Winning Ways: When a Hero Falls

There are other options than repenting of our sin. It's just that none of them work.

We learn this from watching King David repent of adultery and murder.

Adultery? Murder?

David?

As we've walked through the story of King David on Sunday mornings, would you have ever thought it would have come to this? Up to 2 Samuel 11, his story has been exemplary. Heroic David. Patient David. Worshipping David. Merciful David.

And now adulterous David, scheming David. He pulled Bathsheba into infidelity and then, upon finding her pregnant, he conspired to have her husband killed in battle to cover his adultery.

The tragic story recounted in 2 Samuel 11-12 is, as Walter Brueggemann put it, "more than we want to know about David and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves."

One thing the story tells us is that this is not the king we were looking for, after all. In "Head Full of Doubt," the Avett Brothers sing about the disillusionment that comes when you find that "your life doesn't change by the one that's elected." It seems we all pin our hopes on people only to be disappointed. If any of us were hoping to find the ideal man and leader in the David Story, these two chapters make us realize we have to keep looking. The King we really want and need isn't David but the Son of David, who will be born in the city of David a thousand years later.

But David is exemplary in this story in one way: His full-throttle repentance.

To relieve the guilt of our sin there are other things we could try. We could shift the blame to someone else, we could rationalize our failure to the point that we find it perfectly understandable, or we could live in denial.

David took none of these options. When the prophet Nathan confronted him, David crumpled. "I have sinned against the Lord," he said, full stop. It's a thin sliver of the old David we once admired, but it's on that confession that a ruined life gets rebuilt.

You can read this heartbreaking story in 2 Samuel 11-12, and you can study it with us this Sunday. Its part of our continuing series, “Full-Throttle Faith: Life Lessons from King David.” Catch up with the series at www.HillcrestAustin.org, and join us this Sunday @ 10.

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