To download a PDF of the notes for this lesson, click on the following link: NOTES David—great sins and great mercy but always a heart in the right place, part 1

David—great sins and great mercy but always a heart in the right place, part 1

Yvon Prehn, Teacher

You’ve heard the saying, “but their heart is in the right place”

•       Sometimes used as an excuse when someone does something really stupid or evil

•       But often a compliment that someone tried to do something right and maybe didn’t quite make it

•       David, who we have now come to in our reading through the Bible in Chronological order was described as a “man after God’s own heart.”

•       In today’s lesson we’ll look closely at what that means and what we can learn from it.

 

David, a man “after God’s own heart”

•       Actually part of a sermon of Paul’s in the NT Acts 13:22 wherein going thru Israel’s history he describes David as a man after God’s own heart. I wanted to know what that meant, so I looked at it in my fav

•       From the www.BlueLetterBible.org

•       Definition of: Heart/kardia

•       Of course, the heart as the organ in the body, but more

•       denotes the centre of all physical and spiritual life

•       the vigour and sense of physical life

•       the centre and seat of spiritual life

•       the soul or mind, as it is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, endeavours

•       of the understanding, the faculty and seat of the intelligence

•       of the will and character

•       Let’s look at the word in other places of scripture, to be sure we understand it

Other uses of “Heart” in the Bible

•       Mat 6:21 KJV  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also

•       ***Our heart reflects what is important to us

•       Matthew 12:34  (NKJV)  Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

•       ***And what’s inside will come out—it just will. If we want to change something in our behavior we have to change our hearts

•       Rom 10:9 KJV  That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

•       ***Point in verse above, not just believing with an emotion—but with everything that is in you

•       Repent=metanoeō— “to change your mind” you’ve got to change (or start or at least be aware and try to, CHANGE your Mind/your Heart—the motivation for all you do in life from serving yourself to serving God

•       This is what we will see in David—in all his life, but a few more verses as this is very important

More

•       Eph 6:5 KJV – 5 Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ

•       ***All our work should be done as to Christ, because that is the focus of our hearts. If anything else, fear, compromise, indecision will result

•       Saul was always looking at what other people thought and of himself, that is why God rejected him

•       Mat 22:37 KJV – 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind

•       ***A totality in our lives of our love for God*** not simply in the emotional part of it

•       We’ve played down, diminished the definition of the heart to mushy emotion and that’s not it all

•       “Passion” might be a better term, though becoming greatly misused and trivialized

•        Jas 5:8 Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.

•       ***If your heart, the core of you, all that is inside you is established in the reality that your obedience to God is first, that Jesus is Lord, that doing his will is your #1 concern (and please listen to podcasts on How to Love Jesus)—you have nothing to fear no matter how crazy our world gets, as you age, whatever your fears are if your heart is established

•       AND now we will look at David to see how this was illustrated in his life

We will see in David

•       A life lived totally in the awareness of God—in all of it

•       A reminder, review of Psalms

•       From great victories to reprehensible sins

•       One little caution on this

•       God in everything does not mean God is a sort of genie in a bottle, there to help whenever we get in a jam

•       Remember who He is and who we are

•       He’s GOD, we are not. We can talk to him about everything, but we aren’t in control of everything

•       That may mean saying “no” to ourselves on a lot of things

•       We’ll now look at David and then comments and applications on his life

David as a young man

•       Anointed to be king when he was approximately 15-16 years old

•       Encourage young people to dream big dreams for God, while at the same time helping them see the training they need to make them come true

•       My calling—always wanted to be a teacher for Jesus

•       I don’t know who let me help the kindergarten’s Sunday School class when I was in third grade or who it was that gave me my first class that was all my class when I was in 6^th grade

•       But that got me started on a joy in life that has never ceased

•       Again, don’t squash dreams, but be realistic in the demands that are needed to make them come true—

It took David 15 years until he became king

•       Fought Goliath

•       Popular in Saul’s court, marries his daughter, leads armies

•       Saul turns on him and he is a fugitive

•       For 15 years…..

•       Wife given to someone else loses his best friend (Johnathan)

•       Saul whined, disobeyed, acted presumptively

•       David…..

Many Psalms written during this time and hard to date, but reflective of many….

•       Psalm 37 Living Bible (TLB)

•       37 Never envy the wicked! ² Soon they fade away like grass and disappear. ³ Trust in the Lord instead. Be kind and good to others; then you will live safely here in the land and prosper, feeding in safety.

•       ⁴ Be delighted with the Lord. Then he will give you all your heart’s desires. ⁵ Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him to help you do it, and he will. ⁶ Your innocence will be clear to everyone. He will vindicate you with the blazing light of justice shining down as from the noonday sun.

•       ⁷ Rest in the Lord; wait patiently for him to act. Don’t be envious of evil men who prosper.

•       ⁸ Stop your anger! Turn off your wrath. Don’t fret and worry—it only leads to harm. ⁹ For the wicked shall be destroyed, but those who trust the Lord shall be given every blessing. ¹⁰ Only a little while and the wicked shall disappear. You will look for them in vain. ¹¹ But all who humble themselves before the Lord shall be given every blessing and shall have wonderful peace.

He refused to take matters into his own hands

•       Did not kill Saul, though he had many opportunities to do so

•       IMPORTANT: he knew God’s overall commands—that he was not to harm the king anointed by the Lord

•       ***KEY application: no matter what the provocation, there is never a circumstance that should cause you to disobey what you know God wants you to do

•       David and all these troops could have easily rationalized that God had given Saul into their hands and so it must be OK to kill him

•       But it wasn’t

•       These situations are tests—does David truly love God as he says he does?

Results of his obedience

•       Matured him to become the greatest king in Israel’s history

•       Many challenges, battles during this time where he needed to listen to God

•       Also, many Psalms were written during this time that would bless humanity throughout human history

•       If David had not trusted God; he and all of human history after him would have lost out

•       Application: Don’t rush what God is teaching you (no matter what your age)

David becomes King of all Israel

•       Continues to conquer solidifying the boundaries of the land

•       For the first time, Israel now occupies the land that was given to them after the Exodus

•       David conquers Jerusalem, make it his capital

•       Decides to bring the Ark to Jerusalem (it had not been in the Tabernacle since the Philistines captured it)

•       But did it the wrong way on a cart and when Uzzah (son of the man who kept it) reached out his hand to steady it was struck dead

•       David angry, left it for three months and finally did it properly as was prescribed in the law, on the shoulders of priests

•       Bit of pride, self-will there—we must be so careful, just because God gives us success, we can never think we are above the law or LAW

David then wants to build a temple

•       Nathan the prophet first tells him “Go ahead and do it, the Lord is with you.”

•       Nothing wrong with it; much good from a human viewpoint

•       But that was not God’s plan for him and Nathan goes back and tells him

•       He cannot build the Temple, his son will

•       But God will give him an everlasting heritage

•       David’s response: Acceptance and praise

•       Gets back to doing what he was called to do—to conquer, fight battles

•       Application: what do we do when God says “no” to what seem to be good things?

What can happen when you don’t do what YOU are called to do

•       2 Samuel 11: It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

•       He wasn’t out doing what he was called to do

•       And what follows is his adultery with Bathsheba, the murder of her husband, death of his child

•       More on this in a bit, but an application

•       You are NEVER released from God’s calling on your life in things large or small until the Lord calls you home

•       From being obedient in a major ministry to for most of us simply being kind

•       NEVER a vacation from “Doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly with your God.”

Even in his sin—David did not cease being a man after God’s heart

•       Psalm 51 Living Bible (TLB)

•       51 Written after Nathan the prophet had come to inform David of God’s judgment against him because of his adultery with Bathsheba, and his murder of Uriah, her husband.

•       O loving and kind God, have mercy. Have pity upon me and take away the awful stain of my transgressions. ² Oh, wash me, cleanse me from this guilt. Let me be pure again. ³ For I admit my shameful deed—it haunts me day and night. ⁴ It is against you and you alone I sinned and did this terrible thing. You saw it all, and your sentence against me is just. ⁵ But I was born a sinner, yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. ⁶ You deserve honesty from the heart; yes, utter sincerity and truthfulness. Oh, give me this wisdom.

•       ⁷ Sprinkle me with the cleansing blood and I shall be clean again. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. ⁸ And after you have punished me, give me back my joy again. ⁹ Don’t keep looking at my sins—erase them from your sight. ¹⁰ Create in me a new, clean heart, O God, filled with clean thoughts and right desires. ¹¹ Don’t toss me aside, banished forever from your presence. Don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. ¹² Restore to me again the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you. ¹³ Then I will teach your ways to other sinners, and they—guilty like me—will repent and return to you. ^14-15 Don’t sentence me to death. O my God, you alone can rescue me. Then I will sing of your forgiveness,  for my lips will be unsealed—oh, how I will praise you.

•       ¹⁶ You don’t want penance; if you did, how gladly I would do it! You aren’t interested in offerings burned before you on the altar. ¹⁷ It is a broken spirit you want—remorse and penitence. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not ignore.

•       ¹⁸ And Lord, don’t punish Israel for my sins—help your people and protect Jerusalem.

•       ¹⁹ And when my heart is right, then you will rejoice in the good that I do and in the bullocks, I bring to sacrifice upon your altar.

•       KEY POINTS: God the one ultimately offended; a new heart needed; not just outward penance, sacrifice, but truly and broken and contrite heart

•       Again, forming himself back into a man “after God’s own heart”