Deep study
1-2 Samuel and the Psalms - shepherd, king, sinner, and ancestor of the King
David is both praised and exposed in Scripture. His life shows what it means to be a man after God's own heart - not sinless, but quick to return.
When Samuel came to anoint a king, he was impressed by Eliab's height, but God said, man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). David, the overlooked youngest son out tending sheep, was chosen. He would wait years, hunted by Saul, before the throne was actually his - learning in the wilderness to trust God rather than seize power, even sparing Saul's life twice when he could have taken the crown by force.
In 2 Samuel 7, David wants to build God a house; instead God promises to build David a house - a dynasty - and to establish the throne of his kingdom forever. This everlasting throne could never be filled by a mere human line. It sets the whole Old Testament leaning forward, and the prophets pick it up: a child is born whose government will have no end, on the throne of David (Isaiah 9:6-7).
David's sin with Bathsheba, and the murder of Uriah to cover it, is recorded without flattery. What marks David is not that he never fell, but how he responded when confronted. Psalm 51 is his prayer: he asks not merely for relief but for a clean heart and a right spirit, knowing that the sacrifice God wants is a broken and contrite heart. He runs toward God, not away.
Through David, God gave the church a prayer book. The Psalms model lament and praise, fear and trust, complaint and confidence - often in the same poem. They also reach beyond David himself: Psalm 22 cries out the very words Jesus would pray on the cross, and Psalm 110 has David calling his own descendant Lord - a riddle Jesus uses to reveal His identity (Matthew 22:43-45).
The New Testament opens by calling Jesus the son of David (Matthew 1:1), and the angel tells Mary that God will give Him the throne of his father David, and of his kingdom there will be no end (Luke 1:32-33).
The theme runs all the way to the last book. When no one is found worthy to open the scroll, John is told, weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered (Revelation 5:5). And nearly the final words of the Bible are Jesus' own: I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star (Revelation 22:16). The everlasting throne promised to a shepherd-boy turns out to be the throne of the Lamb forever.