, Follow Me has been successful. He wasn’t a bishop at the time, but he said, I’m now teaching gospel doctrine. He said, By the time I get to class, my class knows more than I do. They’ve been studying with their families all of this. I thought this is so successful. Yes, Heavenly Father inspired this incredible thing. It’s so exciting to me how it just seems like it’s working really well. People are getting into it. As you said, we have a daughter that’s just finishing up her senior year in seminary and what are you learning? And that’s exactly what we do and we can all talk about it together. Thank you for your influence in doing this and for having that front row seat to where this all came from.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:13:39             It’s a great place to work. We love our job there. Every now and then we just look up and say, hey, we get to do this. Even in those days where things aren’t going right, we get to do this and it’s a great place to be and it’s a great time to live. This is a great time in the history of the world to live.

Hank Smith:                      00:13:54             Mike, it’s unique for us to have someone who works so closely in church organization here with us and in about six weeks we’re going to make a significant change in our block schedule. We’re going to go to 25-minute Sunday school, 25-minute priesthood, you know, Relief Society meetings. Tell us about that. From your perspective, what are we hoping to see?

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:14:16             The First Presidency, of course, came with that announcement. There were some attachments with the announcement. I want to read from that attachment because the answer, why are we doing this was here. Quote, this is on our church website. “This adjustment is intended to help members focus more on the teachings of Jesus Christ.” I love that. In my opinion, I’m thinking, okay, if I have less time, I’m going to focus on what’s the most important, which would be him. Let’s get to him faster. Strengthen gospel learning in the home is the second thing that mentions. I love that. Increase fellowship belonging and community at church. This is a great opportunity for all of those things, especially maybe with the youth groups, having a weekly touchpoint. That’s a beautiful statement that’s in our materials, that’s why. But let me just mention Sunday School classes. Sunday school classes can strengthen gospel learning at home.

                                           00:15:10             Teachers lead discussions focused on the scriptures and Come, Follow Me for home and church. These conversations encourage personal and family scripture study while giving members opportunities to share insights, testimonies, and experiences that build faith in heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. The goal isn’t to have an absolutely out of the park incredible 25 minutes necessarily on Sunday. We’re hoping that the other 167 hours when you’re not in that is incredible studying the word of God. Wouldn’t it be cool if every gospel teacher in the church instead of saying, man, I want 10 people to come up and say that was great. What if they, their goal was, I had three people come up and say, I started reading the scriptures this week on my own because of your encouragement and it’s changing me. I had a chance to be at the MTC in a branch presidency.

                                           00:16:05             I watched these young missionaries come in struggling, scared. All we had to do is get them in the Book of Mormon. We’re going to work through this with you, but will you do one thing for us? Will you get in the word of God? And man, to see the transformation that would come over these missionaries was phenomenal. The power of the word of God is incredible. Let me share a quote from President Oaks. There are a few things that a teacher can do that would have a more powerful, long range effect on students’ lives than teaching them the importance of studying the scriptures, giving them that experience, letting them taste the fruit of daily scripture study. Daily scripture study. Not, you know, when they come to my class. In my judgment, says President Oaks, that would go beyond any subject that might be taught from the scriptures, except the fundamentals of a few articles of faith.

                                           00:16:58             Beyond that, I think the most important thing we can do as teachers of seminary institute students, and I would add Sunday school students, would be to connect them with the scriptures and the results of daily scripture study. The Come, Follow Me experience is really getting people in the word of God at home, having the power come into their life from a consistent study of the word of God and let that power transform them. Let that power change them. We’re going to study the life today of David. I promise you, I know in preparation my life’s been changed and just preparing for this moment because I’ve been immersed maybe more so than normal in the word of God. We all know the story of David. I’m already have a greater resolve to stand up for the Savior as David did. I want to be like Jonathan and love others.

                                           00:17:55             I want to be like Abigail. So what we’re going to be studying today, I know that the lives of these people and the Lord have changed me. This is what we want every single week from our saints. It’s in the home. Gospel study is home centered. I’m excited about the new change. As you can imagine, this is pretty big change. There’s some concern, as there should be. I mean, how are we going to do this? How are we going to teach in 25 minutes was one of the concerns. I saw this social post and I thought it was pretty cool. Carrie said this. We just did this in our ward as a pilot program for six weeks. Every concern listed here was expressed at the beginning, but by the end of the six weeks, the youth were all begging for it never to end. It’s inspired to work so great.

                                           00:18:41             We saw the youth coming to each class excited to learn a short time they had and the teachers preparing the meat of the lessons instead of extra fluff. So happy this is church-wide. Isn’t that great? We’re excited. The Sunday school battle is the Lords. Just go for it.

Hank Smith:                      00:18:59             One of my favorite thoughts on teaching comes from a 2019 training from Elder Holland. He said, “Remember that students are not containers to be filled. Students are fires to be ignited.” And when I saw this change, I thought, you know, the Lord can do that. The Lord can start a fire in 25 minutes. You can start it. A fire can be started really quickly, actually. I’m excited for this change. And for me, I’m a Sunday school teacher in my ward and I thought when I was in college, it was harder to write a one-page paper than a 10-page paper. Because you had to decide what is crucial. Before we move on, I just have one quick question for you. A lot of our listeners are probably never going to visit Utah, let alone the church office building. What’s it like in there? Is there a good feeling? They might hear online somewhere, oh, the church is really struggling. Oh man, there’s, it’s all doom and gloom. But from what I hear from you, oh, not at all.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:20:02             It’s so opposite of that. I have not experienced doom and gloom. The environment is incredible. We, as a part of our job, obviously we’ll get to interface with members of The Seventy and members of the Twelve and The First Presidency and they’re so optimistic, not only about what’s going on but the future. They are optimistic, positive, upbeat, and they have reason to be. This is a great time to be alive. We’re getting ready for the second coming of Jesus Christ. I think the second coming’s got a bad rap. It’s going to be one of the greatest times. It’s the great and dreadful day and let’s emphasize great, but it is a positive, happy, wonderful place to work. My testimony that we are being led by prophet seers and revelators today and that the church has been restored and that Jesus is the Christ and that God the Father rules in the heavens above has only been strengthened mightily from the experiences I’ve had.

                                           00:20:58             We feel inspired in our work. We’re not perfect and we try and we fail and we try, but then we see something where Heavenly Father knew all along. We launched a home-centered, church-supported curriculum in 2019 right before COVID. We didn’t know that was going to happen, but Heavenly Father did. Here’s your manual. Go learn together as a family or with your friends or on Zoom as individuals. We have seen hundreds of things like that throughout our career where it’s evident that heavenly Father is moving this work forward and, you know, we just sometimes sit back and say, wow, we get to be a part of this. We don’t have all the answers, but we do our best and the battle is the Lord’s after all.

Hank Smith:                      00:21:43             Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, uh, Mike, just one more quick question. I bet you’ll laugh at this, but, oh, the church is just struggling so much. The membership is not where we hoped it would be. I know you were thinking to yourself, I wish we’d probably slow down a little bit. Are we adding membership to the church at all?

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:22:03             Sometimes the brethren and they’ve said this even in conference, I think Elder Rasband I think said something like this and President Nelson, it’s like, look, are you recognizing what is going on right now in this point in the history of the world? God’s children are being gathered and the church is growing at amazing rates in every area, every geographical area of the world. The church is growing. Some places, it’s exploding. Spend a lot of time with my charity in Africa and with a church in Africa. It is exploding in Africa. And in Papua New Guinea, where I was just mentioning with 13% electricity, there’s 45,000 members there. They’re getting a new temple. We are watching this gospel be spread throughout the world at an amazing rate. I hope and pray that our members of the church can see that. This is a great time to be a member of the church and a great time to help Heavenly Father in the small ways we can spread His word and His gospel throughout the world.

Hank Smith:                      00:22:56             Beautiful. Thank you for that. I wanted all of our listeners to hear the truth just in case they didn’t know it.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:23:02             The truth is we deal with issues sometimes, but there’s always a positive. We have prophets, seers and revelators and as the same, that the prophet, seers and revelators in the scriptures, they’re calm. In times of trial, they’re calm because they know the end. President Holland used to say this, right? We know who wins. We know the end. You don’t need to be nervous. Let’s be optimistic and do everything we can. We know Christ is going to win in the end. Let’s go forward with faith.

Hank Smith:                      00:23:33             Yeah, the scoreboard’s already been posted. Just have the right jersey on. Put the right jersey on. Whoever this anonymous writer is, tell him we love him, Mike, because we’re going to jump in again by reading the opening paragraph of the Come, Follow Me Manual. I hope everyone will do this with their families. And these are so well written. The lesson this week is called The Battle is the Lord’s. “Ever since the tribes of Israel had settled in the promised land, the Philistines had been an ongoing threat to their safety. The Lord had delivered them many times in the past, but now the elders of Israel demanded, “We will have a king go out before us and fight our battles.” So Saul was anointed king and yet when the menacing giant Goliath hurled his challenge to the armies of Israel, Saul, like the rest of his army, was greatly afraid.

                                           00:24:23             On that day, it wasn’t King Saul who saved Israel, but a humble, shepherd boy named David, who was wearing no armor but was clothed with impenetrable faith in the Lord. This battle proved to Israel and to anyone who has spiritual battles to fight that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear and that the battle is the Lord’s.” Reading these paragraphs, they just get me excited to study the scriptures. With that, Mike, how do you want to jump in?

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:24:48             The stories are a little bit different. We’re not facing a menacing giant with our sling. The same God that delivered David from the lion and the bear and the Philistine can save us and deliver us from our trials and the giants that we face in our life. And Come, Follow Me, I don’t know if you notice, we have 250 images. I want to share a little teaching tip for people out there that’s something that’s been helpful for me. You can ask four questions about any picture and have a good success, whether your audience are five years old or 50 year old or 70 years old. The questions are, what is happening? What is happening is great because it gets you into the scriptures because usually you have to go, well, let’s go find out. You know, how would you feel if you were there?

                                           00:25:31             That is a great question because it gets them resonating with the characters in the story. You can ask that about a picture. Question number three is what do you learn? This is where those eternal truths come. This is great because the Holy Ghost can teach in this moment. Finally, the last one, it’s sometimes a personal question. What do you feel inspired to do as a result of this? The Come, Follow Me picture this week: David and you have Goliath and you have the Philistines behind him. Question one is what is going? And we’re going to have some fun with those other questions in a minute. The Philistines are gathered together against the armies to battle. I want to stop and quickly say Bible map six, if you want to know where the Philistines live, go to Bible map six, Bible Map seven. You can see where they lived. There’s a city that you’re going to recognize and it’s been in the news a lot lately, but it’s Gaza.

                                           00:26:15             The Philistines come from five major cities along the coast and the Mediterranean Sea there. In your mind, when you think of Philistines, they lived there along the sea. The Philistines were pretty interesting. Originally a group of sea peoples who migrated from the islands of Greece, especially Crete. Have you ever seen pictures of Crete? I don’t think I would ever want to leave. Beautiful place. They had a technological advantage, by the way, over the Israelites, because they had a monopoly on ironsmithing. The Israelites had to go to the Philistines to even get farming implements as well as swords. The religion, they primarily worshiped the gods Dagon, Asherah and Baal. Saul in verse two, three and four, they’re in this valley, Valley of Elah, Elah means oak. The Philistines would come up to battle and the armies are arrayed against each other. Here comes the champion of the Philistines in verse four, he’s Goliath of Gath.

                                           00:27:06             Six cubits in a span. I want to do a little bit of shameless product placement. I don’t know if you’ve seen recently in the Gospel Library, but you’ll notice by verse four. If you’re in Gospel Library, you have two little pictures. If you click on that, we’ve launched these scripture study helps in the related content section. And there is a question in there, how tall was Goliath? They’re right there, you can just click on those little things and get a little bit of help. The Septuagint and Dead Sea scrolls have him a little bit shorter, maybe around six feet seven inches, nine foot nine if you go with six cubits in a span. He was big. The average height back then was 5’5″ for a man.

Hank Smith:                      00:27:46             Oh, wow.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:27:47             I would have been tall. Now that’s so exciting. Goliath was big. You can read verses five, six and seven. He’s got a lot of armor on. His staff was like a weaver’s beam. He’s got about 200 to 250 pounds of armor. He may have been 9’9″ to be able to carry that. In verse 8 he’s coming out, he begins to speak. Instead of everyone fighting, they, the idea here is you could just have your champion fight the other champion. He’s explaining that in verse five and he says, I’m a Philistine, ye servants to Saul. Choose you a man for you and let him come down unto me. If he be able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then shall ye be our servants and serve us.” And then verse 10, he invokes the deities of the time. “I defy the armies of Israel this day. Give me a man that we might fight together.

                                           00:28:42             And when Saul and Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. Let me ask you really quick. How would you feel at this moment? If you’re armies of Israel, how would you feel?

John Bytheway:               00:28:52             Like I’ve brought a BB gun to a tank fight, maybe?

Hank Smith:                      00:28:57             My wife says that in moments of emergency, 80% of people freeze, 10% of people make it better and 10% of people make it worse. I think I would be one of those people who would panic and probably make it worse. When you’re facing something that kind of makes your stomach churn and your heart beat in your chest, you’re in trouble. You think there’s no way out of this.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:29:22             Saul was head and shoulders above the other Israelites, but he’s not jumping out there. In fact, verse 19, it says that he presented himself same message for 40 days. I want to take an unnecessary sidecar. There’s something going on with the number 40. For me, there’s a significance. Maybe on the scale of how important this is, maybe a one or a two. What are some of the favorite 40s that you have in the scriptures? What are some of the favorite 40s you remember?

Hank Smith:                      00:29:51             It rains for 40 days.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:29:53             During Noah’s story.

Hank Smith:                      00:29:54             Moses’ life is broken up into 40s.

John Bytheway:               00:29:57             Jesus fasts for 40 days. Salt Lake Temple takes 40 years to build.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:30:02             I’m not a huge fan of biblical numerology. I think some people can take that way too far, but there’s just something going on with 40. And for me, over the years, it’s come to mean like sanctification through tribulation. Meaning this is not going to be very fun. Fasting is a good example. Can you give a better definition than sanctification through tribulation? And this is a sanctifying moment maybe for, I don’t know what’s going on in the hearts and souls, but there’s a lot of 40s. Let me just read a few of them. You mentioned a few of them with Noah and the flood and Moses was 40 when he leaves, 80 when he comes back, 120 when he’s translated. 40 days and nights on Sinai, fascinating. He sends the spies into land of Israel for 40 days. There are of course 40 years wandering. The 40 years, the sanctification through those tribulation.

                                           00:30:50             Even the punishment with scourging, there was 40 lashes and the Jews would generally do 39 because they didn’t want to go over and displease God. There’s so many 40. David reigns for 40 years. Solomon reigns for 40 years. Remember Elijah’s story where he hears the still small voice and it’s not in the earthquake and it’s not in the whirlwind that came after 40 days of him traveling to Horeb. Most likely fasting because it says he ate a big dinner before then and they went. Nineveh was given 40 days to repent with Jonah. Of course, you mentioned the Savior fasting. The Savior was also 40 days old when he was presented to the temple. The days of purification for a woman in Israel that had a son was 40 days. This purification process. Jesus visits after his resurrection for 40 days. John, I’m so glad you mentioned we have this beautiful 40 in our church.

                                           00:31:40             That is the Salt Lake Temple. April 6 on one end, April 6th on the other end, 40 years in between. The mountain of the Lord’s house is sanctification through tribulations. He comes out there for 40 days. Then you have this little DoorDash moment with David. David, he’s in Bethlehem. He says, “Can you take some cheese and some crackers and some bread to your brothers?” David comes on and in verse 23, he hears Goliath. He sees the fear of verse 24 of the Israelites. Verse 25, I want to read that. “And the men of Israel said, Have you seen this man that’s come up? surely to defy Israel he’s come up. And it shall be that the man who killeth him, the king will enrich him with great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father’s house free in Israel.” That’s the word going around in the trenches.

                                           00:32:29             And I’m not spoiling the story here by telling everyone that David did kill Goliath. Okay. I think everyone knows that. But verse two, “And Saul took him that day and would let him go no more home to his father’s house.” I think they were believing a little bit of a lie. I want to go back for just a minute. I really believe it in 1 Samuel chapter 8, this moment when Israel wants a king. I think this is a fork in the road with Israelites that was tough. In fact, in the northern kingdom after Solomon, I think they have 19 kings and none of them are considered righteous or good. One of the greatest lessons here is following the prophet, but I want to read verse 11 and 12 really quick and I want you to count for just a minute. This is Samuel talking about the manner of king which you will have.

                                           00:33:19             This will be the manner of king that shall reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them for himself for his chariots to be his horsemen and shall run before his chariots and he will appoint himself captains over thousands and 50s and to plow his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his instruments of war and his chariots, he’s going to take your daughters and he’s going to take your fields and he’s going to take verse 14 and he’s going to take them for his servants and he will take a 10th of your seed. He, he, he, his. There are 139 words in these few verses. 21 of them are he and his. It’s at a pace of one reference to he or him every six words. We’re going to see this cadence of speaking with not only Saul, but Nabal as well becoming completely consumed with me and I and he. It’s, my kids call this the I disease. He’s going to make your father’s house free in Israel was a little bit ironic to me.

John Bytheway:               00:34:14             I feel like particularly in Isaiah, he’s always trying to say, Don’t make alliances with other nations. Let God be your king. He’s the one that should reign over you, not a person.

Hank Smith:                      00:34:26             I have a tendency in my life to find out later that the Lord said, see, I told you that was a bad idea. I look back and go, you were pretty clear that this was a bad idea. Why didn’t I listen to that? When the Lord says, this is not going to work. He has a pretty good track record.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:34:45             We’re going to see in these stories the downside of not following the counsel of the prophet. In fact, like I said, 19 of 19 kings in the northern kingdom, we’re going to find out later in the year after Solomon after they divide are wicked and lead their people to do wicked things. 13 out of the 20 Southern kingdom kings around 12 to 14, I believe, of the 20 they had are, lead their people to do evil. When our prophets speak, I have found if we follow and heed their counsel, we will be blessed they speak for our heavenly Father. Verse 26 is so cool because, hey, David’s going to open his mouth and I love it when any character in the scripture finally gets a chance to speak. This is David’s moment and David speaking to the man that stood by him saying, “What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine and taketh away the reproach from Israel for who is this uncircumcised Philistine,” or non-covenant Philistine “that he should defy the armies of a living God?”

Hank Smith:                      00:35:42             Oh, I love it. It reminds me of some of the youth I’ve taught, maybe a new member of the church who’s saying, wait, this is all true, isn’t it? Why are we nervous? Sometimes our age and experience can create a fear in us that maybe someone a little more inexperienced can actually see through.

John Bytheway:               00:36:03             Can we back up a little bit and back to your question, what’s happening here? I think this sounds like a different type of warfare. Instead of the Generals, the Commanders standing in the back and saying, You guys go attack, this sounds like take your best guy and we’ll take our best guy and they’ll fight it out. That sounds like a different way than we do it today. Their best guy was the nine foot nine Goliath.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:36:31             In fact, it’s back in verses eight and nine where he’s explaining that and I think they did this quite often. Hand to hand comebat, you lose a lot of people. You put your best man out and we will put our best man out and whoever wins.

Hank Smith:                      00:36:42             And if you’ve got a guy like Goliath, hey, we like this strategy.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:36:47             But David already, he’s defying the… I love the word living God. That might be a slap in the face of the gods of the Philistines. I just love David’s optimism, and we’ll see a lot more of it. If you’re driving in your car right now, please keep driving. But if you’re home listening to this podcast, can I invite you to open your scriptures? I think one of the best things that could happen today, Hank and John, is if someone, if our voices kind of drift off and someone is so into their scriptures or taking notes and receiving revelation, you’re recording thoughts, I just hope that that happens. Pause the podcast please and write down your notes. Verse 28, we got an older brother who’s saying, what do you, you just want to see the battle. And verse 29, there is a sermon in a statement, this little truth that just jumps off the page. It was true then and true now. What do you see in there?

John Bytheway:               00:37:38             Is there not a cause? That’s it. We’ve got a cause. We’ve got a mission.

                                           00:37:44             You can lift that right out. There’s two or three just in this story alone where you can take these and you can make a t-shirt out of them, you can put them on a bracelet, you can put them on the fridge. Is there not a cause? There’s going to be another one here in a minute when we get to verse 47 that’s so beautiful as well. So David is just giving these one-liners these sermons in a statement, “Is there not a cause?” David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him. Thy servant will go and fight with the Philistine.” David’s young. He’s just bringing food to his brothers.

                                           00:38:16             “Thou art but a youth and he a man of war from his youth.” Are you kidding me? Verse 34 to 37, I want to read them. I want you to really think about this. I’m going to be asking you John and Hank and for your listeners to think of what do you learn from these verses? David said to Saul, “I serve and keep his father’s sheep, and there came a lion and a bear and took a lamb out of the flock. And when I went out after him and smote him and delivered out of his mouth, and when he arose against me, I caught him by the beard and smote him and slew him. Thy servant slew both the lion and bear and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them.” And here’s why. Seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God.

                                           00:39:00             Wow, that’s a lot of confidence David. You must be really good with the sling and you must be really good with whatever staff you had in your hand or whatever you slew the lion with. But David clears that up in verse 37. “The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of the Philistine.” It’s not my strength that delivered me. It’s the strength of the Lord. Saul said, “David, Go. The Lord be with thee.” What has the Lord taught you about verses 34 to 37 throughout your life?

Hank Smith:                      00:39:30             I frequently have this conversation with young single adults, young adults in the church. They reach a new moment in life, something they’ve never faced. They think, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t understand. I’m lost. All I have to do is remind them of some of the experiences they’ve had in the past. And I think Elder Holland said it, “He hasn’t brought you this far to just stop helping you now.” They think, oh, that’s true. You know, maybe they went on a mission, they thought, I can’t do this. And then they did. Oh, I thought I could never, you know, do this, and then they did. What’s interesting though, every time we face something new is that nervousness of, oh, David seems to reflect on his past. He helped me then, he’ll help me now.

John Bytheway:               00:40:13             That’s exactly what I was thinking. This is why President Eyring told us to keep a journal to document the hand of the Lord in your life. If you don’t, you forget. Wait a minute, he did help me. He helped me here. He helped me there. He inspired me here. He answered a prayer there and he’ll help me now. He will deliver since he’s talking about the Lord’s going to do this because if he can protect me with a bear and a lion, he’s going to help me with someone who defied the living God.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:40:42             David’s been prepared for this moment. Can I get a little bit vulnerable? I’ll share maybe an embarrassing story, talk about pride. I remember when I moved here to Highland, was so excited to get a new calling and I was in the church office building working. I had just started with the priesthood family department. My wife and I got called to be a primary teacher. I had a terrible thought come into my head. Primary teacher? Like, like how arrogant, you know, and sad, but it was quickly countered with all of the good things about look at this opportunity that I have to teach children. I guess I thought I was somehow better than that. It was so inappropriate for me to actually think I could be better utilized than teaching Heavenly Father’s children. I got so excited about it and something really cool happened. I got immersed into teaching five-year-olds.

                                           00:41:31             I was with my wife teaching children we had so much fun. I got to see Primary in a way I’ve never seen it before and I got to see sharing time like I’ve never been able to see it before. Then at work, I was invited to redesign the nursery manual and redesign sharing time outline and begin to work on Primary curriculum. Those seven or eight months I had was preparation for me. When assignments come to us or when maybe we’re going through a difficult time, we don’t know what that’s preparing us for coming down the road. From that, I want to embrace every chance I get. I don’t care what it is, how maybe significant or insignificant it may seem, embrace it all because it may, you never know what that is preparing you for.

                                           00:42:23             But here you have David taking a lion on. Lions are fierce killers. He took on a lion. Bears are fierce. He took them on and God delivered him. So incredible. Let’s move on. David, as we all know, tries on Saul’s armor. It’s too big for him. It doesn’t work. I haven’t, he hasn’t proved it. He’s like, I’m not used to this. He gets five smooth stones from a brook, puts them in his bag. Then we get to this moment where he walks out on the battlefield and as soon as Goliath sees David, he disdained him. He was but a youth and ruddy and fair countenance. He’s a good looking teenager. He says, am I a dog? You coming to me with sticks? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. And the Philistine said unto David, Come to me and I will give thy flesh unto the fouls of the air, to the beast of the field.

                                           00:43:13             Let’s go back to the picture for just a minute. John and Hank, I want you to place your, pick someone. You don’t have to tell us who it is yet, but pick someone from this picture. It can be a Philistine, it can be Goliath, it can be David, it can be Saul, Saul’s brothers, it could be an Israelite soldier. As I read this, I want you to think from the perspective of that individual and see if it changes how you might feel. Here’s David. Thou comest to me with a sword and a spear and with a shield, but I come unto thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand, and I will smite thee and take away thy head from thee. It’s funny, David doesn’t even have a sword.

                                           00:43:56             I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day, the fouls of the air and of the beast of the earth. Why? That all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. This assembly might know that the Lord saveth not with the sword or a spear. For, here’s your sermon in the statement number two, the battle is the Lord’s. How beautiful is that? Quickly, Hank, John, who did you pick and what are you feeling?

John Bytheway:               00:44:24             I’m thinking David, and I’m thinking this is not the first time I’ve picked up a sling. He’s got some expertise. I can hit stuff at a distance. I guess I’d be a natural man here, but he’s like, you’ve got a spear and a sword and a shield, and that’s from a distance. I can hit a target from a hundred yards away. And maybe he could with that sling, but also he knew who was backing him. That’s what’s so fun about this. I’m coming in the name of the Lord. He’s not like I just did, thinking about himself, but thinking about who his main ally is in all of his life.

Hank Smith:                      00:45:03             I thought of when you said David’s brothers. I have a son who’s on a mission. He’s getting ready to go and I think I was a little like Saul going, You’re just a kid. And he’s going, I’m going to go out there. I’m really going to change lives. I’m going, oh, bud, you are in for it. Those of us as parents, we watch these youth go out, so much confidence, and I wonder if something shifts in our mind. I wonder if David’s brother says, wow. And then he starts to think to himself maybe, actually, I’ve seen him do this. Wonder if you’re thinking to yourself, I think Goliath brought a knife to a gunfight. I think he’s in trouble.

John Bytheway:               00:45:45             When you add to the length of your arm, I mean, I love to watch these baseball pitchers throw at 90 plus miles an hour, and I think, wow, that means their hand was going 90 plus miles an hour when they released the ball. Add to that the length of a sling.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:46:00             David hasted and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine. There’s confidence. How much, he came running! We all know verse 49, David reaches into his bag, pulls out a stone and he smote the Philistine in the forehead. The stone sunk deep into his forehead, he falls on his face to the earth. When I was younger, this story kind of bothered me, and so did the story of Ammon bother me. And here’s why. When I was about 12, my father helped us make David slings. And we went out and practiced for about two hours. So just imagine 12 year olds with a sling in our- What could go wrong? What could go wrong with this? And just imagine a helicopter above our head doing this thing what I thought that’s how they did it and letting that string go and that no one was safe around this.

                                           00:46:50             We practiced for a whole two hours, right? And we were terrible. And then I had a friend go to Holy Land and come back and he taught me the correct way to sling this. And I was so excited. I went and made a new David sling and I tried it. In fact, I stayed up way too late last night looking at YouTube videos on slinging about how fast, how accurate they are. The only thing you need to know about this, the way they throw it is the very last movement of this, it kind of goes behind your back and gets momentum. And the last part of it is like a baseball, side arm or over the shoulder. You have all of the momentum of your arm, like you said, John, and you have the added speed of the sling.

John Bytheway:               00:47:31             You whip it.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:47:32             150 miles an hour is not unheard of with these slings. And if you look at these people, they are accurate. They can throw them several hundred yards. I was so excited and I was teaching institute at the time. I wanted to show my students how cool this was. And so we had this tall classroom, got this nine foot tall pitcher going. You know this is going bad. I didn’t want to throw a rock inside the building and so I decided to throw a marshmallow. I didn’t want the marshmallow to mess up my little bag I had. I put a little bit of tape, not a lot of tape, just a little bit of masking tape on the marshmallow. So it was still squishy. So we got the kids and I showed them, I said, check this out. I flung that marshmallow and Goliath’s picture was on some wood cabinets and they were pretty thin, maybe an eighth of an inch and I flung this marshmallow and it just disappeared when it hit.

                                           00:48:20             And my student’s are like, where’d it go? I’m like, I have no idea. We went and looked and that marshmallow went through the wood cabinet. That’s how hard it was going in. In fact, I’ve been told this is out in Roosevelt. I’ve been told that hole is still in a cabinet where the marshmallow penetrated it.

Hank Smith:                      00:48:38             Wow. I didn’t quite understand the story till I actually took a visit in the Holy Land. My group had gone inside, you know, a supposed Lazarus’ tomb and I was talking to a guy out at the gift shop and he said, you know, you want to buy a sling? And I said, I would, yeah, I have no idea how to do this. He said, Let me show you. I was floored at how far and how accurate. He could point to something and it was hard and fast and far and I all of a sudden this story came to life for me. Can you imagine one of those whizzing by Goliath’s head and he’s going, oh no.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:49:11             David, I mean, he was a shepherd. What do you do all day? You practice. He just, I don’t know how many thousand stones David had thrown from his sling. He was good. It helped him give confidence, but still, this is the Lord doing this.

Hank Smith:                      00:49:24             It’s a beautiful story.

John Bytheway:               00:49:25             Talking about 150 miles an hour reminds me of a dad joke I heard. An apple a day will keep anyone away if you throw it hard enough.

Hank Smith:                      00:49:37             Mike, I just love how you’re telling this story. You’re bringing it to life. Part of what you’re doing here is asking us these questions and giving us time to think about what would it be like. As a teacher, sometimes we go a little too fast. What would it be like? And then we move on. I like what you did. Just stop for a second. What would it be like?

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:49:55             I really think that we need to do more of that. The Holy Ghost is the true teacher. We ought to give people more of those opportunities. I love silence in a classroom. A lot of teachers will ask a question in a classroom. They begin to wait, which really maybe two seconds feels like an hour because no one’s responded yet. Some of the best questions that you ask people need a little bit of time to think. If you’re a teacher in a classroom or in your home, which is the best classroom, try this. Just say, hey, I’m going to give you a few seconds to think about this question. I’m going to give you 10 or 15 seconds to think about that. I want to go back to this picture. Remember the four questions you can ask about any picture. What is happening? How would you feel? We’ve done both of those. And the third question is, what do you learn? As you think about this moment, what did the two of you learn about this incredible story?

Hank Smith:                      00:50:45             My thoughts go back to my son in the mission field and I remember looking at my wife as he walked away and I thought, he is but a youth. He is going to get eaten alive out there. Now he’s been out on his mission for almost a year. My attitude has totally changed. He’s doing it. He is actually doing this. I like to think David’s brother first went, you’re going to get eaten alive kid. How am I going to tell dad that you went out there and died today? As the story continues, I bet his brother is, he’s going to do this and feeling in your heart and your soul and your mind. What am I seeing? It is happening. It would be almost surreal for a family member of David. I can’t believe it. I can’t wait to tell dad.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:51:37             John, what are your thoughts? What do you learn from this story?

John Bytheway:               00:51:40             I underlined when you read in verse 48, he ran toward the army. What’s the Joseph Smith statement? Shall we not go forward in so great a cause? On, on to victory. I know for a fact we have law enforcement officers who listen, who run to the sound of gunfire, just the courage of that, the godly courage here that David must have had to run toward the army. It inspires me.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:52:12             That’s beautiful. One of the things I like about this is David’s age. I remember teaching a small school down in Emery County in Castle Dale. I had this really big football player who sat on the front row for reasons I needed him close to me. And I loved this kid. He was pretty rough on the edges, but had got a good heart. He was a football player, lineman, senior, and there was a sophomore, really kind of scrawny David-like kid. He was just still growing. His name was Evan. I had heard a rumor that every time this sophomore, Evan walked into the locker room, that all of the swearing stopped. All of it stopped. Locker rooms, as we know, can be a pretty tough place, but all of a sudden that maybe unholy place would go to a holy place just because this kid walked in.

                                           00:53:01             I mean, that’s power. I said to this football player in class, I said, I’ve heard that that’s true. Is that true? And he said, yes. And I said, why? And he said, I don’t know. You just don’t swear around, Evan. Why not? He’s just too good. I said, what about someone who comes in and doesn’t really know about the don’t swear around Evan rule? And he says, well, someone does that we just kind of say, hey, we don’t, we don’t swear around Evan. I said, well, what about when you’re playing a opposing team and they sacked a quarterback, they really get in his face and there’s lots of bad things that’s said in the pile. I said, what happens then? He says, it’s so funny. He jumps up and says, nice hit. They can’t get in his head. I finally said to this football player, I said, tell me, what would ever happen if you saw Evan swear?And he got a little bit emotional and he just said, I’d kill him. Isn’t that cool?

Hank Smith:                      00:53:54             Interesting.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:53:55             There is power in righteousness with the rising generation. The respect that this young man had just because he was able to control himself is so cool. I love it when the youth of the church stand up for the Savior and here was David doing so. Love this story.

Hank Smith:                      00:54:13             What a beautiful story.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:54:15             I know we’ve talked about teaching tips with images. We’ve talked about sermons in a statement that you can put around your house and let me say one more thing about pictures if I can. As I’ve traveled throughout the world, it’s so fun to go to people’s homes and see they use the images in Come, Follow Me and magazines as wallpaper. It’s so fun. Can I just say you’re still going to go to heaven if you take the picture out of Come, Follow Me and put it on your dinner table. One of the great things you can do with your family, or as an individual, just to remind you of this week’s lesson is take that full page image, put it on your table. It’s a great conversation piece. So we’ve talked about pictures, we’ve talked about sermons in a statement. I want to shift to a different teaching skill, if I can call it that, or method.

                                           00:54:58             It’s in Teaching in the Savior’s Way. It’s, teach about Jesus Christ no matter what you are teaching. Teaching in the Savior’s Way talks about that quite a bit. Like if you’re teaching the commandments, don’t just focus on the laws of the gospel, learn about the law giver. If you discuss the word of wisdom and stop at the dos and don’ts of healthy living, you miss the opportunity to ponder how deeply Jesus Christ must care about you to give us this law. I looked at the stat yesterday, it’s still true. It was true 30 years ago. When you think about the word of wisdom, 8 out of 10 crimes committed in America are done under the influence of a mind altering drug. Think about the law giver. He wants us happy and healthy and 8 out of 10 crimes committed in America. You know, sometimes they worry about coffee or whatever and maybe we should just be, wow, isn’t this incredible? So we’re going to do that.

                                           00:55:50             There’s three suggestions in Teaching in the Savior’s Way, emphasize the example of Jesus Christ, teach about the titles, roles, and attributes of Jesus Christ, and the third one is look for symbols that testify of Christ, like a type. Like David was a type. Here was this incredible shepherd, a shepherd king. There it is a type of Christ. I just love that David was born in Bethlehem. Beth in Hebrew is house, Bethlehem. It means house of bread. And Micah 4:2, it talks about how the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. The Savior was born in a place that means the house of bread and laid in something, a manger, which means to eat. Heavenly Father, just by where the Savior was born and where he laid him, Heavenly Father’s saying, the bread of life is here and you need to partake of him and his goodness. Isn’t that beautiful?

                                           00:56:43             Heavenly Father is teaching like this about his Son all the time. There’s only two weeks of the year that a shepherd would be with a flock at night. It’s during the lambing season. It’s late March and early April every single year, even to this day and the angels come and tell a shepherd to go tell people that the lamb of God was here. Not only, you know, is Christ the Good Shepherd, but when you start looking for these little objects that remind you of the Savior, I think it’s so important that we go ahead and take a moment and talk about the Savior. Teach about Jesus Christ no matter what you’re teaching or what you’re reading and finally ends up in Teaching in the Savior’s way says, “You can even find parallels to the Savior’s life in the lives of prophets and other faithful men and women in the scriptures. We’re about to see Jonathan and oh my goodness isn’t he Christlike?

                                           00:57:32             And we’re going to see Abigail, who is certainly a type of Christ with what she does. Chapter 18, verse one, Jonathan and David become very close. In fact, it says that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. They make a covenant in verse three. I really want to hear from you, John and Hank, what you think about what happens in verse four. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him. Jonathan, of course, is the king’s son. This is Saul’s son, an heir to the throne. He’s been Saul’s greatest warrior. I mean, this is the heir apparent of the kingdom. He stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David and his garments, even his sword and his bow and to his girdle. What do you think’s going on there?

John Bytheway:               00:58:18             I’m looking at a talk of Elder Holland called Real Friendship. He said, “Aristotle said once that friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. No definition of friendship could better describe the relationship of David and Jonathan in the Old Testament. Jonathan son of King Saul was a valiant soldier in his own right, a worthy young prince in Israel, but when David came onto the scene, fresh from his mighty victory over Goliath, having already been anointed by the prophet Samuel, it was he, not Jonathan who would be successor to the increasingly disobedient Saul, to a lesser man or lesser friend than Jonathan, David would have been a terrible threat, a natural rival, but he wasn’t.” Isn’t that beautiful?

Hank Smith:                      00:59:01             I know in scripture, clothes are often identity. It’s your status. Perhaps Jonathan is giving a gift of himself.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         00:59:12             I love that. We don’t know too much about what is going on here, but it seems to be saying he’s the prince. This is the heir apparent. He may be saying. In fact, in chapter 23 of Samuel in verse 16, it says, “And Jonathan Saul’s son arose and went to David.” This is in the moments when David’s running away from his father. His relationship’s continuing. He went to David in the wood and strengthened him and strengthened his hand in God. And then it says this, “And he said unto him, fear not, for the hand of Saul my Father shall not find thee and thou shalt be king over Israel.” Jonathan is recognizing you are going to be king over Israel, not me. My dear friend John Hilton shared a quote with me about this. I want to read it from Timothy Keller, who’s a wonderful famous pastor who just recently passed away.

                                           01:00:03             He said this, and this is going back to finding Christ in the scriptures. “You have to do exactly what Jonathan did. You have to look at God’s anointed and you have to say, if you’re going to get in my life, I have to get off the throne of my life. I can’t just believe in you. I can’t just emulate you. I have to give you my life. I have to take off my robe. I have to say you’re first. You’re the absolute Lord in my life.” I just love that about Jonathan. He had every right to be threatened by David if status and being the king was important to him. But Jonathan is a man like unto David who they just wanted to do the will of God. I just love this story of Jonathan. Verse five, David goes out, Saul sets him over the men of war. So he’s not really that free. He’s now the General of the armies of Saul. And then verse six, seven, eight, you get this moment where David goes out and does very well and the women start singing a song. Saul has slain his thousands and David his 10 thousands. That’s not going to do well for someone who’s full of himself.

John Bytheway:               01:01:17             But who’s counting?

Bro. Mike Madsen:         01:01:18             Yeah, who’s counting? You see that in verse eight, the word wroth. In verse nine, you see the word eyed David. In verse 12, you see the word afraid. Verse 10 and 11, David’s playing his harp, which he did often and Saul’s got a javelin in his hand and he starts throwing, he throws it at David twice to try and kill him. There’s something going on with Saul. Twice that happens. He’s afraid. Verse 12. And Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him and was departed from Saul. Departed there has a beautiful little footnote. You see the little eight down there, it goes down to section 121, verse 37, where it’s talking about the power of the priesthood and this is the one that ends in amen to the priesthood or authority of that man. Here we have Saul who’s lost the spirit of the Lord.

                                           01:02:08             Verse 15. Again, you see the word afraid. Saul starts to get a couple of ideas. How can I get rid of this individual who’s a threat to me? And the first thing is like, well, maybe I’ll give him one of my daughters if he goes out and does well in war. He promises Merab verse 17. Then he eventually takes that away and says, no, I’m just kidding. Just keep fighting my battles. And in verse 20, he finds out that Michal, his daughter, loved David and they told Saul the thing and it pleased him. And Saul said, I will give him her. That she may be a snare unto him. Now Saul’s using one of his wonderful daughters to try and get David to die. David in verse 23 says, look, I’m a poor man. I can’t be your son-in-law. I don’t have a dowry.

                                           01:02:49             My family’s not well known. I don’t have a lot of wealth. And Saul’s like, that’s fine. Just go kill 100 Philistines and bring me back evidence that you killed them and I’ll let you marry her. They’re in war time, and so David not only does 100, he does 200, kills 200 soldiers and brings back evidence that he has killed them. He gets his wife, Michal in verse 27. Verse 28, This made Saul even more afraid of David and he was his enemy continually, at least in his mind. There seems to be no one more faithful than David to Saul, but in Saul’s mind, David is an enemy continually. Saul spoke to Jonathan his son and told all the servants that they should kill David. Now you’re encouraging your son to go kill somebody else. It’s just really sad.

                                           01:03:39             Jonathan does a pretty good job in verses two to four of chapter 18 saying, don’t kill innocent blood in verse five, there’s no cause with David. And verse six Saul hearkened to the voice of Jonathan and he says, okay, I’m not going to kill him. And then verse eight, David goes out again, does really well in battle. Verse nine, this is an evil spirit and the JST really helps us there, which was not of the Lord. The evil spirit, which was not of the Lord was upon Saul and he sit at his house with his javeline in his hand, while David played. And again, he tries to kill David. David runs to his wife, Michal, he’s sending servants up there to kill David. And Michal his wife lets David down through a window and she puts together her little dummy, you know, like David’s asleep. It’s like, oh, he’s sick. He’s right there over in bed. And they eventually find out that she deceived her dad. She’s risking her life to try and save David.

                                           01:04:35             David, Saul, he flees to be with his mentor, Samuel and Ramah. Something really cool happens in verses 18 to 23. Saul sends people down there to get David. They feel the spirit of God when they get there and they don’t take him back. It happens three times. Even Saul gets involved in that. The spirit of God is down there with those people so much that they begin to prophesy and so the Lord saves David’s life at that time.

Hank Smith:                      01:05:02             I don’t think anybody listening is ever going to get to the point of Saul’s jealousy. At least I hope not. I’m interested in what both of you would say to someone that, that creeps up inside of us. Jealousy of another person.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         01:05:18             I know that whenever I feel the spirit of the Lord in me, I am happy for everybody. I’m just, I’m happy for success. This is such a hard chapter and it’s going to get worse in just a minute. Can I just go back to this principle of looking unto the Savior and trying to figure out jealousy and where it comes from? You can learn a lot about someone when they open their mouth in the scriptures. Well, the first time the adversary opens his mouth in the scriptures. It’s in Moses chapter one and the Savior is right there. I guess the first time in recorded history we have either of them speaking. This is Moses chapter one. It’s in the pre-earth life. And the Lord God spoke unto Moses saying, that’s Satan whom thou commandeth in the name of mine only begotten is the same which was from the beginning and he came before me saying, here is Satan.

                                           01:06:02             I want you to count how many times he refers to himself. There’s 35 words. Behold, here am I. Send me. I will be thy son and I will redeem all mankind. That one soul shall not be lost and surely I will do it wherefore give me thine honor. Six times in 35 words, it’s that cadence of about one in every six words is about it’s I, it’s this I disease. But behold, my beloved son who was my beloved and chosen from the beginning said unto me. Here’s a different answer. Father, thy will be done and the glory be thine forever. That contrast is so fascinating. I think we’ve got this Jonathan and Saul situation and Jonathan seems to be saying, look, if you are going to be the next king, I’ll support it. That’s what God wants I’ll support it. I think a lot of this has to do with the spirit of God that’s inside of us.

                                           01:06:55             I know when I have the spirit of the Lord, I turn more selfless. I’m less concerned about myself. I had a really incredible experience about seven years ago. I started traveling to Africa and I’m not talking about safari Africa. I’m talking about going into the sticks in Africa. One trip to Africa will change your life forever. When I went there, I saw a happy people, a faithful, a God-fearing people, capable, smart, incredible, but the need is almost overwhelming. I remember coming home back to my nice cushy air conditioned house with three cars and looking around saying, how can I, as a disciple of Christ, not do something to help my brothers? My wife and I started this little charity. I’m not saying I’m good or I’m great or I’m anything. What I’m saying is I think selflessness comes out of a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When I have the Holy Ghost inside of me, I am more selfless. I’m more selfless to my wife, to my children, to my friends. There is the contrast. Being like Christ means that we give glory to the Father and we give of ourself.

Hank Smith:                      01:08:06             Coming up in part two.

Bro. Mike Madsen:         01:08:08             I remember going out one day, a bunch of 12-year-olds again and they were swimming and I said, you guys, you’ve got to get out of here. That’s very dangerous. And they started saying to me things that 12-year-olds would say when they don’t really care about you, you know? And I’m like, please, you know, you’re going to get hurt. And they were saying, calling me names and things like that. I’m like, fine. 30 minutes later, my brother and I were in the shed and we hear blood curdling screams coming from the backyard.