1 Samuel Lesson 60
David and Uriah -1 Samuel 11:6-25; Psalm 51:1-3
The book of 2 Samuel can be summarized by looking at the ebb and flow of
God’s blessing on the Davidic dynasty.
For the first part of this book, from chapters 2-12 we have how God
blesses David; it’s a time of increasing prosperity. It’s a time when God tests David by a unique
test, the prosperity test, and David fails.
The last part, chapters 13-20 deal with the cursing of God and the
complete disruption of the Davidic dynasty.
The big lesson of the book is that God’s promise that David will have an
eternally secure dynasty, that that promise will be fulfilled, in spite of
David’s failure. So that’s the big
lesson that you want to notice in all of this.
This is to show that when God locks you into His program we can fall
flat on our face time after time after time, and yet God always in grace gives
us the final victory. And if you’ll
master this point it’ll make you a lot more relaxed as a believer.
In a book like 2 Samuel we see time after time after time man’s faults,
painted as they literally are. The Holy
Spirit, when He composed 2 Samuel did not pull any punches. He let it all hang out, and therefore this is
a tremendous book of grace. If you can
make it through 2 Samuel you’ve accomplished something that few Christians in
fundamentalism can do.
Now David’s problem began somewhere in chapter 10, we don’t know where,
but by chapter 11 he was in trouble, because in verse 1 he was supposed to go
out to battle, he was out of fellowship.
And this illustrates the tiger we all have in the tank called the old
sin nature, and when we are out of for any prolonged period of time, the old
sin nature according to Genesis 4 and other passages seeks to explode, to
mushroom, to manifest itself overtly. So
you can be out of fellowship for months, mental attitude sin, and absolutely
have no serious overt affect. However,
after a while God is going to take what we call restraining grace that He uses
to restrain the effects of the sin nature, and He’s going to start phasing it
down, and when He starts phasing down His restraining grace, at that point
you’re in trouble if you’re out of fellowship, because at this point the old
sin nature just explodes and takes over and goes into a catastrophic overt type
of activity.
David, we found last time, was a man who had a great libido. David’s
family was troubled with this thing; Solomon his son had it; he got a thousand
women, and Solomon obviously had a tremendous libido and his father did
too. And this was his area of
weakness. Now by calling it an area of
weakness we are not condoning it; we’re simply saying that every person has
what we will call areas of strength and areas of weakness. And what is the favorite game in Christian circles
is to pit your area of strength against some other Christians area of
weakness. Your area of strength may be
in one particular area of, say in this fornication thing that David’s involved
in, you may have very little temptation there. That’s your area of strength,
that to you is not an issue, yet on the other hand you may have an area of
weakness of mental attitude pride that just won’t quit. So you walk up to some other believer and your
area of weakness is pride, mental attitude sin.
Their area of weakness is sex, overt thing. So the tendency is to look down your nose at
them and consider them some sort of a creep and some sort of a low class
Christian, when as a matter of fact, your mental attitude sin of pride is just
as bad, in fact Proverbs 6 says it’s worse.
So this is the way the Bible pictures the score. And the tendency always in religious circles
is to take something that is easily measured, such as overt activity, and make
a federal case out of it, instead of making a federal case out of the mental
attitude sins that lead to it.
Now David, we found, in 2 Samuel 11:1-5 was tempted by the woman
Bathsheba, but the Bible makes it clear David, not Bathsheba, is the one
responsible. David is disciplined, not
Bathsheba. Bathsheba happens to be one
of the stupidest women who ever lived, that’s true, but nevertheless, in spite
of her stupidity, and some of the idiotic things that Bathsheba did, David is
held responsible for how he handled her.
I’ll summarize the last five points of the David Bathsheba incident so
we can get the background for verse 6 and following.
David had been mentally out of it for some time and he had failed the
prosperity test. That’s proved in verse
1 compared to the context. Why? Because David now despised his calling; his
calling was to secure the kingdom for
The second point we said that David’s passions were not being held in
check by grace because of this. So the
second thing is that because of negative volition we have minus grace. In other words, God in His grace partially
pulls back and let’s David’s sin nature spill out. David, naturally being a passionate man as we
have seen, and the passion was not bad, when controlled by the Holy Spirit
David’s passions was what contributed actually to the book of Psalms. We wouldn’t have the book of Psalms if David
didn’t have the soul makeup that he had.
But the same soul makeup when not controlled by the Holy Spirit and
comes under human viewpoint and demonic control gets into trouble fast.
The third point we said that God had blessed David with the right woman
who was Abigail; that was explained in 1 Samuel 25. Abigail was David’s right woman because
Abigail had the ability to check David when in moments of passion he would
violate the Word of God. She had a
tremendous influence on David and one of the greatest passages in the Word of
God for the behavior of a woman toward a man who is out of it is given in 1
Samuel 25. Abigail had what few women
have, and that is a loyalty to the Word of God under pressure of her husband
and yet at the same time that she is loyal to the Word of God when her husband
is not, then having the ability to diplomatically check him without losing her
femininity. It’s a very difficult thing
to do but Abigail pulled it off. So
therefore Abigail is immediately recognized as David’s best woman and when her
husband died, Nabal, the word “Nabal” in the Hebrew means idiot, and when the
idiot died then she married David.
The fourth point was that Bathsheba who is often pictured very sensually
in novels and so on, she probably was a very sensual woman, but she was also a
very passive and stupid woman. In 2
Samuel 11 you find her being used by David; in 1 Kings 1 you find Nathan having
to go to her and show her how to handle her husband. Can you imagine this happening to Abigail;
Abigail knew how to handle David, she didn’t need Nathan to come along and
coach her, but nevertheless Bathsheba did.
And in 1 Kings 2 we found that she almost got one of her sons killed
because of this apparently just stupid, just plain dull as far as the customs
of the court at that time.
And the fifth point was that we found that what she was doing was
bathing in the nude on the roof, deliberately in visibility of David; she was
cleaning herself after menstruation which was given in the verses in Leviticus
and we went into those details. So
obviously she wasn’t in a position where she was trying to be at all modest, to
say it in all conservative terms.
Then point 6, we find David responding this, and this should strike a
familiar tone to most people who have the honest and can be relaxed enough to
admit it, but when we’re out of fellowship and we’re on negative volition,
what’s the next step after you’re aware you’re out of fellowship. It’s not come back into fellowship because
when you’re on negative volition you don’t want to come back in fellowship, and
if God didn’t pursue you with the Holy Spirit in grace, you would never want to
come back into fellowship. The only reason why we eventually quit and use 1
John 1:9 after a thousand other things is because God in grace has kept up the
pressure. But usually when you know you
are out of fellowship and your sin nature is strong and beckoning, what you’re
going to do is, you committed let’s say, -R, your –R learned behavior pattern
one, you will start to develop –R learned behavior pattern two to cover over
the first one. This is exactly what we
see David doing beginning in verse 6, he has sinned, he knows he’s out of it,
but he’s trying to cover it up without taking it to the Lord. This is man in his human viewpoint autonomous
way trying to problem solve his way out, and you can’t problem solve your way
out except by grace.
Verse 6, “And David sent to Joab,” Joab is the commander in chief of the
army of
Now the play from this point on is between David, who is the Jew, who
should know better, and Uriah, the Gentile, who is more loyal to Jehovah, the
God of Israel, than David is at this point.
And there’s a potent interplay going on between Uriah and David. You couldn’t ask for a more highly
contrasting behavior pattern between two men at any point in time. David says get me Uriah the Hittite, so Joab
sent Uriah to David. Remember Uriah was
one of David’s great commanding officers.
Verse 7, “And when Uriah was come unto him, David demanded of him, how
Joab did, and how the people did, and how the war prospered.” See that’s a bunch of bologna, just small talk. The real intention of David is in verse 8,
“And David said to Uriah, Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” Now we have to understand what washing your
feet means. Turn to Genesis 19:2 where
it occurs again, is an idiomatic expression for spend the night. Genesis 19:2, talking about the angels, and
by the way, people don’t think angels can have physical bodies, copulate with
the daughters of women in Genesis 6; they obviously have human bodies here, they
are tired, they sleep, they eat and so on.
Verse 2, “And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn and I pray you unto
your servant’s house and tarry all night, wash your feet, and you shall rise up
early and go on your way.” So the
expression “washing your feet” is an expression that means to stay during the
night. Now let’s turn back to see what
Uriah is doing. What David is suggesting is that Uriah go home and have sex
with his wife; obviously if his wife is pregnant he wants to blame it on Uriah. So therefore, and obviously some time has
gone by because verses 4-5 obviously show at least a month, probably more, so
this is a month later and yet David is still trying to get something to cover
it up. And so he is really subtly
saying, Uriah go home and have sex with your wife. “And Uriah departed out of the king’s house,
and there followed him a mess of meat [present] from the king.” That’s a gift of food, and that is another
attempt. David, being a very subtle
person, and the word “subtle” can be used of evil craftiness, now here you see
it. David, all this time had the capacity to be wise and subtle, not he is also
wise and subtle except it has a demonic orientation to it. See the subtlety is a capacity that is
developed, but once it’s developed there’s no guarantee it’s going to be used
by the Holy Spirit. The spiritual gifts,
because you may have a spiritual gift doesn’t mean a thing about your
spirituality. You can have some of the
greatest spiritual gifts going but 1 Corinthians 13 clearly states that
spiritual gifts can be used apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit. You can develop your capacity and use them
completely out of fellowship. So mere
exercise of a spiritual gift, though edifying to other believers, says nothing
about your spirituality. So David is
being subtle in the sense of the serpent.
“And Uriah departed out of the king’s house, and there followed him a
present from the king,” this is actually a bribe to get him to stay in the
house. But Uriah is going to blow the
whole scheme. Verse 9, “But Uriah slept
at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and went not
down to his house.” So here you have the
heroic Gentile, and beginning in verse 10 through 13 you have the explanation. Now watch this and watch the character you
are seeing in this man Uriah. This is
going to prepare you for what’s coming up in chapter 12; Nathan is going to
come to David and he’s going to make certain remarks. To appreciate the confrontation between
Nathan and David you have to be prepared from chapter 11. Therefore, when you look at Uriah, Uriah is
going to be looked upon as a young man with a sheep, and this is just
background, watch it as you go through the text, then when we get to chapter 12
you’ll be able to pick up what Nathan says about it.
Verse 10, “And when they told David, saying, Uriah went not down unto
his house, David said unto Uriah, Came you not from your journey? Why, then,
did you not go down unto your house. [11] And Uriah said unto David,” one of
the classic replies of a great believer, “The ark, and Israel, and Judah abide
in tents; and my lord, Joab, and the servants of my lord, are encamped in the
open fields. Shall I, then, go into my
house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As thou livest, and as thy soul lives, I will
not do this thing.” That’s an expression
of intense loyalty. Notice what he is
loyal to as a Gentile; he is loyal t the ark.
By the way, that’s a verse that proved they did take the ark into
battle. He is loyal to the ark, which
means he is loyal to the God of Israel.
The Hittites didn’t have Jehovah as their God, but this is proof that
Uriah is a regenerated, born again believer.
He has accepted Christ, as made known under the Old Testament economy,
and because he has he now is fiercely loyal to the God of Israel. The ark, he says, it’s out there, and if the
ark, if God is out there in the middle of battle, that is where I belong.
Now this should be a rebuke to David because where should David be if the ark
is out there. If the King who is the God
is out there, then the king who is the man should also be out there. So in a way this is a little sermon directed
at David. “The ark of Israel and Judah,”
and that proves that Uriah not only is born again, not only is loyal to the God
of Israel, but he has learned to be loyal to the people of Israel; not just
their God, the people. And it means that he puts the Jewish people above the
Hittites, his own native countrymen.
They “abide in tents,” and then the next phrase, “my lord, Joab,” shows
you something else about Uriah, he was a man who understood authority. He understood the concept of authority, and
when someone told him, who had the authority to do something he did it. We’re going to see a very tragic result of
this. The servants are “encamped in the
open fields,” he said I’m not going to sit here and enjoy myself while my
buddies are being shot at, so to speak.
Verse 12, “And David said to Uriah, Tarry here today also, and tomorrow
I will let you depart. So Uriah abode in
Jerusalem that day, and the next. [13] And when David had called him, he did
eat and drink before him; and he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lie on his
bed with the servants of his lord, but went not down to his house.” That shows you something else in verse 13,
that Uriah’s +R learned behavior patterns of loyalty were so strong that when
he was bombed out of his mind, he still maintained his loyalty. Now that is really saying something. This man is staggering drunk at this point,
he wasn’t drinking grape juice, David was not a prohibitionist, he was drinking
and he was drunk, completely, and yet while he was drunk he had at least some
control of himself. And that can’t
happen, that just can’t happen unless this man has been operating in the Word
of God for many, many years and developed a very strong set of godly behavior
patterns. So that doesn’t work.
So verse 14, David starts another attempt; see all this craftiness, same
skill but now employed demonically, “And it came to pass in the morning that
David wrote a letter” an order literally, “to Joab, and sent it by the hand of
Uriah.” Now that’s adding insult to
injury. Here’s a guy carrying his own
death warrant right in his hand, it’s sealed, but the pathos of this whole
thing, the man has his own execution right in his hand and doesn’t realize
it.
Verse 15, “And he wrote in the letter saying,” and this is the order,
and this is one of the most abominable orders ever given in history. “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest
battle, and retire from him, that he may be smitten, and die. [[16] And it came to pass, when Joab observed
the city, that he assigned Uriah unto a place where he knew that valiant men
were. [17] And the men of the city went out, and fought with Joab, and there
fell some of the people of the servants of David; and Uriah, the Hittite, died
also.” Now this shows you what a
believer in compound carnality can do.
Believers can be tremendously cruel in very polite ways. Believers can be very vicious, and you could
argue at this point, Oh, David can’t be saved and do these things. Oh yes he can.
And you should not be surprised, and if you learn grace from Scripture
you will not have this attitude when you run across another believer who really
rams you to the wall on some deal, some business deal, and I’ve often said you
haven’t been gypped until you’ve been gypped by another Christian. But some
other believer can sometimes ram you to the wall on some deal; he can be cruel
to you socially, he can do all sorts of things behind your back or in front of
your face, and if you are not prepared, and if you do not have grace
orientation, immediately mental attitude resentment toward this kind of thing,
but if you will realize that there’s a tiger in everyone’s tank, and you will
not be shocked when this kind of thing happens, prepare yourself for the day
it’s going to happen to you; it will so don’t be alarmed when it happens, don’t
get knocked off balance when another believer treats you this way. This is the way, in a fallen world, it
goes. So don’t get shocked when this
kind of thing occurs. You see, if you
can overcome shock you can think properly in a situation.
I have a friend that drilled soldiers for many years and he always said
that one of the things that he drilled over and over and over for the men under
his command was to respond to the shock of, of course the jolt physically, and
the shock of what’s going to happen when they start to move out of the drop
zone, and all this will translate into so much shock that occurs in this kind
of thing, physically and psychologically and everything else, and sometimes
it’s at night and you can’t see what’s going on, you don’t know where the enemy
is, the unit is spread out all over the place because they didn’t meet in the
drop zone, and you’ve got to move; you can’t panic in that kind of a
situation. Now men can’t do that in a
real life situation unless they’ve been trained, unless they’ve been trained to
anticipate the shock. If you know it’s
coming you can handle the shock. This is
why a lot of doctors and nurses really don’t use their heads when they deal
with patients. Another friend is a
paramedic and he was saying the mistake that he sees so often in emergency
medicine is that medical personnel never tell a patient what they’re going to
do, and the patient is sitting there in shock, they see this big tube coming
down and where’s that thing going, and they can reduce shock simply by taking a
few seconds and explaining what they’re going to do. There are ways of reducing
shock, and what we’re trying to do is get you to see grace to reduce your shock
in operating in Christian circles.
You’ll be done in sometime by believers, and you might as well learn
this is part of the bag, so learn to live with it and stop getting uptight
about is.
All right, David gives this order and the tragedy of it is that in verse
17, in order to get Uriah isolated, Uriah is a commissioned officer of probably
high rank, now how do you suppose he’s going to isolate Uriah under a
battlefield situation. He can’t isolate
him individually without isolating Uriah’s whole unit. So the crime that’s involved here is not just
Uriah that’s involved, it’s all the men under his command involved. We don’t know what he was, maybe he was a company
commander, a regimental commander, we don’t know from the context what Uriah’s
rank was, but Uriah had a rank and he had men under him and what David was
saying, it’s not just like you pictured sometimes in Sunday School literature,
one guy with a spear out there alone.
That’s not it at all. The point
was, David said now look, there’s Uriah’s unit and I want you to pull your
other units back, keep them in reserve when the battle gets going and his unit
will just get bombed out. So this was
not just an order to [can’t understand word] Uriah, this was an order that
affected the destiny of all the men underneath him; this was a massacre, it was
murder on a broad scale. Now could David
do that and be a Christian? He obviously
was, so it’s not a question whether he was a Christian or not, we know
that. Did he do this? Yes. Can
Christians do that again? Sure can.
All right, Uriah is killed in action; not only is Uriah killed, it says
“some,” now the way that’s translated in the King James that it’s a little,
just a few men; it’s not that at all, it’s his unit, the whole unit was
massacred because of this idiotic order of David.
Verse 18, “Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the
war, [19] And he charged the messenger, saying, When you have made an end
[finished] telling the matters of the war unto the king,” see Joab doesn’t like
this either, he doesn’t like to give this order and he knows that David is out
of it, and he says, [20] “If so be that the king’s wrath arise, and he say unto
you, “Why approached you so near unto the city when you did fight? Don’t you
know that they would shoot from the wall? [21] Who smote Abimelech, the son of
Jerubbesheth? Did not a woman cast a
piece of millstone upon him, from the wall, that he died in Thebez? Why went you near the wall? Then say thou, Thy servant Uriah, the
Hittite, is dead also.” When he says
that, I want you to tell David something, after you get through your report,
and he’s blowing his stack at losing a great elite unit, you just add one
little sentence, “Uriah is dead.”
That’ll take care of it. If you
ever write a play you could have material for a fantastic one act drama right
here in chapter 11. It’s very, very
powerful.
Now verse 21 also tells us something else interesting, it’s a sidelight.
You notice how, when they discuss military situations, they cite a concrete
instance of their past history. This
verse gives you insight how they trained their military. They trained their military from their past
history; the incident of verse 21 is given in detail in Judges 9 and this shows
you that there were certain categories of action. And this is really nice because it justifies
what I’ve been trying to do in the Framework course. What happens is that these military people,
there are certain types of maneuvers, certain kinds of situations they are
going to face in real life, so what happens is that apparently they take one
event, one concrete illustration, another illustration for this kind of action,
one concrete illustration and all of that is taken out of the book of Joshua
and Judges. See, Joshua and Judges were
the two parts of the Bible written by that day, and they would study Joshua and
Judges. Just a historical note, it’s
interesting to notice here that most of the defense minister of present day
Israel, Moshe Dayan, learns many of his tactics from the book of Joshua.
And here is proof that the Jews in ancient history did this; they
spotted one event and they memorized that event and everything that happened in
it, and then they used that to stand for a whole category.
Verse 22, watch the response of David.
“So the messenger went, and came and made known to David all that Joab
had sent him for. [23] And the messenger said unto David, Surely, the men
prevailed against us, and came out unto us into the field, and we were upon
them even unto the entrance of the gate, [24] And the shooters shot from off
the wall upon thy servants; and some of the king’s servants are dead, and thy
servant, Uriah, the Hittite, is dead also.”
Verse 25, “Then David said,” now look at this, a man who for years and
years and years, all through 1 Samuel, all through 2 Samuel up to this point is
one fantastic illustration that God is a sovereign God; there’s no such thing
as chance, everything happens by God’s decree. David has been trained in that,
experientially, doctrinally, in all ways.
Now what is the brilliant reply. David said well… “Then David said unot
the messenger, Thus shall you say unto Joab, Let not this thing displease thee,
for the sword devours one as well as another.[ Make thy battle more strong
against the city, and overthrow it; and encourage you him.]” Now, could David’s response be so crass? So hardened in his heart? He just slaughtered a whole unit and he knows
why, because of his messing around with Bathsheba. And he’s completely crass at this point. Now again, let’s be honest, that ultimately
is our attitude when we’re out of fellowship.
We don’t give a damn what we’re doing when we’re out of fellowship, and
it is not until the process of repentance begins that you have any remorse,
ultimately, over what you do when you’re out of fellowship. When you are out of fellowship one of the
marks of being out of fellowship is a fantastic insensitivity, a crassness, where
you can look at all the stuff you’ve done and say well what the hell, that kind
of attitude. And I use that vocabulary
because you know that’s the vocabulary you use.
Let’s turn to how David felt out of fellowship, all during this period,
and to see this turn to Psalm 51. Now
I’m going to upset the chronological order of this chapter but it’s by design
not by chance. And I’m going to go
through David’s confession before
David confessed. The reason is I want to
hit this confession three times, I want to hit it in Psalm 51, I want to hit it
in Psalm 32 and I want to hit it in the last part of 2 Samuel 12, so when you
see this you will have a good basic review of getting back in fellowship,
spiritual first aid. So we’re going to
go over this doctrine three times; we’re going to start with Psalm 51. Remember David has not yet confessed, we’re
going to get to how he confesses, we’ll get to the situation, how God brings
his confession about. Right now we’re
working with his confession because I want you to notice how he was so
miserable out of fellowship and yet so complacent. We’ve just seen how crass he was; we have
just seen his passion to cover up one sin with another, he’s got one glaring
sin, I’ll cover it up with another one, I’ll cover that up with another one,
I’ll cover that up with another one, all the way up until it’s a massive
pile. I know I’ve sinned but I just
don’t give a damn. Now that’s David’s
attitude.
Now all the while this is true, deep down in his heart David is pained,
and these confessional hymns from the book of Psalms depict his inner
heart. These confession hymns show what
the psychologists call mental illness, and it is one further testimony that in
Scripture, apart from organic disturbances, there is no such thing as mental
illness. Now this is not being cruel,
this is not saying there aren’t tremendous problems resulting from compound
carnality, this is not trying to argue that a person who is having mental
illness could get out of it right tonight if he’d just confess his sins. We’re NOT saying that. We’re saying that mental illness is the
result of a prolonged pattern of sin. So
mental illness is a result of something, and you can’t solve mental illness by
tranquilizing it; you’ve got to solve mental illness by dealing with the root,
and the root is rebellion against God and His Law for this world. People who rebel are obviously mentally
ill.
It’s no accident that no generation of young people in the history of
this country have tried to suicide at the rate this generation is trying. People say what are all these teenagers
trying to kill themselves for? It’ easy,
they’re all psycho. Why? Because they
have fundamentally rebelled against God’s authority. This is an authority-less generation and you
are obviously seeing the price; a generation of parents who refuse to
discipline children, you can watch this in any supermarket or any public
place. Watch some mother walk in and the
kids are pulling everything off the shelf, now you put that back and the kid
pulls off 4 or 5 more cans, the whole thing falls down, I’m going to speak to
you more loudly if you do it once more.
And the kid goes on, and after 25 times of this and he’s got everything
on the floor, the mother is still threatening him with what she’s going to
do. And obviously all she’s training
this brat to do is be a bigger brat, because the kid has learned, oh, my mother
doesn’t mean what she says, she’s just talking.
What she should have done was back up her command with a little physical
authority in the place where God intended it to be backed up and this would
have solved the problem. But you are not
being kind to children to not put them in a rigorous disciplined environment. Now this is not being cruel to children, it’s
not being cruel at all. In fact, it
takes effort to do it soundly, consistently, lovingly and biblically. That’s hard, and ultimately, speaking as a
parent myself, the reason we don’t do this is because basically it’s a lot of
work, it is a lot of bother to sit down, give an order and follow it through,
because there are times when you’re tired, you don’t feel like it, and it’s
just too much of a hassle, you don’t want to bother with it, and that’s
ultimately why we don’t do it; we just don’t want to hassle with it. The price to be paid is an authority-less
generation.
Let’s look at Psalm 51, this is one of the classic answers to this
problem. David was neurotic during the
time he was out of fellowship. In
compound carnality, one of the greatest believers of all time, a believer
singled out by God as type of Jesus Christ, he is neurotic. Can believers be mentally ill? You bet they can. Probably more believers are mentally ill than
unbelievers? Do you know why? Because
the believers are the ones who know more of the truth and therefore their
rebellion is greater.
Psalm 51 has a structure of 2,5,6,5,2 type structure where you have two
verses on one subject, five verses on another subject, six verses, five verses
and two verses. That kind of a pattern
is a tip off to what’s going to be emphasized in this Psalm. Verses 1-2, this is David’s immediate need;
I’m going to give the outline and we’ll progress slightly through it and then
next week we’ll finish. Verses 3-6,
David acknowledges two things in his confession, both his personal act of sin
and his sin nature; both form the component for his confession. Then verses 7-12, David deals with his
request for restoration. Now since those
are six verses, and you can see by the pattern of the Psalm that those six
verses form a pinnacle, that tells you right away the most important part of
Psalm 51 re the petitions he makes for restoration. What does David consider to
be proper restoration. Then verses
13-17, David’s vow, what he’s going to do when he is restored. Then finally verses 18-19, David prays for
God’s program.
Now let’s look at verses 1-2, notice the heading of the Psalm, in the
Hebrew this actually is verse 1, “To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when
Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone into Bathsheba.” So the Psalm was written after the fact, but
as we come into this, remember the Psalm heading shows you, I don’t care what
kind of a jam you are in, there is no jam any of you will ever be in that God
in His grace can’t get you out of. And I
don’t want anybody to walk away from here tonight with this idea that you can
commit some sort of sin that is going to permanently ruin you for the rest of
your Christian life, and walk around with a big fat guilt complex that I’ve had
it, and so on. You are just submitting
further to Satan by that attitude because Satan wants you bumped out of the
program, he wants to immobilize you and he’s got you right where he wants you. So if you’re one of these believers that
think you’ve committed some unpardonable sin some place, you are a sucker; you
do not understand grace and you are wrong.
Verse 1, here’s David’s immediate cry, “Have mercy upon me, O God,
according to thy loving-kindness; according to the multitude of Thy tender
mercies blot out my transgressions. [2] Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.” Now I want
you to notice the words, you can’t understand the Psalm unless you’re careful
to understand the words. What is it in
God’s character David appeals to. Let’s
go back, doctrine of divine essence, God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is
just, God is love, God is omniscient, omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, and
eternal. These are God’s attributes; now it is to God’s character that David
appeals. He does not appeal, oh God, I’m
in such a mess, get me out of this. Oh
God, I feel so bad, get me out of this.
David appeals directly to God’s character. Do you know why he’s doing this? Because under the law of Israel there was no
way of escaping he crimes of murder and adultery; they were capital
offenses. So to get forgiveness in this
case he’s going to have to go directly to God’s character, the Law-maker, and
have a special dispensation, and it’s going to be a special dispensation
because he’s the king; if he is killed at this point Solomon won’t be born, and
God’s covenant won’t go on. So David’s
in kind of a jam here.
“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to they loving-kindness,” that’s
the word chesed, it is the word for
covenant love, marital love, it is the word that means I am faithful to an
agreement I have made in the past. So he
says, “Lord, be merciful according to the grace manifest in the Abrahamic
Covenant,” it combines the attribute of love and immutability; those two
attributes combine and form chesed. God is immutable, God is loyal to His Word,
when God promises you something, it is His chesed
that makes Him bless you. “Have mercy
upon me, O God, according to they loving-kindness; according unto the multitude
of Thy tender mercies,” this again is an appeal to grace. Remember what I said, “grace” is an
overworked word in our Christian vocabulary and if you want a more biblically
sound way of thinking, knock out the word “grace” every once in a while for
variety and replace it with the word “mercy.”
And when you find yourself using the word “grace” in your life, just for
a day or so, plug in the word “mercy.”
And when you use the English word “mercy” you’ll get corrected in your
mentality because the word “mercy” connotes the fact you’re in trouble; grace
doesn’t quite do that.
Verse 2, “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity,” now the word
“iniquity” is the word that is used in addition to the word “transgression,” he
uses almost every word here for sin, “and cleanse me from my sin,” see
“transgressions” verse 1; “iniquity” and “sin” verse 2, these are all Hebrew
words denoting sin. Notice his passion
in verse 2; the passion of verse 2 is to be clean. That tips you off about something in this
confession business. When you have the
desire in your heart to be clean from what you know is filth in God’s sight,
you are well on your way because the Holy Spirit has worked and is working,
even at that moment that you have that awareness. So the fact that David has the awareness in the
first two verses shows you it is the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit now
working in the depths of his heart.
Now I’m going to go so far as to say this and I’m not saying this
deliberately to start heresy, but I’m going to make a statement that I want you
to understand in the light of Psalm 51.
Without that awareness you cannot confess your sin. Now this does mean you can’t confess your
sin. Listen to it carefully, “without
this awareness” you can’t confess your sin.
Does that mean there are times when you can’t confess your sin, God
won’t let you? NO! You can always
confess your sins, but when the confession is a genuine confession, motivated
by the Holy Spirit, because remember, who has to motivate a totally depraved
person? It’s always the Holy
Spirit. The sign of wanting to confess
is an awareness of filth and this is why the Hebrew always uses these words to
wash. Remember all through the Mosaic
Law they had to wash their hands, they had to wash their clothes, they had to
wash this, wash that. Why all this
washing? Because it was to drill into
their minds that physical filth is a type of spiritual filth. When you see physical filth you’ll always
have a good picture of spiritual filth.
This is why traditionally wherever you have had Bible-believing people
who were strong spiritually you usually have quite literally physically clean
communities. For example, take the Amish
in Pennsylvania, if you’ve ever driven through the farmlands of western
southern Pennsylvania, you drive by these places and they just are immaculate;
they look like they scrubbed them that morning.
You go to certain places in Europe, Holland, for example, that was named
for its evangelical Protestantism 100 years ago, you found tremendous
cleanliness. Why? Because there’s
something about being spiritually clean that is linked to being physically
clean; the two go together.
And so this cleanliness comes out, the desire to be washed. What did say in John 13 say? Wash my feet and give me a bath, and it was a
type of confession of sin, not an accident, it occurs time and time again. So
the next time some of you housewives wash your hands 55 times a day, next time
you’re standing there at the sink washing your hands you can just be edified,
that’s just typologically what God the Holy Spirit does every time you confess
your sins, and you can get a blessing out of washing your hands, if that’s
possible.
Now the next section of Scripture, verses 3 and following, we’ll just introduce
this to show you the next step in his confession. The first step, verses 1-2, he wants a desire
to be clean, he wants that desire, he’s aware of his dirtiness, his filthiness
in God’s sight; he wants cleansing. Now
verse 3, “For,” notice it begins with “for,” this is the reason he wants to be
clean, and this tips you off to something to look for in your life, something
that will tell you the Holy Spirit’s working.
What produces the desire to wash and to be clean? That is the work of the Holy Spirit. How?
Be specific, David is going to.
“For I” and the King James says know [acknowledge] and it shouldn’t be,
it’s yadah, and it equals the word
just simply to be personally aware, it means not just a theoretical knowledge
but to be personally aware of it, “For I personally am aware of my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.”
Now verse 3 is proof that where you have the Holy Spirit working, the
first step is always going to be guilt.
But please do not confuse the two kinds of guilt. There is a human viewpoint satanic guilt, and
there is a divine viewpoint healthy guilt.
And I don’t want to end without making this clarification, some of you
will walk out of here and start misapplying.
All guilt is not of God; you have got to learn this and you’ve got to
learn on your own, I can’t teach it to you, I have to learn it myself, you have
to learn it however your soul is built.
But somewhere along your life as a Christian you’re going to have to
learn to [can’t understand word] in your heart what is true guilt from pseudo
guilt.
Now one of the features of true guilt that is never true of satanic
guilt, this isn’t the only one, but one of the true features is that true
divine viewpoint is always specific.
We’re going to see this when Nathan comes to him. And because it is specific it is rooted to a
passage, usually, of the Word, the Word of God.
The Holy Spirit wrote the Bible; doesn’t it stand to follow He will use
the Bible as a tool of conviction. Thus, when you are experiencing true guilt
there should be, if you’ve been in the Word any length of time, some verse,
some passage, some thought, you may not even remember where it is in the Bible,
but you can almost see the verse out in front of you, or it’ll come up to your
mind over and over and over, a specific.
Now the reason that true guilt is this way is that God doesn’t want to
make you miserable. God doesn’t get
pleasure out of making you miserable. He
wants to get this whole thing over with quick.
Like when you discipline your child, you don’t sit there and want to
beat him all night, you want to get it over, he wants to get it over with
quick, you want to get it over with quick.
All right, God the Holy Spirit wants to get it over with quick. He’s not interested in dragging it out in a
big long affair. So therefore his guilt
is specific. He doesn’t want you to
dangle at the end of a line wondering what the deal is. He wants to convict you of a specific sin so
you can get on and move.
So what is healthy guilt? It is
something related specifically to a concrete passage of Scripture. And when God convicts it will inevitably be
through Scripture. This is why it’s so
important, particularly a person in David’s position that’s having great problems,
is to sit there, at the end of compound carnality you may be able to do nothing
else, you hardly pick up the Bible, but pick it up and try reading it,
anywhere, just read it. Revelation,
Genesis, Isaiah, the Psalms, just start reading because if you can get your
eyeballs on the text the Holy Spirit can use something, you’re putting
something into His hands, a tool, a “Nathan” in front of you. So physically going to the Bible when you
know, when you’re are that you’ve been out of fellowship and you’ve got to do
something about it, it’s getting too complicated living out of fellowship. The thing to do is get back to the Word of
God. All your notes you might have
chucked while you were out of fellowship, you burned them, so you have nothing
to go to. All right, go to the Word of God.
And that’s one of the keys of beginning, I know my transgressions, David
says, it is that knowledge, verse 3, connected by the word “for” that links
verse 3 to verse 2. How can you get an
awareness of a need to be cleansed? By
first becoming aware of the dirt. How do
you become aware of the dirt? By getting
into the Word of God. So David has been
taught the Word of God by Nathan, Nathan is like the Bible would be to us when
we are out of fellowship. Nathan
confronts him, and then David feels dirty. When the confrontation occurs there
is no question what the problem is. When David goes to confess his sin, he
knows darn well what his problem is. It
says “my sin is ever before me.” And
he’s later on going to say in Psalm 32 all the time I was out of fellowship I
knew it, I didn’t give a damn about it, but I knew what was going on, and even
here David admits this.
Next week we’ll pick this up.