Come now, David, where is everybody going?

I feel like I have to write about David. Someone this morning was listening to a sermon this morning about David and the affects of his adultery. Yesterday in Sunday School we studied Psalm 51, which is the psalm that David wrote after the prophet Nathan confronted him about the adultery. I've been listening to a band almost non-stop who has a song on their newest album called "The Angel of Death Came to David's Room." The men of the SDSU Navigators are even going through a study of David's life on Monday nights.

David is one of my favorite people from the Bible. I'm even planning on naming my second son David (assuming I have two sons and my wife agrees on the names I've already chosen). I think that was a living testament to God's grace. Of all the people in the Bible, David committed a pretty well-known sin. The secular song "Hallelujah" even mentions that his "faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof."

It's well-known because it was massive. Not massive in that it's worse than what anyone else did, but massive in that it started a domino affect that would effect so many people. He conceived a child with Bathsheba, a woman that was not his wife. When Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, refused to lay with her to make it seem like it was his child, David had him killed. The baby got sick and died. David had become a man of blood, and as such, God but David's kingdom in the hands of his son, Absalom, who slept with all of David's concubines for all of Israel to see. David's sin affected so many people, all because he saw what he wanted and had to have it.

The reason I love David so much is because he is a good picture of God's grace. God knew all that David was going to do before He made him king. However, in 1 Samuel 13:13-14, God tells Saul that he will replace him as king with a man after his own heart. God chose David. This man, who sinned greatly, whose sin caused many lives, who God brought high and then brought low, was a man that God described as a man after his own heart.

Why? Why would a just God say that this man was a man after his own heart? How could He? Because He is gracious and merciful, and David knew that. In Psalm 51, David cries out to God. He appeals to God's mercy, because he knows that his adultery and murder were not deserving of forgiveness. He tells God (in the Jason paraphrase):

"Lord, I know that what I did was not of You. My sin is too big for either me or You to ignore. I am reminded of it constantly. But though my sin is big, your grace is bigger. Therefore, forgive me of my sin. I have sinned against You, and the blood is on my hands, but I pray that you will cleanse me of this, Lord. Blot it out, erase it as if it never happened. Renew me, God. Change me from this me that I have become, and turn me into the me that You made me to be. Only You can change me and restore me. Lord, there is nothing I can do to please You. My sacrifices mean nothing to You if I don't have a repentant heart. God, here is my heart, broken before You. May this sacrifice be enough for You."