Bible in a Year Series - Days #133 & 134 - This post is
part
of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the
Bible. Click here to learn more. You are most welcome to
join along at any time.
If I were going to make up Christianity, I would probably leave the rest of David's life out of the storyline.
It puts our hero, King David, in a despicable light, and from here on out his life is going to be very difficult to view.
David raped Bathsheba, got her pregnant, killed her husband in an effort to cover it up, and ultimately watches the baby from this mess die.
David, the man after God's own heart, is desperately trying to cover the tracks of his sin.
The prophet Nathan confronts David, and in Psalm 51 we find David completely broken before God, and teaching us the proper frame when we find ourselves in a similar "found out" before God way.
Oh that we might all have a Nathan in our lives.
God's school of brokenness is a very difficult course that we must all take. Some of us have many years of "cover-up" in our lives, and it is not until God mercifully breaks us that we learn who we really are, and begin to have a right relationship with God.
In fact, Jonathan Edwards, in his famous Religious Affections, tells us:
"Gracious affections are attended with evangelical humiliation. Evangelical humiliation is a sense that a Christian has of his own utter insufficiency, despicableness, and odiousness, with an answerable frame of heart."
As King David confessed:
"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." (Psalm 51:5)
Jonathan Edwards is telling us that if we don't completely understand our own utter insufficiency, then we do well to wonder if we might be Christian at all. We should also not forget that Messiah told us that many will cry Lord, Lord. But a great many of them he (Messiah) doesn't know at all.
Psalm 51 is a Psalm that all God's chosen must participate in. I implore you, don't let another day pass without understanding this most important lesson.
Here is an outstanding video of Dr. John Piper explaining this great Psalm of David.
