Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Kind of Leader Will You Be? | Historical Books | 2 Samuel 23:8-39

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Everyone is a leader. What kind of leader will you be? Will you care for others, or leave them out to dry? In today's episode, Patrick shares how 2 Samuel 23:8-39 encourages us to be Christ-like servant leaders. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Samuel 23:8-39

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. What kind of leader do you want to be? Some of you think about yourselves as a leader already, so that's probably a question you've already asked. But other people listening to this, maybe you don't think of yourself as a leader. And so maybe you're thinking you should tune out and move on, but not so fast. Because if you think that, it's probably only because we tend to define leadership far too,

narrowly in our world. When we think about leaders, we think of business owners, CEOs, pastors, politicians, or managers, but the reality is that everyone is a leader. And everyone is a leader in more dimensions than they imagine, even the CEOs and the politicians. If you have children, then you're a leader in your home. If you serve in student ministries at your church, you're a leader at your church. If you're a nurse and you care for patients, you're a leader. If you're scheduling meetings with fellow students for a group project, you're a leader. If you're just a friend who helps friends, we're in need, well, you're a leader. Wherever you have formal or informal responsibility to take care of others and to guide them in any way,

well, in those places, you're a leader. And that means we're all leaders. If not now, we have been in the past. And as life goes on, we all become leaders in different ways and different dimensions. and that means it's never too soon or too late to ask this question, what kind of leader do you want to be? Because God cares tremendously about leadership. In part, that's because God himself is a leader.

The Bible calls him the king of kings, the leader over every leader. And that's true whether or not those political leaders realize it. Jesus himself was called the Messiah, which is the Hebrew word for the Anointed One. and the anointed one in Israel was the king, the leader. So perhaps there's an even better question than the one I've been asking. What kind of leader does the king of kings want you to be?

One day you will stand before him and he will take the measure of your leadership. He'll ask you how you dealt with leadership, how you dealt with the responsibility that he entrusted to you, how you cared or didn't care for the people that he put into your care. As we come towards the end of 2 Samuel, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the narrator wants us to reflect on the life and leadership of David. He was Israel's most important king before Jesus, and it's clear that the narrator wants to do so precisely because David's life of leadership was complex. At times it was ideal and beautiful and noble, and at other times it was corrupt and broken. In 2 Samuel 23, we meet David's 37 mighty warriors.

These are the men that David most carefully and closely led during his military campaigns. And it's easy to get fixated on their stories because honestly, they are super interesting. Just consider Shemah. In verse 11, we read, When the Philistines banded together at a place where there was a field full of lentils, Israel's troops fled from them. But Shemah took a stand in the middle of the field. He defended it and struck the Philistines down, and the Lord brought about a great victory.

Or we could consider Benaya. Verse 20. Beniah, son of Jehoiada, a valiant fighter from Kabziel, performed great exploits. He struck down Moab's two mightiest warriors. He also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. And he struck down a huge Egyptian. Although the Egyptian had a spear in his hand, Benaya went against him with a club. he snatched the spear from the Egyptian's hand and killed him with his own spear.

Sometimes we read these stories and we think that the lesson is that God wants us to be courageous, mighty warriors, and I suppose there's a truth to that. And yet Jesus calls those who are his servants to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. The New Testament tells us that our enemies are not flesh and blood, but the spiritual forces of darkness, sin, and the flesh. And our means of fighting, well, it's not with steel and spears, but with the word of God and the power of his spirit. Nonetheless, this chapter, 2nd Samuel 23, isn't really about David's mighty warriors. It's about David. It's about his reign and the kind of leader that he was.

And we see this in a story at the center of David's mighty men, and we see an implied story at the end when the narrator gives his last mighty man. So let's go ahead and start in the middle. Verse 14. At that time, David was in the strong, hold, and the Philistine Garriston was at Bethlehem. David longed for a drink of water and said, oh, that someone would give me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem. Now let's pause. David is in the cave of Adulam, so he's not asking for water from Bethlehem

because it's just his favorite brand. It's likely that he and his warriors were starved for water. They were thirsty. And the implication is that David himself was refusing water so that others around him could survive the harsh conditions. The story continues. Verse 16. So the three mighty warriors broke through Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem, and carried it back to David, but he refused to drink it. Instead, he poured it before the Lord. Far be it from me, Lord, to do this, he said. Is it not the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives? And David would not drink it. So what do we take away from this story? Well, I don't think it's that we should be mighty warriors with the blind courage to go behind

enemy lines to satisfy their leader's thirst. The point of the story is to show David at his best, to show us the right kind of leadership. You see, the right kind of leadership is selfless leadership. This is the leader who eats last, who serves first, who ensures that others are taking care of before he's taking care of himself. The popular idea that we need to do self-care before we do others' care is not found in the Bible's leadership manual. But this passage goes one step further. It shows that David values the lives of those in his care over his own life. When his men risked their lives to pamper him, David refuses to honor their wild risk. Instead, he pours the water out, and in effect he says, you are more valuable to me than my own life.

I am a king because I serve you. I put you first. Some people have called this servant leadership, and it's not a bad term. It refers to Jesus' teaching that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, that the greatest leader is the one he becomes a servant of all. And this is the inverse of how the ancient world thought, and of course it's the inverse of how our own world thinks about leadership. We love to pamper our leaders. We serve them, and our leaders expect those under them to be subservient to him, to honor them as first and foremost, among all things. But that's not the kind of leader David was, and it's not the kind of leader that Jesus was. But it turns out that later on in life, David did become that kind of leader. Second Samuel 23 goes on to list 30 of David's mighty warriors by name,

and the narrator includes one name at the end of the list. And this being at the end, it's not an accident. It's there to make a point. We read in verse 39, this name, and Eurya. the Hittite. That single verse is a hyperlinked to David's darkest day. When David stole Yariah's wife and then had Yariah put to death to cover up his own misdeeds, David, the mighty leader put Yariah, the loyal follower, to death, out of self-interest. In that moment, David thought, the first shall be first and the servant shall be worth nothing at all.

So what kind of leader do you want to be? the kind of leader who goes first or the kind of leader who goes last. The kind of leader who demands that other people make sacrifices or the kind of leader who takes up her own cross. The kind of leader who expects to be served or the one who serves others and takes responsibility for others to her own cost. Which one do you want to be? The servant leader or the leader who commands and demands and always puts her interest

above the interest of others. Jesus answered that question himself on the cross, and in doing so he freed us to answer likewise. How can we who were saved by a self-sacrificing king, not want to reflect that beauty in our own leadership? Even more so, how can we who have received everything in Christ not be freed to give everything away for others? Because we know that even if we give up our own life, even if we give up our comfort, even if we give up our sleep, even if we give up our energy, and our interest, we know that we cannot lose the thing that we treasure most, the love of our king, Jesus. So what kind of leader are you at home in your office, at school amongst friends? What kind of leader is the king of kings calling you to be? Come to him in confession today.

Of the ways that you've commanded and demanded and put yourself first, receive his forgiveness and allow His spirit to conform you to the image of the great King of Kings who laid down his life for his servants.