Message – “Faithful, Flawed and After God’s Heart”
Does anyone hear enjoy doing puzzles? What do you enjoy the most about doing puzzles?
Here’s another question: Do you ever feel like figuring out your life is like trying to solve a large, thousand-piece puzzle that doesn’t have a picture on the box?
Well, how do you sort yourself out? How do you sort out the pieces? That’s what I wanna talk about today.
How do you make peace… with your life as it is now, with your past, and move forward, hopefully not totally encumbered by your past, not ruled by what has happened in your life so far. How do you sort yourself out?
“Have you ever tried to clean out a messy closet? You start with good intentions, pulling everything out to sort through it.
But an hour later, you’re just sitting there, surrounded by piles of old stuff, wondering how your life got to this point. You find an old jacket, try it on, get distracted by some old photos, and eventually, you just shove everything back in and close the door.
That’s how a lot of us deal with our past. We don’t really sort it out—we just push it aside and hope it doesn’t spill out at the wrong moment.
One way of coming to a greater understanding of ourselves, is to think in terms of critical moments, scenes or snapshots from life. Ones that made some kind of impact.
I have snapshots from my life: my very first memory is being screamed at by my mother because I jumped out of the van my family had been driving in for 6 hours straight on the way to Mexico.
And with the energy of a 4 year old on fire, so to speak, I was about to run into a massive, deep gorge. So my first memory is of my life being saved by my mother.
Of course there were negative moments. We all have negative snapshots in our heads, and what we do with them has a big impact on how we sort ourselves out and how we progress in life. We can choose ourselves how much we might choose to focus on them.
In fact even as we try to figure ourselves out, the parts of our lives that we choose to focus on and concentrate our energies on often have an impact on how we experience the day and how we experience life overall.
But the truth is that we are in control of those snapshots, those pieces of memory, those Recalls of our life experience, and we have the agency, the ability, to determine at what distance from our lives painful snapshots stay.
Likewise we can choose which positive snapshots we allow to inhabit our imaginations.
Do I keep traumatic moments right in front of me, frequently thinking about them, frequently talking about them, essentially keeping alive those passing seconds or hours or days, when they really belong in a place of memory, in the past.
I did that with the moment of my brother’s death.
What were passing, semi-conscious moments for him lived on for many months - years even - in my mind. It was not good.
Or do I accept that by God’s power and because of His love and power at work in my life, I can learn to keep those dark moments behind me, at the fringes, the very edges of my awareness, because I choose to enter into NOW without the burden of that memory.
This was the situation for David, as we will see. David had a lot of pain in his background. He was the runt of the litter in his family, the youngest, mostly forgotten, under-rated son of Jesse.
Later in life, as we will see, David did some mighty dumb things for which he had to live with the consequences his entire life.
But, like David did, we can choose to not be defined by that pain, that trauma, those awful moments, that suffering in our pasts. We can choose instead to allow God to define who we are.
We can let God be God and make us that new creation that we are promised that we are and are becoming.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] the old has gone, the new is here!
Today is the first Sunday of Lent, a time of year in the Christian calendar when followers of Jesus have the opportunity to reflect on Jesus’ journey to the cross.
A brother in Christ, Henri Nouwen, said, Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking fullness of life in us right now. Lent is a summons to live anew (in Christ).
Today we are going to spend some time in the Old Testament, also known as the Hebrew Bible.
And we’re going to look at scenes from the life of one of the important people in history who was of the line of Jesus: King David.
We will look at David’s character and some snapshots from his life,
and consider his place in the story of Jesus.
I’ve always found King David to be one of the most fascinating guys in the Bible. There is so much about him that you wouldn’t normally expect to find written about a king.
There’s so much in there that you’d think should have been covered up or glossed over. But in the Bible we get a really transparent, blunt look at David’s life.
David was a shepherd, hunter, warrior, general, king, poet, champion, outlaw, ladies man, musician, prophet,
worship leader, adulterer, murderer, brother, husband, son, parent, leader, hero, builder, ancestor of Jesus Christ, a man after God’s own heart!
The Thompson Chain reference Bible, “No Bible character more fully illustrates the moral range of human nature”.
That’s why I think it’s good to have a look at this fellow. Let’s look at some snapshots of David’s life.
David’s Calling
What was David up to before he knew he was to be king?
The Old Testament book of 1st Samuel talks about God telling the prophet Samuel to talk to Jesse, David’s father.
So Samuel meets Eliab, Jesse’s oldest son, and is very impressed with the way Eliab presents himself.
But God says to Samuel: "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart". 1 Sam 16:7
Another 6 sons of Jesse are paraded by Samuel. But God says: 1 Sam 16:10 "The LORD has not chosen these."
Then, almost forgotten and definitely not taken very seriously, Samuel has David, the youngest, the baby of the family, busy labouring in the outback, takin’ care of a bunch of sheep... Interestingly, God’s chosen leader of His people would be a shepherd.
Samuel sees David and the Lord says to Samuel: "Rise and anoint him; he is the one."
So in this snapshot of David we see him as a labourer without prestige, busy at his task at hand, humble and low down on the totem pole as the youngest brother of seven,
busy with his hand to the plow, so to speak; not, as far as we can tell at this point, made from the stuff of kings.
And yet he’s proclaimed to be the future sovereign king of God’s people. Good start. That’s a vision from God, not David’s pipe dream, not a delusion.
David and Goliath
Goliath was no slight fella. Goliath was a big Philistine. Here’s how the Bible describes him: 1 Sam 17:4-7 “He was over nine feet tall. 5 He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing 126 pounds 6 on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. 7 His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed 15 pounds”.
This day and age we might be a little suspicious at how big the Bible describes Goliath. Anyone here see the movie: The Princess Bride? Well, Andre the Giant, who played Fezzik, was 7 feet, 5 inches, but he was only the ninth tallest professional wrestler in history.
The tallest man living today, as measured by Guiness World Records, is Sultan Kösen of Turkey who is 251 cm (8 ft 2.8 in).
Robert Wadlow was even taller at 8 ft 11.1 inches.
Goliath was not just the brute squad, he was pretty clever. You see the Philistine army was facing the army of Israel, about to go into a pitched battle.
Normally in this type of situation everybody on both sides just starts fighting and there’s blood and guts everywhere.
Goliath suggested that instead of this type of carnage, Israel should send out one soldier to fight against him.
That way if Goliath wins Israel’s army gets to live, but as slaves to the Philistines.
If the Israeli fighter wins, the Philistines become slaves to Israel. But again, they live. Sounds like a plan, eh?
The problem was, of course, there were no takers on Israel’s side. There was no one brave enough or valiant enough or stupid enough (depending how you see it) to put his neck on the line for a fight to the death with this boxcar of a Philistine.
Now David was a little guy whose job it was to run rations to his brothers near the front lines.
One day as he’s doing this he sees that both armies are just about ready to pummel each other because no one had taken the bait from Goliath.
David inquires and hears that the king (Saul) would give tons of money, his gorgeous daughter and his left foot to the man who would take Goliath on and defeat him.
Saul, of course, knew that the defeated king in these situations never lives long after the battle
Let’s just say he’s motivated to find someone to take Goliath on.
David puts this all together and with the combination of knowing the benefits to himself of beating this brute, and some apparent righteous indignation at the arrogance of Goliath:
“Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?", David agrees to fight Goliath despite serious pressure from embarrassed and jealous brothers.
David ends up going face to face with the giant Goliath, who is decked out with the latest designer soldier-wear.
David is wearing nothing but a sling and a prayer. Let’s pick up here in the Scriptures:
1 Sam 17: “Then (David) took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine. 41 Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. 42 He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him. 43 He said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 "Come here," he said, "and I’ll give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field!"
45 David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head... and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands."
David takes the sling and some stones and with his first try sinks a stone into Goliath’s brain. There’s some more messy stuff that happens with Goliath’s head that we won’t go into.
What does this episode tell you about David? Is he an opportunist who capitalizes on Saul’s vulnerable situation, or is he someone who really wants to assert the power and authority of the Lord?
Does he act out of love for himself or love for God? Does he have motive, or the other?
Sometimes we like to think that that’s the way it works.
That as we look at David we see him in stories where he’s good, and then we see him in stories where he’s bad.
We look at the good stories and we say, we’ll that’s when he was serving God fully, and we look at the bad stories that are coming up later today and we say that’s when David was completely backslidden.
I don’t think David, or we, are quite that black and white.
What I’m seeing as we explore these snapshots of David is a fellow who is faced with many choices, some good, some bad, some really, really bad...and some really, really good.
And these choices are always before him. When he chooses the good, it’s not easy to do so and things don’t always go smoothly for him after doing the right thing.
When he chooses the bad, as we’ll see, all's not lost, although there are some pretty serious consequences to his actions.
He’s a complicated guy who becomes a complicated king.
That’s what makes him interesting. Let’s look at another picture of David:
David and Saul
This is a pretty drawn out story but in a real nutshell, David had been anointed Israel’s first king, because Saul had shown himself unworthy of the title. He was not faithful to God.
Samuel proclaims and anoints David, but in the real world at that point Saul is still functioning as king, and he’s getting increasingly loopier as time progresses.
Despite his own rights to the throne, despite the fact the Saul had in fact lost the anointing of God to be king (God had withdrawn his Spirit from him), David showed nothing but respect for Saul and reverence for the crown.
Despite this Saul tries to kill David several times. Although he was the hunted, David defers to Saul, submits to his kingship, until the day that Saul dies.
This says to me that David at times made choices that showed that he saw things clearly.
Whatever longing David had for the crown, it seems that he understood at a pretty deep level that he being king was about God’s glory and not his own.
There was in David this precious quality - humility. He was not arrogant. He was not proud.
He could have been, because he was told by Samuel the prophet that he was going to be king.
But he was humble. We will see more of that in a little while.
Before that we’ll ponder an x-rated episode in David’s life that demonstrated pretty phenomenal egotism and evil
and amazing bad behaviour for a king, for a man and for one of God’s own.
David and Bathsheba
David is now king. It was spring, the time when kings go off to war. But David didn’t go off to war. That was his first problem. David sent out his army, but he remained in Jerusalem.
2 Samuel 11:2-5 [Text beside pic] says this: “One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her.... 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."
Oops! Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, returns from the battlefield at David’s command.
David, really seriously wanting this whole affair to never have happened, tries to get Uriah to go home to his wife so that Uriah will think in the end that the child his wife bears is his own.
Uriah, in a gesture that surely must have utterly humiliated David, refuses the luxury of home and comfort and the arms of his wife while his men, the soldiers who have fought David’s battles at his side, are sleeping in the open field, risking their lives for David and for Israel.
Maybe awed and shamed by Uriah’s integrity and honour, perhaps just really in a blind, stupid panic, David sends Uriah back to the war front with a sealed letter to his commander instructing that commander to make sure Uriah goes to the front of battle.
This is the letter: “Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die."
Uriah of course dies. Bathsheba, who is only a victim in this, mourns for her husband who David has murdered
Cut to one year later. Bathsheba has had David’s baby.
David has an important ally in Nathan, another prophet of God. Nathan comes to David. And he tells David a story:
“ "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
4 "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him." 5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."
7 Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the LORD , the God of Israel, says: ’I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. 9 Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? ou struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’
Let’s stop for a second. Try to forget that you know what happens next. What do you think might be going through David’s mind as Nathan begins to turn the tables in the story and identifies David as the culprit?
You know, David had a range of options. Kings in David’s day did not have the type of accountability for their behaviour that Prime Ministers and Presidents have in theory today.
David could have commanded Nathan to be silent... forbidden him to speak of this again anywhere under pain of death. We might have expected him to do that.
David could have had Nathan killed right there on the spot. Hidden his sin with another deadly cover-up. He covered it up before, he could do it again.
Sin has that nasty way normally snow-balling in our lives doesn’t it? WE tell one lie and have to remember who we told that lie to. Then another lie to cover up the first lie.
It gets very complicated. It snowballs. Unless...unless we make the choice to not cover it up.
Unless we make the choice to confess our sin, to break its power of shame and humiliation in our lives.
We’ll, David could have done one of those things I just mentioned to Nathan, and then his story and a lot of what was to happen later would be very, very different.
Instead, David allowed the piercing light of truth into his darkness.
He had lived with this sin for over a year. He had buried any noticeable regret about it and gotten with his life. Was he unaffected by it? Of course not.
Sin that is undealt with, unforgiven or deeply patterned in our lives, cannot help but impact our lives.
It can render us deaf to the voice of God, insensitive to the gentle nudgings of the Holy Spirit.
It can even distort our view of God and His holiness.
David had gone on with his life, but thank God for Nathan, who is worth a study in holy tact himself.
David’s response?
Psa 51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Psa 51:2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Psa 51:3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
David confessed his desire for God’s mercy and love, because he knew that his sin had coloured his world black. His adultery had stained him. And he was guilty of the murder of another man.
He didn’t block out or justify his sin or try to explain his actions. He wasn’t looking for excuses. But he was looking to be excused, to be forgiven by the only one who could forgive.
Psa 51:4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Psa 51:5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Psa 51:6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts ; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
David grasped the seriousness of sin. Yes, he had sinned against Bathsheba, yes he had sinned against Uriah,
but compared to the standard of the holiness of God, and knowing how personally God cared about his life and his actions,
David confessed that He had sinned against God and that God was right to demand better of him and to judge him for his failings.
David speaks here of the depth of sin. It’s not just actions. Stuff we do that offends God.
It’s an attitude, ingrained from conception...it’s an attitude of rebellion, of defiance. The book of James speaks of how sinful thoughts give birth to sinful actions which lead to death.
Yet God wants to put his truth in us. It is his truth that we cleave to that gives us power to resist our sinful desires. His Word goes inside us and teaches us wisdom. Amen?
Psa 51:7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Psa 51:8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Psa 51:9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Psa 51:10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Psa 51:11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Psa 51:12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Psa 51:13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Psa 51:14 Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. Psa 51:15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. Psa 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
There’s something about sin that’s chaotic, that messes us up deeply inside. That can move us out of the will of God, that corrupts and deadens us.
But there is something about confession, about lining ourselves up with the truth of God, about repenting and turning away from sinful actions and attitudes, that rearranges the furniture in this temple of flesh.
Instead of our brows heavy and covered with shame, there is a spring to our step. Instead of wasting time doing stupid stuff, there’s energy for good things.
Instead of doing stuff that ends up with very negative spiritual consequences, there’s an investment in things that honour God and have life in them.
Shame, waste and death. That’s David’s experience of sin.
That’s probably the human experience of sin. Creativity, life and joy is the fruit of a life lived for God and in obedience to him.
David knew that he needed God’s forgiveness. He needed to rely on God to be made clean of his sin. David also knew that he had been given a throne from which to rule.
He had a calling from God that his sin, unconfessed and unrepented of and thus unforgiven, was threatening to destroy.
So he said: Psa 51:7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Psa 51:9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Psa 51:10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Many years later an angel would speak to a young girl in Israel:
Luke 1:30"Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. Luke 1:31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. Luke 1:32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, Luke 1:33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never
end."
This child was to be the Christ of God, who would come to us through the line of David and who would deliver to the world the forgiveness that David sought for himself in Psalm 51.
Revelation 5:5 says: “See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed...Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne...He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.
And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb...And they sang a new song: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation”.
I hope that we all get a glimpse of God’s heart in this study of David’s life. God didn’t have in David a clean-cut, morally upright fellow.
God held David in His hands, and it’s fair to say that in David God had a real mess on his hands.
David was not a bad man who did some good things. He was not a good man who did some bad things. David was a real, honest to goodness human being who more often than not was a real mess.
But David loved God. David sought God. He honoured God’s Word. When confronted with his sin he did not exercise the right of kings to kill the messenger - Nathan.
He did not do what so many do when they hear the gospel - mock the very idea of sin and of our need for a Saviour.
Instead he heard the truth about himself and wrote a song, Psalm 51. He let this terrible truth about himself become a revelation of a wonderful truth about God.
God forgives. Makes us clean. Makes us whiter than snow. In Christ Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, the Lamb of God,
God the Father does indeed blot out all of our iniquities, and creates a pure heart where now there may be a broken, sin-stained heart.
His Spirit, which lives in those who believe, does renew us daily, making God’s mercies fresh to us,
making his grace to us that gift that transforms us into the people God wants us to be, who we were intended to be from the very beginning.
We may at times look frankly at our own lives and say that, you know, in us, as with David, God has a real mess on his hands.
David’s life shows us that this is not a problem for God, when we make the choice to be humble about who we are, to repent of and not justify our sins. When we admit who we are and when we make the choice to rely, really rely on the grace and goodness of God to see us through.
David’s life teaches us that the snapshots of our past don’t have to define our future.
He had moments of triumph, like defeating Goliath, but also moments of failure, like his sin with Bathsheba and the consequences that followed.
Yet, David chose to confront his past through confession and repentance, as seen in Psalm 51, rather than letting those dark moments consume him.
In doing so, he acknowledged the power of God to cleanse and renew him, freeing him from the weight of shame and regret.
Like David, we all have snapshots of pain, failure, or trauma, but we also have the ability to choose how much power we give them. When we bring those memories to God and align ourselves with His truth, He helps us place them in the past where they belong.
This doesn't erase our experiences but allows us to learn from them without being ruled by them.
God’s work in David’s life shows us that our mess doesn’t hinder His grace; it amplifies His transformative power.
He clears the path for us to live better lives, filling us with joy, creativity, and purpose.
Ultimately, by focusing on God’s love and mercy rather than our flaws, we can become the people He intended us to be—new creations in Christ. But we need to come to Jesus Christ for this to find life in us. We need to turn TO the One who gave His life for us to reconcile us to God.
The God that David worshiped would come to us in the fresh in the person of Jesus.
And He would pay to reconcile us to God, to heal our relationship with God, to forgive us of our sins, with His very life on the cross.
Have you come to Jesus Christ in faith, trusting that His sacrifice on the cross happened because He is love, and He loves you enough to lay down His life for your salvation, for your healing, for your peace?
If you know Jesus, you know the peace I am talking about. If you follow the way of Jesus you know that, compared to the peace that the world offers, the peace that comes into our lives from following and obeying Jesus is SO MUCH better.
If you don’t know Jesus, I want to give an opportunity for you to accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, as the king of your life, as the One you will follow all the days of your life.
I’m going to pray a prayer, and if you want to, you can repeat after me.
I know I’m a sinner, and I ask for your forgiveness. I believe Jesus Christ is Your Son. I believe that He died
for my sin and that you raised Him to life.
I want to trust Him as my Savior and follow Him as Lord, from this day forward. Lord Jesus, I believe that You gave your life for my sins. Guide my life and help me to do your will.
I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.”
I repent of my sins – I choose to turn from them and toward You.
I thank you for the gift of salvation that comes only through Jesus. I now receive Jesus Christ into my life as my Lord and Saviour. Amen
If you prayed that prayer and you meant it, that means that you have taken the first step in a life-long journey with Jesus that will actually never end.
I encourage you to speak with myself or Darlene or Breda or Laurie to learn how you can take the next steps in following Jesus. It is an amazing journey.
May God bless you and keep you, may He make His face shine upon you and give you His peace.
Amen.
