But yesterday, the Lord opened my eyes to the power and intensity of His love and grace for ME through this story! Aaaaaand I'm really excited about it. So that's why this is here.
So David, King of Isreal, man after God's own heart, commits these huge no-no's. He sleeps with his friend Uriah's wife while he is out at war and OOPS, gets her pregnant. He tries to cover it up by bringing Uriah home from war and giving him a rest-- he wants him to sleep with Bathsheba so no one would ever think that David is the baby daddy.
Uriah, being an honorable man, refuses this luxury and won't go home to his wife out of respect for his soldiers still at war. Good dude.
So David gets him drunk, thinking OBVIOUSLY this will fix everything. But Uriah still remains faithful to his soldiers and won't go home.
David then has this BRILLIANT idea: "Okay. If I can't get Uriah to do what I want, I'll just send orders to have him killed off in battle. Then I can swoop in like a victorious eagle and take Bathsheba as my own wife! I'm a genius! Everything is FIXED! HUZZAH!"
Wrong.
Things happened the way David wanted them to, but the Lord was displeased. He sends a prophet, Nathan, to tell David "Listen, broseph. You've screwed up. The Lord anointed you, delivered you, and set you apart as king. He would have even done more for you. And this is how you repay him? Not okay, dude. Not okay."
He then tells David that the sword will never depart from his house, and that the child born to him by Bathsheba would die. Watch out, David. Consequences are coming.
This is where my mind starts to get COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY. David makes no excuses. He simply says, "I have sinned against the Lord." He acknowledges his sin. He repents. And Nathan's response is this: "The Lord has taken away your sin. You aren't going to die."
The Lord IMMEDIATELY wipes his slate clean. David doesn't have to prove himself, or do community service, or pray a long-winded prayer. He simply repented and the Lord removed (and forgot!) his sin.
THIS IS GRACE. Grace is getting something you don't deserve. David didn't deserve to be clean! But the Lord happily made him clean anyway.
- Now remember, David totally messed up. He was an adulterer AND a murderer. And yet the Lord made him NEW! If He did that for David, how much more will he do that for us!!???? God FREELY LAVISHES grace upon His children. On me. On you. We don't have to earn it. It. Is. FREE! We can be clean too!!
The story continues.
Although David's sin was removed and forgotten, David still had to endure consequences for his actions. Bathsheba's child died, just as was prophesied. There are consequences to every sin.
- There is a small part of the story when David is mourning this loss that really sticks out to me. In chapter 12 verse 20, it says that after he mourned he got up, went into the house, and worshiped. WORSHIPED. Can we just let that sink in for a second?? David has committed these heinous sins, lost his child because of those sins, and YET gets up and WORSHIPS THE LORD??! I don't know about you, but that is totally convicting to me. I don't know how many times bad things have happened to me and I've done everything BUT worship. The Lord is faithful and deserving of our worship REGARDLESS of our circumstances.
He was faithful to David, too.
Not long after this, Bathsheba gets pregnant again and David is the legitimate father of this child. The child is called Solomon, and the Lord loved him.
Solomon, it turns out, is a pretty important dude. You see, he appears in a crucial place in the New Testament... right at the beginning:
The genealogy. Of. Jesus.
God used David's horrible situation to bring out something beautiful: Our Savior, Redeemer, Salvation, Emmanuel, God With Us. If it weren't for David's sin and the consequences of that, Jesus' story would not have happened the way it did. How COOL is that?????
So the fact of the matter is this: It doesn't matter what you've done. There is no sin or situation that is too large for the Lord to deal with.
I'mma say that again.
THERE IS NO SIN OR SITUATION THAT IS TOO LARGE FOR THE LORD TO DEAL WITH.
Jesus has the power to make you clean. He has the power to heal you and bring restoration in your life. But more than that, He has the power to take your messy situations and turn them into something.... beautiful.
He is faithful. He is good. And he is ready to go with you on a mind-blowing journey of grace.
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“Grace, then, is grace,–that is to say, it is sovereign, it is free, it is sure, it is unconditional, and it is everlasting.” ~ Alexander Whyte
