Monday, August 6, 2012

Sermon (August 5) By Pastor Cheryl Foulk - "The Life of David: Seeing the Real You"


It was springtime...

King David  of Jerusalem was at home enjoying the breeze and the view from the palace roof. A beautiful woman caught his eye.    With this introduction, we might be expecting a love story. But a entirely different story  develops.

 We remember from last week that David's setting his sights on a woman began a series of disastrous  events in his life.  David had the woman Bathsheba  brought to his palace and afterward sent her away. Situation became more complicated when she sends word to David that  she is pregnant.  David begins to scheme how he will resolve this dilemma. He  sends for her husband Uriah who is  a soldier on the battlefront. David tries in vain to get  Uriah  to  spend his furlough  with his wife Bathsheba  but the loyal soldier  refuses.  So David pursues a new plan: he will see that Bathsheba's husband is killed in the next  battle and then when Bathsheba is a widow, David will add her to his harem.  The abuse, the deception, and the murder  will be hidden away. David after all is king. There is one person that questions David's plan: his friend Nathan, the prophet.  Nathan loved David  enough to confront him.

Nathan speaks to  his king in a manner that does not put David on the defensive. He tells David a story :a person of wealth  needed a lamb for his banquet. And even though the rich man had a flock of sheep, he chose to take the pet lamb of his neighbor to be slaughtered. (The pet lamb which was like a member of the family.) This  lamb was served to the guests.

David is filled with disgust.  What kind of person would do such a thing?  To bring such heartache to his neighbor.

David is ready to punish the guilty party, the greedy person who  had no pity. Who has done this thing?

And then Nathan delivers the blow:  “You are the one. I'm talking about you. “

This becomes David's moment of  truth.

In our day, we would say that Nathan and David had a confrontation, an intervention.

Brad Lamm describes intervention as  “interrupting self-destructive behaviors with love. We are reminding someone that we care, that we pay attention, and that we see them for what they really are.”

Nathan risked his standing with David in order to help the king.     David had much power and status, but he had forgotten that he also had boundaries. God's laws set limits for him as well as others.

Nathan also knew that David was a man of faith, one who searched for God, and desired to follow God's ways. Nathan was not going to let David's  behavior go un noticed.

To intervene  can be messy, and also scary because we don't know the reaction of the other person. It involves talking honestly about things that may make us uneasy.

When we intervene, we are not condemning , or shaming, or embarrassing.

The goal is not to destroy, but to restore. Nathan wanted David to be the great leader that he believed he could be. 

Pastor Charles Swindoll  commented that  he would prefer to have a friend who cared more for his character than for his comfort. He said:    In your choice of friends, be certain that you have a few who care less for your comfort that they do for your character. Most of us want to make our friends comfortable. Few are good enough friends to overlook the comfort for the good of the character. And if you have some who care more for your character  than your comfort, you are rich indeed, you are many times blessed...I have a physician who is like that. He doesn't say when he gets to an x-ray that looks questionable, “Oh.. we won't worry about this one. This is a bad picture, Let's talk good news today. Let's go have lunch together.' No, he snaps that x-ray on that screen and he says, “Now look at this Chuck. That does not look good. We gotta do something about that.” And so it is with a wife. And so it is with a parent. And so it must be with a friend.

How did David respond to the truth?  Did he completely deny his behavior? Did he make excuses?

Did he put the blame on others?  Did he downplay what had happened?  Did he tell Nathan to mind his own business?

 David offered no excuses, he didn't try to explain away his actions. David offered a simple confession:   “I have sinned against the Lord.” . In Psalm 51, (believed to have been written by David in the midst of this situation) we hear from David's heart as he takes responsibility for all that has happened.  David wants his life to be cleaned up, he wants to be a different person.  Nathan held a mirror up to David so that he could see himself, and he did not look away.

Virginia Satir, renown family therapist ,wrote: “Until we own all of who we are and what we have done- the good, the bad, the ugly- we can never be whole.”

David has come to a life changing moment and he accepts the truth about himself that he sees.

In  recovery programs which use the 12 steps, some of the steps include:

admitting to God, yourself, and another person the wrongs that you have done; asking  God for help, and being ready to be transformed by his power. Even though David was not in a recovery group,this is the process that David is engaged in.

Within our relationships, there are times when some one is like a Nathan to us, expressing  their concerns about our behavior. And other times we also may be in a position to speak to a friend as a Nathan. We all have blind spots in looking at our actions. As we speak to one another, the goal is always to restore and not tear down. It may take many encounters and  consequences  in our lives before the truth sinks in. Thank God for those who care, the Nathans who help us to see where our life is going.

A  father  was on a weekend retreat for men. Before he left home, his daughter had asked him why he yelled at Mommy so much.  The dad had thought about his daughter's words ever since. During the retreat, he had a time of sharing with other men. He came to the harsh realization that  he had higher expectations and was more short tempered and less forgiving with his wife than with anyone else. He saw the pain that he was causing. With his friends' support  at the retreat, he committed himself to change his behavior with God's help. And he promised to share what he realized with his wife.

In these times of intervention, there is a spiritual  mirror so that we can see ourselves as we are.

There is also a window that reveals God's grace and love for us, great mercy in the midst of failure!

Remember that David confessed his sins and he was forgiven.

Like us, David still  had to deal with the consequences of his past actions. Nathan told him that “the sword shall never depart from your house” and that was the reality. In David's life, there would be violence and betrayal  between him and his children. His quest for power and control were imitated by his sons and there was much heartache in David's future.

Eugene Peterson wrote a book about David, (Leap over the Wall)  and in it he writes that there is not much variation in sin. It is dull  and repetitive. People have been doing the same kind of things for thousands of years. The wrong that we do is basically our wanting to be in control of everything , regardless of what God might want for us, or how it affects others. But God's grace and love, Peterson says, that is another story: it is rich, an endless variety , and can come in so many ways to save us!!

That is what David discovered. God is  present when David's life is out of control. God is there when Nathan helps David  to see himself. God is present in David's confession and in his yearning to be a new man. God's faithfulness to David never falters.

God  kept reminding David of his  identity: a man whose heart was to be one with God's.

God is present with us also in all our wanderings and our struggles.

May we too accept the  truth in love about ourselves and also  the abundant grace of God  that brings us wholeness!

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