When Heroes Fail: David, Repentance, and Restoration

``It's someone who's in charge, they can get what they want and instead of using their power to get what they they use it in proper ways, they use it to do it something selfishly and that's where brokenness starts to creep in. And, what we think in our cultures, when we see power corrupting, what we think is, let's get more power to overtake that power so we can just keep beating the powers that are trying to use in a bad way. But here's the problem. If you think about our faith in Jesus, and if you're a follower of Jesus or not, I want you to hear this. Jesus came with all the power. He was God in the flesh. You know what he did with that power? He laid it down. He gave up his own life on the cross for you and me. Jesus didn't look at all the powers of the world going, you know what it's going take to beat them? More power. No. The way he defeated brokenness and evil was laying down his power and sacrificing himself for you and me. [00:39:10] (56 seconds)  #ServantLeadership

But, this is David's response. David acknowledges his sin. He recognizes and admits his sin. He turns from it and turns back to God. Because in failure and in sin, this is what God desires from us. He desires to recognize it, to turn away from it, and turn back to him. And, we call this repentance. And, it's a very churchy word that means to change your mind. And so, you hear things like, repent, repent, repent. What it means is change your mind. Stop going your own way and going after your own heart's desires and change your mind and go God's way and align your heart with God's. [00:49:08] (43 seconds)  #RepentAndReturn

And this is what David does here. He repents. He turns from his broken sinful mess and turns back to God and says, I've messed up. God, I need you. I need your help. And think about it. This is the common message that God gives us as people. When Jesus shows up on the scene, if you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John in your Bibles, which is the biographical account of Jesus' life, what does Jesus preach? Repentance. That's what he's calling people to do. When you've sinned, when you've messed up, when you've broken something, repent, change your mind, turn from it, and turn back. So, god, this is the good news of Jesus because in repentance, god uses that to refine us and transform us and this is what David does. He doesn't justify it, doesn't deny it, doesn't lie about it. He admits it. Okay. He had someone else called out and he owns it and admits it. And we actually see David's response here. In the book of Psalms, there's a bunch of like wisdom type writing. We see a bunch of David's writings and throughout this series, we've seen some of those. [00:49:51] (54 seconds)  #RepentanceRefinesUs

and so we give in to greed. Doesn't mean that wealth is bad, but when we give in to greed, that's when it becomes bad. We hear the lies of pleasure, so we give in to the the the temptation of lust. We hear the the lies of enemies and think everybody else is the bad guy, so we give in to the sin of hatred and hating other people. And, what's hard about that because you can't really get around it, Jesus told you to love your neighbor as yourself. And, guess who your neighbor is? Everybody. So, if you find yourself hating somebody else, your heart is not aligned with God's in that situation. [00:56:46] (34 seconds)  #LoveNotHate

But here's what's wild. Do you know who Solomon's mother was? Bathsheba. David had more children with Bathsheba after this mess of the situation. And God took that situation and he used this broken, crazy mess to continue his rescue and restoration plan. Now, through the brokenness of David and Bathsheba, from David and Bathsheba's relationship came the next king of Israel and the next king, and the next king, and the next person until we got the ultimate king in Jesus, God's final king, the king of his kingdom here on earth as we bring more heaven to earth. [01:03:54] (41 seconds)  #GodRedeemsBrokenness

Sin happens, but they don't stop us from trusting and following God, which is why God wants repentance from us to make sure we realign back with him to continue to follow him. And, this, honestly, in my opinion, is the most important thing about David's legacy. Yes, he did amazing things. He did horrible things. But, the thing that kept him in right standing with God was repentance. And that's what leads us to be in right standing with God as well, is to repent so God continues to transform us in that. [01:01:22] (31 seconds)  #RepentAndBeRestored

But, we all fail. We all sin. Even with all those things, we're still going to mess up. And, the reality, this is what sin is. And, I want us to recognize that sin is the fruit of our hearts longing for something that's not of God. When you've sinned and messed up and if you don't know if you've sinned, ask your spouse, they would love to tell you your sins because they know them very well. When we do things that are not of God's, it's a result of us longing to resentment that's not of God's. Greed and lust and unrighteous anger and lies and theft and hatred. All these things are things that God does not desire, but our hearts go after it because we're not longing to align our hearts with God's. [00:56:08] (36 seconds)  #MisalignedHeartsLeadToSin

This is who we're called to be. It's who God calls us to be. David's story, while really cool and awesome, there's amazing moments, it's far from perfect. The dude messed up big time. But, that's not the legacy of David. The legacy of David is someone still caught a man after God's own heart. Because what God wants from us is repentance. That's what then, when our hearts align with God, that's when it determines our actions and that's what we see throughout David's life. When his heart was aligned with God's, amazing things happened. When it wasn't aligned with God's, disaster happened. Guess what? The same is true for you and me. If our heart aligns with God's good things. If our heart doesn't align with God's, it's not going to go well. [01:06:07] (42 seconds)  #AlignYourHeart