Bible Recap Week 20

Transcript

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All right, here we go, episode 20. Uh, this uh episode of our Bible recap at Water's Edge invites us into uh one of the darkest and most emotionally complex seasons in the life of David. What begins in 2 Samuel 11, as far as my reading goes, as a private moment of compromise becomes this generational crisis that fractures a family, it destabilizes a kingdom, it leaves a father grieving for his lost son. But woven throughout the painful narrative of our reading this week, which was a lot, 2 Samuel 11 through 18, 1 Chronicles 20, and then we had um about nine or 10 different psalms that we read that that lined up with our reading, which I man, I love the chronological order of the of the scripture. It it brings the psalms to life. It's like we're reading about what David is going through, and then we're reading his journal. Um it's just, it's really, it really is uh it's an amazing journey. Samuel gives us the events of what's happening, but the Psalms gives us the emotion of it. And together, when you combine those things in your reading, it's just not what happened in David's house, but it's what's happening in his soul. The main theme of this episode, as I just kind of do my own recap, uh, is pretty sobering. And it's what what happens in the soul of a person eventually shapes the culture of their family. This section of scripture, um, along with the Psalms, is not merely about David's personal failure with Bathsheba, but it's about unchecked sin and what that does to a family. It's about how being passive multiplies dysfunction when you don't deal with things. It's how unresolved wounds can become generational crisis. And yet somehow the mercy of God continues to move through broken people and broken systems. The tragedy is difficult to miss. Um, David could conquer nations. He was known as the great warrior. He took on lions and tigers and bears, but he could not, he couldn't shepherd his own house. The collapse begins long before his son Amnon assaults Tamar. Um it be it begins long before Absalom rebels against David. It begins really in David himself. 2 Samuel 11 opens with this haunting detail. It says, In the spring, when the kings go off to war, David remained in Jerusalem. Now, we might just read that, but as you're as you're looking through, and especially listening to, if you're listening to the devotionals by Torah, David remained in Jerusalem. The warrior king is absent from where he should have been. David should have been out at war, but he stayed home isolated. And isolation creates vulnerability. Comfort dulls our vigilance. When we choose to ignore things, when we choose comfort over uh encourage, or if we choose passiveness over um dealing with something, there is a slow drift that begins, and um we see what happens. David sees Bathsheba, takes Bathsheba, and when her pregnancy threatens his image, he orchestrates murder against Bathsheba's husband Uriah. The sin, this sin is not merely just sexual. It's it's it's like a broken covenant failure. It's an abuse of power. Um it is it's done in secret. Uh David feels entitled that he has the right to do this. Um and you you lose this, you lose the view of David being a shepherd and a king. Um he's acting as though uh people exist to protect his comfort and his reputation. And perhaps that's where a lot of family crisis begins. It's uh it certainly is a lot in in my world, it certainly is a lot of where church crisis begins. That um when a pastor no longer acts as a shepherd, but they act as entitled people or people who are protecting their reputation, or or they won't move forward because it might it's it might push the people too much and they choose comfort over um over uh leading, it it produces a crisis. Um and and sometimes it's done over a slow, uh, what do they call that? A slow burn, not in one catastrophic moment of, oh no, you know, now we have problems. We didn't last week, but now we do. Church problems never happen that way. Family problems never happen that way. There is a slow erosion in the inner life that happens. Psalms 51, we read this week, allows us to hear David after the prophet Nathan confronts him in that that in that dramatic passage when Nathan says, You are the one that I'm talking about. And and it it grabs David. And then he goes into this raw repentance. And I'm thankful that David just didn't you know cut off the head of Nathan, um, but he goes into this repentance and he says, Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. See, there's something that different that happens in when you read Psalms 51, knowing that the background is is aft comes after Nathan confronts him on his sin. David realizes that the deepest issue is not um protecting his his kingship, um, but but it's their inner correct it's it's the uh that that inner corruption. Um backing up to Psalms 51, if you go to Psalms 32, which is also about this same time, it complements the confession with the relief of forgiveness. He's uh David says, when I kept when I kept silent, my bones were wasting away. David learns that hidden sin never remains hidden. A leader's private life eventually becomes a communal reality. I know I'm kind of shifting into my regional pastor mode of teaching on, you know, for pastors, but this is true in church leadership as well. Church leaders' private life eventually becomes uh community known. A leader in your home's private life, if it's dark and you're covering up, it eventually comes out. And soon the consequences begin unfolding inside David's own house. And we read about that this week. 2 Samuel 13 tells one of the most heartbreaking stories in scripture. David's son Amnon violates his half-sister uh Tamar, uh, sexual abuse. And Tamar is just devastated, humiliated, uh, abandoned. And the text says David becomes angry when he hears about it, but he doesn't do anything. Nothing. Uh I mean, this father has his daughter sexually abused by uh his son, and he doesn't do anything. There's no confrontation, there's no intervention, there's no justice, as far as we know. And this silence becomes one of I'm my opinion, this silence is one of define the defining failures in David's life. You know, I I don't understand as I thought about this passage and as I dealt with the pain of of uh people who have survived sexual abuse, I don't understand why David remained passive in this. Um maybe maybe it was unresolved guilt of his own weakened moral authority. David knows what it is to misuse power sexually. So maybe he was, uh, I hate to say sympathetic towards his son, but but maybe he felt like he would be hypocritical if he dealt with it. And so now he's faced with this sin that he committed, but now in a different type in his own house, and he doesn't address clearly what mirrors um his own failure. Uh passive leadership creates space for chaos. When when we don't deal with things in our own life and in our own families, we shift into isolation and and become passive, and it creates chaos. A lot of times in counseling, um, and I'm I am not a counselor, but I know counselors, and I've read a lot of books about counseling, but I'm I'm I'm it is not my gift. But um but a lot of times a counselor will begin to unravel the chaos in a person's life and oh, tell me more about that chaos, tell me more about that, tell me more about that, because that counselor knows that they have to get back to what was what's some of the passiveness that has been ignored that brought you to this point. Um so families often suffer not just from what parents might do wrong or incorrectly, but but what parents refuse to confront and deal with. Um as I look back on my own family, I I I think I did this right. Um, and my daughter edits this so she can edit this out if she chooses to, I guess. But I I feel like Lisa and I lived um at least most of the time not covering up our scars and not covering up what we did wrong. But we would we would admit to those things. Um Absalom, Tamar's brother, watches all this unfold. And he waits two years and he's he's angry with his dad because his dad didn't do anything about it. Um nothing comes. So Absalom takes it into his own hands and he creates his his own solution. He murders his his brother Amnon and he begins, and and and so so Amnon, Amnon abuses Tamar, David does nothing. So his son Absalon says, if that's not gonna do anything, I'm gonna do this. And so brother murders brother, we've seen that before in scripture, and then this begins an Amnon decline because he's slowly moving towards rebellion. And what what we see here today is the is this danger of unresolved pain in David's family. Absalom is fascinating because he he really possesses many of David's strength. Um, he's charismatic, he's handsome, he's politically gifted, people love him. But internally, he has some of the same things going on that David had. Absalom, I don't think this is true with David, but Absalom was consumed by bitterness. 2 Samuel says that Absalom, he stole the heart of the people. You know, Saul has killed his um uh hundreds, but David has killed his thousands. Yet beneath the charm of Absalom is this wounded son whose pain has become rebellion. In Psalms 55, David writes, again, it it carries over from here we're reading in 2 Samuel. Let's go to the Psalms, and what does David write? He says, Oh, if an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, my son. You see, the betrayal in David's life is no longer, you know, from the outside. He's not long, no longer trying to protect his life from Saul and people of Saul's army trying to find him and kill him, but the fracture is now inside the house, and and his own family has become emotionally unsafe. And then eventually that exp that rebellion explodes. And Absalom marches towards Jerusalem and then takes over uh the kingship. David flees um up the uh Mount of Olives weeping, and the mighty king, David, who we have come to love and believe in and root for, who who once stood before giant Goliath just in episodes just a few weeks ago, right? Now leaves his city and he's humiliated and he's exposed. And uh he fills he fills some of the writing that we see. Psalms 3, oh Lord, how many are my foes? How many people are against me? Um, he in Psalms 4 he talks about sleepless anxiety. That might be something that some of you, I know that, I know that I can some have sometimes have sleepless anxiety. Psalms 4 is is where David records that. Uh Psalms 13, he says, How long, O Lord, will you forget me? Are you gonna forget me forever out here, Lord? Some of you maybe have cried similar prayers. Uh Psalms 28 cries out for mercy, Psalms 86, um, which we read, uh, David is crying out for grace and guidance. You know what makes these Psalms so powerful is is their honesty of what go is what's what going on and what is going on in David's life. David doesn't hide his fear, his confusion, his shame. This broken king is still praying. And perhaps that's one of the greatest encouragements of this story that I find is that broken people, even as as we look at David's sin and we can't believe you know some of the sin that's been committed, he's broken. Broken people still can seek God and they can do it honestly. Sometimes leaders uh must finally face externally what they ignored internally, and uh that's painful. Uh sometimes dads and moms have to finally face externally what maybe they ignored internally, and that doesn't mean you have to write a book about it or make a movie about your life. It just it just means that there are times that you can eve even in even if you feel like the biggest loser or the biggest failure, you can still be real with God. Um then in in the reading this week, if that wasn't enough, um, we read that Absalom dies in battle, and and there's just this twist in in David's uh story. Uh and uh when David gets word that his son has been killed, he collapses into grief. And um this is this is pretty powerful as well. David writes, Oh my son Absalom, my son, my son, would I had died instead of you. Um this is this is particularly moving because uh we find that that David wins the battle, he wins the war, but he loses the relationship. And suddenly um the victory of becoming king again feels empty. That like there's nothing there. Um because the king David realized that uh power, titles, authority doesn't heal fractured relationships. Um, winning a battle cannot mend a wounded family. Uh winning a lawsuit doesn't erase the pain. I mean, talk to somebody who's gone through divorce and and maybe they come out of that divorce and it looks like they are have won and but the pain is still very much alive. Um I've I've learned I've learned this. The deepest wounds in leadership are are relational wounds. They're not vocational wounds. Um they're relationships. Uh there are there are so many experiences that I could that I could go on about and we're coming to the end here, but I it it may look like, oh, for vocationally, that was a really good thing. But if I lose the relationship, it doesn't matter to me. It it really doesn't. It I mean it's like, well, I guess that's good, but I always ache over the loss of of relationships, even if I know that, even if I know it has to happen, even if I know that it might be for the best, um, even if I know that it's best for the organization if that happens, I I hurt over broken relationships. And there are people that I could just start naming, and I'm tempted to do that, and I won't, but it's it I just uh broken relationships break me. What makes this all of this week so compelling is that the psalm for me is the psalms become the emotional narration of what's going on, and uh I think that's my biggest takeaway from this week of how honest God allowed David to be, um, how much God welcomed David's uh repentant heart, his um um his desire to be one, his desire to be healed. Um the final word is not destruction. That I want you to take that away this week. The the final word in all of this that's happened is not destruction of David, um, but it's it's the mercy of God. God coming through, pursuing broken people and broken stories. There is there is not one person walking this earth that is so far from God that cannot be brought brought back in through the mercy of God. Even in David's collapse, God continues to write redemption redemption. David is David is still called a man after God's own heart by by most of us. Your spiritual biography might be like David, but probably not. Um I I know in my life I've never had a Bathsheba in my life. I've have no murder charges against me. Um but I sure have flaws, and I sure have failed, and I sure have had times of passiveness and brokenness and a whole bunch of mistakes and lots of sin. But the final word is not eternal damnation. The final word is through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come. 'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home. God bless you. Thanks for listening.