Un-Failing Our Way Into God’s Unlimited GoodnessНамуна

The Story of King David

No one is invulnerable to bad decisions, no matter how well set up they seem. King David, known as “a man after God’s own heart,” is a prime example.

At the pinnacle of his success, David watched the beautiful Bathsheba take a bath and decided he had to have her. He slept with her, and she became pregnant.

To try to cover up his sin, David called her husband Uriah home from the battlefield to spend some time with her. But Uriah could not countenance making love to his wife while his men were fighting a war. So David had him killed.

At first, it seemed as though David had gotten away with everything. But God did something interesting: He sent the prophet Nathan to rebuke the king.

A smart, experienced prophet, Nathan told David a story about a rich man who had everything and a poor man who had nothing but a little lamb. The poor man raised the lamb, shared his food with it, and loved the lamb as if it were his child.

Nathan told David that the rich man took the lamb from the poor man and ate it. This infuriated the king, who declared that the rich man must die. Then the prophet shouted, “You are that man!”

The implication of this story hit David immediately. Truly remorseful, David repented, and the Bible says that God heard him. God spared David’s life, but his son born to Bathsheba would die.

This story is especially tragic and frustrating when you recognize that God had poured His blessings on top of David in quarts and gallons, not pints. His was truly a story of amazing significance, amazing success. He had everything going for him. Then he messed up. One sin had led to another. David was not just an adulterer; he was a murderer.

Even through the tragedy of losing his son and taking away his many blessings, God had not forgotten David. He and Bathsheba had another son, Solomon, who was an ancestor of Jesus’s foster father, Joseph, while their son Nathan was an ancestor of Jesus’s mother Mary. Through weak and fragile people, God would provide the salvation of the world. Through the blood of those who failed, God would bring the blood of the one who would succeed eternally.