Please take your copy of God's word and turn with me this evening to the book of Acts and chapter 13. And we will together seek the aid of the Holy Spirit as we consider verse 22, Acts 13 and verse 22. This is Paul in the middle of a sermon. And when he had removed him, that is King Saul, and when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king, to whom also he gave testimony and said, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will. It has become popular today to dismantle the reputations of men. It has moved from an idle pastime to an intoxicating preoccupation. People find some sort of fiendish delight, a titillating thrill and searching out and exposing the flaws and failures of those who are generally esteemed. As a result, we have moved from the philosophy of deconstructing language to the practice of deconstructing people. And sadly, and this is sad indeed, but sadly, this mentality has bled into the church in the form of patriarchal iconoclasm. That is to say, a preoccupation with any and all flaws and failures of the Old Testament fathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and down the line it goes. You listen to sermons on texts that relate to these men, and you'll note the proportion of emphasis that is given to the grit and grime that lies in the background of some of these accounts. But all of this is a violation of the moral principle found in the Fifth Commandment. the duty that we have to honor our superiors. And so, for example, and this draws from the text that's in front of us this evening, for example, what is the very first thought, the very first thought that comes to mind when you hear the name King David? Well, for many people, the answer is Bathsheba. That's the first thing that comes to mind. Uriah and Bathsheba and so on. The question that really lies behind this is, why? Why is it that this trend has swelled to such proportions? And there are, of course, many reasons. We could highlight a number of them. The most obvious, the one that sits on the very surface, is that it feeds pride. It feeds pride, right? We bring them down to bring us up. and to quell the conscience regarding our own shortcomings. But there is an even bigger problem than that. There's even a bigger problem with this trend. And that is that it flagrantly contradicts the voice of God. It flagrantly contradicts the voice of God. It is defiant and dishonoring to disregard God's word. And whenever we do, we fail to think God's thoughts after. We fail to see as God sees, to believe as God says. And for that reason, we ought to oppose. We ought to refute. We ought to demolish. this popular trend in our own day and age. So in one sense, again on the surface of things, I suppose, we come this evening in defense of David, to set the record straight. But as we shall see in looking at Acts 13 verse 22, as we shall see in coming under the word, we're gonna be taken much further and much higher than merely defending David. title of our sermon is, A Man After God's Own Heart, a phrase that has always intrigued me, as I'm sure it has intrigued many of you. A man after God's own heart. We're going to consider this under three points this evening. First of all, we're going to begin with David himself. David as a man after God's own heart. David as a man after God's own heart. Here We read again, and when he had removed him that is Saul, he raised up unto them David to be their king, to whom also he gave testimony and said, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will. Remember the context of this passage in Acts, Paul and Barnabas have come to the city of Antioch in the region of Pisidia. The Sabbath has arrived, they've gone into a synagogue, and Paul stands up to preach Christ. and to preach the necessity of faith in him unto justification. And in the immediate context, he is rehearsing for the Jews the history leading up to Christ. And he includes in that account King David here in verse 22. And you'll notice that he cites a testimony regarding David. He cites a testimony. He says, to whom also he gave testimony. Now, we're accustomed to that language. We can think in terms of our personal testimony. We're having a conversation with someone, and we tell them our testimony, which is to say, we tell them, this is what God has done for my soul. This is what the Lord has done in my life. Come, magnify the Lord with me. And that's appropriate, but here, Here in this passage, it is not David's own testimony. It's not even Paul's testimony of David, but it is the testimony of God himself. It is the testimony of God himself, which is, of course, of far greater weight and of far greater substance and importance. What does God think about David? How does God see King David? We're told that he sees him as a man after his own heart. Now, it's not the only time in which we find the Lord bearing testimony to the graces within his people. You think, for example, by way of parallel of Job in Job 1, verse 8. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil, that it shuns evil. See the same thing in chapter 2. In verse 3, here is God who is boasting before his chief enemy, and he is boasting of one who has been a recipient of divine grace. And so you come to this testimony given to us here in Acts 13, that David is a man after God's own heart, and surely every true believer's heart burns. within them at the thought of this. You know, it's wonderful if our parents or our spouse or our children or our friends and colleagues or others, if they commend us, that's nice. But oh, my dear believing friend, oh, for God to say, for God to say of any one of us, this is one after my own heart. What would the believer give for that to be said of him or her? No more. What would we give for that to be true of us, to be one after God's own heart? And so that raises and presses the question upon us, doesn't it? The question is, what does after God's own heart mean? What does after God's own heart actually mean? And contrary to what many of us may initially be inclined to, it does not refer to the person with the most intense flurry of feelings, right? It's not the person with the warmest fuzzies, as it were, toward the Lord. In other words, it's not heart in that sense, as we would so often use it. And I'm not dismissing here the essential place of sanctified affections. Far from it. Love and joy and hope and peace and sorrow for sin and all of those things are included as essential in sanctified affections. But these things are the fruit of a more fundamental truth. They correspond to something more basic than merely sanctified affections. So the question is, what does a man after God's own heart mean? And the text actually tells us. It defines it for us. If you look at verse 22, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will. Which shall fulfill all my will. So there's the definition that God himself gives of what it means to be a man after God's own heart. It's one who fulfills all of God's will. Now Paul is citing here from 1 Samuel 13 and verse 14, and you'll note as you turn back to that passage that Saul, King Saul, is the one who's actually being spoken to. 1 Samuel 13 verse 14, God says to, through Nathan, he says to, or through Samuel rather, he says to Saul, but now thy kingdom shall not continue. The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart. And the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people. because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee." So you see that same element that Paul's drawing on here. Saul, you're being removed. You're being disposed of. I'm replacing you with one who is a man after my own heart, and you're being displaced. Why? Because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee. And so in both texts, we find that a man after God's own heart is defined in terms of obedience, which is rather perhaps shocking to some of us when we have thought of that language over the years. But the definition biblically is obedience or conformity to God's will. This is the one who is the man after God's own heart, the one who walks in his ways, the one who conforms in his thinking and speaking and emoting and living and acting and so on, conforms to the standard of God's own will and obedience to him. In other words, it is to see, it is to think, it is to act as God does for our soul to be aligned with God's will. That's a person who is a man or a woman after God's own heart. In other words, it is the fulfillment, if you will, of what we're taught to pray in the third petition. Thy will be done on earth, even in me, as it is in heaven before thee. And so God sought, as 1 Samuel tells us, and God found, as Acts 13 tells us, David as a man after his own heart. And you'll note that he found David as a man after his own heart in David's youth. He found him in his youth. And it's interesting because David is the least notable person in the world's eyes. He's the least notable, right? You have Saul who preceded him, and he's tall, and he's handsome, and he's significant, and he's important, and he's gifted, and he has all of the pizazz that would attract the attention of the multitudes and so on. Not so with David. Indeed, his own brothers dismissed him. And you'll remember when Samuel comes at the command of the Lord, the behest of the Lord, to Jesse's house, and he's going to anoint one of his sons. And Jesse brings out the first and the second and the third and so on. And each time I think it's surely this is the one. And he says, that's it, that's all I have. And Samuel's saying, well, it can't be. And they're, oh yeah, there is one more. There's the youngest, there's David, who's out in the field, right? Not even his own family would have thought of him as having any substance. But what the world sees is not what's important. You remember what the Lord says to Samuel in 1 Samuel 16 and verse seven, but the Lord said unto Samuel, look not on his countenance or on the height of his stature, because I have refused Note the language there. The Lord is looking on the heart. He's not looking as man looks. And he's looking and finding one whose heart is after God's own heart. And that is found in David himself. And so here is David, even in his youth, young people and children, you take note of this. Here is David, already a man after God's own heart in his youth. And he's developing this heart for the Lord in obscurity. without the eye of man, unnoticed by those that are around him. Indeed, without oversight. It's not as if this is something that is entirely attributed to the investment of his parents, though no doubt that contributed to it. But he's out by himself in the fields, in obscurity, the back of beyond, as we would say. And there he learned. communion with God. We read of it. We read of him playing his harp. We read of him singing praise to the Lord, of communing in his heart with the Lord. You see all of the fruit that begin to bear out. Here, a lamb caught in a lion's mouth or threatened by a bear. And here you see the heart of a shepherd who is willing with self-denial to sacrifice everything in order to rescue, to save, to secure the lamb that is in jeopardy. What does the Lord from heaven see? The great shepherd of Israel, the Lord of glory, sees in the heart of David, the heart of the king in heaven. Right here is David, who is at work and learning the ways of the Lord, the word of the Lord, and seeking to walk with the Lord. You think of how David's heart, again in his youth, throbbed for the glory of God. It's graphically described, isn't it, in his response to Goliath, that well-known story. You go to 1 Samuel 17, verse 26, and you read David, and remember, out of the heart The mouth speaketh, the words are revealing to us something about his heart. And David spake to the men 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 that he should defy the armies of the living God? His interest is God's own glory. Verse 36, thy servants slew both the lion and bear. And this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God. And then in verses 45 to 47, here's David. And he's speaking to Goliath, thou comest to me with the sword and with the spear and with the shield, but I come to 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 thine head from thee, and I will give the carcass of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. He goes on, right? For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into my hands. What do you see in this young man? you see one whose heart is throbbing for the glory of God. Grown men with all of the strength and experience of battle-hardened soldiers are quaking in their boots before Goliath. But David doesn't see the enormity of the enemy. What he sees is the glory of God. And he says, we will shut the mouth of this fool who defies the living God. And so he goes out into the field to do that. There is this all-consuming concern for the glory of God. And this is something that is sustained throughout his entire life, despite his stumblings. We're not suggesting that we ignore them, right? All of them are second table violations, mind you, and that's of some significance. But Bathsheba and Uriah and the numbering of Israel and so on, dealings with Absalom, the Lord records these flaws for edifying purposes, not for us to magnify, but among other things, to remind us that the king has not yet come. And in the case of all the patriarchs, we're left with clear indicators that the promised seed has not yet arrived, that we are waiting for that one who is yet to come in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the flaws and the fly in the ointment at least serves that purpose. But here, this heart that David has is sustained throughout his life despite his stumblings. You think of some of the highlights, you know, for example, his bringing the ark back to Jerusalem. Here he is, he's desiring the presence of God, that visible token of the throne of God in the midst of his people, and he's taking pains to secure it. And you remember the intensity of his jubilation at the arrival of this symbol of God's presence in the midst of his people. You'll remember his passion for the building of the house of God. And when told that he wouldn't be able to lay the walls and foundations himself, he did absolutely everything conceivable, everything in his power to prepare and to accumulate the resources in order that it might be raised. upon his demise. Why? His heart is for the glory of God. He wants God magnified in all of these things. I mean, you go to 1 Chronicles 29, beginning at verse 10 and following it. Read those words. There are few words parallel to them in the Old Testament. 1 Chronicles 29, 10 and following. And you will peer into the heart of the man. Here in his advanced years, You see his soul exercised as a heart, a man with a heart that is after God's own heart, his concern and pathos for the glory of God. And of course, you can open the middle of your Bibles and you can trace his steps through all of the Psalms. And there is you, indeed, this would be a good project for you, you know, to open up the Psalter and to be able to see from the inside out, David speaking out of the depths of his own soul, David speaking out of the midst of his own Christian experience. And we see there vividly, perhaps most graphically and colorfully, that this indeed is a man after God's own heart. To pen these words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to sing these words, to put these words in our own mouths, we feel at times as if we fall far below them. and being able to attain, to sing them with all of the faith that we can muster, we see the heart that is there. And it's true right to the end, right to the end of his life. You come to the end, to David's last words in 2 Samuel 23, verses one and following. Here is the one raised up on high. Here is the anointed of the God of Jacob, the sweet psalmist of Israel. And we're told that the Spirit of the Lord spake by him, that God's word was in his tongue. We're told that he ruled in the fear of God. In verse 5, although my house be not so with God, Yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure. For this, this everlasting covenant, this is all my salvation and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. There is a man to the end who is a man after God's own heart. And so God himself stands in the heavens and bears testimony. He says that he gives his own witness. When we think of David, here is a man after God's own heart. Now, having said all of that, David is a man after God's own heart. This, my friends, is but a faint shadow that is pointing much higher. How so? Because it typifies for us. It points forward to David's greater son, does it not? That brings us secondly to Christ. To Christ, not as a man after God's own heart, but Christ as the man. the man after God's own heart. Here is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of David and David's Lord, the one who could cry like no other could ever cry, not my will, but thy will be done." We said that to be a man after God's own heart is obedience, it is conformity to the will of God, to have our thoughts conform to his thoughts, and to have our lives conformed to his standard. Here is Christ, not my will, but thy will be done. And you'll note that the Lord Jesus Christ also has a divine testimony. Not only when the Father speaks from heaven and says, this is my beloved Son, my well-loved Son, in whom I am well-pleased, but we see it elsewhere. For example, in the Gospel of John chapter 5, Because there Jesus says in chapter 5, verse 36, but I have a greater witness, you could say testimony, I have a greater witness than that of John. For the works which the Father hath given me to finish the same works that I do bear witness of me. that the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me." And so Jesus also has a testimony, not just like David, but greater than David. Notice how we find in this Lord Jesus Christ, one who has the heart of God. Verse 17, "'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.'" Verse 19, "'Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do?' For whatsoever things he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." Perfect conformity. Verse 20, for the Father loveth the Son and showeth him all things that himself doeth. And then you notice in verse 30, I can of mine own self do nothing. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which has sent me. Here we find quintessentially in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the man after God's own heart, who is conforming to the will of God and following the ways of God, who is consumed with the honor and glory of God. He is the man after God's own heart, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father. As I said, we see perfect conformity to God's will. The heart of Christ throbs with the heart of God. And so everywhere Christ goes, everything that the Lord Jesus Christ does, He is pursuing the Father's glory. He is pursuing the Father's honor above all things, above all else. He's impeccable. He's sinless. He is one who is running in the commandments of the Lord. And that, of course, includes magnifying God's glory through the redemption of his people. He is going to fetch glory for God in securing the full and free salvation of His own people. He's going to secure worshipers for the Father, whom the Father is seeking, who will worship Him in spirit and in truth, Christ Jesus. comes in order that all of his sons would be brought to glory, in order that all of the elect hosts will be brought to lift up their voices with the unfallen angels to magnify the glory of God. And so here is the Lord Jesus in his earthly ministry and continues now in his heavenly intercession, and he is bearing the people of God on his heart. Right, just as we see signified in the Old Testament high priest in Exodus 28 verse 30, where the high priest carried the names of the tribes over top of his heart. So our high priest has always and forever will bear the names of his own people upon his heart in the pursuance of the glory of God. And so the Lord Jesus Christ plunges himself into all of the horrific, staggering, mind-boggling work of sacrificing himself for sinners. He endures the cross. And He does so in order that He might glorify His Father in saving His elect people. He does so in order that His sinful, fallen people who have hearts of stone might through his glorious work have the hearts of stone removed and replaced with hearts of flesh. Here is the law keeper, the one after God's own heart, running in the commandments, obeying God's will, submitting himself to all that the Father has told him, fulfilling the works the Father has given him, serving the Father, all in the place as a substitute on behalf of his law-breaking people. His people who shattered the commandments of God in their hands, under their feet, in their hearts and heads. The Lord Jesus Christ comes to secure salvation so that those born with uncircumcised hearts might instead have those hearts circumcised and might have written on their hearts the very law of God and His covenant mercies, so that the law of God is embedded within their bosoms and they are enabled to walk in His commandments. David is a man after God's own heart, and it's true and must be affirmed by us all. But surely what we find in David is merely a shadow that is pointing forward to the fulfillment and the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ, we have the man after God's own heart. But then thirdly, and moving quickly, we come to the believer. the contemporary believer as one after God's own heart, the believer today as one after God's own heart. The core question for any redeemed believer who is truly or even proximately after God's own heart, the core question is this, what is God's will? That's the pressing question. What serves God's interests? What serves God's glory? What is His will? This is what the true believer longs for, seeks after. I've perhaps said on another occasion, but you'll find, and I find in pastoring and interfacing with people elsewhere, that people feel a great deal of stress over the consequences of embracing a doctrine or practice or principle or whatever it is. So they're wrestling, they're studying, they're thinking, they're listening to sermons, they're reading their Bibles, in order to get clarity on a question, on what they should believe regarding a doctrine, doctrines of grace, or a point of practice with regards to worship, or a principle, or something else. But what we discover in sometimes conversing with people, that the real burden, the thing that is stressing them out most, is the price tag. What is this gonna cost me? What are the consequences if I embrace the truth of this doctrine, practice, or whatever else it is, what are the implications going to be? And that's where people feel the most stress. But it's actually the opposite of where they ought to be. For the man after God's own heart, all of the stress is on getting clarity about what God says. And there is and perhaps should be a sense of stress in studying, thinking, meditating, reading, digging in God's Word in order to get clarity and cogency and understanding with certainty what hath God said. But once the believer settles on that, once the believer is grounded in that truth, The consequences are inconsequential. The implications, the price tag, the cost. A man after God's own heart could care less. All of the stress is up front. What is God's will? What serves his interest? What serves his glory? And if we can secure that in our minds, then whatever comes of it, Let that be what it may be. We want to walk in the ways of the Lord. And this is what we find when the Lord is in the days of Moses in Deuteronomy 5 and verse 29. It says, this is the Lord speaking, that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me and keep all my commandments always." Oh, that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me and keep my commandments always. You realize I trust that to have God's law in our heart Is it a sense to have God's heart in our heart? It is to have God's heart in our heart. The law is a transcript of God's own holiness, as you know. And therefore, we're reminded, as we've seen so often and we saw in our exposition of John and Romans and elsewhere, this connection between love and law, right? Love of God. is what brings us to esteem God's law. Indeed, we can say the opposite, that to be anti-law is to be anti-love. This is what it means to love the Lord, to keep his commandments. Jesus says that to his disciples. John reaffirms it in his first epistle. When Jesus summarizes the law, he summarizes it this way. This is the first and great commandment, to love. to love the Lord thy God, and the second is like unto it, to love thy neighbor in the redeemed, believing soul who has been, through the merits of Jesus Christ and his sacrificial work alone, brought under the wake of God's grace, forgiven and brought into the acceptance and access with God himself, their heart swells with love and gratitude for all of these redeeming mercies, unmerited, unearned in any way, but freely given at the high cost of all that Jesus Christ has secured. Their desire is to love, to love the Lord. And the Lord says, here's the path to run in in expressing that love. And so the psalmist David, who is the man after God's own heart, is the one who pens the words, oh, how I love thy law. It is my meditation every day. Paul, a New Testament parallel. speaks of how he delights in the law of God after the inward man. His heart is throbbing with love for the Lord, to love the glory of God above all else, right? To advance his will, to seek his interests, to seek his glory, to be concerned not with self, to be concerned not with our own interests, to be concerned not with our pleasures, our peace, and everything else that attends to it, but to be consumed with the Lord, His glory, His will, His way, His word. I said that the core question for the redeemed believer is what is God's will, what serves his interests and his glory. But for the unbeliever, this is the furthest question from your mind. This is the last question that you would conjure up and set at the forefront. For the unbelieving heart, it is to live for self. The idolatry of our self-seeking self-gratification to live for the world, to be a lover of pleasure rather than a lover of God, to love all that brings us temporal satisfaction, to love all that tickles our fancy, that inflates our pride, that gratifies our carnal appetites. These are the things that you as an unbeliever have. Is this the heart of God? This is the heart of the devil. And here's the rub, isn't it? For those who are preoccupied with the world, the flesh, and the devil, Jesus comes to the Pharisees and he says, no, no, you claim Abraham as your father, but you are just like your father, the devil. You bear his resemblance, you have his heart, and therefore the fruit in your own life. For those of you who are unconverted, this is yet another shot across your bow. The Lord is coming to arrest you, to awaken you out of your stupor, to be faced with the reality that to not have the heart of God is to have the heart of the devil abiding within us. and how we need to turn our gaze to what we were saying a moment ago about the man, the man Christ Jesus, the God-man, to see in him the one who alone is able to bring and to deliver our souls from all the consequences of our rebellion, to save us. And lo and behold, he whose arm is not straightened that it cannot save, he is willing and able to save to the uttermost all who come to him, who all who come by Christ Jesus. Come, the gospel says. Come, the Lord Jesus Christ says. Come unto him. And for the believer, this aspiration, you know, rather than falling prey to the twisted, convoluted, evil approach that we see around us, which takes David and misshapes him into so-called misogynist and other such wicked things, that'll cause our blood to boil. We ought to repudiate it. Rather than that, we ought to take God at his word, God's own testimony with regards to David, and to see ourselves as falling so incredibly short of the attainments that he had in grace. To indeed, to inspire through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the ministry of the Holy Spirit, to become as believers. men and women after God's own heart. That means, as David's son Solomon teaches us in Proverbs 4, that we have to keep our hearts with all diligence out of which flow the issues of life. This business of keeping our hearts becomes all the more important to us now. Yes, indeed, our hearts need to be kept. If we're gonna be one after God's own heart, they have to be watched. All the faculties of our soul, our minds, our affections, our wills, our consciences, our bodies, we need to be watching our eye gates and ear gates and mouth gates and hands and feet and everything else that is connected to our heart, watching as a sentinel over these things. by the grace of God, keeping our hearts with all diligence, so that we might sing, as we're going to do in just a moment, so that we might sing in the words of David from Psalm 119 and verse 10. With my whole heart have I sought thee. Oh, let me not wander from thy commandments. With my whole heart have I sought thee. Let me not wander from thy commandments. Right? Remember, one who is a person after God's own heart is one who's conformed to God's will, one who is walking in the path of obedience. Don't let me wander from those, Lord. Keep my feet, my heart, my head, my life in the path of believing, dependent, loving, gratitude. in running in the ways of the Lord's law. Don't allow my feet, O Lord, to wander. This is the language of one who is a man or woman after God's own heart. With my whole heart have I sought thee. Oh, let me not wander from thy commandments. This is the work of grace. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ came in part to accomplish. In order he predestined a people, he atoned for a people, in order that they, Romans 8 tells us, might be conformed to the likeness of the Son. So that we might be transformed into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we, not just legally in our justification, but that we might spiritually and really and morally be transformed in our sanctification from one degree to another and beholding the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. This is the third person of the Godhead who comes and dwells the Lord's people and transforms them from the inside out, transforms our heart. in order that our mouths might be changed. Oh, I need to watch my tongue. No, you need to watch your heart because out of the heart, the mouth speaketh. And the spirit comes to bridle the heart in order that the tongue might likewise be bridled. And so too with all of our other faculties, so that we say, Lord, we want this tongue to be conformed to what pleases Thee. We want it to walk in the ways of the law of God. We want our decisions, both small and great, both pertaining to temporal things and spiritual things. We want them to be conformed to the will of God in his word. We want our lives, not just in talk, but in reality, to exemplify that we really are seeking first, first and foremost, the kingdom of God and of His righteousness, that His agenda is our agenda, that His kingdom and its advance is our preoccupation in this world, that the exalting of His glory is the heartthrob that beats within our own bosoms. That is all descriptive of a person who, like David, is a man after God's own heart, who has come under the saving influences of the man after God's own heart, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we read in Acts 13, almost in passing, as it were, he raised up unto them David to be their king. to whom also he, that is God, gave testimony and said, I have found David, the son of Jesse. a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will. May God put it within our own desires, within our own petitions and prayers. Oh, that God would find us to be men and women after his own heart, which seek to fulfill all his will. Let's stand together for prayer. O Lord, our God in heaven, the God of glory, the God of David, the God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. O Lord, we magnify thy name and confess that all glory, honor, and praise is due unto that name. That we, O Lord, are to live for the glory of the great King. That we are to subject and submit all of our dreams and ambitions, our desires, our goals, our pursuits and priorities. We are to submit all of our will to the will of God. O Lord, grant that by the saving mercies of Jesus Christ, the purchased and provided Spirit of Christ might so work in the souls of redeemed sinners as to raise up in the generation now living a host of those to whom thou wouldst say, I bear this testimony. that they are people, after my own heart, who will fulfill all my holy will. We plead these things for the glory of Jesus Christ, whose name we pray. Amen.