Just One Little Flaw?
But for David’s sake the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, to raise up his son after him and to establish Jerusalem; because David did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and had not turned aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, except in the case of Uriah the Hittite. 1 Kings 15:4-5 NASB
Except – Wouldn’t you like to be like David? Israel’s greatest king. Poet laureate. Victorious warrior. And recognized by God as a man with God’s own heart. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it. Oh, except for that one little flaw (only one?). That little mistake with Bathsheba. That one tiny indiscretion that resulted in adultery, betrayal, murder, infanticide, sibling hatred, family collapse and untold grief and agony, personal and corporate. Ah, yes. All good except for one little error. Still want to be David?
Amazingly, this verse in 1 Kings doesn’t even recall the death of 70,000 because David listened to the accuser and counted the army. Perhaps the historian who missed that one worked for CNN on the Palestinian front. But what are a few thousand deaths in the great scheme of things. David is a man after God’s own heart. We can excuse 70,000 graves, can’t we?
Still want to be David?
It’s true that David’s faithfulness over the course of a lifetime resulted in God’s delay of punishment to others. Time and again we hear the chronicler saying that God did not strike down a wicked king “for David’s sake.” Perhaps in the long run David’s faithfulness had positive effect, but trying telling that to the 70,00 who died or to Uriah (or even Bathsheba). History records the lives of the winners, but winning often involves the death of losers and sometimes those losers had nothing to do with the consequences that befell them.
“Except” is the Hebrew word raq. The pictograph is “person behind (or least),” which is another way of painting the image of a person who is either less than he is or who is different than his future. Maybe that’s the key to understanding why God seems to overlook David’s sins. Maybe God sees David as he is in the future. And maybe that’s the way God sees you and me.
We all have “except” clauses in our lives. Some of them are pretty awful. But maybe God sees us as we will be someday when He is done with His work. Maybe the “except” isn’t about the past but rather about the future. Maybe what we learn from the chronicler’s omission is that we are exceptions too.
Topical Index: except, raq, 1 Kings 15:4-5
No Exceptions to the Rule
~ Then one of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with Him. And He went to the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to eat. And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil, and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil. Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he spoke to himself, saying, “This Man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner.”
And Jesus answered and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”
So he said, “Teacher, say it.”
“There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?”
Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.”
And He said to him, “You have rightly judged.” Then He turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave Me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss My feet since the time I came in. You did not anoint My head with oil, but this woman has anointed My feet with fragrant oil. Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”
Then He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
And those who sat at the table with Him began to say to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”
Then He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”
Looking for “The Rest of the Story?” – read Psalm 51. ~ “Go thou, and do likewise..” ~
My understanding of Abba was substantially changed when I studied the life of David. I read “The Life of David” by A.W.Pink and it reshaped my understanding of forgiveness and pursuing the heart of the Father. According to the doctrine that I grew up with, David wasn’t even saved. David’s life was, on many levels, disastrous; objectively, his “sin” was arguably greater than Saul’s but he continued to lean into the heart of the Father. In all of my years of pew warming, somehow I never heard that. Another characteristic of David that changed my prayer life is the oft used “..and David enquired of the Lord.” Combined with a phrase that I believe I picked up from Art Katz: “interrogatory prayer”. These two ideas gave me permission to ask questions and expect answers from our Father. This has changed the trajectory of my life forever. Intimate conversation with Elohim is a birth right of His children, particularly in the New Covenant context of habitation.
Thank you for the reminder. These lucid moments, these intimate revelations of who our Father is to his children somehow dissipate and I forget; I begin to take more independent responsibility for that which I am only a steward. It is a role that I am ill-suited for alone.
If I am in Christ (ok, Yeshua;-) and He in me, then every event, every thought everything that presents itself to my life happens to Him also. If He never leaves me nor forsakes me, then He is here, right now, right here. We are never alone, never have been. And if Abba is committed to forming the nature and character of His son in us; surely we are favored sons and daughters of the Most High God.
So thanks for the ministry of good words!
As Sponge Bob would say: “That felt great, I feel empowered!”
I Just finished a little teaching for this 6th month of repentance which also discusses past present and future. I’m no proponent of rabbinic Judaism but I love the thought process even though my conclusions often go another direction than the teacher’s.
This website allows you to watch 1 hr. per month for free so you can watch all the segments beginning to end.
Enjoy
http://alephbeta.org/course/lecture/how-can-there-be-rules-for-teshuvah?utm_source=Teshuvah+Re-release+ellul&utm_campaign=elul+release&utm_medium=email
I also have learned some helpful perspectives from alephbeta. Skip recommended a book by Fohrman many years ago, and I was ‘hooked.’ 🙂
Skip, I was with up until your sixth paragraph when you began to elaborate on the meaning of “except”–or perhaps more precisely, until you began to speculate (as evidenced by your use of the word “maybe” six times in as many lines) on the meaning of “except,” or at least the application of its meaning. First, our right-standing with God has nothing to do with God overlooking sin—David’s, ours, or anyone else’s. God paid a very high price–the ultimate price–for our sin, the death of his Son. Second, our right-standing with God is not limited to the future; it is all about the present as well. Specifically,
“By God’s grace, without earning it, all are granted the status of being considered righteous before him, through the act redeeming us from our enslavement to sin that was accomplished by the Messiah Yeshua. God put Yeshua forward as the kapparah [atonement] for sin through his faithfulness in respect to his bloody sacrificial death. This vindicated God’s righteousness; because, in his forbearance, he had passed over (with neither punishment nor remission) the sins people had committed in the past; and it vindicates his righteousness in the present age by showing that he is righteous himself and is also the one who makes people righteous on the ground of Yeshua’s faithfulness.” (Romans 3:23-26, Complete Jewish Bible. (CJB))
Admittedly, salvation encompasses the past, present and future.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in that the Messiah died on our behalf while we were still sinners. Therefore, since we have now come to be considered righteous by means of his bloody sacrificial death, how much more will we be delivered through him from the anger of God’s judgment! For if we were reconciled with God through his Son’s death when we were enemies, how much more will we be delivered by his life, now that we are reconciled! And not only will we be delivered in the future, but we are boasting about God right now, because he has acted through our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, through whom we have already received that reconciliation.” (Romans 3:23-26, CJB)
Thus, the truth that God presently deems us just as righteous as Yeshua, is incontrovertible. It has nothing to do with, “Maybe God sees us as we will be someday when He is done with His work,” and everything to do with, “God sees us as we are now, righteousness in Yeshua.” This doesn’t mean that we do not sin, it just means that, “God made this sinless man [Messiah Yeshua] be a sin offering on our behalf, so that in union with him we might fully share in God’s righteousness.” (II Corinthians 5:21, CJB)
Thanks for your comments. I am not satisfied with some of the translation in the CJB as it also incorporates its own perspective, but it is useful to see how the translator’s viewed Paul’s thinking. I don’t propose that God is unconcerned with sin, only that the text itself seems to suggest unusual evaluations of what WE consider gross errors.