Who Knows? The Lord May be Gracious to Me | 2 Samuel 11-12 | Jarryd Cole

Pastor Jarryd continues our 4 week series "Who Knows?", teaching how we should respond to our sin by looking at the life of King David. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's east side. We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

All right, all right. You guys can go ahead and find your seats. Take a seat. And again, welcome to Ambassador Church. Glad you guys are here with us on this beautiful uh Memorial Day weekend. Glad you guys stuck it out with us here. Hey, if we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Darren. I get to be the lead pastor here at Ambassador Church. Before we jump in, uh, if you're new to the room, we're glad you guys are here. I know it can be kind of scary coming into a place for the first time and figuring out, hey, uh, is this a church I can be a part of? I get that. Listen, if this is your first time, we don't want you to leave here without getting connected. A couple of ways you can do that, right in front of you is a QR code. You can scan that. There's a virtual connect card right there. Give us some information, your name, your email address, your phone number, and we'd love to reach out to you sometime and meet up outside of this space. We want to hear your story. We want to tell our story to you, and we want to see if Ambassador Church can be a spot that you can plug into. Okay. If you're more of like a pen and pad type person, we have physical cards, physical pens back there at the connect station as well. So after service, if you'd rather do that, do that as well. Same information. And we do the same thing if you fill that out. Okay. Well, hey, I want to jump into where we're heading this morning. We are continuing part two of a four-part series that we're kicking off before we get into the summer called Who Knows? And I want to tell us that there's exactly four times in scripture where we see this phrase pop up, and they're in the Old Testament. We explored one of them last week through the book of Jonah, the King of Nineveh, actually says this. And we talked about a word that we all know and love, right? Repentance. And by the way, if if you weren't here last week, I would love for you to go back and check out that first message because in beginning a new sermon series, here's what's true. Uh, oftentimes that first message begins to be the thing that sets the the foundation and the culture for where we're going for the rest of the series. And so if you're wondering about something I'm saying today, you should go back and listen to the first message and get some more uh background and information on where we're heading with this Who Knows series. And you can do that by going to our website, ambassadormke.org. Our videos are there. You can check out those. You can go to our podcast, just search Ambassador Church Milwaukee on there. We're on uh Spotify and Apple. Um, there's no Apple people in the room, are they? You guys go to Spotify for all your podcasts?

unknown 2:39

No.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Oh, amazing. Okay, I did the other way on first service, and everybody was like jogging all mixed. I didn't say Spotify. That's amazing. I'm an Apple guy myself. I threw my own people under the bus, but go Apple? Go Apple. All right. Low, low output, low output. Okay, anyway. You can check it out wherever you get your podcast. We're on YouTube, all the different things. Check out the first message to get the lay of the land of where we're heading, okay? And I want to remind us of this thread that we see woven throughout these three instances of people asking, who knows? Like each of these occasions are people appealing to God's mercy, pleading with God not to carry out what it seems likely that he is about to carry out. So I want to reiterate for us like none of these characters are calling into question God's justice. Every single situation is like these people see a just and holy God. They see them as sinful, rebellious people, and the punishment fits the crime. Okay, they think I deserve this, we deserve this, but who knows? Maybe God, out of an overflow of his mercy, maybe God out of the compassion of his heart, maybe he will relent. See, his justice isn't called into account, but rather an appeal is made to his mercy. And this is a big difference for most of us in the room, right in 21st century America. Because when we think about God doing whatever he wants and enacting his good and right justice, we tend to approach God with a bit of arrogance and question, and we question what God does. We question his justice. And in fact, I think this reveals a certain level of hypocrisy that exists inside of us, all of us. Because what this shows is that we tend to be people who want justice for them, but we want mercy for us. But here's what's true when each of us begin to come to terms with how outrageously gracious and how outrageously patient and kind and merciful God is with every single one of us every single day. Like remember, every time that you sin and God's justice is not immediately enacted on you, is a glorious display of his mercy. And what that should do is move us from a place of entitlement and arrogance to a place of humility and ultimately repentance. You might be asking, well, Derek, didn't we talk about repentance last week? The answer to that question is yes, and we're doing it again. Okay, so buckle up, gang. But last week we saw this with the life of Jonah. We got to see an occasion where an entire nation, Nineveh, this wicked nation, when Jonah came and preached the worst sermon ever, right? Just a couple words of repent or die, basically. They all fell before the Lord in repentance, and God actually relented. He did not carry out what he had initially intended to carry out. His mercy came to their rescue. But today, as we look at our text, we look at a very similar story containing many of these same elements, but we'll see a different response from God in this story. So if you have your Bibles, I hope you do, we're gonna be in the book of 2 Samuel this morning. If you don't have your Bibles, there's some right there in front of you. You can grab one of those. Um, and we're gonna be in 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12, at least in part, to uh look at the life of a guy named David, maybe someone that many of you know. Now, no matter how new you are to church, you've probably at least heard of David to some degree, right? This is uh the same David that would become the unexpected king over Israel, right? He was the runt of his family. Those of you know your your your scriptures, he was the youngest of eight sons, okay? And when there's going to be a second king of Israel, and um the prophet goes to Jesse's house, who's David's dad, like David would have been the least likely person that they would have picked to become king, and yet David was still chosen to become king. And I love how the narrative tells us that the Lord had to say, Hey, the Lord does not look at the things that people look at, but people look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Okay, this is what God's saying basically. Hey, I know David might not look like much, but his heart, his heart is a heart of gold. This is David. It's the same David who would eventually take down Goliath, and in time he would win the affection of his people. And early on in his life, humility was the mark of his kingship. But as we know, as time goes on, and this so often happens, he starts to get a little bit lazy, he starts to get arrogant, he starts to feel a sense of entitlement. And in short, we can say this he forgets where he comes from. And this is often what power can do, can't it? And this is where we pick up the story today in 2 Samuel chapter 11. I want to begin reading for us in verse 1 as we see this narrative of David. Here's what it says it says, In the spring when kings marched out to war, David sent Joab with his officers and all of Israel, and they destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. I want you to kind of underline or highlight that text. If you have your own Bibles here, you can underline, hey, but David remained in Jerusalem. Because I want us to see here before we jump in, is that like, hey, uh, back in this day, leaders of nations at this point in history, they weren't merely these kind of political diplomats who just sat back in their corner offices or in their homes and made these decisions from their comfort, but they were men who fought alongside of their common man. They were people who joined in in the action. And so as you read this text, you get this off the top. What the author wants us to know is that David is very much forfeiting his duty and his responsibility as king over Israel by not going to war with his people. David's getting comfortable. He's actually abandoning something. He is neglecting at least part of his call, part of what has made him such a great leader, his willingness to get into the trenches with his people. And this should always be a worthwhile reminder for each of us in the room because regardless of where you are in your faith journey yourself, this reminds us of something. And it's this important point here that our actions have consequences. And you're going to see this illustrated throughout this event in David's life. And I could have made this point at any point in the message, but I kind of want to make it here at the front end. And it's this that your actions do have consequences. And in reality, if I went around and asked any of you if you disagreed with that, I would go out to say that none of you would say you disagree with that statement. But here's the thing: I think there's a subtle drift that begins to play out in the lives of so many Christians as we begin to understand in particular the forgiveness of God. And when we think about actions having consequences and the forgiveness of God, like I think there's something that we kind of miss. And here it is, it's that we tend to blur the line between forgiveness and consequence. Right? Like if you're in this room, I want you to know this that there's nothing that you have ever done or nothing that you will ever do that will put you outside of the reach of the forgiveness of God. But that also doesn't mean that you won't have consequences for your actions. And we see this tragically played out in David's life. Here's a question Have Have you ever felt like God's just kind of cosmically picking on you? Maybe you've been in a place where you understand and you know, hey, God forgives me, He loves me, but the way that my life kind of feels right now, it just seems like He's picking on me right now. A couple things. You're right and you're wrong. Yes, God forgives you, but He's not picking on you. What's more likely true is you might just be simply bearing the consequences of your sinful behavior. I remember uh first getting my feet wet in the ministry. I was back in Iowa and I was doing some post-incarceration ministry as a part of the staff team I was a part of. It's called the Matthew 25 house. And I got so many opportunities years ago to see so many men come into this house after they had spent their stint in prison. And I got to see so many cool things. These men kind of getting their lives back on track and the house in general, what it would do is it would provide a place for the men to live. It would provide meaningful work for them to put their hands to, it would help them pay off debts that maybe they accumulated before or during their time in prison and maybe even get a car, right? So they can get themselves around and do this kind of things. And so what they got to experience is a chance to bask in and even experience the mercy and the grace and forgiveness of God. But you want to know what's also true, they were also still dealing with the consequences of their actions. Because they got to experience the forgiveness and the mercy of God, did not take away the fact that they were still dealing with broken relationships in their lives, the impact of their poor decisions, potential relapse into bad habits and even addictions, limited places that they could live and get work after they leave the house. They get to experience this fact that God forgives me, but there's still a lot of hoops left to jump through in the courts as a result of getting caught for things like murder and drinking while driving and drug use and selling or whatever else it might be. You know, I want us to know that that's not God picking on people. That's just people bearing the consequences of their actions. And sometimes, even I talk to other men, men who aren't kind of like the Matthew 25 men, but men who have families, right? And sometimes men later on in life, they come to this realization that there's so many things in their lives that they put in front of their family, their wives and their children. And what's true is when they come to know Jesus, they may experience the forgiveness of God, but they are still dealing with the consequences of their actions where they might still have to pursue restoring relationships with family members and children and spouses who they mostly ignored for most of their life. What's most true about them is they might have this fractured love, they have fractured trust, they have fractured respect. And y'all's difficult to get those things back. How many of us know that? And I want to suggest this morning that those consequences aren't actually a bad thing. Those consequences are God exercising a type of kindness to us to help point us towards what is good and true and right, what is just, what is leaning towards life to the full and away from the things that lead to regret and things like embarrassment and shame and misery. Like sometimes the greatest thing that God can do is yes, save us from our sin, but not save us from our consequence. Sometimes it's the best thing God can do. Furthermore, as we illustrated here through the life of David, but all of us have instances in our own lives to point to as well. Like, just as there are consequences for our actions, doing stuff we know we shouldn't do, there's also consequences for our inaction. We just came through a series in James here, James chapter 4, 17. I want to remind us, it says this in our paraphrase. He says, It is sin for you to know the good you ought to do and don't do it. Like it's not just sin for you to do things you know you shouldn't do, it's also sin for you to withhold yourself from doing the thing that you know that you should do. And when you start to come to grips with this, it's crazy because it's one thing to eliminate the big sins in your life. I'm not gonna do this, I'm not gonna do that, or whatever it might be. But the thing that James is talking about here is next level because he's saying sin is not just stopping things you know were wrong, but it's then doing things you know are right. And this is what James is calling out. I want to bring this back around because David was under no impression that he wasn't supposed to be at battle. Like he knew he was supposed to be there, and to not do so for him was sin. And when we reject the God-given assignments in our lives, there are consequences for that as well. Like, just as much as there's consequences for doing things we know we shouldn't do, there's also consequences for not doing things we know we should do. All sin has consequences, no sin is neutral. And look what happens next with David in our text. And keep in mind, like, this is a common and predominant pattern. His sin is gonna multiply. You see, the multiplying effect of sin in our lives, and in particular, for the type of sin that James lays out here, this is what we're gonna see. Like, David is wrestling with this reality. Hey, I know I'm supposed to be doing this, and I'm not doing it. This is the type of sin that David is wrestling with. Look at me and continue in verse 2. It says, one evening, and this is like one evening when David was supposed to be at war, one evening when he wasn't doing what he ought to be doing, one evening where he had let his guard down because he was being disobedient to his calling. This is just this one evening, okay. David got up from his bed and he strode around on the roof of the palace. And from the roof, he saw a woman bathing, a very beautiful woman. And so David sent someone to inquire about her, and he said, Isn't this Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite? David sent messengers to go get her, and when she came to him, he slept with her. And now she had just been purifying herself from her uncleanness. And afterwards she returned home. The woman conceived and sent word to inform David and gave him three of the most powerful words any woman could say to a man. I am pregnant. Um, I might need to remind you, uh, we have a great kids' ministry upstairs and downstairs for you to take your kids to if they need to exit the room at this point. But hey, in the words of your favorite anchor man, Ron Burgundy, right? That escalated quickly, right? Like, this is like a sad how many grown men and women have failed to put this together? This kind of multiplying effect of sin that again, like you do a sin and then it gives birth to another. Like, how many of us think that when we like do sins in our lives, we can just stop with it right there? But no, what's more often true is that once you do one and you don't deal with it then and there, it tends to be like a downhill speed. You just keep going and one after another, it comes and it comes and it comes. But we tend to have this kind of narrow-minded sinner, right? We kind of have this, hey, we're a prisoner of the moment. Oh, it just happened like this, or we have this kind of view on life, but we fail to recognize how deeply Satan has his claws on us when we have that perspective. But here's what we need to know: no one sin is ever isolated. Sin often opens up a door for future sin, sin that would never even otherwise present itself, and with it, a life comes, a life marked by shame and embarrassment. And this is why the Bible ruthlessly and consistently talks to us about eliminating sin, any form of sin in your life. I know the young people in the in the room, like you're probably sitting here thinking, hey, I can get serious with God a little bit later. I know I might be doing some things I shouldn't do, but man, I'll I'll stop it, you know, when I get to be 30, when I get to be 40, when I'm really old then, you know. Let me tell you, the sin that you flirt with in your 20s and 30s will be the very sin that haunts you in your 40s and 50s. And will be the very sin that continues into your 60s and 70s, and may be the sin that puts you in your grave. Like this is the effect of sin. So here's a warning: do not give Satan an opening. Don't flirt with your sin. Flee from your sin. Do the hard thing of establishing guardrails in your life that keep you away from any danger zone. Be honest about your weak spots. Why? Because we all have them. Seek accountability in your life to protect you accordingly. And here's what I know like I'm not exempt from this reality, okay? I can get to the place where I think, you know, I'm stronger than I actually am. And I'm not alone in that. Many of us are in that way. But here's what's true you're not. And if you continue to live on an island, you will get eaten alive by the temptation this world has to offer you. And if we don't flee, that temptation will inevitably give birth to sin and it'll do way more harm than you ever anticipated it doing. So now, for the sake of time, I want to summarize what happens next in the rest of 2 Samuel 11, going into 12. In case you miss it in verse 3, Bathsheba has a husband. A husband who happens to be fighting in the very battle that David held back from that he's supposed to be fighting in as well. And so David hatches this amazing plan in his mind. He's like, Okay, I've done this thing, and Bathsheba's now pregnant. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Here's the brilliance of David. He says, I know, I'll call Uriah back home from battle. And I'll be like, Uriah, man, you've done such a great job. You've been so hardworking, all this kind of stuff. You should come back and actually take a load off. You should go home, be with your wife, take a night. It'll be good. Come on, come and do it. And his thought was this that if he could get Uriah to go back home and spend a night with his wife, then he wouldn't have to take accountability for the baby that was actually rightfully his. And it would have worked in that day, y'all, because how many of you know there was no talk show host, Mari, back in the day, you know, being like paternity tests and all this kind of stuff. It would have worked. David would have been off the hook, but there was one problem David did not account for. He did not account for Uriah's integrity. Uriah was a man of integrity. He was a soldier that was too loyal to his fellow man to go home and take a night off when he knew that one, all his other men were out at war and he didn't want to dishonor his king. And so what Uriah does is he comes home, he comes off the battlefield, but he doesn't go to his house. He actually goes and sleeps on the palace's steps. This man is such a man of integrity that he doesn't even bother to go home. But even when he doesn't know he's being taken advantage of in this moment, he chooses to love and honor his king, even then, even protect him. And so David says, Okay, you won't go home. What am I gonna do now? He doesn't get to a place where he's like, okay, dude, you have just so much integrity. So now I'm gonna confess, I'm gonna come up front and let you know all the things I've done. No, no, no. He doubles down. And what he does is, if you won't go home by yourself, maybe you'll go home if I get you drunk. Let's get you some fine wine to drink. Now you'll want to go home and be with your wife. You wanna know what Uriah does? Full of integrity, still doesn't go home to be with his wife. And so Dave is now down to his last end. And so what he does is what I hope many of us in the room would never do. But he decides to send Uriah back to the battlefield with his own death sentence in hand. He wrote a note, gave it to Uriah, said, give this to the commander in charge. And the commander reads it and it says, Hey, put Uriah on the front lines. Why? Because if he's on the front lines, he will surely die. Could you imagine that? Your friend, your brother, who's supposed to be fighting alongside of you, now puts you in such a place where you're carrying your own death sentence back to your murder site, and you don't even know. That this is being plotted against you. Could you imagine that? And so you want to know what happens. Uriah gets this note. He goes back to the battlefield, gives a note to the commander. The commander reads it. And I wish I could tell you Uriah somehow survives this attack. But he doesn't. Uriah gets killed. And so now, David, what he does here is he takes Bathsheba as his wife. And you might be thinking, well, that's crazy. Don't people know that Uriah's like, what's going on? No, no, no. David, in this insistence, in this instance, would have been seen as a noble gentleman for doing this. Like he was writing his own story. He was creating the best possible outcome. People would have seen David as this, oh, noble king. Man, this dude was cut down in battle, and now you're coming alongside. You get to care for this woman, you get to raise her kids, and this new baby she has. Oh, wow, King David, how amazing you are. And he does this successfully, and he thinks he has successfully hidden his sin. But 2 Samuel 12 comes up, and there's someone who pays David a visit. And it's this prophet, his name is Nathan. And Nathan comes to David, and at first it seems he's coming to him unassumingly. But Nathan shares this story with David. And he says, Hey David, there once was a rich man and a poor man. And this rich man had a lot of cattle, and this poor man only had one little you lamb to his name. He loved her, cared for her, she ate his food, she drank his drink, all this kind of stuff. And this is his. He loved her. And at one point, the rich man was having people come in. He was supposed to host his party. And the man couldn't bring himself to kill one of his many lambs in order to provide a feast for these people coming in. And so what does he do? He goes to the poor man, takes his one you lamb, and uses that as the feast for the party. And Nathan asks David, Hey, what do you think should happen to this man? David says, That man should die. Kill him, put him in a grave. And not only that, he should give what he has to the poor man, like do all this kind of stuff. This is this is outrageous. And you want to know what? The response that David had in that moment, that was actually right. Because an injustice had taken place. The problem is he wanted justice for that man, but mercy for himself. But Nathan doesn't let him off the hook. He says, Well, guess what, David? That rich man is you. And can you imagine the head spin that came on David in that moment for him to now be confronted with his sin and recognize, wow, what have I done? And in our narrative, we get into the justice of God. If you can pick me up in 2 Samuel chapter 12, verses 10 and 12. Here's the indictment on David now after he's done what he's done. It says, Now therefore, the sword will never leave yours, David's house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own wife. And this is what the Lord says I am going to bring disaster on you from your own family. I will take your wives and give them to another before your very eyes, and he will sleep with them in broad daylight. You acted in secret, but I will do this before all Israel and in broad daylight. Even I look at this result and I shudder a little bit. Why? Because I'm like, God, I know David messed up. But does his legacy have to be stained like that? Like we'll never get Uriah back, and Bathsheba didn't deserve what happened to her. But this feels a little harsh, doesn't it? But here's the thing I've taught on this a great detail in the past, and so I'm not gonna do a ton of it today, but I think it's worth mentioning again that as human beings, we are predisposed to separate the love of God from the justice of God. And this is what I tend to feel when I read about David's story. But church, you want to know what? You cannot and must not separate the two. Why? Because you cannot have a God of love who does not exercise justice. I think of a courtroom setting. Imagine there's a man who has committed unspeakable crimes against many families, which each of these families in the victim seat in the courtroom, expecting the judge and jury to carry out justice due to this man. Imagine that scene. And if the judge were to lovingly dismiss all charges and set that man free, none of these victims would view that as love. In fact, it would be the most unjust, unloving thing that he could do. And so it is with God. Like if we want God's love, here's what's true: we also must receive and accept his justice. They are unmistakably intertwined together. 2 Samuel 12, 13, David continues and he responds to Nathan. He says, I have sinned against the Lord. And I love this response from David because it's very similar to last week. And David doesn't plead his case with Nathan, he doesn't try to explain to Nathan why uh being a king is so hard. He doesn't say, Well, you don't know what I'm going through. If you were in my shoes, I wonder what you would do. You'd probably do the same thing. No, no, no. But rather, he comes clean, he admits his wrong, he accepts, no matter how much he dislikes it, the justice that is due to him. And look at Nathan's response, continue in the text. Nathan replied to David, And the Lord has taken away your sin. I love this, you will not die. However, because you treated the Lord with such contempt in this matter, the son born to you will die. And the narrative continues that Nathan went home after that. What a way to leave the scene. So we see what David's done. He's committed his grave sins, he's been confronted by a prophet for his sin. He actually repents, he relents from what he's doing. And you would think that now things would go up into the right for David, but no, you see in the text things actually get a little bit worse before they get better. Like they get worse. And the consequences of his sin are now extending even beyond himself. He's basically being told here, hey David, you are forgiven, but there's still going to be consequences for your sin. There's consequences for your contempt for the Lord. And I think some of us in the room really need to hear this today because as you continue to indulge in whatever sin that it is in your life, you need to know that you are showing utter contempt towards the Lord. And hear me, I don't say this with a spirit of condemnation, but rather to move you to a place of repentance. That the longer you continue to make an excuse for your sin and you use softer language to talk about your sin instead of calling it for what it is, and you justify your sin, the longer it will continue to undermine your future and the plan that God has for you. So understand your sin for what it actually is. Your sin is contempt, it is disrespect, it is hatred to the Almighty God. So now, David, because of this news, he repents and he has the right spiritual response. He even fasts, right? He lays low on the ground, he puts on sackcloth, he puts on ashes, he humbles himself before the Lord. And I love this, he doesn't call into the question the justice of God, but he begs and appeals to his mercy. And it's wild in the text because all of David's house and all his servants, they're now, if you read it, they're walking on eggshells, okay, during this time. And not because David is super irrational right now, it's not because of what he's going to do, but it's mostly because he's unresponsive at the moment. And I can imagine that. Like he's all he's experienced, all he's going through right now, you can imagine his mind is probably just mushed and he's thinking, he's probably like wide-eyed, and nothing's really coming through. He's probably not feeling a ton. He's in this unique emotional state, suspended, if you will. Now, if you were here last week, David responds much like the king of Nineveh did when Jonah confronted him in his sin. But David does not receive the same response as the Ninevehes do. God relents from punishing the Ninevites, but he actually goes through with the punishment on David. And after a week of pleading with God, the child of David in Bathsheba dies, just like God said he would. And after the child dies, there's actually a change in David's behavior that surprised his household. And we'll see how and why in verse 22. Look at this. It says that he answered, While the baby was alive, I fasted and wept because I thought, and here's our word, our phrase for the series, who knows? Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let him live. But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? And then he lands on this resolve I'll go to him, but he will never return to me. See, David is saying, while the child was alive, I was holding on to hope. He was saying, Who knows what the Lord might do? Who knows? When he was alive, I was filled with this sense of like, you know, if I repent, if I come humbly before God, I don't know what's gonna happen on the other side of what I'm gonna do. I don't know what's gonna happen on the other side of me owning my sin and repenting before him, but I'm going to step in and do the right thing anyway. Why? Because who knows that God is gracious, merciful, and kind. Maybe he will be kind and let the child live. Maybe he'll be kind. And what we see David doing is modeling for us the tension of this entire series that when he's standing at the edge of what he knows and he doesn't know, he's pressing into hope to do the right thing. He repents, he fasts, he prays, despite what the outcome might be. Why? Because who knows, who knows, who knows what God might do. Who knows? And in seven days, you have to see this the lifespan of the baby, it's a week. The Lord was able to do a miracle in the heart of David. Like the miracle the Lord does in this moment isn't the miracle we think it's going to be, it's a unique one. And what he does is he gave David the peace and the resolve in the midst of tragedy. This is the miracle in the text. And you can see this in the rhetorical questions he's processing. He says, But now that the child is dead, why should I go on fasting? It doesn't answer it for you in the scripture, but the answer to that question is he shouldn't. He shouldn't continue on fasting. He says, Can I bring him back again? And the answer to that question is, no, he can't. He's responding in this way. So in the midst of tragedy, God was able to bring David to this painful but necessary place of surrender that maybe, maybe many of us have actually walked through before in our own lives, or maybe it's a place that many of us need to step forward in. Maybe God is beckoning us to that place right now. And yet we're resisting it, we're withholding that from our lives. He's inviting us into that place. But here's what's true of David. Even through surrender, David wasn't filled with remorse or despair or pity. He was filled with hope. Remember his resolve. He says, I will go to him, but he will never return to me. See, many scholars believe that this phrase is David's theology on what happens to babies when they die. And here's what this text tells us: it tells us that they get wrapped up in the arms of God. And if you want to know what I believe about that, I agree with him. See, when I talk to Christian families who've walked through losing a child, which usually isn't due to sin on either of their parts, by the way, but it's either through the unfortunate type of miscarriage, or like my wife and I have gone through, or maybe it's stillbirth, or maybe something similar to where the baby is born but then dies days later. And when I talk to families like this, here's what I do. I confidently point to this text where David shows us the hope that he has in the midst of losing this child, that although, yes, there might be pain in this life, and that child not being able to return to you right here in this life, you can be sure with all the hope and confidence in the world that you will one day go to them again. This is what's true. So if there's anyone here in the room who needs that encouragement, I pray you hear it and you receive that today. So David cheats, he lies and he kills, he's confronted with his sin, he repents, he hopes, but yet he still reaps his consequences for his actions. And if you're like me in the room, it makes you wonder, right? Like, what is there left to say now about the life of David? What is David's reputation now? This David we're seeing, who's not only the mighty king and the one who slayed Goliath and the little old shepherd boy, he's not just that, but now he's a confirmed adulterer, he's a pathological liar, he's a maniacal murderer who now has even the blood of his own child on his hands. Are you wondering what the billboards of heaven say about David now? We find the answer in Acts chapter 13, take the New Testament, verse 22. This is Paul giving one of his sermons in the book of Acts, and he says this. He says, After removing him, Saul, who was the first king of Israel, he raised up David, the second king of Israel, as their king and testified this about him. This is what God said about David. I have found David, the son of Jesse, to be a man after my own heart who will carry out all of my will. In other words, he says, David, son of Jesse, son of God, who will do everything that I tell him to do. Which includes repenting when he's confronted with the blind spots of his sin. Reminding you to know that you will sin in the most defining moment in your life isn't if you commit a sin. The most defining moment in your life is what you do after you sin. Do you confess? Do you go to God? Do you repent? Don't you know that's the only place where you can go? If you try to hide, if you try to hold on to it yourself, if you try to do all the things you think you can do about it, listen, that will be the end of you. Literally. Like hell is you trying to figure out your life forever for all eternity. Heaven is you surrendering to God and being in his joy, mercy, and grace forever. And you don't get that by living a perfect life, you get that by living a surrender life to God. You're not perfect. David's not perfect, but David is a man after God's own heart. And you want to know who the people are who are after God's own heart too. They're the people who, yes, sin, you'll never be perfect, but they're the people who go to God in repentance and turn and relent from our sin, no matter what might be on the other side of that outcome. See, the thing that God said about David back then is still true for him today, and people in the room who believe in Jesus, the same thing is true for you. And so to close our time today, here's what I want to do. I just want to give us two truths to hold on to. When you feel like you're facing a who knows moment like David. And the first one's gonna pop up here on the screen. The first thing is this is that your sin does not place you outside of God's love or God's will for your life. Like I'll be willing to say that nobody here probably has the same combination of sins that David had in this text, right? But yet you do sin. And here's what God referred to him as a man after my own heart. Here's what this shows us that your sin is not the greatest definer in your life. Okay, we've said this. But the greatest of honor is the work of Jesus Christ in your life, the cross that goes before you, the cross that you believe in, the cross of Jesus Christ, who sacrificed, went to the cross, ripped his body, poured his blood for you. That is the thing if you believe in Jesus that defines you, not your sin. Did David mess up? Yes. Do we all mess up? Yes. But David is remembered more for his triumph than his failure. Why? Because of how he responded to God when confronted with the sin and darkness in his life. And the same can be true for us. See, God used David mightily, even despite his flaws, not because he continued to hide and steal and build himself up, but because in humility he humbled himself before God and he willingly repented, even not knowing what was on the other side of his confession. And each of us today have the choice to do one of two things. We can either stand defiant in our sin and fall or and be both of ourselves up, or we can fall in humility before God. And here's my hope for the room today that we choose humility over pride. Because our earthly and eternal future depends on that. And the second thing is this as a follower of Jesus, you are called to worship him on the mountaintop and in the valley. Your sin does not define you, and you are called to worship him on the mountaintop and in the valley. This is a posture. And in particular, amongst people living in the world that we live in right now. Why? Because we have so much. And it's hard for us to worship God when we're in the valley, but it's easy for us to worship God when we're on the mountaintop. We worship God when everything is going up and to the right, we have all that we need and the surplus and all these different kinds of things. And then we fail to worship God when we don't have the situations and circumstances that we want in our lives. And we even try to moralize this by saying, Man, I'm not gonna worship God if I don't feel like it. I mean, I'm just faking it at that point, right? But I want to remind us there's only one thing in our lives that we tend to have that kind of outlook on, and it's this, it's our faith. Because imagine it this way, fellas. Like, we don't get to be good, kind, and loving husbands only when we feel like it. Or if we did, I would refer to us affectionately as losers, okay? That's not what we do. Or dads, like I don't get to be a patient sacrificing dad only when I feel like being a patient sacrificing dad. That's my role as a parent, putting the needs of my kids ahead of my own, whether I feel like it or not. And those of you in workplaces, like, you can't just suddenly decide to start showing up to work only whenever you feel like it. Otherwise, your work is gonna suddenly not feel like employing you anymore. Like the only place we tend to apply this logic is to our faith. And we say, like, why would I pursue joy? Why would I pursue peace? Why would I pursue worship when I just don't feel like it? There's nothing else in our life that we apply that logic to, and I would submit to us that we shouldn't apply that logic to our worship either. So we worship God, whether we're feeling it or not. And here's why: because Christians aren't people who worship our circumstances, we worship the one true and living God. We worship him both on the mountaintop and we worship him in the valley, even when every bone in our body says, I don't feel like doing this. Why? Because he is worthy of our worship. Full stop. We worship him for his mercy and his justice. We worship him because he is the infinite God and we are the finite human beings. We worship him because he is our savior and he is our Lord. We worship him because we have chosen to submit our lives to him, not the other way around. You see, David, even after the death of his son, he chose to submit to and worship God because he had a firm understanding of who reports to who and whose he is. So, Christian in the room, you are a child of the Almighty God. And more than anything else, he wants this type of relationship with you. And so, my charge to the room is hey, let's be people like this. Let's be people in a lot of our own who knows moments that we choose worship. Whether we find ourselves on the mountain or find ourselves in the valley, we know we serve a God who deserves worship no matter what. And we be people who press into this. Would you pray with me, Father? We love you, and we're grateful for this morning. We're grateful for your word, we're grateful for your son, we're grateful for all he's done for us, we're grateful for his sacrifice and what it means for us now. And it means that when we put our faith in him, we don't have to try to strive to live these perfect lives. Yes, growing godliness, yes, growing what it means to love and know you. But no, listen, sin will still come. But would you help us know that the most defining moment for our lives is not that we sin, but the most defining moment is what we do whenever we do sin? Do we hold it to ourselves? Do we well up in pride and not pursue repentance? Or do we come humbly before you open our hands and say, God, there's no one else I'd rather come to? Would you do it only you can? Would you redeem me? Would you hold me accountable? Would your spirit fill me? Would it fill me more? Would it refill me again? So that all of my desires are gone and all of your desires are in. Would this be true of us? We'll be people who worship God even in our who knows moments. Maybe there's some of us in the room right now, like we're in a place where we don't know what's coming up, and God might be calling us to take a step, but we be people of faith who take a step and do the right thing, even though we may not be able to control the outcome. We don't need assurance to have faith in you, God. So would you believe us as we do too when you convict our heart? Would you love us, Father? It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

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Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast. To learn more, visit AmbassadorMKE.org or follow us on Instagram at Ambassador MKE. And if you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 9 or 11 a.m. at 2308 East Bellevue Place. Grace and peace.