Speaker 2 0:20

So we'll just listen carefully and we'll answer some interesting questions. I got some zingers for you guys.

Speaker 1 0:29

Hopefully not the hostess kind.

Speaker 2 0:32

You guys already have I like those foods. Yeah, good. My stomach just growled. You're gonna spoil your meals.

Speaker 1 0:40

Couldn't they have made those out of healthy ingredients?

Speaker 2 0:43

Oh they preserve forever.

unknown 0:45

Yeah.

Speaker 2 0:46

Because my dad said, with all the preservatives, I'm gonna last forever. Yeah, exactly right. That's part of eternal life.

Speaker 1 0:56

We got 2 Samuel 12, 1 through 23. 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. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, 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, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveller to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guests who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. 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, and he shall restore the land fourfold because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. 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, 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. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in its 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. 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. 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 the sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun. 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. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die. Then Nathan went to his house, and the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah's wife bore to David, and he became sick. David therefore sought God on behalf of the child, and David fasted and went in and lie all night on the ground, and the elders of his house stood beside him to raise him from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. On the seventh day the child died, and the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead. For they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spoke to him, and he did not listen to us. How then can we say to him, The child is dead? He may do himself harm. But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David understood that the child was dead. And David said to his servants, Is the child dead? They said, He is dead. Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes. And he went into the house of the Lord and worshipped, and then went to his own house. And when he asked, they set food before him and he ate. Then his servants said to him, What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive, but when the child died you arose and ate food. He said, While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.

Speaker 2 4:53

Thank you, Melissa. That was a long passage. I couldn't figure out where to cut it off when we were covering that topic. We needed more context because everybody was saying, Oh, this means that David knew that babies all went to heaven, and so we covered that. But then with all that being unloaded, these other things came to my mind, and so we're not going to look at it from that angle. But I wanted to ask the question, how can this David be considered a man after God's own heart?

Speaker 1 5:19

Yeah, it's a good question.

Speaker 2 5:21

We'll leave that question. We'll set that aside, just keep that in mind as we're talking. Was the death of David's son a substitution for what should have been his own death?

Speaker 1 5:32

Well, he should have died.

Speaker 2 5:34

He should have died, but he the Lord said, I'm not going to kill you, but I am taking your son.

Speaker 1 5:39

So maybe prophetic of Christ?

Speaker 2 5:42

Doesn't it seem like there could be some symbolism there? So verse 13 says, David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord, and Nathan said to David, The Lord has also put away your sin. You shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die. Can we see any parallels with Christ in the substitutional death of David's child? Kind of interesting.

Speaker 5 6:08

It is.

Speaker 2 6:15

Kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 6:16

He didn't want human sacrifices. He never asked for that.

Speaker 2 6:19

It wasn't a sacrifice, though the Lord just took him.

Speaker 1 6:22

Right.

Speaker 2 6:22

It was a judgment. It seems there could be some kind of shadow there. Like a type and an anti-type scenario. Because David would have suffered grief just as the father suffered for Jesus, didn't he? Oh, maybe. Just something that struck me when I was looking at it. And here's a better question. How was the Lord able to put David's sin away? We don't hear that kind of rhetoric in the Old Testament. We see that in Hebrews. He's put away our sin forever. And so, wait, he did that to David too? That sounds more a new covenant, doesn't it?

Speaker 3 6:54

In terms of all that, when what you said earlier about Kizedek and how that spans that time back into the old covenant. Before the law. Way before the law. That puts it in a in sort of a different place. What happened to the individuals who rested in what the law was truly for and before that? So my point is this the law was not designed for us to live righteously. It was designed to show us our need for God. There were individuals in the Old Testament who utilized the law for that purpose. They understood that. They said, Look, we're guilty. We cannot do this. We're throwing ourselves on the mercy of God. God said that made him righteous. And I believe that saved him before Jesus. Then when Jesus went through the very act of salvation, the very act of the crucifixion and resurrection, that was a type of what happened to these individuals in their lives. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 8:03

Yeah, and I further I think they were saved by Christ, the future Christ in advance, just like Abraham was credited righteousness in advance. Exactly. Because Christ was to come and he believed it. He saw the gospel. It's written that he saw what was to come and believed. But he never got to experience it.

unknown 8:25

Exactly.

Speaker 2 8:32

Because that's the way Yahweh was dealing with his people at that time. Exactly right.

Speaker 3 8:37

They'd go to the temple, one person would bring everything he needed and said, There, I'm righteous now because I've fulfilled the law. Another person would come and they would say, I was never worthy of God's presence to start with, so I am going to just fall on the mercy of who he is. That person was righteous. But they both went to the same temple. They both went through the same act. My point, circling back to David, is that was David. He was a repentant man. Do you remember the story of him in the valley when he wanted to sacrifice because he'd counted Israel? He went into the valley and he was looking for something to sacrifice, and he went over to a guy and said, Hey, listen, I'm going to buy your oxen and your cart, and I'm going to sacrifice this to the Lord. And the guy who had them said to him, I'll tell you what, I'll give you this stuff. And David said, Oh no, no, no. I can't sacrifice anything to the Lord that didn't cost me something. That revealed David's heart, just like this revealed David's heart in his repentance. That's why he was a man after God's own heart.

Speaker 2 9:40

Yeah, he said, I've sinned against the Lord.

Speaker 3 9:42

Yes, and that's why Psalm 23 and Psalm 27 are so amazing. Because they reveal a personal relationship of what God desired long before that was the thing that everybody thought he God wanted. And it blossoms in his life through his emotion in an amazing way. Yeah, no doubt.

Speaker 2 10:05

And Paul touches on the whole reasoning too that we've been talking about about the future Christ in Romans 3 21, he says, But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. This is under grace. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there's no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. Yeah. He passed over David's sins for the sake of Christ until the Christ came.

Speaker 3 10:54

I think many times we have a tendency to put God in some ogre category. Oh, well, this is the rules. I make the rules, you didn't follow them, so you get the acts. That's not the personality of God that we see if we read a holistic gospel throughout the Word of God. We see a generous, giving, loving God who's jealous for the attention of his people.

Speaker 2 11:19

Even the law, like Sabbath, was supposed to be this gift. The Pharisees ruined it by making all these rules. You can't do this on the Sabbath, you can't do this. It was supposed to be a day to rejoice and relax. God didn't ruin it, they ruined it.

Speaker 3 11:33

I don't know if you've ever gone to those churches like I talked about before, where you go in and everybody looks miserable, but they're all in church. That pretty much says it, right? They're all in church, they're all miserable, and they want to find more people to be miserable in church with them. I don't know if it's a big pity party or what that is, but when you go into a church and you see one person smiling, nobody else in the church likes them because they're smiling all the time. Now I'm exaggerating, obviously, but my point is this that we live as new creations, we live in an environment of joy. That's what God wanted for his people. That's why he sends Judah first. That's why Judah went first. Because Judah was joy, music, singing, worship, and praise. That is the heart of God. Not the uh we've got to, or we didn't, or I'm better than you, and you're better than me.

Speaker 2 12:22

Yeah.

Speaker 3 12:22

It's focus on him.

Speaker 2 12:24

Each of you focus on him. Well, what command do you see the most when you read in the Old Testament Bible anyway? You see the Lord saying, remember your redemption. Remember when I brought you out of Egypt and saved you from the bondage, and they just kept forgetting, and that was the primary problem. Like, oh no, these other guys are doing something over here. This is cool. Let's make some sacrifices. Forget about Yahweh. Yeah. He just wanted them to remember the good that he did. Look at the love that I showed you guys. So that's all that he wanted. That was his desire.

Speaker 3 12:59

I mean, how many times did he say, I want to rehearse this to you? I want you to understand who you are. I mean, read the Song of Solomon. Even in Ecclesiastes, you see, even though that's a more drastic approach, you see behind it all, you see his concern for his people. Psalms is a beautiful song of the emotion of God for his people in both directions. And uh despair that they experience and the joy that they experienced, but his desire was always this. He would sing over them, he would rejoice over them with singing.

Speaker 2 13:33

The seven feasts of Yahweh, too, are a perfect picture of Christ that were given with the law. That's a fascinating thing to look at. Everything was this perfect picture of Christ, the law, everything, like you said, it all pointed to Christ, and Israel was literally reciting everything that their Messiah was going to do through those feasts. It's incredible, actually, when you look at all the parallels in the law, it's just incredible. But getting back to David and Bathsheba, could Bathsheba have said no to David? Or would David's power as a king cause her to just have to say, okay, David, let's have this affair. Could she have really said no? Or was David abusing his power?

Speaker 1 14:16

That's an interesting topic there. Was it rape, what you're getting at?

Speaker 2 14:20

Yeah, I I don't think it was necessarily mutual. And then would it not be considered cold-blooded murder when you intentionally sent Bathsheba's husband to his death? I mean, we don't really know the backstory on those two.

Speaker 3 14:33

You know what I mean? Like, was there several dinner parties going on when Bathsheba was in David's presence and he was giving her the eyeball? We don't know. Or if there was their semblance of relationship there that we don't know about. Would she overwhelmed by the fact that he's paying attention to her?

Speaker 5 14:51

Right.

Speaker 3 14:52

What kind of guy was Isaiah? You know, what kind of guy was he? All those things. We don't know that. We know that they did something they weren't supposed to do. And we know that David could have demanded it. But we really don't know we really don't know if he did, right? So in the old testament, you know, you were taught that if that happened and there was no witnesses, you believe the woman. The man was stoned. But if that happened and there was witnesses, obviously they both were stoned. If the witnesses said that it was an amicable thing that they wanted to do. So Good point. I guess, you know, so if we did bring that forward, we say, huh, maybe there was something going on there that just culminated in this, and it was more than just a casual sling.

Speaker 15:44

So maybe there were dinner parties, maybe there was more to that, but didn't he see her bathing?

Speaker 3 15:50

He did.

Speaker 15:51

So, I mean, did she know that he was gonna see her?

Speaker 2 15:56

Looks like playing lost in the picture we have.

Speaker 3 15:59

Yeah, I mean, maybe she looked up and saw that he there he was with a little telescope, looking off the top of the castle, looking across the courtyard, down at her with his telescope, set on a tripod up on the top of the roof of the castle. Yeah, exactly right. He was he kept piling glass on so he could see more. Whatever happened there. Uh that's a good point. A very good point. That whatever happened, I mean it, you know, you can make a whole bunch of stories up about the whole thing, but the bottom line was It was wrong. Yeah, yeah, that happened.

Speaker 2 16:37

The analogy that was brought to him, he did something really wrong. And was he a chosen child of God at that time that he did this? Because we often, as Christians, we're like, oh, well, once you become a Christian, you don't do this, you don't do that. Wouldn't David essentially have been a believer when he committed these heinous crimes?

Speaker 17:00

But he probably let the power go to his head.

Speaker 2 17:03

But still, he was you know, if we're looking at a a believer, he was a man of God, he was a king of God. He made the Hebrews Hall of Faith in chapter 11. He got noted among the most faithful. He committed this crime as he was a believer, as he was a king. That's something that you know I just don't think we often meditate on. He was a very flawed person at that moment.

Speaker 17:28

Yeah, I think that just goes to show even King David was just as flawed as the rest of us.

Speaker 3 17:34

Amen. Yeah.

Speaker 17:36

Yes.

Speaker 3 17:37

Amen. It's also one of the deepest pictures of God's grace you'll ever find. It's hard for people to realize the fact that once you're his, you're his. Yep. Once you're his, you're his. It doesn't mean anything other than that. Even under the old covenant. Because of the new covenant, we have this wonderful experience that we've gone through, that regeneration of the newness of life. And as a result of what Christ has done, the sins that separate are done away with. Flawed humanity is still here. But the beautiful thing about flawed humanity is that it doesn't separate. So if David was alive today and he went through all those things after becoming a new creation, he's still a new creation.

Speaker 2 18:25

So what are some differences then? Let's look at that under the lens of the old covenant versus the new covenant. What changes here? What wouldn't go on from that situation in the new covenant, and what can we pull from it that still applies? You just mentioned several things that are applicable. What's not applicable about that scenario? Well, I know one thing that comes to my mind is the punishment. Punishment that was law-based. He was supposed to pay that price. And they still lived under the law, so the punishment still applied. David deserved to die, but even though he had mercy on him, he still paid a price, didn't he, under the law. There was still a price to pay. So do we apply that today as Christians? Are we still imagine God saying, This is what I'm going to do to you and your family for this?

Speaker 1 19:17

I don't think we get punished anymore if he puts our sin away.

Speaker 3 19:21

Again, this is my thought, but I think that we have to deal with punishment and then we have to deal with consequences. And the consequences of our frailty that happens, whatever it is. Whatever we do. We do something and there's consequences.

Speaker 5 19:37

Yes.

Speaker 3 19:38

And society has set that up. That's part of it. So that's why the experiences that we go through, religion would like you to think that you still sin, but you don't sin. Really? You miss the mark because you're frail. And the result of that has consequences, but now instead of it separating us from God, those consequences draw us near to Him. That's the difference between the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, and the new. Because today we can fail in God's presence and He's there with us. He never leaves us. In Him we live and breathe and have our being. We either believe that or we don't. So the frailties of life still produce the consequences of life. If I have a temper tantrum and kick an iron ball, I break my foot. That wasn't sin. That was just stupid, yes. But my point is that it's the results of a frail man erroring in his life, making a mistake, missing the mark. Shouldn't have done that. God didn't punish me by breaking my foot because I kicked it. I'm not being punished. I'm living the results of my decision. And from that, because we live in this grace period, the time of God's grace in our lives, we go from that. And maybe I'll limp the rest of my life because of it. But that's the difference between the old and the new.

Speaker 2 21:04

Yeah, and I think that it's not as if God just stops working and doing things because you see in your life as you look back time periods where the Lord will use our shortcomings to get our attention. More than to draw us back, as you said, to draw us back. And now that doesn't mean that we can't be ignorant even about that. But you know, sometimes he's just kind of waking us up. Like, hey, you look, you remember you have the opportunity to live on my love. Let's draw closer.

Speaker 3 21:34

Exactly. That's what this life is right now for all of us. New creation, new creatures. That's what our life is. Our life is a series of mistakes that reveal God. I mean, really, that's where we are. He loves us so much, he experiences everything with us and never leaves us.

Speaker 2 21:52

See, what you're saying is uh like you look at first John, the passage where he says something along the lines of when we believe. believe we no longer sin. And that passage causes so many people to cross their eyes looking at their Bible, like, what?

Speaker 3 22:08

What? Yes, a great example, Lenny.

Speaker 2 22:11

I don't understand this. And you have these theologians writing dictionaries of information on this passage trying to explain it and they can't. Because they just don't understand that sin has been dealt with in such a sense that John wrote that we no longer do it. Yeah no longer do it in the spiritual sense at least. It wasn't like he was ignorant. You know it's a stupid behavior. It was a spiritual writing that he wrote and if you just understand it that way, it's not that hard at all to understand. It's actually really easy.

Speaker 3 22:46

Well we are as humans we are so ready to take responsibility for our actions. We either take responsibility or blame somebody else. Those are the things we do right as I like option too. I prefer yeah most people do yeah yeah and I and I and the better part is involved over there too so I'm sure that goes both ways. But but my my point I know it can happen in any domestic relationship right how do you know that I'm I'm a prophet I can't I can't help it I just think that that's an amazing part of our existence. You know God lives in perfection yet he desires to dwell in imperfection there's something to that baffling we I mean obviously that's his desire he knew any creation would be flawed if there was any benefit to it. It couldn't be a perfect creation it had to be flawed because that's the only way that relationship develops that's really a lot to wrap your head around wow yeah that's deep yeah and the yeah and the thing is deeply true deeply true and the gospel the true gospel digs right down into our bottom of our very being and ignites that well of water that flows up and out of us that we can't control. Nothing written nothing all those things the gospel that was birthed within us when we acknowledge the reality of who Christ is starts flowing out of us uncontrollably. We can't control it. And because of that our life becomes a living testimony of who he is and we don't have to plan we don't have to do any of those things that we love to do. We should be responsible and all those things.

Speaker 1 24:47

Something you said just a little bit ago about God dwelling in imperfect man are are you kind of touching on the fact that we have just like in a marriage for example you have to get into a few arguments in order to really get to know each other and grow you have to struggle together.

Speaker 3 25:04

That was before she met me.

Speaker 1 25:06

I know that when you know it's sort of like this when the perfect comes that's great that's a great comment is that kind of what you're saying like we have to struggle together with God in order for us to really get to know him and to have a real true relationship.

Speaker 3 25:21

That is so awesome yes that's exactly what I'm saying but the core of our being is really a well of living water