King David was a champion for God but he did not live a Teflon lifestyle.
The problems, difficulties, and sorrows of life did not slide past him. He
lived a difficult, tragic, and lonely life. His was a life of brokenness.
Great men and women of God are not great because they escape their problems.
They are great because they know how to go to God with their problems in
brokenness.
The Bible doesn't sanitize its characters before presenting them to us. They
are presented with all of their sin and uncertainty. This is why we are
given the brutal truth about David and his life - his sinfulness, his
blindness, and the consequences of his sin. Time and again, God forgave
David, but He didn't overrule the consequences of David's sin.
In many ways, the Bible's 66 chapters about David would make for a wild
Hollywood soap opera. Everything is there - murder, adultery, incest.
However, there is a difference between David's true-life drama in the Word
of God and a Hollywood soap opera. The Bible reveals to us the wages of sin
while Hollywood sanitizes, glamorizes, and sugarcoats the consequences of
sin.
Ignoring God's will may be accompanied by successes in the beginning but
give this behavior some time, and the wages of sin will become clear. As the
heart hardens, no sermon, no preacher, no friend, and no church will be able
to get through to that person until the Spirit of God breaks them.
David thought that he had gotten away with his sexual sin with Bathsheba. He
didn't understand that God's justice may take a long time but it will always
come. The law of God was clear and the punishment for adultery in the Old
Testament was stoning. Both the adulterer and the adulteress were to be
stoned to death. David tried to escape the law by arranging for Bathsheba's
husband, Uriah, to be killed.
Months passed and everyone forgot about the sin except for God. Through the
prophet Nathan, God brought David under conviction and his response was, "I
sinned before God." His response is an indication of the sorrow and grief he
had over his sin. Every verse of Psalm 51 shows us the depth of his anguish
and the reality of his repentance.
David's repentance is the only true and biblical kind of repentance. It was
genuine because it was accompanied by a desire to forsake his sin. The
consequence of his sin was grave - the death of his son. Still, God forgave
David just as He will forgive us when we come to Him in repentance.
From cover-to-cover, the Bible gives examples of great men and women of God
who exercised genuine repentance - in both word and in deed. Sin is
deceptive and its wages are death. God honors true repentance and gives life
to those who are broken before Him. Today you can ask the Lord to "Restore
unto me the joy my salvation" (Psalm 51:12).
Useful link: www.leadingtheway.org
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