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In my book by book sermons through the Bible, I treated multiple books as one,
since almost all of them are simply two parts of the same document, at least in the
Old Testament. Here, ironically, is the great story of David, written presumably
by Samuel. And while the early story of Samuel, along with the story of Saul, the
first king, are here, this is the momumental telling of David's life. As with the
books of Genesis and a couple of others, I struggled with this two-parter. How to
sum up the story. How to capture its high points, its great twists and turns. How
to organize and (again) outline carefully, providing information for those who
don't know the story very well, and yet saying what we have to learn from the life
of this, the greatest of the Hebrew kings. The story of David's sin, his repentance,
his forgiveness (drawing even from the Psalms), and his redemption, become the
centerpiece of the sermon. While I did not expect to, I ended up liking this
sermon very much, to the point of preaching it more than once. It is also one of
those sermons that needs to be passion-driven in a way that only preaching the
memorized outline without notes allows.