David 4

David Johnson

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Sunday Morning, Session 4

As good as it gets

So welcome back to our David series, we are looking at Israel’s greatest king.

Today we are going to skip ahead a bit. Now if you know the life of David you’ll probably notice that I have skipped over Saul dying and David becoming king and the famous story of David and Bathsheba...

but what we have looked at is this major political transition in Israel.

Israel went from these almost self governing scattered tribes to all 12 tribes united together under the political kingdom of Israel…

And there are two main character arks

The rise and fall of Saul & the Rise and fall of David…

Remember right from the very beginning we had the comparison of Saul and David

Saul was tall and handsome, he looked like a leader…But he had poor character…

We learned from David that we have to be very careful not to throw spears or to even learn that easily mastered trait…

We saw one of David’s early failures…where he lied to the priest at Nob and the consequences were huge

We saw David grow in maturity in the wilderness…and finally

Last week we saw David become king…and he did something amazing: He made a covenant with all of the tribal leaders…He essentially shared power, he was concerned with his people

This is something that kings just didn't do…It took him from the realm of bing a good king to a great king…

Well as we move forward in the story, The Lord leads David to capture the city of Jerusalem

And so now David has a proper capital city for the kingdom…

It is the political center of Israel, but David wants to make this a religious center too…

So he goes to the prophet Nathan and he says…Hey I have this amazing house…Shouldn't God have a house too…I want to build it for him…

Nathan says, Do what you think is right…

But later God speaks to Nathan some words for David…It actually becomes the pinnacle moment of the book of 2 Samuel and of David’s reign

So God speaks to Nathan to tell David that he will not build a temple for God right now…leave that job for someone else, but that God will make David into this eternal dynasty, this eternal house

2 Samuel 7: 11b-13

“‘The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you:12 When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

So this becomes this amazing moment for David…

David will be made into an eternal house and another great king will come from his line.

Now the Bible tells us that pride comes before the fall…I mean if you understand character development…one of the things you see in David is this thing called Character arch

He is at the peak of his glory and power in chapter seven…

Some time later…

David sees his friend’s wife, Bathsheba bathing on a roof and he is burning with lust so he sends his servants to go and get her and he sleep with her. She becomes pregnant, and David covers this sin up by murdering her husband.

This is where David’s story takes a nosedive. He was at the pinnacle of his kingdom. God literally just told him…You’re so important to me that I am going to build you an eternal dynasty!

And what happened…

David’s success made him believe that he was untouchable…

I have said this a hundred times and I will say it one hundred more…Every time you reach a season of success you have to ask yourself, Can I still serve?

Success can ruin you!

So right after this, The word of the Lord comes to David through this guy Nathan the prophet and one of the things that he says to David is this

First Nathan gets David to see his own sin through a story that he tells him…and then he shares with David the consequences of his sin

2 Samuel 12:10

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.’

Nathan told David, look because of your sin and disobedience, there are punishments and consequences…Now David repents, he is punished, the child he bore died…But ultimately he is forgiven by God..

David write about this in Psalm 51 & 103

But here’s the deal…Punishments and consequences are two different things…

I feel like God gave me children as an unending source of illustrations…

So when Jacob was a lot younger, we were trying to teach them to drink out of a normal cup rather than a sippie cup…One of them every now and then would just tip it over and laugh…

Now If I said…Hey don't tip that cup over or I punish you….That’s a punishment…Can I change that punishment? Yup, I Totally can…

But if I said…hey don't tip that cup over or you’ll get all wet and your drink will be gone…see that's a consequence…I can punish them but there will still be consequences of their actions….

In the same way, David had his punishment…but the consequences is that David’s family saw what he did and took it as permission to behave the way they wanted…

One more example of this

In 2002, one person in the Huston Office of Arthur Anderson oversaw the Enron account…At the time Arthur Anderson employed world wide something like 65,000 people….

So one partner with 15 or so people in his office was complicit with fudging the numbers with Enron…

Literally the entire company had to shut down! Now this guy in Texas got a punishment by the government, but the consequences of his actions got passed down to all of those people who worked in the company…

And even though the Supreme Court vindicated Arthur Anderson later on all we remember about Arthur Anderson is ENRON!

What I think God is trying to tell us through this story is that in our sin, we may be forgiven, but it can still have far reaching consequences that are beyond our control.

Sin can be forgiven, but there are still consequences.

David’s sin was no longer contained to two people…to Bathsheba and Uriah…

And I think one of the things that we see over and over again in the Bible is that a person’s sin doesn't just hurt the person, it hurts people that they could have never imagined…

So everything after David’s story is dealing with the consequences of David’s Sin with Bathsheba and the Murder of Uriah.

It is a downward spiral

So the consequence that David is told is that the sword will never depart from David’s house.

So let me give you the sword consequence:

David’s kids re-play David sin…

He has these three kids by different mothers…

Amnon Falls in love with his half sister Tamar and when she refuses him, he rapes her…

And then Absalom another son of David hears about this, His sister comes to live with him…and He waits two years but eventually he has his brother come over he gets him drunk and kills Amnon

Because of this one sin with Bathsheba and the way he covered it up…

David would see all of his family descend into chaos… Absalom actually leads a conspiracy that we will talk about in a minute…

He eventually dies in his rebellion to his father

And then later on after David dies Solomon takes the throne and another one of David’s son’s makes a play for the throne through marriage his name is Abishag. Solomon puts him to death…

So here David is after Bathsheba…He’s still king…But his sin has been punished for his sin, but the consequences are still playing themselves out..

But there are more consequences to David’s sin that Nathan tells him

2 Samuel 12:11-12

11 “This is what the Lord says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. 12 You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’”

Ouch this is a rough one…

Look at 2 Samuel 16:20-22

In this text David’s son Absalom is perusing David and trying to take over and he takes advice from a guy named Ahithophel who many believe was Bathsheba’s father.

20 Absalom said to Ahithophel, “Give us your advice. What should we do?”

21 Ahithophel answered, “Sleep with your father’s concubines whom he left to take care of the palace. Then all Israel will hear that you have made yourself obnoxious to your father, and the hands of everyone with you will be more resolute.” 22 So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and he slept with his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.

This all originated from David’s blowup with Bathsheba and Uriah…

Even though David confessed his guilt, he went to the Lord and sought forgiveness…and the Lord forgave him…

He couldn't control what his kids did with his sin. The consequences were out of his hands…

If your a parent, you should hate this message, this should be a punch in the gut for us!

Well as I told you Absalom, one of David’s sons who was handsome…He had it out for his father …He began to believe that he should be king..

The bible says he would go to the gates of Israel and he would offer to make these judgments on behalf of others…

In fact he did this so frequently the bible says this

2 Samuel 15:6

6 Absalom behaved in this way toward all the Israelites who came to the king asking for justice, and so he stole the hearts of the people of Israel.

He stole the hearts of Israel…

See when you read about Absalom you’re supposed to think about Saul…

Saul tried to keep his power by throwing spears but Absalom stole power through words and manipulation

And the story continues

2 Samuel 15:13-14

13 A messenger came and told David, “The hearts of the people of Israel are with Absalom.”

14 Then David said to all his officials who were with him in Jerusalem, “Come! We must flee, or none of us will escape from Absalom. We must leave immediately, or he will move quickly to overtake us and bring ruin on us and put the city to the sword.”

Again, David found himself in a place in his life that he had to run for his life into the wilderness…

But get this…and this is the sign of a great spiritual leader…He would rather sacrifice his position than split the kingdom.

I mean David took his people who were in the palace…But he never roused the city up to fight Absalom…He realized that God’s kingdom was bigger than himself...He would never divide God’s kingdom…

So he ran…and they ran so fast there are all of these people who made decisions for David that shouldn't have…

2 Samuel 15:25-26

25 Then the king said to Zadok, “Take the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the Lord’s eyes, he will bring me back and let me see it and his dwelling place again. 26 But if he says, ‘I am not pleased with you,’ then I am ready; let him do to me whatever seems good to him.”

David knew the history of Israel and in 1 Samuel 4 that same ark had been brought to war, the Israelites were trying to manipulate God…and David was like, Nope. I will not try and manipulate God…

The common practice at the time was if you wanted the Lord to be with you in battle that you took that ark with you.

But David was like, “not me.” Even though my life is not going as planned…even though I am running for my life, I will not take the ark because God’s presence needs to be with the people of Jerusalem! I will not try to manipulate God for my purposes when my life is not going well…

This was a sign David cared more about the kingdom of God than his own life.

Well eventually a great battle would ensue that covers a few chapters of 2 Samuel

And Absolom was riding his horse in the forest, in the middle of battle and his head gets caught in the branches of an oak tree…

As he is hanging there Joab, one of David’s might men puts three Javelins though him

All of the fighting stops. When Absalom dies, there is nothing left to fight for…His men stop fighting and David regains control…

And when David is told about his son, he breaks, he becomes a broken man, He said only if I would have died instead!

David gets the kingdom back but its very different…it's a politically weakened kingdom…David is a king who has seen the consequences of his own sin play out and he is a man who is very sad…

Really the last few chapters of 2 Samuel talk about how David was too weak to even go out to the battle field any more…and nine years after Absalom died, David died…

But there is a huge lesson to be learned in all of this. And that is this…

Even though David had to flee his city and run for his life…The foundations of his faith were never shaken.

David never stopped honoring God with his life, David always praised the Lord…

See the foundations of your faith should never be your circumstance

Your faith should not ebb and flow based on whether or not life is going well for you…

David would see three of his children die. He would be run out of his own city…His own son would steal the hearts of his own people…

Some of David’s top commanders when it was all said and done would literally yell at him for mourning the loss of his son…

David would go back into battle at the end of 2 Samuel and it says…he was too wary to fight….

I mean after his sin with Bathsheba.. everything falls apart

But the reason why David is the great king is that faith should always transcend circumstance…and it does for him

Because for some of you, I know this isn’t motivational right now, I know this is hard to hear… and it’s hard even to say because we live in such a culture of optimism…

For some of you…This is as good as it gets…

For some of you, your dreams wont come true …

For some of you, your kids will disappoint or even disown you…

For some of you no matter how hard you’ve worked for that position, its still not coming

For some of you as bad as it sounds, that relationship that is strained or broken is never going to get better no matter how hard you try…

For some of you…right now is as good as it gets…and if that’s true…

Now that might not be true for a great many of you…For many of you its going to get better…

But, you have to ask the question…Is this as good as it gets for me?

David’s most famous descendent had a lot to say about this…

So go to Matthew 11….

Before we start reading what you have to know is that Jesus had just completed this ministry rampage

He had healed a little girl from the dead…

He healed a sick woman

He healed a blind and mute guy

He forgives and heals a paralyzed man

He is casting out demons

He calls sinners to follow him

I mean all of the stuff Jesus is doing is such good news!

Matthew 11:1-6

After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee.

2 When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples 3 to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

I mean come on…This is Jesus’ cousin! He was the crazy guy in the wilderness shouting people down and when Jesus came John was shouting from the rooftops….This is the guy!

This is the messiah! And now John’s life isn’t going well…So you can imagine…He is like…My entire life has been dedicated to Jesus…To announcing his coming…to proclaiming that out of the totality of prophesy in the Old Testament…That Jesus is the fulfillment of it all!

I mean John told his disciples…now that he is here follow him…

But now he is in jail…Life isn’t working out…So as you can imagine…Jesus were you really the guy? Did I waste my life on you?

And so Jesus replies to him actually two passages from the book of Isaiah that were concerning himself and he says:

4 Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: 5 The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. 6 Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

Now if you read the verses that Jesus is quoting here there is one little verse that Jesus leaves out…It’s sort of his code to John the Baptist..

The verse is: “and the prisoners are set free”

Jesus is like…John…Will your faith remain if this is as good as it gets for you…

Somewhere in the Christian world many of us got the idea that if you accept Jesus as your lord and savior then its just smooth sailing until you die…

And that just is a false gospel…Nothing could be further than the truth…

And the question is what do you base your faith on?

You can’t base your faith in God in how you think He needs to behave.

God is under no obligation to bless you with whatever you think you deserve.

So I think the second half of David’s life leads us to ask the question, Will you still give your life to Jesus…even if this is just as good as it gets…

Because for David, the best he got was years before his death…

Many of you are going through it today..I don’t know your circumstance…But the question today is will you follow in your pain?

What consequences of your sin are you still living?

Will you follow if this is it for you?

Will you follow Jesus if it never gets better?

Extras:

In fact later in the books of the Kings Solomon would have this same cycle of sin and downfall…

He build’s God a temple…Dedicates it..It is the crowning achievement of his kingdom and then just 4 chapters later the author reminds us that Solomon had many foreign wives and that his heart was turned away from the Lord by them…

While David never turned away from the Lord, I think the lesson we are supposed to draw from this is that after every season of success, we need to ask ourselves, can we still serve?

I think what the Bible is trying to tell us is not only that this is a pattern of human behavior but when we go all the way back to

Hannah’s song:

God opposes the proud but exalts the humble…

But a few years after David and Bathsheba there is something else that we need to see…

1 Samuel 2

God opposes the Proud and exalts the Humble

“Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the Lord is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed.

Proud Saul & Goliath are brought low, while David is exalted

Despite Evil, God is at work

The Lord brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up. 7 The Lord sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts. 8 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor.

Despite Saul’s evil, God is moving in David

God will raise up a messianic king

2:10b

“He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

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