Getting Back On Tack: How Do I Come Back
2 Samuel 12:1-31 John 21:15-25 7/15/2012 Calvary
Have you ever tried to fix something or a situation, and the more time you spent trying to fix it the worse it became? We’re going to look at why fixing stuff our way does not always work. We are in the third part of our series, “Getting Back On Track”. Pastor Toby did part 1 with “What’s Got My Eye”, Pastor Kellie did part 2 with “How Did I Mess Up”, and I will be doing part 3 with “How Do I Come Back.” Pastor Toby will return with the final message, “What Is My Purpose.”
One of the most interesting people in the Bible is a man by the name of David. The label that sticks to him from the Bible is a “a man after God’s own heart.” David as a very young man was specifically chosen by God to be the second king of Israel. Although he was the youngest of eight sons, God chose him because he had examined David’s heart. David was anointed by God, and as a young man who had never fought in battle before, he volunteered to fight a veteran enemy soldier who stood over nine feet tall. The soldier was Goliath who terrorized the entire army of Israel. With God on his side, David defeated this soldier who came at him with a sword and spear while David had five stones and a slingshot.
David’s success over Goliath led him to the top of the king’s army. David knew victory after victory in battles. The king eventually became jealous of David and tried to kill David. But through some very difficult times while being pursued by the King, David stayed faithful to God. Eventually the king was killed and David became king in his place. Everywhere David turned, he was granted military victories by God. His kingdom continued to expand. The people loved their king and he was as about as popular as a king could be in the heart of his people.
But then one day when the king should have been out in battle with his troops, he stayed home. That night he saw a married woman taking a bath while looking down from his palace rooftop. It was something that caught his eye. Next thing he knew, he had sent for this woman named Bathsheba and had sex with her for just a one night stand. He probably quietly confessed his sin to God and thought nothing more of it, until she sent a note a few months later indicating that she was pregnant. There was no need for any DNA testing. It had to be David’s child, because her husband, Uriah, one of David’s most trusted men, had been away fighting the king’s battle.
David tried fixing this little problem by having Uriah sent home from the army to have some rest and relaxation with his wife, so that he could pass the pregnancy off on Uriah as being the father. Uriah came from battle, but would not go home to have sex with his wife. David tried getting him drunk in hopes that would cause Uriah to go home to be with his wife. Uriah did not go home again. What on earth could David do now? What would a man after God’s own heart do when he gets off track? He will do things unthinkable. Have you ever had some unthinkable thoughts of what you might do in a situation? That should cause us to be more compassionate to those in our midst who have gotten off track.
Instead of confession that would lead to embarrassment and a possible scandal in the palace, David goes even further off track. So David sends a note by Uriah to the officer Joab instructing Joab, to “put Uriah in the thickest part of the battle, and then leave him there so that the enemy could strike him down.” Uriah was such a faithful servant of David that he is listed among David’s top 37 men in the entire army. David’s attempt to fix the problem went from deception to murder of a man who trusted him fully. All David had originally planned for was a ½ night stand. Sometimes we can’t plan to get off track just a little bit because we don’t know when all of a sudden the tracks drop off into a steep dive, taking us much further and faster than we had hoped to go.
After Uriah had been killed, to show his appreciation for this warrior who would have gladly given his life for his king, David sends for Bathsheba to come and be his wife, and he will raise the child as his own. To some people, David seemed like the most honorable of men. Who would marry a pregnant woman as the king had done, when he could have had any beautiful woman as his wife? That one look that had caught his eye, had led David to put his life in a mess. How does one go from being a man after God’s own heart, to an adulterer, and on to a murderer? He thought he could get back on track with God by keeping this whole thing a secret.
Secrets can become prisons that rob us of our relationship to God. We may want to get back on track with the Lord, but it just does not seem to work. We can lose so much once the secret comes out. If you would have seen David a few months after taking in Bathsheba, and seeing him with his new son, you might have thought everything was well. That he was the same old David before all this took place. But inside there was a change gnawing at him. He wrote in Psalm 32:3-4 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away, through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.”
We all have the right to choose to sin and to do what we want to do. But let us not think, we can always get out of the mess we create without some long term scars being left in our lives. Trying to cover up what we have done is not the way to get back on track. God always reserves the right to bring what we do in darkness out into the open light. It’s part of the disciplinary process we are promised in Hebrews. Those whom the Lord loves, the Lord disciplines.
David arrived at the palace just like any other day. He was convinced that all was well and that life would go on as usual. God sent Nathan the prophet to David, and Nathan told David a brief story. The story involved a rich man who had many sheep and cattle, who brutally took a poor man’s single lamb who was more like a family pet in order to serve the lamb as dinner to guest of the rich man.
David was furious and said the rich man deserved to die and should be required to pay for that lamb four times over. Isn’t it strange how the sin of others just seem so much worse than our own. David is angry over a rich man killing a pet lamb, but was at ease ordering a someone’s husband, someone’s son, someone’s brother to be murdered so that he could look good as being something he was not.
When Nathan told David, he was no better than the man in the story, and that he too deserved to die David realized all his attempts to cover his tracks had failed. This entire thing he had done in trying to get out of his mess had displeased the Lord. God said after all I had done for you, you stole Uriah’s wife and had him killed with the sword of the Ammonites. As punishment, someone close to you will sleep with your wives, you will have calamity in your own household, and your nation will continually be at war. What you did was done in secret, but your punishment will be open for everyone to see.”
David is now at a crossroad in his life. As king, he could order that Nathan be executed before his message gets out to others. He could continue down that line of cover up, but who knows where it would all end. David had drifted so far off the path of walking with the Lord. He had spent a whole year telling himself that what he had done was alright in the long run. Who knows, Uriah may have died in battle anyways. He had tried to make things right with Bathsheba and he was raising this little boy as he should have been. What more could God have expected of him to do?
It is easy for us to live in opposition to the revealed will of God for our lives and tell ourselves, we’re doing nothing wrong or else to find comfort in knowing, what I’m doing is not nearly as bad as what they are doing. In our New Testament reading, we ran into a disciple by the name of Peter. Peter was one of Jesus’ closest disciples and he swore to Jesus that he would die before he disowned Jesus. But when Jesus was arrested, 3 times Peter denied having anything to do with Jesus. After Jesus was resurrected from the dead, Jesus had a one on one talk with Peter. He asked Peter, “Peter do you love me more than these.”
Jesus is asking us, “do we love Him more than what it is we are covering or keeping in secret.” We may say, how dare you compare my love to Jesus with my choice to sin. I didn’t compare it, Jesus did, for it was Jesus who said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” The thing is we serve a God, who when we break those commandments, He waits to see if we will turn back to him or go on living breaking commandments.
David wanted to come back to the Lord. He had lost the joy of his salvation. Sure he was still king, but he knew God’s presence was missing from his life. He was worried that as God’s spirit had left King Saul earlier, God would take his Spirit from him. Are you listening to the spirit of God in your life today, or are you just going through the motions of being a Christian.
For the first time since this whole thing started with that look, for the fist time since the cover-begun, for the first time since he fooled himself for nearly a year that all was well, in verse 13 of chapter 12, David humbles himself and makes a public confession “I have sinned against the Lord.” Do we recognize as believers, that our sin is not just against another person. Our sin is a sin against the Lord. When we name the name of Jesus Christ, and call God our Father, we are stamped as one of God’s chosen children. God’s name is so connected to us, that our sin attached itself to the name of God Himself.
Have we come to the point of taking that first step of getting back on track which is to acknowledge that we have sinned against the Lord. The second step is being willing to accept hat there will be some painful consequences for the decisions that we have made. God is eager to remove our sin, but sometimes God allows the consequences to take their natural course and sometimes God sends consequences to remind us that God is in charge of this world.
The moment David came clean, and said “I have sinned against the Lord,” he expected to die for his actions. But Nathan replied to him “The Lord had taken away your sin, You are not going to die. But because by doing this, you have made the enemies of the Lord show utter contempt, the son born to you will die.” I want you to notice that David did not have to do anything great before God, or make a hundred promises of what he was going to do to have his sin forgiven. He just had to admit and confess to start the process of coming back to God.
The forgiveness of his sin, meant that he was restored back in his relationship to God, but it did not mean everything was going to fall into his place and he would live happily ever after. It meant that he would have the strength and presence of God to face the painful consequences that would surely come into his life.
After Nathan left, the Lord struck the child with an illness. David pleaded with the Lord for the child’s life. If someone were to die, he wanted it to be him. It seemed as though his world was falling apart. But my friends when we think our world is falling apart, recognize that this is God’s world and God is still in charge. There will some good days in life and there will be some we wish we had never seen. As believers in Jesus Christ, we accept them both as having a purpose in our lives from God.
David fasted, prayed, and humbled himself by sleeping on the ground. A king should never lie on the ground, but David wanted to completely humble himself before God. He prayed fervently that God would change his mind and heal his son. He did this for seven days, but on the seventh day, the child died.
The king’s staff were so concerned about David that they were afraid to tell him the child had died because they thought he might try to kill himself or something. But when David saw them whispering to each other, he knew the child must have died. He immediately got up from the ground, took a bath, changed his clothes and went into the house of the Lord to worship. He then went back to his own house.
The servant staff was amazed that David acted this way now that the child was dead. They asked him to explain himself. David said while the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live. Now that the child is dead, I can’t bring him back again. But one day I will go be with him. Because David was back on track, he knew that he and his son was going to be reunited in heaven. This child went straight to be with the Lord.
David went to comfort Bathsheba in the loss of her son. She later gave birth to another son. The Lord was pleased with this son Solomon and called him Jedidiah which means loved by the Lord. There was no resentment or anger from God toward David and Bathsheba. God still desired a personal relationship with them both and God still desired to use them. They still had some difficult days ahead, but they knew they would have God on their side through it all. They both had come back and gotten back on track.
Even in our mess ups God is able to come through and cleanup and get is going in the right direction again. But there is always a price to pay when we get off track. It means we have some difficult choices to make in the future if we are to be restored. Not making the tough decision, is actually making a decision. It means enduring some setbacks and losses. Rarely is there a painless path to getting back on track. Jesus is willing to walk with you through the consequences if you are willing to seek forgiveness and admit, having sinned against God.
God does not want you walking around with a load of guilt and a cart of “if only I had not of.” God wants to make you whole again. God wants you to come back home. But you have to admit, that you’re not okay and you really do need to come back home. You really do need to give your life to Jesus Christ so that you can be cleansed and made new. It’s not to be your promises to try harder that will cleanse you from your sin. It will be the blood that Jesus shed on the cross which cleanses us all from sin, if we’re willing to humble ourselves and receive it.
God didn’t give David all that he deserved, which was two death sentences. Instead he gave him the chance to change the ending of what his life story would be. It is our confession that unleashes the grace of God in our lives. God can use the worse of the worst of us and turn us into a trophy of His grace and His mercy. God wants you to know, you can back today if your want to.
