Lessons from David: How to Be a Giant Killer (17 page)

With the merciful thou wilt show thyself merciful, and with the upright man thou wilt show thyself upright.

In this passage, David basically said the same thing as what we find in James 2. He recognized that the Lord shows Himself merciful to those who have shown mercy, and with the upright, He shows Himself upright. At one time, David had had this principle revealed to him (see also vv. 27-28). He knew that if he wanted mercy, he had to show mercy. But if he didn’t show mercy to other people, he in return would receive no mercy.

David Determined His Judgment

Yet David had quit seeking the Lord and had departed from Him. He had allowed himself to be drawn into adultery and, while trying to cover up that adultery, he committed murder. However, he was just going on as if nothing had happened.

David’s heart had become so hardened that he had quit being responsive to the things God had shown him before. So when he heard this parable, he responded in judgment to a much lesser transgression than he himself had just committed. Taking another man’s lamb and feeding it to a guest is nowhere near as great a transgression as taking another man’s wife and murdering him to cover it up. David was the one in the greater transgression.

David basically determined his own judgment. The Lord gave him this parable through Nathan the prophet. David could have said, “This man did wrong, but I’m going to show him mercy. Instead of giving him the punishment that he deserves, I’m just going to have him make restitution. Maybe his heart was right somehow.” However, without asking for any further information or finding out any additional details, David jumped right into judgment declaring, “This man shall die! He’s going to suffer four times the punishment for the suffering he caused.” Mercy rejoices against judgment, but if you don’t show mercy, you won’t reap mercy!

God gave this parable to David to see how he would respond. Would he be merciful? If he had shown mercy, I believe the Lord would have been merciful toward him in the way He dealt with his transgression. But when David showed no mercy, he didn’t reap any either. God responded to David the way he was responding to other people. David determined the harshness of his own judgment.

If we are merciful to others, we will receive mercy ourselves. I’ve done some stupid things, but since I’ve been merciful to others, I’ve been able to reap mercy. God has been gracious to me when I’ve said and done things that hurt other people’s feelings, because I’ve been merciful to those who have hurt mine.

Are You Perfect?

I remember a certain media minister who was vicious and condemning toward anyone and everyone. When he fell, he received fourfold the judgment that he had put on other people. People were merciless with him and it destroyed his ministry. If he had shown more compassion toward others, he would have reaped more compassion in his time of need.

We all need to learn this lesson. If you want God to be merciful to you, you need to be merciful to others. If you rail on people when they make a mistake, you can expect to be railed on when you make a mistake. Is that really what you want?

We’ve all seen someone who thought they were Mr. or Ms. Perfect. They tried to make everyone else “perfect” like them, but if they weren’t, they judged and criticized them. When this “perfect” person made a mistake and stumbled, you could see the vultures circling as if to say, “It’s payback time. They’ve condemned me and everyone else. Now it’s time they tasted some of what they’ve been dishing out!” You just love to see people like that receive what they deserve. But when someone has been merciful, you want to extend them mercy. That’s just how things work!

David brought this judgment upon himself by being so strict in his criticism of the man in the parable.

And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.

This parable wasn’t really about a rich man taking his poor neighbor’s lamb. It was about David, Bathsheba, and Uriah. So Nathan declared to David, “You are the man!”

God Is Your Source

Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; and I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.

The Lord was saying, “David, look what you’ve done! I’ve blessed you, prospered you, and done all these things for you. And if that wasn’t enough, I would have given you more!” God was telling David that if he wasn’t satisfied, He wasn’t against him having more—more wives, more money, more fame, anything. The real sin wasn’t adultery or murder; it was the fact that David quit trusting in the Lord. He stopped looking to God as his source.

At one time, David couldn’t do anything. He was a poor and despised nobody, so he had to be dependent on God. However, once he became king, he was powerful. He was the head of one of the most powerful nations on the face of the earth at that moment. David could do anything he wanted, so he quit trusting in God as his supply. He started doing things just because he wanted to and could as king.

This is a real danger for us too. When we prosper to such a degree that we no longer have to pray and trust God to provide things for us because we can just go out and get anything we need or want on our own, beware! The danger is that we will quit depending on God as our source. That’s really the transgression that the Lord was bringing out here. He was saying, “David, I would have given you more if you had asked Me!”

“You Despised Me”

Then Nathan continued:

Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.

Notice how the Lord reproved David. He didn’t say, “David, look what you’ve done to Bathsheba—how you’ve defiled her. Look what you’ve done to Uriah—how you murdered him. Look at all of the people you’ve offended.” No, that’s not what the Lord said. The Lord was saying, “David, look what I’ve done for you. If you had trusted Me, I would have given you even more. But all of these things are going to happen now because you have despised Me.” God said, “You despised Me!” This was all about David’s personal relationship with God.

The Heart of Sin

Most people think of sin in terms of the damage done to others. Most people believe stealing is wrong because it violates and hurts the person they have stolen from. Since they look at it only in external terms, many folks justify certain types of theft. Take for instance theft from an employer. Many people—even Christians—take pens and other small things from work. They’ll steal a little bit of time, thinking
My employer has this big business, he can afford it!
So they doctor their time sheets and allow for a little bit of extra time. They don’t feel bad about it because they’re not thinking of what they’ve done as a sin such as stealing because of the relatively small amount of damage it is doing.

Some big corporations allow for a certain amount of thievery. They have insurance to cover fraud and other things like that. Some just write it off. So there’s a bunch of people involved in what’s called “white collar crime.” They think,
I’m not doing anybody any damage. This corporation won’t even miss $100,000. They have insurance to cover it
.

Even though the employees think about it in those terms, the issue isn’t whether the company will miss it, has insurance to cover it, has made allowances for a certain amount of shoplifting, or whether they can get by with it. The issue is, the person committing these acts is sinning against God. They are despising the Lord! Instead of trusting God and letting Him supply them with things in an honest way, a way of integrity, they are going against Him and doing it their own way. Unbelief, not trusting God, is the heart of sin.

My teaching entitled,
The Positive Ministry of the Holy Spirit,
is taken from John 16:8-11. In verse 8, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would reprove us of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Most people interpret this as saying that the Spirit reproves us of sins like adultery, lying, stealing, dope addiction, and other such things and then He tells us we’re unrighteous because of what we did and if we don’t repent, we’re going to be judged. That’s not at all what Jesus was saying. As a matter of fact, the Lord knew this verse would be misinterpreted, so He explained Himself in verses 9-11. The sin the Holy Spirit reproves us of is not believing on Jesus (unbelief, v. 9). The Holy Spirit doesn’t convict us of “unrighteousness,” but rather that we are righteous in Christ (v. 10). Verse 11 doesn’t say that the Holy Spirit convicts us so we will be judged, but rather that He talks to us about the judgment of the devil. Religion has really twisted this up. Therefore, I strongly recommend this teaching. You’ll be blessed!

Chapter 18
The Root of All Sin

The root of all sin is the fact that we aren’t trusting God. That’s really what’s wrong with stealing. When someone steals, they aren’t trusting God. It doesn’t matter if a person or a corporation ever misses what was taken or not, God misses them depending on Him. They are going about obtaining their needs in an ungodly manner, contrary to His instruction. That’s the transgression against God.

That’s what’s really wrong with sexual immorality and adultery. Even the church has fallen to the place where they reason against sin based on the physical consequences. They say, “If you sin sexually, you’re exposing yourself to sexually transmitted diseases. And with today’s AIDS epidemic and the prevalence of other sexually transmitted diseases, you’re just playing Russian roulette!” They try to argue for sexual purity on the basis of just the possible physical consequences that could result from sexual promiscuity. Those things do exist and if that were all the reasoning you had, it would be good enough to remain sexually pure. It’s just stupid to go out and do things like that. But at its core, this is really the wrong reasoning.

What would happen if medicine somehow came up with a cure for all sexually transmitted diseases? What if AIDS was obliterated? Would that all of a sudden make sexual promiscuity okay? Of course not! But if you use this kind of logic to convince someone that they shouldn’t live in sexual immorality, they will be able to excuse it by saying, “I’m using protection. I’m having protected sex.” They will just explain it away. However, the real root of sin is that they aren’t trusting God.

Marriage Is Honorable

If you’re married, the Lord gave you your mate.

Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

Proverbs 5:18-19

Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled.

Hebrews 13:4

In other words, God has purposed for you to satisfy your sexual desires with the marriage partner He gave you. Even from the very beginning, the Lord ordained that there should be one woman for one man. This was God’s original plan. His plan for marriage is revealed in the fact that He made Adam and Eve—not Adam and Steve or Sue and Peggy. God didn’t give Adam multiple wives. It was one woman for one man.

That’s what’s wrong with homosexuality. People argue against homosexuality saying you can get all of these diseases and the suicide rate among homosexuals is the highest of any segment of society. The real problem of homosexuality is that it rejects God’s design. Homosexuals say, “I don’t care what God did. I don’t care what He says or what His will is. This is just the way I am!” No, it’s not! They are rejecting and rebelling against God.

What would happen if a man’s wife went out and committed adultery? What’s really wrong with that? Well, you could talk about sexually transmitted diseases and ask, “What if she gets pregnant? What would happen to the child?” You could reason from all of these things, which are legitimate problems. But what if she did this and there was no sexually transmitted disease and no pregnancy that came of it. Just because there was an absence of physical consequences, would the husband say, “It’s okay honey. You didn’t pick up a sexually transmitted disease or become pregnant, so don’t worry about it.” Of course not! The real issue is that she broke her covenant with her husband. He would be grieved and have to deal with it.

It’s the same way with God. Whether you get caught or experience any consequences in the natural isn’t the issue. God knows that you aren’t trusting in Him and looking to Him to meet your needs.

Broken Trust

That’s what the Lord was telling David. He didn’t say, “Look what you did to Bathsheba! Look what you did to Uriah! Look what it’s going to cost you and the nation!” Instead He asked, “How could you have despised Me?”

When I first let my boys start taking the car to go on a date or some other outing, I’d tell them, “Be in by eleven o’clock.” If they arrived home at 11:10, 11:15, or later, I’d ask them, “Why are you late?”

They would answer, “It’s only ten or fifteen minutes. It’s not a big deal.”

Like most parents, I didn’t always communicate things right. I remember saying, “It’s late at night. What would have happened if you had a flat? Run out of gas? Gotten stuck or something? Nighttime is when all the weirdoes are out and about. It’s dangerous. You could have been hurt. Something could have happened!”