A Man After God’s Own Heart

In Acts 13:22, God is quoted as saying, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will.” That is a deep, powerful statement. I believe every one of us could understand it more deeply.

God dearly loved this man!

Do you want that kind of favor from God? Do you want to be a real spiritual success as David was? Here is the best way: Become a person after God’s own heart, who shall fulfill all His will!

But how do you achieve such a monumental goal?

In this book, you will see how the Prophet Jeremiah strove to achieve that goal and to teach others to do the same. It was through a penetrating study into David’s psalms.

More than any other book in the Bible, the book of Psalms tells you why and how David was a man after God’s own heart. He opened himself up in a heart-to-heart way like you will find nowhere else in the Bible.

The “last words” of “the sweet psalmist of Israel” are recorded in 2 Samuel 23:1-2. David said, “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue.” David said his writings were just God putting His words on his tongue!

The Bible explicitly credits over half of the psalms to David himself. A few were written by Moses, Solomon, Ezra, Nehemiah and others, but most were authored by David. Psalms is a book by a king, and it is a book about the way kings ought to live. It is dominated and orchestrated by David’s themes and David’s writings.

These psalms are truly special. “In the time of David, the lyric poetry of the Hebrews attained its highest splendor,” wrote J. G. Herder in his book The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry. “From his youth upward, the mind of David had been attuned to music and poetry.” By writing these psalms—from his youth onward—David truly developed both his talent and his depth of mind and spiritual thinking.

“In his psalms his whole kingdom still lives,” Herder continued. “Even the prophets imitated him, because David was the favorite name among the people, because his psalms were the songbook of the nation …” (emphasis mine). David loved to praise God and thank God and show love for God. He wrote songs, then appointed singers and assembled giant choirs whose job was simply to praise God! He institutionalized praise for God. He organized the people to enthusiastically show God how much they loved Him—through wind instruments, stringed instruments and large choruses. We need to understand why we should praise God, and the nation under David learned that in an extraordinary way.

You can be certain that in the World Tomorrow, when Jesus Christ is King over all the Earth, we will witness a spectacular revival of such grand ensembles!

King David knew that writing poetry was a way to exalt God and help people know God better. This was a major purpose of his psalms. Psalm 34:3 reads, “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.” The Hebrew word for magnify means to grow, promote, make bigger or more powerful. In Psalm 40:16, David wrote, “… let such as love thy salvation say continually, The Lord be magnified” (see also Psalm 69:30; 70:4). David’s psalms reveal his fervent effort to enlarge God in the minds of all who would hear or read these compositions.

These psalms show how David loved God’s law and God’s government. God’s people need that attitude. Our Church hymnal is composed almost entirely of songs that use these psalms to praise God. When we sing these lyrics in our hymns, we ingrain this beautiful thinking into our minds. It is a tool to help us grow more like David. We want to develop that character and capture that spirit as much as we possibly can.

Herder continued, “It is, therefore, undeniable that David greatly refined and beautified the lyric poetry of the Hebrews.” This is masterful poetry—the greatest there is! Of course, some of the beauty of the Hebrew does not survive translation, so these works may not appear to have the features we would expect from English poetry, such as meter and rhyme. Yet they are rich with effective, powerful language and artistry, and plenty of David’s masterful poetic devices do translate well into English. This is truly magnificent poetry!

A Student of David

The Prophet Jeremiah lived four centuries after King David, but his life’s work revolved around David in an extraordinary way. The commission God gave to this prophet prodded him into an intensive study of Israel’s greatest-ever king. He wanted to know all about what David said and did. He studied the psalms and captured the spirit of David.

Not only did Jeremiah study the psalms, he composed psalms of his own. This book shows how and why he authored Psalm 89, which centers on a special covenant God made with King David, and Psalm 119, which so thoroughly exhibits David’s spirit of praise and devotion that in some ways it surpasses David’s poetry!

Perhaps we too ought to write personal poems or psalms.

God’s commission brought Jeremiah, late in his life, to Ireland. There this venerable and faithful prophet not only accomplished what God had asked of him regarding the throne of King David, but went on to establish a culture of praise and thanks, of music and dance, patterned after the model David had established four centuries earlier.

Jeremiah had learned so much from David! That example had galvanized his own relationship with God and his spiritual life. He wanted to build that same love for God in all the people. So he drew upon the same trove of spiritual riches that had so inspired him: the psalms of David.

The Psalter of Tara is the name of a special book in Irish history that traces back to antiquity. Annals say that it was a record of Irish history, though its exact contents have been lost. But based on everything I know about Jeremiah, David and God, I am absolutely convinced that the original Psalter of Tara was a priceless collection of David’s psalms, published, as an aid in the worship of the true God for the people of Ireland, by the Prophet Jeremiah.

The Value of Studying the Psalms

In this book, we will study David’s psalms. God really wants us to explore this spiritual treasure trove. There is so much we can learn from David’s psalms if we approach it the way Jeremiah did—not just reading one occasionally but studying them together as a collection. By doing so, you will gain more from David’s psalms than you would ever think. Putting them together like this multiplies the meaning and the understanding it gives us. It certainly has for me; it is a refreshing and wonderful lift to my life!

By delving into these psalms, you gain a better picture of David and get to know him more deeply. You need to know his psalms to understand the man.

A man after God’s own heart. We really need to know a man like that! We need to know all we can about him if we are to grow in that kind of character.

Jeremiah published a book about this. He was moved and stirred, fascinated by the throne of David and what God accomplished in and through that man.

In the past I often thought it would really be terrific if we found the history of Ireland that Jeremiah wrote. Now I realize that book was not even primarily about history! And further, I don’t think we need to find it. I believe we have essentially that same book today because God is revealing it to us!

In Ireland, Jeremiah put the majestic, transformative sacred poetry of David on a pedestal. He used it to teach the people of Ireland how to worship the true God and how to become people after God’s own heart.

With a collection of psalms and a book, we can understand this far better. I honestly believe this study can double our understanding of David as a man after God’s own heart! It won’t double your character, but it will boost your understanding of David’s heart.

The Psalter of Tara is a beautiful book! Jeremiah knew he had to give this to the people to properly rule over them. He wanted to instill the spirit of David into Ireland, and he succeeded. God is resurrecting Jeremiah’s Psalter of Tara so we can understand this better in this end time.

Continue Reading: Introduction: A Promise Kept