Up next, Dr. Michael Yousef guides you into a season in King David's life, which right next to the battle between David and Goliath is really the best known.
Today, David's adultery with Bathsheba, killing her husband, and then the attempt to cover up the entire controversy in sin. A Heart for God is the title of Dr. Michael Yousef's current series on leading the way. Through this insightful teaching, we've looked into seasons in David's life, offering biblical encouragement for living a strong and growing life of faith. Do remember, leading the way is listener supported, relying on your generosity. So learn how to stand with Dr. Yousef.
Call, speak to a ministry representative at 866-626-4356 or click to the website, ltw.org. Join me now as Dr. Michael Yousef explores one of the most compelling life stories captured in the Bible. Through the years, many people have speculated as the reasons why David failed. A lot of speculation, and I'm going to condense them all for you, but I want you to know it is a forewarning to every one of us without exception. Your pastor is included because the moment you say, I got this, that's the moment the devil starts working. And these are not excuses. These are not rationalizing of David's failure.
It's a forewarning to all of us. First of all, it was boredom. It was boredom which caused David to get into this trouble. Beloved, the average American is bored with life.
If I can understand what's going on, I can tell you the average person is bored. You ask a person and say, why do you work hard? He says, so I can earn more money. Why do you want to earn more money so that I can buy food? Why do you want to buy food? It's because I want to get strength. Why do you want to get strength? Because I want to be able to work. Why do you want to work in the merry-go-round?
It just goes on and on and on and on. I happen to be privileged to know people throughout my life who literally work hard for one reason and that's so they give money away to the Lord's work. That humbles me beyond measure. This was David. When I think of people who literally live to work so they give money away, this was David.
Because if you remember in the last message, he was giving his entire net worth for the glory of God. He was totally in. He was totally committed.
There was no doubt in his mind. He said, if God does not want me to build the temple, I'm going to give all that I have for the future building, whoever God will raise to build that building. That was David. And he said, what happened? What happened of David of 2 Samuel chapter 7 to the David of 2 Samuel chapter 11? Something has changed. Something has happened. When his life purpose was the glory of God and then all of a sudden he becomes bored with life. Now, beloved, as I said, this is a warning to all of us without exception.
Young and old, watch out for getting bored. That is the very first sign of trouble. The second possibility is that David was experiencing loneliness. Well, I think all of us in leadership will know that there is a certain loneliness that goes with leadership.
It's just the price you pay for leadership. And that is why he could say in Psalm 102 verse 7, he says, I have become like a lonely bird on the housetop. Someone would say, well, Michael, he was king. How can a king be lonely? He can call on anybody and entertain him. He can be with lots of people.
Anybody in the kingdom would be happy to receive an invitation to come and just hang out with the king. Sometimes there can be loneliness when you're surrounded by thousands of people. You can experience loneliness of vision that nobody shares with you or you can experience the loneliness of idea that nobody understands or you can experience the loneliness of taking an unpopular stand with the culture and everybody starts shooting at you or you can experience the loneliness of contentment.
Even if there are thousands of people around you, you'll feel lonely under these circumstances. And the third possible reason for David's failure is that he got tired of fighting. He just got tired of fighting. After 34 years of fighting and running, it's time to relax and take it easy. That's why I don't want anybody to say, when are you retiring? I'll never retire. I might change jobs, but I'll never retire.
I'll never retire. I'm going to run into the arms of Jesus. I don't want to slouch into heaven.
I want to run into the arms of Jesus. Listen, had David gone out with his men into the battlefield, he would not have ended up in the places of failure. Beloved him right, the moment you relax your grip on the sword of the word of God, the moment you relax your grip on the sword of the spirit, the moment you relax your grip on being sober in the spiritual warfare, you will end up in places that you should not be. No wonder the apostle Paul says to Timothy, he said to him, endure hardship as a good soldier for Jesus Christ. Are you going through hardship? Endure that hardship.
See the victory on its way to you. Then the fourth reason, possibility, is that David allowed his wife, Michael's rejection to get to him. He took it personally. He said, well, how do you not take rejection personally?
Well, I'll explain to you in a minute. Remember when David danced before the Lord in front of the entire population and he danced before God when the ark was being restored and he basically humbled himself before the Lord. You remember his wife, Michael, Saul's daughter? Man, she gave him a tongue lashing when he got home.
She sucked it to him. I mean, she let him have it and she belittled him and put him down. Listen to me, Saul's daughter, Michael, was cold, cantankerous, critical and crabby and David took it personal. Someone said, well, you know, but Michael, he had other wives. Yes, but Michael was the love of his life.
Hemorrhage, please. Rejection is severest and hardest to accept when it comes from the people that we love the most. In David's case, instead of exercising leadership and headship in his home, servant leadership, he allowed bitterness to dig deep into his heart. Lack of spiritual headship in the home and servant leadership in the home brought David disaster after disaster. And man, listen to me, God called you into servant leadership in your home. God called you into a spiritual headship in your home. The fifth possible reason for David's failure is pure good old-fashioned laziness. His laziness.
Look at verse 2. He got up in the afternoon. Sometimes, ladies said evening.
He got up in the afternoon out of bed. I mean, this is self-indulgence. This is not redeeming the time. Beloved, laziness gives the tempter the upper hand.
Proverbs 12, 24 says the hand of the diligent will rule while the slothful, that's kind of an old-fashioned word for laziness, will be put to tribute. And the sixth possible reason for David's failure is this. He refused to hear the truth. He refused to hear the truth. When David sent the messenger and the messenger came back to want to find out who she is, he came to him and he said, she is Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah.
Did you get that? David, she's another man's wife. But David, let that truth go by.
I know and you know, when somebody doesn't want to hear the truth, they will use all sorts of rationalization and explanations and excuses and I know experientially that when hearts are hardened and nicks stiffened, no sermon, no preacher, no friend, no church, nothing will be able to get through to that person except God the Holy Spirit. In fact, David actually thought that he's gotten away with it because it's been a while now. He's a man who got away with this shenanigans. He didn't realize that not only choices have consequences, even if these consequences do not show up for months or years. You see, the law of the land at the time said that when adultery is committed, the adulterer and the adulteress both put to death. How could David get around the law of the land? How could David circumvent the law of the land?
How could David kind of get away with breaking the law of the land? Well, if I can't get him to go and sleep with his wife, I'll get him killed. Oh, beloved, listen to me.
The one whose eyes neither slumber nor sleep, the one whose eyes see what nobody else sees, the one whose eyes penetrate what no camera lens can detect is watching. Months have passed since this horrific deed was done and everybody forgot about it. Oh, everybody except. Except the one whose justice is just as real as his mercy. Now, a lot of people like to separate the justice of God and the mercy of God.
You can't separate them, two sides of the same coin. Now, if you study the scripture carefully, you're going to find that the Lord seldom uses the same method to speak to us. And now sometimes because I'm hard-headed, he had to use the two-by-four a few times, you know? The way he speaks to you and me are all different. He doesn't speak to us all at the same time. For it was the sense of God's inspiring majesty that brought Job to repentance. It was the exalted holiness of God that caused Isaiah to cry out, woe to me, for I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips. It was the manifestation of Jesus' power that convicted Peter about his false self-confidence and made him cry out and said, depart from me for I am a sinful man, oh Lord.
It was in the day of Pentecost when the power of the Holy Spirit was manifested that hearts were pierced and 3,000 people came to repentance. And here in 2 Samuel, chapter 11, God uses a method that is going to be a method that's unique to David. God could have spoken to David, but he probably not in a mode of listening to God. You see, when you have departed and you moved away from the umbrella of the covering of God because of deliberate sin, you're not in a mood of listening. You won't hear God.
There are too many noises around you. You can't hear him. And so God had to send him a flesh and blood. He had to send him the prophet Nathan. Nathan comes in and he gives him a parable and then he applies the parable.
I thought long and hard actually as I was preparing this. Who would cherish this task of going to the most powerful man in the land and tell him about his sin? I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't cherish that.
That's not something I would enjoy doing. But nonetheless, if God assigns it, you do it. We as prophets and priests in the New Testament, we do not have those offices because all of the believers are priests. All the believers are prophets. In fact, Moses prophesied about that a long time ago. He said all of God's people are prophets. In the New Testament, we are all prophets. And therefore, we need to speak the truth with love.
We need to speak to others of sinful culture at large. It may never be easy. It will never be easy. It was never easy. It's not easy.
It will never be easy. But it's the only way to please the Lord, speaking the truth in love. Look at the parable. Go a little bit further and you see the interpretation of that parable.
The parable is very simple. A poor man with one lamb, talking of course about Uriah and his wife, Bathsheba. This lamb was so dear to the poor man that literally slept in his bosom. The rich man wronged that poor man because the rich man had lots of herds and cattle, lots of lambs.
When a traveler came, he takes the one lamb that the poor man has and offers it to the traveler. What is Nathan doing here? He's painting a word picture, one of the most magnificent things. He's painting a beautiful word picture. He is highlighting the enormity of the wrong that was done. He was elevating and highlighting that sense of wrong. How about describing how this rich man who had all kinds of herds and cattle seizes the one and only lamb of that poor man.
Why? Because the rich man had a traveler. A traveler. Who's a traveler who came to the rich man's house?
David's eyes. That's who the traveler is. His wandering eyes. The traveler represents his restless desire. The traveler represents the progression of lust. The traveler represents the invading thoughts into our minds that have not been captured to Christ.
The traveler here is the roving eyes of David in connection with Bathsheba. And that is why Paul says, 2 Corinthians 10 and 5, he said that we must take every thought. How many of those thoughts? Captives to obey in Christ. It is absolutely true that we have no control over the thoughts that go through our heads.
Right? I mean, we have no control over that. But we have control over the fact that we can stop them from nesting. In fact, it was Martin Luther who made this illustration. He said, I can't stop a bird from flying over my head, but I sure can keep it from nesting and laying eggs and hatching. But here, David welcomed the traveler. Here David entertained the traveler. David hosted this traveler.
David allowed this traveler to have the run of the house of his life. He may write, continuously a nonstop entertainment of ungodly thoughts paves the way for sin and failure. But I also want you to notice that David's reaction to that parable. His first reaction was really emotional. His reaction to that parable and this poor man who lost his one lamb and the rich man who took it and his reaction immediately was emotional, was not biblical. I want to explain this to you because it's very important.
We not react emotionally, react biblically because whenever we react with our emotions, not from the word of God, things are made worse for us. You say, Michael, how do you know that? I've done it.
I've done it. See, the law of the land required that if a person steals a lamb, it's required to pay fourfold, give four lambs back. If he had to work for the rest of his life to do it, he has to pay four back. That's the law of the land. That's the word of God because that's what they're operating on, the Old Testament law. The Bible didn't say when a man steals a lamb, he should be killed. No.
Just restore it fourfold. David reacted emotionally, said this man must be killed. Why react emotionally instead of biblically?
I want to tell you something that you can take to the bank. Listen carefully because David was harboring sin in his life. It made him critical of others. Be very careful when you are judging other believers, particularly when you judge their motives. We are never to judge a person's motive while you harboring sin in your life.
Be very careful. The one who has an uneasy conscience always rails against the sin of another believer. The one who is most merciless with other believers is often the one who is most desperately in need of mercy. The one who is quick to judge other believers' motives is covering up something, covering something, covering it up. See, the moment David finished pronouncing the sentence upon this hypothetical character in Nathan's parable, Nathan said, you're the man.
You're the man. Let me ask you this. Has the Holy Spirit of God convicted you of something? And he's constantly saying to you in a gentle voice, you're the man, you're the woman, you're the boy, you're the girl. Are you harboring resentment that you have never been able to deal with? Are you holding on to some bitterness that is eating you alive? Are you in an unwholesome relationship that does not belong there? And God is telling you to give it up. Are you holding back money that belongs to God? Are you unfaithful to your spouse and keep on being unfaithful?
And you get some remorse but then you keep going being unfaithful. I want you to respond like David. We're going to look at Psalm 51 because that Psalm gives us evidence of the depth of conviction of David. You're going to see the depth of his sorrow. You're going to see the depth of his grieving over sin, the depth of his feeling of the enormity of sin. In fact, every verse of Psalm 51 shows us the depth of his anguish and the reality of his repentance. David uses words that I pointed out in the beginning of the message, you know, talking about the meaning of the word sin.
He uses all these words, iniquity, sin, transgression. Only those who have spiritual depth, only those who truly hunger for righteousness, only those who have longing to please the Lord, they will fear that sin that Chrysostom feared. Only those who would not rationalize, would not sweep things under the carpet or explain things away, but express repentance. They're the ones who are going to be restored and forgiven. They're the ones who repent of their sin, confess their sin, will experience true forgiveness and true restoration. And those are the very people whom God loves to restore and renew. Oh, there are many people who repent like Saul.
Remember Saul throughout the series? You know, kind of a very emotional repentance, but then there are those, thank God, who repent like David. Saul's temporary repentance was always a cheap repentance, always kind of fleeting repentance, momentary repentance, always had crocodile tears. But David's repentance was genuine repentance, it was true repentance, it was forsaking type of repentance. And beloved, this is the type of repentance that pleased the Lord. Sometimes we think repentance belonged to the person who never came to Christ, when they repent and come to Christ. Believers should live a repentant lifestyle. The Bible said, if we say we have no sin, they said, we say because it's not true. We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
But if we confess, God is faithful and just. You are listening to Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef, passionately proclaiming uncompromising truth across six continents and in 28 of the world's most spoken and most understood languages. Experience more of what Leading the Way is all about at ltw.org. As we close today's Leading the Way audio, I'd like to share one of the recent letters that a viewer from the Kingdom Sat shared with us. Solomon from Morocco writes to say, the reason for me to leave Islam and become a Christian is credited to the Kingdom Sat TV channel and the program presented by Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. I have been closely following your programs on a daily basis. Thank you so much for sending the link to the Bible. I really need to meet with somebody who would help me in my walk with the Lord. Well the field team arranged for a visit and they spent time with Solomon explaining the Christian faith and the message of the Gospel. And he shared his thoughts by saying this.
The Kingdom Sat channel is the only channel that I found very beneficial. Its content helped me grow in my faith and gave me the assurance that Jesus truly is God in the flesh who came to save me from eternal punishment. Thanks to those of you who have stood with Leading the Way and Dr. Youssef over the years. You've made it possible for so many lives to be turned from darkness to light. And here's the number. Call and speak with a ministry representative at our call center.
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