Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 22nd, 2015 | Route 66 - 2 Samuel

Transcript

March 22nd, 2015 | Route 66 - 2 Samuel · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Let's try that again.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: My voice isn't all the way back yet, but I feel great.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting today, we're on a road trip through the Bible.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: And I need to tell you, I need to confess something that about 10 years ago or so, Melody and I, and I think I saw Dave and Jane out there, we got we got hooked into a sort of a fad of line dancing, country line dancing.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, what's so funny?
0:30
SPEAKER_00: So or maybe Melody got hooked into it, and I'm hooking into Melody.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: So uh, but anyway, we went down, we would go down to the uh base down here, the uh the military base where they had a building, and you'd go down there once a week, Tuesday, Thursday, or something.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: And and so, you know, you'd do the vine, and uh, you know, wasn't that?
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice that?
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice the legs?
0:51
SPEAKER_00: And uh and uh what?
0:54
SPEAKER_00: And and so you'd dance the dances with great names like the tush push and the achy breaky heart and the electric slide.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: And after a while, maybe a song, uh, you get tired, or you go sit on the sidelines.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: But there is one song that would get every single person off the sidelines.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Everybody would get out there when Garth Brooks would break into friends in low places.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: It's just such a catchy song.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: The story of the song's kind of interesting too.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Garth's, you know, had a girlfriend and she's left him.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: He's sort of a blue-collar jeans, you know, kind of a guy.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: And um and she's gone for you know, somebody in high places, somebody who's high flute, and somebody who's cool, and he's seen her at a party, and he tells her not no sweat.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've got friends in low places where the whiskey flows and the beer chases your blues away.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: And it suddenly got very silent in here.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Um that that's uh actually, though, a wonderful introduction to the unusual book of 2 Samuel, which tells us that God has friends in low places.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: And you ought to be really glad about that, because I am.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: So let's start with a word of prayer.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you that your grace, like water, uh, flows downhill to the very lowest places, which is where we, like David, often find ourselves.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: And we thank you for the comfort in that.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: And we respond to you with a heart of love.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: So you've heard uh uh you've heard lawyer jokes, you've heard the political jokes, I'm sure, about like how many congressmen does it take to change the light bulb?
2:46
SPEAKER_00: One, and then he stands still, lets the whole world revolve around him, you know.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Or the one with a couple who go into the cemetery and they're looking at uh gravestones, and one of them says, Here lies a politician and an honest man, right?
2:59
SPEAKER_00: And the guy says, Things have come to a pretty pass when you have to bury two people in one grave.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, or or you remember about 10 years ago where we had this uh this this this flap about uh term limits and how many limits, how many terms we're gonna, you know, should congressmen serve?
3:15
SPEAKER_00: And and that's when that bumper sticker became really popular.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's that had Mark, it was famous Mark's Twain, fame Mark Twain's famous quote politicians and diapers ought to both be changed regularly and for the exact same reason.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: So uh one oftentimes has delayed laughter.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: But now none of those jokes were ever told about uh the hero of today's message, about David.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: None of them are ever told about King David.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh because he's the hero of 2 Samuel, our theme is God has a heart for those who have a heart for God.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: And if you have your little study sheet in front of you, uh the one with holes punched in it, the one that you can put in your beautiful new thanks to Leota for doing a great job on these notebooks.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: You'll see in the middle of the front page the overview of 2 Samuel that it's the book of the ideal king.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: And we read 1 Samuel is the book of Saul, 2 Samuel the book of David.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: Whereas Saul was the rejected king, David is the ideal king.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: Now, the book of 2 Samuel begins with Saul's death, about 1,000 BC.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Actually, I thought 1,050 BC.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Few would have predicted great things for Israel at that point.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: No, I get the first time.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: It's about 1,010 BC, to be exact.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: Few would have predicted great things for Israel at that point, for they'd just been decisively defeated in battle, had lost their first king and were now scattered over the land without a leader.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: But what followed was what Jews still call the golden age and the beginning of an empire that endured for a thousand years.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: The reason?
4:49
SPEAKER_00: David, a man after God's own heart.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: Last week we noted the first, second Samuel is one book of Samuel, divided in two, and uh the outline of the seven parts of these two books is as follows.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: This morning, the bottom three.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: Flip it over and you'll see the outline of my message, as simple as you can get.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Heart of gold, chapters 1 through 10, feet of clay, 11 through 20, Hall of Fame, 21 through 24.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: But as I was saying, none of those political jokes would ever be told of David, because David was what you would call a 24-carat king.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: He was not some Bedouin uh uh bandit who had brought his band uh uh, you know, out of the desert and uh in a coup d'etat and seized the title of king.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: He was not some slick politician who had wormed his way uh through an election so that he could force people to call him Your Majesty.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: No, David was a real king, and he was the king of the nation that God had built from scratch and had announced would be the uh the conduit to the salvation of the entire world.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: And David was king of that nation, David was king of Israel.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: And what's more, David had not sort of inherited that.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: David had come to that position through great struggle and and and agony.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: He'd come, he'd he'd risen the hard way.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: And it started uh with his home.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: He'd grown up in what I think is a very difficult family background.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: He'd been the youngest of eight sons, one of ten children.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: And then when you read the stories, you realize that there was a distinct pecking order among those boys, and he was at the bottom of that pecking order, so that anytime he spoke up or stepped forward, he got stamped on or pecked and told that he should mind his own place.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: And even his relationship with his father appears to be quite distant, so that it was not just a generation gap between them, it was more like a Grand Canyon gap between them.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Somebody has said David fought for his whole life to overcome his family background.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about that, but I do know that David as a boy is what we would call a gifted child.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine having an IQ of about maybe 150, having the musical ability of a Carrie Livgren, the athletic ability of a Derek Jeter, the poetic ability of a Robert Frost, the military ability of a General Robert E.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: Lee, and being stuck at the tail end of a family where most of your brothers probably couldn't have graduated from sixth grade, where their idea of music, composed music was whistling a tune through their teeth.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: They constantly bossed it over you and looked down on you for even deciding that you were going to make something of your life.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: What's more, David not only fight against the family background, he had to fight against Saul.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: For when he was still a teenager, David was informed that he was going to be the next king of Israel by the prophet Samuel.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: But Saul, wow, this guy was strange.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Now, David was willing to wait for the office.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: He had too much respect for the throne, too much respect for God and God's anointed to try to seize it ahead of time.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: But this Saul, he was paranoid.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: He was crazy, he was uh had these dark and murky and depressive moods, and Saul actually turned David into public enemy number one, and he chased him around the land of Israel the way a pit bull chases a bunny rabbit or the FBI chases a criminal, so that for ten years, no less than ten years, David was an outlaw and an outcast, and he had to scrounge for food and hide out and sleep in caves.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: But now that's over.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: David has outlived Saul, and now David is the king of Israel.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: And now he wastes no time in the early chapters of 2 Samuel by showing himself to be the greatest king in what would be Israel's long history.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he's presented as the ideal king.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: We find the tribes of Israel recognizing he's pretty special in chapter 5, 1 through 5, 2 Samuel.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: They all come to him at the town of Hebron.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: They don't come to him at Jerusalem because Jerusalem isn't even Israelite territory yet.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: Twenty miles south, they come to him at Hebron and say, Here we are, we're your flesh and blood.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Even when Saul was king, you are the one who led us out to battle.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said, You're gonna shepherd my people Israel.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: A key word here is king.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Notice the elders came to the king at Hebron.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: King David made a covenant.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: They anointed David king.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: He was 30 years old when he became king.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: He reigned 40 years, and seven years in Hebron, 33 years in Jerusalem.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: But that's the this David was just this unbelievably remarkable character.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: And we've we are told this immediately in three ways.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: We're told that he's politically brilliant, militarily brilliant, and spiritually brilliant.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: The next words really out of the author of 2 Samuel are words that indicate his political brilliance in making Jerusalem the capital of the country.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: Now, the reason this was smart is that Israel in those days was a little bit like America in the Civil War.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: If you were in the north part of America in the Civil War and asked me where they were from, they'd say, I'm from the north.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: And if you're in the south, they'd say, you know, I'm I'm from the south.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: And the same thing was true.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: If you went to an Israelite in those days who's from the northern ten tribes, they would say, Where are you from?
10:30
SPEAKER_00: They'd say, I'm from Israel.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: But if you went to either Judah or Benjamin, the major tribes in the south, they'd say, I'm not from Israel, I'm from Judah.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: And so David looked up and he saw that there was this town right there on the border, crossroads east and west road, north and south.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't Israelite territory, but it was a town of Jerusalem.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: It was a town that was impossible to conquer.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Nobody had been able to conquer it in 300 years.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: But he said, if I could just get that town, it's on the border, and that way I could unite the country.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what he tried to do.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: We read that they marched to Jerusalem against this ancient tribe of Jebusites.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Nobody had conquered them in a thousand years.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: And they looked over and they said to David, You'll never get in here.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: Even the blind and the lame can repel you.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I don't care if you're the U.S.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Marines, the cripples in wheelchairs can keep you out of here.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: You can't get in.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: And yet David did.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: That's a great story of finding a way in.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: He did capture the stronghold of Zion, and it was called then and from then on, the city of David.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: It's exciting that in the last 15 years, a couple of archaeologists, Ilat Mazzar and Elishukron over in Jerusalem, have found, excavated, including David's palace, have found this in Jerusalem.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Love the city of David.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Now David took up residence there in the stronghold, which he named the city, and he built it up.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: And we read at the end David became more and more powerful, for the Lord God of hosts was with him.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: So David, this is David's political brilliance.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: This is this becomes his city.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: He unites the entire country and uh uh and and he is dwelling at the very top of the city of David.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: So he, and we'll find out how important this is later, he can look down on every one uh of his subjects there.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we find in the next verses that David is known as a military brilliant uh strategist.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: His military brilliance is shown in the fact that he takes on and defeats the strongest military power in Western Asia in that time.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: It was about a thousand BC.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: We know it in archaeology as the Iron Age, because the old age is called the Bronze Age, but then some people had learned how to smelt iron, and iron was so much stronger than bronze that if you had iron swords and iron shields and so forth, people who had bronze swords and bronze shields didn't stand a chance.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: They were like butter to your iron.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: And we know from the book of Judges that Israel did not have any iron, and it said when they wanted to go down and sharpen their plows, uh, they needed to go to the Philistines and begged them because the Philistines had iron sharpeners, and when they wanted to, when they wanted to have their axes sharpened, they had to go to the Philistines.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: The Philistines, they had, they knew how to smelt iron.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: They had iron, and because of that, they were the strongest military power anywhere in that part of the world.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: And David decided that he had to take them on, and he did take them on, and he beat them.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: He beat them one-on-one against their hero, against their champion, whose name was Goliath, exactly.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: And then he beat them in guerrilla warfare, and then he beat them fair and square, army against army.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: And we read about that in the last dozen chapters, dozen verses of 2 Samuel 5.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: In two great battles, he takes them on.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Now the Philistines actually came after him.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna teach this whipper snapper, this new king who's in charge.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: And when they heard David had been anointed king over Israel, they came up, they spread out in the valley, and David whipped them.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: And he whipped him not only once, but he whipped them twice.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: And as a result of whipping them twice, all of the rest of the kingdoms, you know, said, David, you're in charge.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that meant Moab and Edom and Ammon and all of these others, so that David before long was not just the king of Israel, he was the king of the Ammonites and the Edomites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Philistines, and as far as your eye could see, and as far as your foot could walk, from the river of Egypt all the way to the river Euphrates, this because was David's kingdom, it was the greatest, became the greatest kingdom of that day.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: That's how brilliant David was politically and militarily.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: But most important, we find that he was brilliant spiritually because he had a heart of gold for God, a 24-karat heart for God.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you were here last week in 1 Samuel, you know that God's made it clear what he's looking for in a king.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: He's looking for an ideal king, but an ideal king is a king who is a man after his own heart.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: So God has his magnifying glass out, and he's looking all over Israel and he's saying, Where is a man after my own heart?
15:03
SPEAKER_00: And he sends the prophet Samuel to Jesse to anoint one of his sons.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: And Jesse and Samuel are going, Well, it's got to be Eliab, it's got to be this guy, it's go all the way down.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: And God says, No, no, no, no, no.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Lord doesn't see as man sees.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: Man looks at the outward appearance.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's looking at the heart.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking for someone who has a heart after me.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: And when he anointed David, when he found David, God found a man with a heart of gold who had a heart after him.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 1 through 10.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: Now there are a lot of ways that you could evidence that David had this heart.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting to me that in 2 Samuel, the way that it endeavors to announce this to us in the very next verses in chapter 6 is by David's attitude toward the ark.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: We find that having conquered the Philistines, David assembles his army again, his choice men 30,000.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: You go, whoa, I thought you'd conquered everybody.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: And David says, I have.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: Now that's how important this next task is.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: He says, We're going to go down and get the ark of God and bring it up from this town, Baal, Judah, also called Kiryat's Yarm.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: The ark is called by the name, the name of Yahweh of hosts who dwells between the cherubim.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: And David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord with all kinds of instruments, lyres, harps, tambourines, systems, symbols.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: David's dancing with all his might before the Lord, wearing a linen ephod.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: They bring the ark of the Lord up and they set it in its place inside the tent David had set up for it.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Now you need to understand something that this is not just a box, a cedar wood box that's covered with gold, that has uh the Ten Commandments inside it, and the and the ark and the and Aaron's rod that butted.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: No, this ark is actually where God Himself, God Almighty, has chosen to dwell on earth.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: In fact, back when Moses was leading the children of Israel through the wilderness in the morning when they got up to leave, Moses did not turn to the Israelites and to the priests and say, Okay, get the ark, let's go.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: No, he turned to the ark and Moses said, Arise, O Lord, as if that box was a person, and as it was.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: For that's where the Lord himself dwelt, between the cherubim, between the cherubim, with the ark being his throne.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: That's where he actually dwelt in his Shekinah glory.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: And so Moses would say, Arise, O Lord.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, when that ark would be put down, he would say, To the ark, he would say, Return, O Lord, because he knew that wasn't just a God in a box he was dying to.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: That was actually the Lord God Almighty there.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: So, so um, and by the way, you remember, you remember how so many of the Israelites forgot this.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: Back in 1 Samuel, chapter 4, God got so disgusted with the leaders of Israel.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh Eli and his sons Haphne and Phinehas were the leaders of Israel.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: And they didn't care about God.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, they were getting whooped by the Philistines so bad that one day they grabbed the ark and they treated it like a rabbit's foot.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: And they said, Let's take this into battle and wave it up and maybe we can, you know, blast them.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: And God was so disgusted with how he was being mistreated, God decided of his own free will.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: He was going to leave Israel and go into the enemy territory.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: And so God allowed himself to be captured and he allowed Israel to be defeated, and God went into Philistine territory.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: And he made three stops in Philistine territory.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: First stop, the Philistines thought, wow, he's a lot wimpier second-rate God than we thought.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: So they stuck him next to all their other second-rate wimpy gods in their huge temple at Ashdod, the temple, all their temples to Dagon.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: That was their almighty God, the father of Baal, huge statue of Dagon, and they stuck the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of hosts in there.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: And when they came in in the morning, they found something absolutely shocking and strange.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: They found their God Dagon falling on his face, his decapitated face, before the Ark of the Covenant.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And the strange thing was, interestingly, his head wasn't broken off, his head was cleanly sliced off, like decapitated.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: You see.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting that in this whole battle of the gods thing, when you do, when you work overseas in archaeology, let's take Bait Saida, where we've dug several times.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh Beit Saida, they still have the gods, the moon gods, uh, these big stone sort of pillars.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they found those that were up, and this is David's day, they were up, and you had to offer sacrifice before you went into the town.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: The town was called Geshur, it became Beth Saida later.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it's very interesting because you find those gods' heads are cleanly sliced off.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: What happened?
19:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, 300 years after David, when Sennacherib of Assyria came down, the first thing they ever did when they conquered a town is they took their gods and they put them in a huge in a hot fire.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: And when they're absolutely the rock, the stone was glowing red, then they dumped them in water, and that would make them absolutely brittle.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: You could do whatever you want, and then they sliced them off as if they were decapitating them.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: And so, of course, the archaeologists have found the head and stuck it back on the top there.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: But but that's what we have there in the temple at Ashdod.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: We have uh the God of Israel, we have the holy God, the Lord Yahweh, defeating the god Dagon, and Dagon's head absolutely sliced off.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: The Philistines say, This is embarrassing.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: They they glue Dagon's head back on, but they send, they actually send the ark on to another city.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: They send it on to Gath.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: And the same thing happens at Gath, and now everybody's starting to get sick in the city as well.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: And after a few months they say, this is enough.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: They send it on to Ekron.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: Three cities they send it to.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, and all three the same thing happens to Dagon, and people are getting sick, and after seven months they say, hey, we may be dumb, but we're not stupid.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Let's get rid of let's get rid of this thing.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: So they stick it on a cart pulled by calves, and and to their amazement, these calves who've never traveled anywhere turn around and head on the road directly up toward Israel.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: And they cross over the border into the border town, the Israelite town of Beth Shemesh.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: And as you can imagine, there are parties and they put out the red carpet, they're so thrilled they scream, God's back, God's back, we're so glad God's back, right?
21:18
SPEAKER_00: No.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: There's a wide yawn.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: No parties, no excitement.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: In fact, after a little while, they they say, This thing's dangerous to us.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Let's move it on up the road.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: And they send it on up the road to a forest town called Kiryatjaram, where it just sits there.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: And you want to grab Samuel, who's the prophet at that time, and shake him and say, Samuel, you're a prophet of God.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: Don't you understand?
21:47
SPEAKER_00: That's where God is.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: And you can't care less.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: And then Saul becomes king.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Does Saul care about the presence of the Lord of hosts?
22:00
SPEAKER_00: No, he can't be bothered either.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't visit it.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't care where it is.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need to be here near him at all.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: What's going on here?
22:10
SPEAKER_00: I got a secret for you.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: It's not a very pleasant secret.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: You may not want to pass it on to anybody.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: They might not like the God you worship if you tell them, but here's the secret.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't have much of a heart for people who don't have much of a heart for him.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't have much of a heart for people who don't have much of a heart for him.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he steps back from Saul.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Saul, you don't care, it's all about you, it's all about your crown, it's all about your throne, it's all about your kingdom.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna step back, let you do your own thing.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, what Saul does his own thing, and it's paranoia and it's mad depression, and finally ends in suicide.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: God stepped back.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: And when God steps away from us, that's what happens.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: And now, now, but now David is king.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: Now David is fine.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: How's David gonna respond?
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Wow! Immediately.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this amazing?
23:09
SPEAKER_00: You can actually read about it in a psalm.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 132, David says, I'm not gonna enter my house, I'm not even gonna get into my bed, I'm gonna sleep on the ground, I'm gonna get I'm not gonna give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids until I find a place for the Lord a dwelling place for the mighty one of Jacob.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: I've gotta have God close by.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: I can't stand a day not having my quiet time, you know, not having my time with God.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: And so he sends his whole army down and he gets that ark up there and he puts it, you know, just a few hundred feet away now.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: We now know from where his palace and fortress were.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: He's up at the northern end and a little bit farther.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's where the tabernacle is gonna be.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: That's where the ark is, so that as we know from another passage, he would just he could just saunter up there in the afternoon and sit there before God.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: That's how much he had a heart for God.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: He cared so much about God.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: That's why the Jews in tradition still call David Ovya, beloved of God.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: That's why in Palm Sunday, when Jesus is riding into Jerusalem, they throw palm branches, they wave palm branches, and they shout, son of David, because they understand that David and God have this incredible relationship going on where one of them has a heart for the other and the other one has a heart for the other.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: And you say to yourself, man, I'd love to be in a kingdom like that.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to live in a country, in a land where you had a king that was so wise, who was so gracious, who was so kind toward people, had such a heart toward God as well.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: And I tell you, you will be.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: You will be in that kingdom.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: If you trusted Christ as your Savior, if you put your faith in the Son of David, i.e.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: the son of God, who came down at Christmas, died on Good Friday, rose on Easter Sunday, you will one day be in that very kingdom where the Son of David will rule, and you won't believe how wonderful it's going to be.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: And that's the kind of king we have who would then write genuinely from his heart, as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O my God.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: And O God, you're my God.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: Early will I seek you.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land where no water is.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Search me, O God, know my heart, test me, know my thoughts, see if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: Is it any wonder that even in the New Testament, the apostles, as they preach or saying things like, God said, David is a man after my own heart, which makes it all the more shocking when we then move to chapters 11 through 20 and find that this ideal king, this wonderful king, this brilliant king, who seems perfect in every way, has feet of clay.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: It starts very quickly.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: As soon as we get to chapter 11, in the spring, when kings march out to war, march out to war in the spring because it's too muddy to fight.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: If you've got wars to fight, you have to wait until the mud dries.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't take your chariots or anything else for the mud.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: So in the spring, when kings march out to war, David sent sent Joab.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: You didn't go, David?
26:12
SPEAKER_00: He sent General Joab, the chief of his staff, with his officers and all Israel.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: They destroyed the Ammonites, they besieged Rabah, Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: David remained in Jerusalem.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: He sent the troops and the Ark, by the way.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, David, do you realize how tied in you are with the Ark?
26:36
SPEAKER_00: David, I don't think it's an accident that just like the Ark, God went willingly into Philistine territory because of his mistreatment, you went willingly into Philistine territory because of King Saul's mistreatment of you.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: David, I don't think it's accidental that the Ark made three stops in Philistine territory and you made three stops at three cities in Philistine territory.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: David, I don't think it's any accident that just as the God Dagon was decapitated smoothly, so you decapitated Goliath, showing your victory?
27:07
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's an accident that the Philistines finally kicked the Ark out and that before that they, or after that, they kicked you out of Philistine.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: They said you're too dangerous, just like the Ark was.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's any accident, David, that you made three stops ending in Jerusalem to be king and the Ark did precisely the same thing?
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's any accident that because you're around the Ark, you flourish, and now you're sending the Ark out of Jerusalem and you're staying behind?
27:38
SPEAKER_00: You and I have decided to visit Jerusalem.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: We've been told by the travel agents that spring is the best time to visit Jerusalem.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: As it is, the flowers are out, it's beautiful, and so forth.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: But as we get there, you and I are suddenly struck.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, we're not going to be able to sing King, see King David, because he's going to be at battle.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: So we're surprised to hear that he's he's in Jerusalem.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: He decided this year not to go to battle.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: Great.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: So we go, we go by the palace in the afternoon and look for him in the throne room, but he's not there.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: So we walk upstairs, we go up to the roof where the breezes flow through, and there he is.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: He's taking an afternoon nap.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: We know he's a busy man, we know he's got a lot of paperwork, we know he's a king of a great land, but really, David, if you were 30 years older, that would make sense, but you're only about 40, 42 years old.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: You're a little young for that, don't you think?
28:35
SPEAKER_00: And maybe we maybe we moved, maybe we disturbed him, but David wakes up and we watch as he gets out of bed.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: And he he stretches and he walks over and he looks out and looks down, for he is on the high point, and he looks over at the gardens and he looks at the houses, and then his eye uh catches just a little ways down the road.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a roof, and there's a uh a big pail of water, and there's a there's a woman, and she's a beautiful woman, and she's she's bathing in that, and she doesn't have all her clothes on, and we're watching David as he watches her, and we we see this look in David's eye, this gaze, like a man might gaze at a centerfold, like he might be fixated on a stripper or on a website, and and we're embarrassed for him, but he doesn't seem to be embarrassed.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: He cannot, no, he will not take his eye off of her.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: And when she finishes and she dries off and goes inside, David stands still.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: He he can't get her out of his mind.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: No, he won't get her out of his mind.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: And after a while, he makes his way downstairs into the throne room and he sits there and he calls over a servant.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: He says, You know, I've been thinking.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: It's too bad, you know, in a day like today, we get so busy we don't know our neighbors.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just I'm so busy with everything I do.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, maybe you could tell me who who lives who lives across the street, really?
30:00
SPEAKER_00: Oh and next to them.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: How about down the road, you know, on the right hand side, the one that has uh you know a nice house with a sort of a courtyard pool at the top.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: Really, Uriah the Hittite, I should have known that.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: He's one of my 30 mighty men.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh his wife, I think I met her.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: What's her name?
30:19
SPEAKER_00: Bathsheba.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Sure, yeah, I think she's been at the Pala.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: Very intelligent woman, isn't she?
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and her father, Eliam, right, her grandfather's actually one of my advisors.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, it strikes me that I haven't thought about this really before.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you know, it's gotta be hard on a woman when her husband's away at war.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: When you're down there later this afternoon, would you mind just stopping there and tell her to drop up here and see me?
30:47
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's something I can do for her.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't know exactly how it happened.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: That might have been the way.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: What we read very briefly, tersely, in uh 2 Samuel chapter 11 is that one evening, which to us would be late afternoon, David got up from his bed and he strolled around on the roof of the palace, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing, a beautiful woman, so he sent someone to inquire about her, and he reported, This is Bathsheba, and so forth.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: And David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: And when she'd purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: The woman conceived and sent word to inform David, I am pregnant.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: That has happened so quickly.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: You sort of want more information.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: You want to know, was it soft and sweet and romantic, or was it more like rape or robbery?
31:44
SPEAKER_00: It could have been either one, but but for my money, it was a little more of the latter.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: As you look at the verbs here, David sent and he took and he lay with her.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: David, don't you realize what that is?
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Don't you realize that's adultery?
32:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm sorry to call it that, but and I don't I doubt that David would have called it that.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he might have called it afternoon delight or a little fling or even a meaningful relationship, but whatever it was, he was happy because she was able to leave and go back home, and he could wash his hands of the whole affair until four weeks later he's sitting on his throne, and a servant comes up and passes him a note.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: He opens up the note, it says, I am pregnant, and it's signed B.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden you can feel that uh that ball of guilt and whatever else growing in David's gut and almost stifling him.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: He's what in the world?
32:40
SPEAKER_00: I am so in trouble because in a couple of weeks she's gonna begin showing, and everybody will know what happened because her husband's away at war, and then I'm gonna lose my palace and my throne and my king.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, this is gonna this is so shocking.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: Calm down, he says to himself, calm down.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm a man, I'm a king, I've dealt with tougher situations than this.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: I have got to get her husband home, and her husband home in her bed.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: And so he sends a message.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: He says, get Uriah the Hittite home, ASAP.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: So Uriah comes home.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: He comes to the palace and says, What's up, David?
33:09
SPEAKER_00: Wow, it's on the front lines, what's up?
33:10
SPEAKER_00: And David says, Listen, it's just some RR.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: I want you to have, you've been working hard, I know you're one of my 30 mighty men.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: I want you to just go home, have a good time, and so forth.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: Uriah says, Are you kidding?
33:19
SPEAKER_00: I can't do that.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: I can't go back to my to my to my to my troop, to my, I can't go back to the other guys and say that I got some R while, you know, they're sleeping in the field and where they're, you know, taking blows.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I'm just gonna lay down here at the front of the palace and I'll do whatever you want, but I the last thing I can do is go home.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: And David gives up.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: He sends a note then.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: He says, Tell, take this note back to General Joab.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: And that note says, Joab, this guy needs to die, put him in the front lines.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: Then when the news comes back, sure enough, Uriah has died.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: David mourns a little bit.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, after all that, you have to mourn a little bit, even if you murdered the guy.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: And the wife of Uriah, notice she's not called Bathsheba, when she hears her husband's dead, she mourns for her husband.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: And when the time of mourning is over, David sent, brought her to his house, she became his wife, and she bore him a son.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: Wow, no one will ever know.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, maybe there's some people in the palace who can count to nine and figure out backwards that there's something that's a little bit too quick on the baby.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: And of course, General Joab knows, but Joab will never tell.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: Other than that, really, nobody will know.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: He's been able to dance the tune and not pay the orchestra.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: That's how you feel, isn't it?
34:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you feel like, you know, I've gotten away with it.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy that no one will ever know David.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Stop for a minute, David.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: Don't you realize someone does know?
34:49
SPEAKER_00: God knows David.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: You may have ignored him, you may have sent him out of the city, but God knows his eye is on you.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: And the last verse of chapter 11 is the thing that David had done wasn't excusable in the sight of the Lord, wasn't forgivable in the sight of the Lord, it wasn't kind of bad in the eyes of the Lord, it was evil in the sight of the Lord.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: And someone else besides God knew.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: Because God talks to prophets, and prophets talk to God, and one of David's friends was a prophet, his name was Nathan, and God told Nathan, and he told Nathan to go rebuke David, and so in the next verse, we find that the Lord sent Nathan to David.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: Now, the problem is that if you're the prophet, you know it's dangerous to ever rebuke a king, and it's doubly dangerous to rebuke a king who has a guilty conscience, and it's triply dangerous to try to rebuke a king who not only has a guilty conscience but has already murdered someone to get his way.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: And so Nathan doesn't go directly in the front door.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: He sort of moves in the side door.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: He sort of tells him a story about a very wealthy man who has all the sheep and goats and lambs that he needs.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: But when someone comes for dinner, he doesn't want to kill any of his, and he looks across the street and he sees a poor guy with only one lamb, one lamb that he sleeps with in his bed at night, one lamb that he seats at his table who eats and drinks his food.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: And the wealthy man reaches across the street, takes the lamb, slaughters it, kills it.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: And David loses it.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: David the king says, That guy's gonna die.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't care who he is, I don't care how powerful it is, he's going to die.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: Silence for just a moment.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: Then Nathan says, David, David, you are that man.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: And it hits David like a hammer blow.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: His face turns white, his knees begin shaking, and all of a sudden it hits him.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm caught.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Someone did know.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: My life is over.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: Everything is gone.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: The palace, the throne, the kingship, everything.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: Most importantly, my relationship with God is gone.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: How can I ever, ever kneel before him and ask him for something again?
37:01
SPEAKER_00: How can I expect him ever to enjoy one of my songs of praise?
37:06
SPEAKER_00: There is no sacrifice in our religion for what I have done.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: It's over.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: And so sitting there in silence, David says to Nathan, six words which define it, define the whole story completely.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: I have sinned against whom?
37:26
SPEAKER_00: You sinned against Bathsheba.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: You really definitely sinned against Uriah.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: You've sinned against Israel, but David knows that more than anyone else, he has sinned against the Lord.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: He has sinned against the Lord in such a way that nothing else matters to him because he has a heart for God.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: But now he knows he has ruined his relationship with God forever.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: And as he sits there in absolute and utter and total repentance, the most amazing thing, the best thing that ever could possibly happen, happens to him when the prophet Samuel reaches over and touches him on the arm and says these words.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't think David could care much about the second half of that.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: I don't think he cared whether he died or whether he lived or whether he kept the throne or anything else, but I do know that he cared deeply that he was forgiven, because when you are forgiven, you know that restores your relationship with God, and you can then experience God and talk to God and fellowship with God again.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: And if you have a heart for God, the most important thing in the world for you is if when you have feet of clay, when you have sinned, that God forgives you.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: And that's why David wrote Psalms 32 and 51 about how his heart was so full of joy at being forgiven.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: But something you and I definitely know is that being forgiven does not mean there's no fallout.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: And we find out immediately that David's family and David's kingdom crumbles around him.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: In the very next chapter, David has two sons that follow in his footsteps, committing his two sins.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: First of all, one of his sons, his oldest son, Amnon, the crown prince, commits a sexual sin, a rape against his stepsister.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: And a couple of chapters later, uh, you have the sin of murder which David committed, when Absalom murders Amnon.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: And then you have a kingdom that just falls apart with conspiracy and betrayal and rebellion and civic unrest and rape and suicide and murder.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: And so, to be honest with you, you come to the end of chapter 20 and you go, wow, what a mess! I'm curious.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: You go, what in the world the epitaph for David's going to be?
39:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's God's view of David now?
39:56
SPEAKER_00: He had such a heart of gold, but then such feet of clay.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: And I've got to tell you, it's absolutely shocking and comforting at the same time in the last three chapters to find that David is inducted into God's Hall of Fame.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
40:12
SPEAKER_00: God delighted in me, 2 Samuel 22.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: And God himself speaks in chapter 23 of David, the one who rules the people with justice, and the fear of God is like the morning light when the sun rises, the glistening of rain on sprouting grass.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: David is like a force of nature, God says, that blesses the world.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: And David himself says, Yep, my house is with God.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: Got an everlasting covenant.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: He's securing me, he's going to bring about my every desire.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: How in the world can you say that?
40:45
SPEAKER_00: You can say that if you understand that your relationship with God is more important than every other relationship in life, including your family.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: Hear me very clearly now.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: Do not misunderstand me.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: You may have a great relationship with your family, but you need to understand there will be there will be men who've raised a great family who never ever make it to heaven at all.
41:19
SPEAKER_00: And there will be Christian people, Christian men and women who've raised a great family and have a great marriage, who, when they step into heaven, will not hear the words, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, because they couldn't care less about their relationship with God.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: It was all about the family.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: But your relationship with God is more important than your relationship with your family.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: Focus on the family by all means.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: But a focus on the family only gains you eternal merit if it begins with a focus on the Father.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: And if you find that you're focusing on the family, but not focusing on the Father, then you have a kind of idolatry that gets it backwards.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: For if there's anything that 2 Samuel teaches us, it teaches us this shocking truth that many of you know by personal experience that you can have a family that has fallen apart, a family that is fractured, you can have a heart of gold, you can have a heart for God, but you made a mistake.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: And like David, you wished, you wished you could go back and take it back.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: You wish you could take another start at this whole thing, but you can't.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: And you sometimes wonder if, because your family is the way that it is, that somehow you are farther from God or away from God, and God says, Listen, this is the man, this is the ideal king that I judged every other king on.
42:53
SPEAKER_00: Did he have a heart that was wholly devoted to me, like the heart of King David?
42:59
SPEAKER_00: By all means focus on the family.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: But you need to focus on the Father first and foremost.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: Here's a question for you in closing.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: What is that single thing which, if you have it, if you have it, you don't need much else.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: But if you do not have it, not much else matters.
43:23
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is a heart for God.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: For if you have a heart for God, then God will have a heart for you.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: If you love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, but you find that you have feet of clay, I want to comfort you this morning.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: If you find that you're surrounded by a family and you look back and you say, Wow, I wish I had a family like that family, God says to you, that's not what I'm asking you for.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: What I'm asking you about is this do you have a heart for me?
43:58
SPEAKER_00: Do you say, My God, I love you?
44:00
SPEAKER_00: My God, I want to see you one day.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: My God, I love to spend time with you.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: My Jesus, I love you.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: I know you are mine.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: Because if you have that kind of a heart for me, then I'll have that kind of a heart for you.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: David had a heart for God.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: And God has a heart for those who have a heart for Him.
44:28
SPEAKER_00: Bye your head with me.
44:32
SPEAKER_00: For a moment, God, we look to you and feel challenged but greatly comforted.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: For often we judge ourselves on the wrong standard, and we're reminded this morning that you judge us on the standard of the vertical rather than the horizontal, that you judge us based upon our heart and where our heart is.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: It's comforting.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: Amen.