2 Samuel 11:1-15
In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. 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, 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?" Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant." So David sent this word to Joab: "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent him to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master’s servants and did not go down to his house. When David was told, "Uriah did not go home," he asked him, "Haven’t you just come from a distance? Why didn’t you go home?" Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!" Then David said to him, "Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. At David’s invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master’s servants; he did not go home. In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so that he will be struck down and die."
Psalms 14
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no-one who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no-one who does good, not even one. Will evildoers never learn - those who devour my people as men eat bread and who do not call on the LORD? There they are, overwhelmed with dread, for God is present in the company of the righteous. You evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor, but the LORD is their refuge. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When the LORD restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!
Ephesians 3:14
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
John 6:1-21
Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover Feast was near. When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming towards him, he said to Philip, "Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?" He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Philip answered him, "Eight months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!" Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, "Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." There was plenty of grass in that place, and the men sat down, about five thousand of them. Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted." So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, "Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world." Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, where they got into a boat and set off across the lake for Capernaum. By now it was dark, and Jesus had not yet joined them. A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. When they had rowed three or three and a half miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water; and they were terrified. But he said to them, "It is I; don’t be afraid." Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.
David & Bathsheba
Have you noticed all the hoo-ha in the papers recently about the standards of television today? It seems that our TV channels are filled with programs of depravity. Tales of violence. Stories of drunkenness. Documentaries on sex. Competitions competed in the nude. Holidays programs which offer us it all in one package. They call it Sun, Sea, Sex and Sangria. It’s appalling, they say. It must be stopped.
And have you read the backs of the books they call best sellers? Short racy comments designed to lure into yet another steamy story. Bodice rippers as they are often called. I don’t know if I agree, but these methods certainly seem to get people to watch the programs and buy the books.
I wonder how well this book might sell. The write up on the back says “He was a rich and powerful man. She was a soldier’s wife. Together they shared nights of passion that lead to corruption and murder!” Sounds a good story and if it sold well, perhaps someone would buy the movie rights.
It would have to have some good bits in it. Let’s see. What about a drunken father, that’s usually quite good. What about a community of swingers and wife swappers. Stories of lust and debauchery. Tales of corruption and betrayal. Of war and spies and fighting. This must certainly get the books flying of the shelves in their thousands.
We need a good title. Any ideas? Well I’ve got a book here that has all this plus a lot more. You have probably guessed, it’s the Bible. But if you were to ask people today what was in the Bible they would not describe it how I have. It would be described as a boring book. Full of good people doing good things. Out of date. And so on. Perhaps some of those descriptions would be right but it is not the whole story.
The bible is full of people doing things. Sometimes it is good people doing good things, but is also full of bad people doing good things and good people doing bad things. And it is full of many, many other things as well. So just what is the point? I think that other that the history, what the bible tells us is this:
1. God working through human failures in OT.
God shows us how great things can be done by ordinary people in the OT. People who and not just good or holy, but are ordinary people with ordinary failings. Yet God still uses them for his purpose.
2) Jesus working through human failures in NT.
Jesus shows us in the NT how he can work out God’s plan with ordinary people. He becomes an ordinary human himself. People, ordinary people are part of the Kingdom.
3) Holy Spirit working through human failures in today’s world.
We can see from the later parts of the NT how the Holy Spirit works, once again through ordinary people, and from that we can learn how to see the Holy Spirit still working in the world today.
Let’s start with the OT reading. It was this reading I used for my back cover. The rich and powerful man was David, with Bathsheba, the soldier’s wife. The reading only tells part of the story. First David seduces Bathsheba and she becomes the first person to be tainted. David’s affair and the subsequent pregnancy means that it cannot be kept secret unless they can persuade Uriah to sleep with his wife. Perhaps then Uriah will think it is his, but this fails. His next plan is for Uriah to be trapped in battle and left to die. This makes Joab another to be tainted by David’s sin, made a murderer.
There were many others caught up in this web of intrigue. The guilty who helped in the cover up, and the innocent who died in battle alongside Uriah or were left bereaved by their deaths. So was David good or bad? If we read the whole story we can see that David was generally a good man. A man through which God has shown his work. Out of this fated union came Solomon, born much later. A wise man of God and the one who built the temple. But perhaps one of the most important things is that the story goes on to show how God did not stop loving David.
It would be easy to say that the swathe of destruction deserved total condemnation. The expression “you’ve made your bed, now lie in it” might well be apt. But this is not how God works. He sends Nathan to David so David can see and understand his sins. He is forgiven, but punished. The son conceived in adultery dies but then David and Bathsheba have Solomon. David learns this lesson well and expresses this in the Psalms. David also understands that humans are fallible and will fail, even though they try hard. In our Psalm 14 v3 he says “there is no-one who does good, not even one.”
This is just one of many stories you can find where God uses ordinary people to do his work or to show his love. An OT story of God working through failing humans.
If we now move on to the NT we see how Jesus uses ordinary people, with ordinary failings and weaknesses, to show how God’s love can work. The feeding of the 5000 is a good example, I think. Perhaps the authors of the Gospels agree as this is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels.
How did Jesus manage to feed 5000 people with a bit of bread and a couple of fish? I think that in the crowd were people who had food. Most people at that time would have taken some food for the day out. I suspect that these were normal people and they kept the food to themselves. They would need it later. They would be hungry. It was their’s. I’m not sure that you could really call them selfish or greedy or uncaring for others, they were just ordinary people. There were probably many who came without food. Were they thoughtless or did they expect others to look out for them? Perhaps they were just caught up in the day and did not expect to be out so long. Ordinary people.
Yet when they saw the little boy generously offering his small meal, his caring, his love inspired them all to share what they had with each other. Getting 5000 people to share and care for people they probably did not know is one heck of a miracle.
The Disciples were just ordinary men. Prone to faults, often argumentative, ordinary men. Sometimes scared, like Peter when he ran away and denied Jesus. Sometimes proud, like the disciples who argued who would sit at the right hand of Jesus in the Kingdom. Sometimes failures, as when the disciples found that they could not heal because they did not have faith.
There were many people around Jesus that we might well consider failures but were able to show how God loves and forgives his people. Jesus showed us through his actions how he loves all of us, even when we fail. And even when we fail, we can still show God working in the world. There is much more in the NT where Jesus works through human failure.
My third thought was how we can see the Holy Spirit working through ordinary people in the later part on the NT. I think it might be too easy to use Paul as our example. Paul is a good example as he never met Jesus. As Saul, he thought that he knew so much better than anyone else. He was proud. Proud to be a Pharisee. Proud to be both a Jew and a Roman. He was contemptuous of Christians, he was present at the stoning of Stephen. Yet after his Damascus conversion he became one of the most prominent evangelists.
Yes, perhaps he is too easy to use, but through him, or rather his letters we can see how ordinary people struggled to understand the Gospel of Jesus. How the fledgling churches with all their problems and failures still showed the work of God in his world. We see the church who suggested that if they sinned more, there would be more to forgive and therefore more grace. Nice idea but is does not work. There were many more examples. Lots of letters giving answers. It would be nice to know what the questions were, but we don’t. What we can tell is that, if they were asking questions then they must have thought that they were not doing things right, that they were failing. In many cases they were failing, but they still tried and from these people the work and the word of God spread throughout the world. If you read more of the letters, you will find many more examples of the Holy Spirit working through the failures of people.
Today we are no different to the rest of humanity throughout the ages. We are still ordinary people. Our technology might be further advanced but we still try and still fail. Where we do have the advantage is that we have the evidence and example of God’s love in the OT. We have the evidence and example of Jesus’ love and forgiveness in the NT. And we have, later in the NT, the evidence of the love and guidance of the Holy Spirit. I think the question might be, what do we do with this knowledge?
If we think that because our lives are easy, we have plenty of money, a nice job, a lovely house, then we must be doing it right, then we have not understood the question. If we think that the down and outs, the poor, the homeless are doing it wrong, then we still do not understand. If we think that we tried it once and it did not work, then we still miss the point.
It is all about showing God’s love in his world. We still get it wrong both as a church and as individuals, but we still try. This Christian church, throughout the years, has grown and grown. From a few disciples to the 1.7 billion today. In some places in the world the church is growing at a rapid rate. This is not being caused by perfect saints and angels but by ordinary, fallible people. In some places, it is getting smaller and smaller. Is this because we have stopped trying? Is it because we are happy to have Jesus in our lives but not happy to share him? Have we stopped listening to the Holy Spirit. I don’t know.
What I do know is that God has not stopped listening to us. We can still show his love in the world and it is often the failures that show it best. The homeless drunk who still praises his Lord. The family, penniless, full of misfortune, wayward children, marriage problems yet still manage to love Jesus can still do God’s work. Every person who stops to wonder WHY they still have a faith is also questioning their own and may well be led to the answer.
We must try to show the work of God any way we can. We will often fail, but Jesus understands that. And so must we. When we see someone else fail, we should try to understand and just by doing that we start to show God’s love in the world. It might be a small start but where it will end who can tell but look where our church started from .
