Gospel Prism

And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had very many flocks and herds, 3 but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, [1] and it was like a daughter to him. 4 Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” 5 Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, 6 and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”

7 Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. 8 And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. 9 Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ 11 Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 12 For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’” 13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, [2] the child who is born to you shall die.”
2 Samuel 12:1-14

Introduction

Many of you know this all-too familiar story. It’s the story of a man who is at the center of his world, David the King. There was no one like him in Jewish lore, none before him and none after him. He was a man after God’s “own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). He was exalted for having the heart of a warrior even at the youngest of ages, defeating the mighty Philistine Goliath. He cared deeply for his men and won the favor of all who surrounded him. He was vastly different than his sorry predecessor Saul, whose whole reign consisted of a slow demise due to his lust for power. David also controlled the most territory ever for a Jewish king. He rarely lost battles and was dearly loved by his men, who would give everything they had for their king. So if there was anyone who was at the center of his world, it was surely David.

But what happens when one is at the center of his world? What happens when he believes he is the ultimate determinant factor of his life? Remember the scene in Titanic when Leonardo DiCaprio’s chractater climbs the prow of the ship and shouts, “I’m the King of the world.” How many of us at some point in our lives have lived and believed as though our lives should and must center around me as the king of the world? Isn’t this the case right now? What David experiences in 2 Samuel 10-12 is not isolated only to David. This perspective began in the Garden when Adam decided that he would decide for Himself, not God, as to what is right and wrong in His life. In other words, he would be at the center of His world and not the one who created him. But Adam’s move to be at the center of his life would lead to the exact opposite of what he longed for most, for his longing for joy to be satisfied. And ever since then, including David the King, all have believed being at the center of one’s life is the best place to be. However, author/counselor Paul Tripp reminds us why this move to the center is futile:

We were never meant to be self-focused little kings ruling minuscule little kingdoms with a population of one…It is a fundamental denial of your humanity to narrow the size of your life of your own existence, because you were created to be an ‘above and more’ being. You were made to be transcendent. (Paul Tripp, A Quest for More, 17)

Each one of us was made for so much more than we could ever imagine and yet so many of us settle for far less when we place ourselves at the center of lives. And the results of doing so can be disastrous as David finds out. But as we’ll see, the story doesn’t end with David. So I’d like to explore 4 areas aspects of David’s dealings with the center: 1) Temptation toward the center, 2) Catastrophe in the center, 3) Separation from the center, 4) Rightful restoration to the center.

Temptation Toward the Center (2 Samuel 11:1-5)

First, David’s story begins with the temptation toward the center. Again, we must remember that David was chosen by God to lead His people because he was a man after God’s own heart. Just one quick perusal at David’s psalms and you see a man who loved God, cherished God, and desired God more than anyone or anything else. He wrote in Psalm 42:1-2: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” In 2 Samuel 6, it was David who was so enthralled by the ark of the covenant’s arrival into Jerusalem that nothing would stop his whole worship of God. When Michal, his wife criticized his dancing in front of the people unto the Lord, David responded: “I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes.” David would let nothing stop His worship of God. God was truly at the center of His life and all that he did was to continue to lift him up to the center. So what happened that would dramatically change his life? What made him believe having himself at the center would be better than anything he had ever experienced with God before?

Let’s look at 2 Samuel 11:1 to see if we can get an idea from the text: “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.” This seems like a relatively simple statement of fact, but a closer read reveals much detail. Spring was absolutely the best time for kings go to battle. After the long winter months where weather and darkness impact fighting, it made sense that the first sign of winter let-up would be a strategic time to fight. But what’s even more telling is how chapter 10 ends. The Ammonites and Syrians had formed an allegiance against Israel and David had just defeated them. So a year later 11:1 picks up where chapter 10 left off, where Israel’s enemies needed to be fully routed for there to be complete people for his people, instead of going to war, David stays home. We can’t miss the irony of the author in this text. David was the warrior-king of Israel. He was the one who ravaged and besieged Israel’s sworn enemies. But instead, David meekly ‘sent’ Joab to protect Israel from harm.

And what would David be doing? Verse 2-5 record for us what happened next: “It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. 5 And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.” And of course, from this point forward we see David spiral downward towards hard-heartedness. So what happened to David according to this text that tempted him, a man after God’s own heart?

First, David grew complacent.

It would be a mistake to assume that David fell into this type of sin on the spur of the moment. From the time of the end of the wars with the Ammonites and the Syrians till chapter 11, most likely one year had passed. For whatever reason, David, the man who had always led his army into battle decided not to do so. Perhaps he grew tired. Perhaps he felt entitled to stay at home. Perhaps he felt it was mere mop up duty and that Joab could handle it. The fact is, we don’t know exactly why David stayed at home. But one thing we do know is that it was known that all kings go to war at this time. He had most likely done it every year. Read through chapters 1-10 of 2 Samuel and you can see the myriad of David’s accomplishments in war. David was probably satisfied with the job he had done. He might have begun to believe some of the things that were being said about him, the things that intended to let him know that maybe he was a brilliant war general and these victories actually were his. Whatever the case may be, there seems to be some level of complacency in David’s attitude.

Second, David lived as though he was the one in ultimate authority.

When David ‘sent’ Joab to take his place in the fighting, he did so because he could. Then look at the verbs in verses 2-5 that describe David’s actions: saw, sent, inquired, took, lay. In such a short period of time, David saw a woman, demanded her (not on the basis of anything else but her body and physical appearance), and took her. He wanted her and he got her. After all, he was the king, supreme commander of Israel. Nothing should be denied him. He had every right in his mind to do as he pleased.

If you examine these two states of being for David, his complacency and his sense of his ultimate authority, you can see how each leads him to believe he is the center of his world. Prior to chapter 11, David always viewed life with God as the center of his life. We see this in Psalm 27:4: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.” In Samuel 7, when God makes a covenant with David that David will forever have his descendant reigning, David responds with utter humility in verse 18: “Then King David went in and sat before the Lord and said, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? 19 And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord God.” But you simply do not see this heart at all in 2 Samuel 11. Somewhere along the way David slowly began to believe that he was in control of his own life, his own destiny, and he believed that this was his greatest path to joy.

Complacency is a deadly temptation for any who desire to follow Christ. And surely, if David can be lulled into sin, so too can we all. The Hebrews writer makes it a point to warn believers of this temptation in Hebrews 3:12-13: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” He calls sin deceitful, tricky. In 12:1, the Hebrews writer says sin can easily entangle us or it ‘clings so closely’ to us. Though we need not fear sin or Satan, we cannot dismiss their influence and power either. We must beware that we’re riding on past spiritual coattails. Simply because you once followed God, once believed in his mercy, once spent time in His Word, is not enough to keep you from sin. Jerry Bridges acutely observes:

Yet even when we understand that our acceptance with God is based on Christ’s work, we still naturally tend to drift back into a performance mindset. Consequently, we must continually return to the gospel. To use an expression of the late Jack Miller, we must “preach the gospel to ourselves every day.” For me that means I keep going back to Scriptures such as Isaiah 53:6, Galatians 2:20, and Romans 8:1. It means I frequently repeat the words from an old hymn, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”

Essentially, David forgot that God was the center of His life and as he realized in 2 Sam 7, God was the one who made David king. David was nothing apart from Him. God was David’s salvation. God was the warrior-king. As David declared in Psalm 24:8: “Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!” The battle was always His. But David forgot God. And the only way that David would hold off complacency would be to remember that truly everything David had and did belonged to the Lord. Thus, Jerry Bridges and Jack Miller are right, without a regular preaching of the Gospel to oneself daily, we make ourselves far too big and God far too small in our own eyes. And lest we judge David too harshly, we need to ask ourselves, “Have I slowly drifted from believing God’s Word to be true in my life? Have I forgotten God’s grace, that He has saved me and loved me and cared for me and led me? Have I failed to recognize that my complacency is due to my own self-sufficiency, the false belief that I am doing well and don’t need God’s salvation because everything in my life is going well, and my hard work, my merits, my hard studies, my money, my health will not let me down, will keep me happy and joyous? Have I settled for far less than what He offers me through my complaining spirit, my envious heart of others’ successes and happiness?” All of these questions reveal a heart that will be tempted to find joy outside of God’s grace and in those things that will never truly satisfy one’s soul as David realized.

David also began to believe in a lie. He believed that he had ultimate authority, that he was the master of his ship, the king of the world. He believed that he deserved whatever he felt he needed. He felt entitled to whatever he wanted because after all, he was the king! And so when he saw Bathsheba, he took her. And this is exactly the same lie that was fed to Adam and Eve by the serpent in the Garden. Satan said to Eve: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:5) In other words, “C’mon Eve, God doesn’t know what He’s doing. He isn’t promising anything. Take things into your own hands. Be the master of your own life. God’s holding back something from you. You DESERVE better.” Entitlement is an incredibly alluring temptation. In the short term, if you have the time, the money, the power, the energy, why not use it, smoke it, feel it, spend it, buy it, have it, take it, abuse it. It’s yours. During the housing boom, I’d be listening to the news and every commercial it seemed was either some get rich quick off of real estate or get a loan with creative financing to own-the-home-of-your-dreams-that-you-deserve pitch. And that was the common thread. It was the “don’t miss out-you’re entitled to your own home-you deserve it” mentality. If you weren’t taking equity out of your home to buy more homes to get wealthy, you were considered someone who would be left behind. The entitlement mentality doesn’t start from money however. We are raised to believe, we’re entitled to a college education, to a problem free life, to get married, to have children, to have a problem-free marriage, to have a husband who cherishes us, to have a retirement fund, to have our children support us, to have our sexual needs fulfilled, to eat the best of foods, etc. We deserve the best, or at the least we deserve comfort, and if we don’t get it, then we should go out and take it. The allure is to be the king of your own world. John tells us such thinking simply does not come from God: “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world.” (1 John 2:16) And sadly, David experienced the result of such a fatal decision.

Catastrophe in the Center (2 Samuel 11:6-12:12)

Falling to the temptations at the center lead to catastrophe in the center. I won’t go into the details of 2 Samuel 11:6-12:12, but just to summarize, David’s insertion of himself as the king of his own life led to deadly and catastrophic results. Notice until the last verse which expresses God’s displeasure, there’s not one mention of God. The man who said, “How precious is your steadfast love, O God!” (Ps 36:7) and, “All my bones shall say, “O Lord, who is like you,” (Ps 35:10) and, “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth…Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Ps 34:1, 8), is now the man who can’t even mention God’s name, who doesn’t want to think of Him because to think of Him will show him just how hard-hearted his heart has become. With each action that David takes, starting with David’s attempt to cover up the pregnancy to David’s murder of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah, there is only God’s deafening silence. And verse 27 ends with David’s last act of authority by sending for Bathsheba. From this point forward, David no longer sends for anyone, almost as if the author is letting us know that David’s attempt to rule his own life has led to not only great catastrophe, but has undermined the very tool he used, his authority.

In chapter 12:1 notice that the Lord “sent” Nathan, almost meant to contravene what David did by sending for Bathsheba in the previous verse. Even though David has attempted to thwart God’s will over His life, God’s will can never be thwarted. And in this story, I want you to notice how deadened David is to his own sin. Here was a man who had a robbed someone of his wife, killed Uriah, covered it up, and ignored his longstanding relationship with God. Also, most likely the time frame in which David brought Bathsheba into his home and Nathan’s confrontation with David was probably a number of months. What do you think David was like doing those months? The Bible doesn’t say. It’s silent. But I’m sure, outwardly, nothing for David changed. He continued to make judgments and decisions. He continued to advise Joab on the war. And he probably continued to make sacrifices to God as he had always done. In other words, David’s sins had so deadened his heart as we see in chapter 12 since he was clueless to Nathan’s analogy, that his conscience no longer bothered him. He was self-righteous. He probably justified himself in his own heart. He was blinded by his own sinfulness. David could only view his world with himself as the king of the world and everyone and everything should and needed to bow down and meet his needs. He could not be sensitive to what God had to say to him because in his universe, he was God! He wasn’t just king. He was the king of kings. Paul Tripp describes this phenomenon this way:

The more I live with the meeting of my needs as my central focus of concern, the more things in my life get defined as needs.” In other words, David didn’t need Bathsheba. But he wanted her, desired her, took her, and therefore a want became a need. And by doing this the fact it went from want to need now justified the taking. It justified the sin. (Paul Tripp, A Quest for More, 54)

And we do the same thing, don’t we? We need a wife. We need a raise. We need a new home. We need that new gadget. We need to have our sexual needs fulfilled. We need to have easy children who don’t cry much. We need more sleep. We need to be liked by that person we envious of. And the more we focus on needs that are not truly needs, the more we become hardened to God and the quicker we are to justify sin. There is nothing more destructive to our joy than to be deadened to sin and deafened to God’s voice. Something needs to change and for David, something did change.

Separation from the Center (2 Samuel 12:13-14)

David became separated from the center as we see in verses 13-14: “David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.” The significance of David’s response to Nathan is dramatic. David was the almighty and all-powerful king. David could have been so infuriated, he could have lopped off Nathan’s head. How dare this peasant prophet question the king? David need not confess anything to a prophet. But he does. David’s response is simple and accepting and we see for the first time in our story why David is a man after God’s own heart. Saul had a similar response when he was confronted with his sins in 1 Samuel 15. But Saul was always first defensive and self-justifying and blameshifting. He never realize the gravity of his sin. But David humbly recognizes it. Oh what a blessing and a grace it is when a person sees the depth of his sin can fully take ownership of it without defense and simply say, “I have sinned.” These words, when spoken with heartfelt depth, are words that can melt away the hardened heart and can open blinded eyes. They can stop an argument between husband and wife dead in its tracks and bring in the first light of healing.

There is nothing more critical to one’s joy than to come to the realization that David has come to, that being in the center is an illusion of one’s joy. Suddenly David realized that everything that he used to cherish, his delight in the Lord, his sweet fellowship with God, his ascension to the throne was only a means to an end, and the end being a total worship of His true King, became realized. David needed to be separated from the center in order to enjoy everything that he was created to be, but mistakenly he believed that being in the center was where he needed to be. And it cost him dearly.

Rightful Restoration to the Center (Psalm 51:10-12)

I want you to turn to Psalm 51:10-12. If I had another hour, I’d go through the whole psalm. This was David’s response following 2 Samuel 12:13. In the original Hebrew, there is actually a space following the words, “I have sinned,” and some scholars believe this space was intended to be the place where Psalm 51 fit in, which sometimes was the technique of Hebrew poets. David says in verses 10-12: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.” 2 Samuel 11-12 is a story where God’s presence and His Spirit are out of the picture. And it’s a dark place for David. It’s a place where he gets to live his own life as he sees fit. It’s the same place in Luke 15, where the prodigal son says, “Give me my inheritance, so that I can live the way that I want.” It’s the same place where Adam and Eve were in when they, through their actions, bought into the lie and ate from the Tree telling God they no longer needed his services. It’s the same place where the Israelites were in when they no longer wanted to follow Moses and desired to head back to the enslavement of Egypt. And it’s the same place where those who shouted Hosanna one week earlier, were now shouting, “Crucify Him!” All because Jesus was not the type of King THEY expected or were entitled to. It’s the place where we are in the center of our universe where we determine, not God, as how God should lead us and direct us. Again to quote Paul Tripp:

There really is no place for Christ in many people’s Christianity. Their faith is not actually in Christ; it is in Christianity and their own ability to live it out. (Paul Tripp, A Quest for More, 106)

David realized that the truest road to joy was not having himself in the center, but God. God needed to be the one to “restore to me the joy of YOUR salvation.” God does the work and we trust in Him. Christ is King and belongs in the center as we see next week and having Him there is exactly what we need. It took God allowing David to turn from Him to remind David of such things. But it also took God’s action of sending Nathan to tell him how desperately he truly needs God to experience joy once again.

Conclusion

All of us are living for something. All of us are pursuing something that we believe will make us happy. We work for this reason. We desire to be married and have children for this reason. We’re here at church for this reason. We wake up each morning hoping that today will truly be a new day. The way you spend your free time, whether watching Food Network or ESPN, whether you are taking a walk next to a lake, whether you are standing online at Safeway, you are pursuing your joy and happiness. The question is, are you pursuing this happiness with you at the center determining what’s best for you or is Christ at the center? Does Jesus impact your desires and motives and actions or is it all about you? I hope the next few weeks will show you why having Christ at the center is infinitely more delightful and more joyous than you could ever imagine.

Here’s my last exhortation. This message and series is a reminder as to why we’re moving as a church. It’s so easy to allow our decisions regarding the church to be about my personal needs and wants. Like everything else, I can be my greatest factor as to why I attend a church. Remember the 6 c’s? They are essentially the 6 C’s of ME-Centeredness. Does the church provide Camaraderie for me? Is it Convenient in terms of location? Is it Congenial? Does it have the Church programs that cater to me? Is it a Conglomeration of similar people? Do they have programs of Compassion? But all of these place ourselves once again at the center. And in doing so, it will be nothing but a short-term fix that will eventually disappoint us. Instead, we need the ultimate C characteristic. Are we Christ-centered? And Christ-centered means that we place a church’s relentless pursuit of Christ and His Gospel as the fundamental reason why we do things as a church.

And being Christ-centered does not mean we’re moving to Pleasanton because 70% of our members drive less. And it doesn’t mean that now we have the rest of the day to do whatever we want. If these are the reasons, then we are nothing but a me-centered church and if David’s story teaches us anything, it teaches us that there is catastrophe awaiting us. No my dear brothers and sisters. Let it be that we’re moving to Pleasanton because 1) Since most of us live near the church, we can invite people to hear the Good News on the Gospel, 2) That our morning worship on the Lord’s Day will allow us to begin the day with Him and the rest of the day will be a continuation of that worship, 3) That our morning worship will allow one less barrier for the lost to hear the good news, 3) That we will intentionally be a part of planting more Christ-centered, Jesus-loving, God-glorify, lost compassionate in different parts of the Bay Area. May those of us who live in the Tri-Valley never be so consumed with ourselves that we forget that we are not Wellspring centered but Christ-centered, and so we care not about making Wellspring’s name great, but Christ’s name great. So we will do whatever it takes, even if it means that this church should be split into 2 or 10 pieces for this to happen. And for those of you driving from Oakland or Fremont or the South Bay, I want to urge you to continue coming. Our desire is to see a Christ-centered church, not like Wellspring, but rather, like Christ that cherishes His Gospel, in your area. And my promise to you and to our Lord is that we will not lose that vision, that Wellspring will always be a church willing do all things for the sake of the Gospel to God’s glory for our joy.