The Cry of a Fallen Leader

When David became king of Israel suddenly acquired vast amounts of power and prestige, and wealth. But none of that would diminish the guilt he felt about the simple plot he had contrived and later today on her life.

Alastair big Texas to Psalm 51 to teach us about the only sure for a guilty conscience story goes like this. There were two men in a certain town. One of them was particularly rich and the other one was very poor.

The rich man had a considerable number of sheep and cattle and the poor man had simply one little ewe lamb he had bought it when it was tiny and he had raised it. It had grown up both with him and with his children. Indeed, it was like a daughter to him. A traveler comes into town and goes to the home of the rich man the rich man in seeking to provide for the physical needs of this individual chooses not to go to his own hairs and flogs but goes instead and intrudes on the law of the poor man, a flock of one as you will recall, and takes the ewe lamb from this gentleman and uses that as the means of preparing food for the traveler who arrived at his gate and there's an obvious moral incongruity of that was on his or listen to it say that's not right.

And that's exactly what David said when he heard the story when Nathan came to him and told him the story. David was filled with anger and he declared the man who did this deserves to die, he must pay for that lamb.

Four times over because he did such a thing and he had no pity.

The story was a moral outrage. It struck David and then in that instant, the dagger pierced the heart of the king because Nathan the prophet immediately then seized on the story Lydia told this. He says to David as a parable of your life and particularly of your activities of late because he said you are the man that I'm describing in the story and the awful actions of this leader were described in the words of Nathan know the background to that of course is another story with which many of us are familiar but not all of us.

David had after a long claim to the top made it through the struggles and challenges of political life, and he was finally there he was in his mid-40s. He was the most significant person in the land. He was the commander-in-chief of the forces he was the civil leader. There was no one greater than him. He had the ability to do things that others couldn't do. And so, although it was the time for kings and soldiers to go out to Walmart. The biblical record tells us that he decided to stay home so he stayed home secure in his mid-40s and ready for his own midlife crisis. She was exceptionally beautiful. She was particularly vulnerable when she was after they're traced. Unfortunately, pregnant. What he might've figured as being a one night stand, because after all he was a prominent person with a reputation to maintain.

He surely wouldn't want the court reporters to be going around spreading use of what it taken place.

He must be discreet in all of his dealings and hopefully he would be able to avail himself of the opportunity and be gone as well.

Under the cover of darkness of the early hours of the dawn, and it all went so horribly wrong, and so this leader was confronted by a moral dilemma, actually by an immortal dial-in because this lady was married to one of his army officers.

A man by the name of Uriah, so what was he to do what is instinctive reaction was to cover it up.

And so that's what he decided he would recall Uriah from the campaign from the board or securing task which he had and he would get them to come back and he would encourage him to sleep at home and work. This first plan was a dreadful miscalculation because as it turned out Uriah was more noble than the leader because when he called Uriah back and he invited them into the palace. He said hey how you doing I wasn't going to lie I must've said to himself. I don't know what this is about, and when he followed it up by saying why do you call him and spend a few nights with your family and particularly with your wife. Why don't you go home and wash your feet your I must've walked out of the palace and really smelled a rat or not.

I don't know he must've said to himself. This is one strange deal. I'm out there fighting I get called back into the palace. He has this conversation with me and then he says go home and sleep with your wife. I wonder why he so concerned that I would go ominously when my wife so he doesn't ominously with his wife. He goes home and sleeps with the service beside the servants. The king whines and dines among three successive evenings presume he says now on you all and he goes down and he says I can go and enjoy the privileges of marital bliss.

While my friends and my colleagues are out facing the peril of their lives on the forefront of battle. This was a normal guy. I'm not going to be in here schmoozing and snoozing while my guys are out on the field getting choked up with lances and with swords plan a it's the number plan B. He has to go to, so he instructs his general Joab to engineer events in such a way that this army officer Uriah will be killed in battle, put them up somewhere in the front. He says and wait for the right opportunity and make sure he takes it in the throat so to speak them will have a funeral and after the funeral, marry the grieving widow and then when the grieving widow gives birth to this child that I will have already adopted.

I will make this child a prince in the law of the royal line which will be a nice memorial to the national hero, namely Uriah and that's exactly what he did cynical, sordid, thirsty, filthy, horrible plot immediately put into action everything in his power and powerful he was was unleashed in order to ensure that the dirty business would never actually make it into print would never actually become the conversation of the common man.

He must've said to himself as the dust began to settle. That was an unfortunate business.

He may even have said, you know, that was an improper relationship, but he said to himself it's time to move on.

After all, that is our country to care for their matters to be addressed that our political issues and that are matters of national security to be dealt with. Surely I'm not supposed to belabor this and stay here.

That was his great miscalculation. The reason it was such a great miscalculation in such a tactical error was because of this sin cannot be sealed away in the past, sin and guilt are not eradicated, simply as a result of saying oh well, I don't want to think about that anymore. Oh well, that's in the past. Oh well, that's okay.

No, it's not even if the courts don't punish it, even if public scandal doesn't expose it even if by hypocrisy we managed to conceal it, singing our hymns attending our services preaching our sermons going about our business. Even if by hypocrisy we managed to conceal it.

Eventually the rotting carcass will smell so bad that everyone will know there is no way to avoid that. Of course, is the good news in the back is you don't have to be a Christian to understand that pagans understand that boys at school understand that girls understand that as they lie in their beds in the bidding their hands in the pillow. The no man alive.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this. Is there anyone to whom I can go. Is there any place that I can turn. Is there anything that I can say, well, the only safe thing that can be done with guilt is to have it washed away, and there is only one to whom we may go to have it washed away to whom then can this fallen leader go well to the one whom he addresses in the sun. He says I'm coming to you and my crisis is have mercy on me. Oh God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion.

Who is this God will. He is the God who has revealed himself as a God of unfailing love is the God who has shown himself to be great in his compassion, and it is to this one that we may go with the request blot out my transgressions. You see, because when a man or woman is made aware of their guilt. I know within myself that I'm going to have to deal with God. I may try and suppress the notion. I may try and deny the idea but I know by then my very nature is being made in a moral being that there is one to whom I am accountable, and God knows that I know and I know that he knows and I know that this God no matter what my anthropology teacher told me no matter what the sociologist tells me know what up no matter what a postmodern community tries to instill in me. I know that this God is not some cosmic force.

I know that he is not an impersonal being. I know that he is not simply an energy. I know that he is a moral being and I know that he is the judge of all the earth, who will do right and on account of that that is a fundamental question which confronts me.

How then can I be sure that if I go to this God he will accept the answer is because of who he is because of your unfailing love, according to your great compassion. David only had a few books of the Old Testament, but he understood who God was. We have not only the books that he had, but all the books that follow ultimately forming up in the person of the Lord Jesus, and ultimately bringing us to the cross of the Lord Jesus. Where do we see this unfailing love when is this great compassion declared. Where is this cleansing detergent to be discovered is to be discovered on a Roman jib. It for the grace of God reveals one who loves us so much so as to make Calvary possible and who hate sin so much so as to make Calvary necessary and we have never understood. Neither Satan nor the death of the Lord Jesus Christ until we have faced this fact that they are when he hanged upon that cross. He was bailing in his own body.

Our sins Paul when he describes the circumstances to the Colossians in Colossians 2 he says that he took our sins in himself and that he bore them and that he took all of my staying and he nailed it to the cross, granting to us forgiveness.

That's why the message of the gospel is for sinners. God saves sinners.

I have no right to claim forgiveness and yet I must come and accept forgiveness is something God gifts is a free gift, but we don't receive it automatically doesn't come by one of those Visa card things in the mail to people thing while somehow or another. As I go on my merry way.

One day I will my mailbox. I'll take out the mail and I will say hey dear Fred, just want you to know you're forgiven I thought you should know that now cheer up and get on with your life. No forgiveness is a free gift of God.

But we come in. We ask for and we ask in confidence that we may receive it.

Not because we deserve it but because of the nature of the God who loves to give it. Have you ever come to God and asked him for forgiveness or item you in some genetic way.

I don't mean this in the old dear what a mess here I am again for the 47th time with no sense of confession or cleansing revere come to God with all of it and said, Lord God, there's clearly no one else to whom I can go. Secondly, there's only one thing that I can say that is verse three. I know my transgressions, my sins always before me know when a man or woman is prepared to say I know my transgressions, my sin is always before me. I'll tell you what they're not doing number one and no making excuses for when I know myself to be found out when I know myself to be busted when I know myself to be clearly in the wrong I have to get down before God and say you know what I know my transgressions, my sin is ever before me.

I'm not here to excuse it away. I'm not here to blame it on capitalism or socialism or hormones or dyad door. My grandmother's influence on my life, whatever else it is all God, I am totally in the wrong so you can know that genuine repentance and godly sorrow. It does not attach itself to a litany of excuses, nor does the genuinely repentant person try and hide behind some form of pseudo-moral indignation that goes like this well you know a lot of people have been doing a lot of bad things lately. Who's to say what's the deal to me tell you when the spirit of God convicts the heart of a man about the awfulness of his sin he going to go run and find a place on his own to cry out to Almighty God is not interested by the sins of his wife, his cousin's brother sister the guy up the stairs. His boss or anything else. He says, oh God, I know my transgressions and my sins are ever before me. I can run and I can honey. I'm here to say one thing I'm saying no to excuse I'm saying no to indignation. I'm saying no to repression man or a woman is going to find peace of heart and mind that there is only one to whom they may go there is only one thing that they can say and that is verse four against you and you only have I sinned my offenses against you. Will God have done evil in your sight, she will wait a minute.

In the sin against Bathsheba, Denise and against Uriah, yes, but in the final analysis you and I'll never come to terms with sin or with guilt until we have personal feelings with God about. There's only one to whom we can go see real guilt is not just a psychological hangup. There is false guilt. Some people feel guilty all the time.

They make themselves feel guilty and have nothing to be guilty about what real guilt began psychology eyes will build away. There is a psychiatrist in the John Hopkins University can get rid of real guilt for you, even if he tells you that it's that sin is a Christian neurosis, even if he externalizes it for you. Even if he tells you that is over. There is not in here.

This will help to you and if you've been there you know the misunderstanding of nursing psychiatrist can help you. I'm saying that they cannot remove guilt. There's only one person has the detergent. Not enough to have a psychologist help me is not sufficient that the person I've hurt for gives me. It's not enough to feel bad. It's not enough even to be angry with myself. The only day that you and I can come to terms with guilt is when my mind is no longer filled with thoughts of how it affects me how it affects others.

But when I start to feel seriously burdened by how my sin affects God because only God has the detergent. There's only one thing I can say. And lastly, there's only one solution to be found and that is a heart transplant. Verse 10 create in me a pure heart will guard and renew a right spirit within me. Don't cast me off from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit from me. David was probably thing about what happened to Saul at the end of his days.

What a mess. He was in his argument have to change my heart and my spirit, the center of my will that the core of who I am. Change my heart. Oh God, my need is crucial. I can see that the solution is radical.

I'm glad that the surgeon is gentle. Some of us have lost loved ones because the only solution that was left to them was a brand-new heart and it was impossible to effect that change so they were gone. Some of eyes wandered in and out of our days and the only solution that is therefore is is a brand-new heart's not that we haven't been told it's not that the surgeon hasn't come and made the diagnosis and offer the cure. It's not that we misunderstand the radical nature of the solution.

It is simply that we do not want it to happen. If you're here this morning and you remain unforgiven, you're sitting around with a bucket full of guilt. I want you to know there is one to whom you can go there is something that you can say and there's a solution to be fun. There are many ways to become a member of the community. There are many ways to become a good dad. There are many ways to assimilate religious principles, but all of that onyx owner put together does not equal a religious conversion for a religious conversion takes place only at one place can only be affected by one person, and only in response to the sale of one thing I have sinned I have transgressed.

I'm in a total mess and when that card is then cleansed and made new. When the heart transplant takes place than civil, religious, familial personal duties following light that's the message so I'm glad I'm not in this. I'm not a leader and I didn't do any other stuff.

Look at verse five. Surely I was sinful at birth and sinful from the time my mother conceived me see guilt is not a fungus to be scraped away. Guilt is a defect in our character. There's no little island of innocence in our personalities from which we can launch a counterattack. The core is correct's twisted it stained where our right off. For those of you are involved as insurance assessors or in body shop work. The targets hold on it sortie way into one of those places insurance assessor comes the expert looks at it. You're on the receiving end of the telephone call the guy comes on the phone. He goes it's a ladle was a mate in mid-June after her brand-new because this thing will never go again. That's the description. It's not that we came into worship this morning and we need a new fender or we need a couple new headlights or do you fancy a couple of spiritual fog lamps or you know. Would you like to have that intermittent Christian windscreen wipers or something like that or you know you want to Christian sunroof for you know him pretty nice guy. I just wanted you could benefit me out with with a soda package you have what's in the packages you have here. I'm interested in what you have to offer me. We live and we had a tremendous amount to offer you. But before we would offer you any of the other stuff is only one thing to offer that is an introduction to the only one to whom we can go a description of the only thing that we can realistically say and a reminder that there is only one possible solution to the predicament that we face. God offers the gift of forgiveness through his son from today's message on Truth for Life with Alistair Begg could like to know more about the one solution for the predicament of sin that Alister talked about in today's study, we invite you to visit TruthforLife.org/story there you'll find a helpful video that explains God's plan for salvation, God's plan of salvation is something were always eager to share. That's one reason we been talking about a book called the God contest this week.

It's a colorful engaging picture book for children and provides many opportunities for you to be able to talk about God and the Bible with young ones. This book tells about the story of Elijah and his contest with the prophets of bail to determine who was the one true God. Because the book leaps forward and explains that Jesus wins the ultimate contest by defeating death your child not only hears about Elijah, he hears the gospel as well. We love children's books that are faithful to Scripture, God contest certainly fits that bill.

So order your copy today when you make a generous one time donation to Truth for Life. Do the online quick and easy when you visit Truth for Life.org/donate Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening.

How much does a person need to know before they can become a Christian. Surprisingly, it can be boiled down to two main things. Find out what they are tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life with wording is for living