Sermon Tone Analysis

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.