From Murder to Mercy!
Psalm 51:1-3, 12 9Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation …NASB
Almost a year has passed. All was so quite that it would appear he had literally gotten away with murder. In all of that time, the record is silent whether God said anything to the “man after God’s own heart ”. Certainly, life had gone on as usual. Well, we can’t call it usual. It is more accurately described as bizarre and decadent. David had sinned but maybe God was not paying attention or was fast asleep. Have you ever sinned and thought it was so minor that God would let you slide? Or maybe the sin was major, but since everybody else is doing it, it’s the many and the one…and that makes it morally right. Minor or major is our worldview of the sliding scale against which we measure infractions as egregious and the consequences accordingly adjustable. If we are honest we realize that the long litany of sin is not only about David but is about us too. Sin pervades our lives. Sin is a perennial feature and facet of being human. We test God’s limits, especially in our youthful prodigal moments of recklessness that God allows time to come to our senses before getting tough on sin. Maybe God also needs a wake-up call with all of those ancient laws, to get an update to today’s new times and lax trends. Or because so many believe in a prosperity ideology; the idea that God wants us to be rich, to have fun, success, status and a grand self-esteem so we become a bit self-absorbed, but it doesn’t make it true. You know, seemingly forever the world believed second century astronomer Ptolemy’s theory that all planets revolved around the earth. That belief was wrong for over 1400 years before being trumped by Copernicus’s proof that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the universe, thus the earth revolves around the sun – the Copernicus Revolution. We all sometimes need a Copernican Revolution to reshape our thinking that the world and everything revolves around us. It is really about God and the glory of the Lord. So David learned that God will not give him everything, with disregard to a moral compass.
David was set. God had set him up, living in his fine palace, even with contributions from Palestinian King Hiram who sent timbers and laborers. He unified the government. He was sitting atop of the world with a horde of wives and women.
But how David won his wife Bathsheba was sheer premeditated evil. One day, God’s prophet Nathan brings David’s sin to his consciousness in the creative telling of a parable about a rich man who takes a poor man’s one and only pet lamb, slays it and with savory seasonings cooks it and serves it to his guests at an elaborate dinner. It leaves the poor man now with nothing, not even his beloved lamb. David in his kingly role was also “Supreme Court judge” so he enters an accurate verdict of the case Nathan described to him: “The man should be put to death.” Nathan immediately tells David what most feared to tell him, “Thou art the man!” That little parable powerfully brings home the full significance of that sin. It enables Nathan to safely speak truth to the powerful king. It paves the way for David’s objectivity. David recognizes that he has sinned, even if he has repressed it under a truck load of justification and explainable necessity. Often sin distorts our good judgment of ourselves causing us to become immune to the sting of morality. Our impartiality to decipher right from wrong is lost. Because it is us doing it and the means justify the ends. Self-preservation evokes our exclusionary nature and nullifies the ability to self-judge with detachment, with independence, and with neutrality as God would see it.
"In the spring of that year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab ..." (11:1). David stayed in the comfort of his home to execute his strategy, when good kings normally go out to battle (1 Samuel 8:11-17). He neglects his day job, in a calculated lustful quest for a gorgeous married woman. David relaxes on his veranda and checks out Uriah’s wife Bathsheba, bathing, and commands his servants to bring her. She comes to him– because of David’s kingly power or reluctantly desiring to resist his imperial command. The young king’s hormones raging, sinned – “he lay with her" (11:4). By the way, what’s love got to do with it? The king enjoyed the royal prerogative of a little tryst, a rendezvous, a one night stand. After returning home Bathsheba sends a word to David: "I’m pregnant." These words launch a tumultuous domino sequence of deception and violence. First, it was an attempt to shift the presumption of fatherhood onto Uriah; then his murder.
The Apostle Paul sums it up in Romans 7:18-24. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work …What a wretched man I am!”
It’s so hard to imagine. David’s life – he was fully loved by God. He unbelievably trespassed more than half of the Ten Commandments. God’s own man who we thought perfect and on the right track.
1. David, the singer of psalms and harpist;
2. Shepherd and brilliant kingdom administrator;
3. Fierce lion, bear slayer, conqueror of Philistine giant Goliath, mighty warrior
4. Retriever of the Ark of God delivering it with praise into the gates of Jerusalem;
5. David who women celebrated singing – “Saul hath killed his thousands & David his ten-thousands”;
6. The one anointed king thrice: for God; for Judah and for Israel;
7. Mightily blessed and highly favored one after God’s own heart;
8. Ancestor of Jesus, fearfully and wonderfully made.
Bright, brilliant, good men and women too are vulnerable to sin. No one is “too good” – or have no real need for grace, or is so bad to be beyond the scope of mercy. To acknowledge David’s sinfulness annihilates our whole worldview that God uses sinless saints and not sinners. Because the writer of Samuel’s version tells it like it is we observe that the anointed can be deeply flawed. The canonical account of David’s reign in Chronicles eliminated the sin story altogether, and Kings elevate David highest compared to every other king.
Dastardly compounding his sin, David’s heart ejects a chilling arctic blast as he comforts the distraught army leader Joab, saying, "Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another..." (11:25). Yes, you’re the man David, greedy, vain and emotional egotistical, neglecting the Ark and troops leading to lust, leading to coveting another’s wife, leading to deception, leading to adultery leading to lies, ultimately leading to murder as if life is an insignificant commodity. Spun out of control so that one sin begat another sin and another and still another.
God’s last word: "the thing that David did displeased the LORD" (11:27).
“LORD, the God of Israel, says: ’I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 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.” 2 Samuel 12:7-8
Because the pursuit became a priority and a preoccupation above loving God, and the devaluation of love for others, God’s judges the sin – “in broad daylight what you’ve done in the dark of night”. They do see that judgment throughout his life, and so do we, (2 Samuel 12). The sword never leaves David’s house.
The good news of the gospel is God’s unyielding grace. David prays. God grants forgiveness faithfully to those who call upon God’s name, in humbleness, and repentance from their wickedness. If you ever crave a revival, revival will come when you experience confrontation with God like this. Revival comes in facing the facts and confessing guilt (veres1-5).1 It’s a good pattern to pray for mercy, to call upon God’s unfailing love and great compassion to blot out sin, none of which one can obtain for one’s self. Realize the limits of human power and grace shall abound. Self-reliance renders us powerless against the adversary. David admits his sins are directed vertically, only against God, albeit also against those humans in his horizontal relationships. Righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
David asks God to be new from the inside out. David ask only for spiritual gifting; truth, wisdom, purging, a newly created pure heart, and a right spirit (verses 6-12), but not the temporal possessions, not even to keep Bathsheba. David recognizes the power of God’s spirit. It’s by God’s spirit alone that he performed mighty acts. He likely recalls the frightening sight when God’s spirit was removed from the first king, Saul, who was left emotionally devastated. Christians need to pray for forgiveness and reconciliation, but as Baptized believers we need never plead for God’s spirit not be removed. Jesus promised the Spirit is with every believer, forever: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—”.
Surely, God forgives. God’s compassion for us. The true love and abundant grace of God outweighs any sin one can commit, even the seemingly never-ending trail of carnage like David’s. God even weaves sin into redemptive purposes. Without erasing the consequences their first child born from the infidelity dies. But God twists the blessing out of a mess with David & Bathsheba’s second child, the wise king Solomon, who will build the Temple and in the genealogy is Jesus’ ancestor. God’s grace is sufficient in the weakest moment as God incorporates and transforms sin into salvation history of the world.
In the perfect divine providence, sin is not an automatic cul-de-sac to death, but an exit on the interstate to God’s escape hatch of free, unmerited, liberal grace. God’s grace answers the human condition. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Oh yes, God’s love for us is genuine and deep that, sacrificially, Jesus’ life was spent as redemption’s price of our pardon making atonement through faith in His blood. The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Dr. Jacquelyn Donald-Mims is pastor of the Imani Community Church, Austin Texas.
1 Samuel 13:16, NIV
2 Sam 12, Ac 13:22, NKJV
2 Samuel 12, KJV
2 Chronicles 7:14
John 14:16-17, NIV
Matthew 1:6
Romans 3:23
Romans 6:23-24
