King David Was A Criminal

Sermon 060909: for it’s when we have been restored, we can bring others to the Lord; Psalm 51.

In life there are times and reasons why we don’t believe God would want to have anything to do with us, I’ve even been told by people that, "I’m that bad that God wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me."

Today I’m going to speak about a man that fell out of favour with God

This man wrote a good number of the Psalms, he was the second king of Israel and a human ancestor of Jesus Christ. Yes King David, King David was a criminal.

Now that I have told you that can I give the evidence against him?

It was spring time, now this was when Kings went out to battle, in fact it wasn’t just kings, and it was the blokes who did the fighting for them also.

Now David had been fairly busy, prior to this spring he had defeated the Philistines, Moabites, Zobahites, Syrians, Edomites, and Ammonites. So he stayed home, while he was up on his roof, for that is were kings spend time some there time surveying their kingdoms, he spied a beautiful woman bathing, her name was Bathsheba.

Being the King and liking what he saw he enquired after her, the reply was in short, “she’s Uriah the Hittite’s wife.” Uriah was off at war at the time.

To cut to the chase, it was spring time and Kings it seems have a lot of sway, she ended up pregnant to King David. On hearing this David not wanting scandal decided to get Uriah back from battle so that he would go home to Mrs Uriah, and cunning plan, David would be off the hook.

Uriah though was a loyal bloke and decided that he didn’t deserve the comforts and affections of home while the king’s men were camped in a field. Well what to do?

David came up with another cunning plan, Uriah was off back to war and David told his commander to put Uriah in the thick of the fighting and leave him defenceless. Uriah was killed! David added murder to his adultery.

Then he married Bathsheba. Yip King David was a criminal, “an adulterer and a murder.”

Things went along nicely for about a year. Then Nathan the prophet put King David right on the situation with a parable about a lamb. (Fleur to read from the Message paraphrase)

As a result King David was over come with guilt and there were consequences of his sin, but also forgiveness. I think its well worth reading the rest of this story if you are keen it’s in 2nd Samuel chapters 11 and 12.

David knowing his distance from the will of God cried out to God; this is recorded in Psalm 51. This is a series of three prayers for restoration – these are recorded as a poem.

About the poem, Hebrew poetry is not like our poems, it does not often rhyme. It often utilises parallelism, comparing one verse with the next and in this case a lament a prayer of personal struggle which as we know has for us a positive personal outcome.

The positive personal outcome occurred because of the way David went about praying. So what did David do?

1) David knew God, he was genuine about his need to repent of his sin, so he appealed, That’s right he appealed to God, to God to wash him clean of his sin, in doing so he acknowledged his terrible actions.

In verse three he says “I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. “

I don’t know about you but I guess he was in that place where his actions had been on his mind, like the quilt of gossip over tea cups about old so and so, the unauthorised extended lunch breaks on company time, the webb site you stumbled across and lingered a bit long over, the music down load that’s a bit unhealthy, But in David’s case all of his guilt must have been more intense than these things rolled together, the guilt must have been incredible.

The joy must have been sucked out of his life.

2) In the following verses he continues his pleading to God, he acknowledged his wrong. That’s right he acknowledged his wrong doing. “I’ve sinned, and done evil in your sight, I was sinful at birth, sinful from conception” (paraphrased). So King David is certainly feeling his guilt. He was guilty and had sinned against the Lord. He had acted in a way which was depraved.

3) King David realised that God desired king David to be cleansed, not an external cleansing but cleaning within. This is what God desires; let’s look at what David says. “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inner most place.” (Verse 6)