When Dreams Come True

Well, everybody, it's great to see you, whether you're here in the room or joining us online.

I'm honored to have you along for the ride.

Before we get to the content today, though, I gotta give you a little family update.

Okay, lots going on in my family.

Show you this picture.

This was Friday night.

Just take it in.

Forest Hills Northern uh had husky kickoff, which my wife actually organized, super proud of her in one of the events was that the moms got to tackle their son.

So that's my son Colton, who is on the football team.

And and um that was actually not the most amazing part.

Apparently, on the way home, uh Sarah drove Colton home.

Colton said, Mom, I'm so glad that I got your athlete jeans.

And so when I heard about that, had to have a little m conversation with Colton, and I informed him that I, in fact, have three varsity letters.

It's true, okay?

Science Olympiad, Debate and Orchestra.

Boom! That was it.

So anyway, uh we are in the final week of a series we've called Hard Won Wisdom.

Uh, and in this series, what we get to do is explore the life of one of Israel's most famous citizens, a guy by the name of David.

And uh over the past few weeks, we've watched him face giants and run for his life and wait and wait and wait for over a decade for God's promise to him that he would one day be king to be fulfilled.

But then last week, if you're with us, you may remember we explored the moment when David finally became king.

The crown rested on his head.

And honestly, you might think that's where his story would end.

I mean, the shepherd boy becomes the monarch, good defeats evil, roll the credits.

But that's not what happened.

Because as it turns out, the greatest heartbreak of David's life didn't happen while he was waiting to become king.

It happened while he was king.

And that's a little surprising if you think about it.

I mean, most of us assume that if someone finally gets the thing that they've been praying for and longing for and waiting for and hoping for, that their life will finally be good.

But but if you're paying attention, you know that's not always how it works.

It really seems like at least sometimes the most challenging seasons happen after our dreams come true.

I mean, think about where David was at this point in his life.

I mean, Saul was gone, Israel was thriving, so anybody looking at his life from the outside would have said, man, things couldn't get better.

And I think that's why this story that we get to explore today matters so much.

I would argue it serves as a powerful reminder that the most important battles in our lives may actually begin when everything seems to finally be falling into place.

Like when we finally get the job or finish the degree or purchase the house or establish the relationship, and we assume that life is gonna be everything we hoped it would be.

David's story reminds us that at times, even getting everything we want can't protect us from ourselves.

Okay, so now the author of David's account describes the moment things began to unravel for David this way.

He writes, In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent his nephew Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army, but David remained in Jerusalem.

And I know that may not sound like a big deal to us because we would imagine that kings wouldn't go to the front lines, but in those days, kings were supposed to be leading their armies in battle.

And the author wants us to know David wasn't.

And if you're wondering, okay, what was he doing?

Well, the author tells us one evening, he said, David got up from his bed and walked around the roof of the palace, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing.

And I know some of you are thinking, why would somebody bathe on a roof?

I don't know, but that's what was happening.

So from the roof, saw a woman bathing.

The woman's name was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her.

The man said, She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Iliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.

And it's interesting that instead of answering David's question, his servant informs him of who the woman was, namely, somebody else's wife.

It was kind of like a not so subtle warning that David immediately chose to ignore.

In fact, as the account kind of continues, we learn that David sent messengers to get her.

She came to him, and he slept with her.

I don't know if it's just me, but it doesn't seem like much thought went into this.

Would you agree?

David did what David wanted to do without any regard for potential consequences.

Maybe he just thought, well, I'm I'm king.

And so somewhere along the way he decided that no one would ever know, and he could, you know, kind of cover it up, and that he deserved to indulge his desires.

I mean, he was doing so much good for his people.

And I would argue, this is how temptation often works.

It sort of convinces us that our situation is somehow different, and that the rules don't really apply to us in the same way that they do to other people.

But I'm and but I'm telling you, once David believed a version of that lie, he set off a chain reaction in his life that couldn't be stopped.

And his first indication of trouble comes when Bathsheba sends him a message, just three words, I am pregnant.

And in an instant, there's a real potential here that David's life will be flipped upside down.

It surely will never be the same.

And he has a choice to make.

He can confess what he's done, bring what is in darkness into the light, or he can try to control the fallout.

And many of you know the story, he decides to call Bathsheba's husband Uriah home from the battlefield, and he convinces himself that, hey, if he can get Uriah to spend the night with Bathsheba, then everybody will assume the baby is his, problem solved.

Except Uriah refuses.

Here's what he tells David after returning from the front lines.

He said, My commander Joab and my Lord's men are camped in the open country.

How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife?

Like, as surely as you live, I will not do such a thing.

And David is stunned, and David is in trouble.

And after some additional deliberation, he tries again.

This time he gets Uriah drunk, but Uriah still refuses to go home to his wife.

And that's when David, in an act of sheer desperation, does something that honestly is hard to read.

He writes a letter to Uriah's commander.

He says, This put Uriah out in front, where the fighting is fiercest.

Then withdraw from him so that he will be struck down and die.

In other words, kill him.

Make sure he doesn't come home from the battle.

And so David sits down and he writes this letter, he folds it up, puts it in an envelope, hands the letter to Uriah to deliver.

And without realizing it, Uriah carries his own death warrant back to the front lines.

Apparently, the man David has betrayed still trusts him completely.

It's heartbreaking.

And I would argue it illustrates how far any of us can drift when we refuse to bring our sin into the light.

Sin is sinister.

It always demands more, and it always takes us farther than we ever imagined we could go.

Anyway, David's plan works.

Uriah is killed.

David marries Bathsheba and slowly comes to believe that he's finally in the clear.

See, but then God sends a prophet named Nathan to pay David a visit and to deliver a message.

And rather than confronting David directly, Nathan tells David a story.

It's a story about a rich man who owns many sheep and a poor man who only owns one sheep.

And so after introducing the characters, Nathan looks at David and he says, Okay, now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him.

Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man, like the one and only lamb, and prepared it for the one who had come to him.

And upon hearing this story, David is furious.

He looks at Nathan and he says, As surely as the Lord lives, like as surely as God is in the heaven, the man who did this must die.

He must pay for that lamb four times over because he did such a thing and had no pity.

And in response, you can't make this up.

Nathan looks David square in the eye and he says, You are the man.

But he didn't say it like that, right?

He's like, You are the man, right?

It's like Nathan's story did something that a direct accusation of David might not have done.

The story allowed David to see the ugliness of his actions before he realized that he was looking at himself.

David could clearly recognize injustice when someone else committed it.

He just couldn't see it in his own life.

And I would argue that neither can we at times.

Have you ever noticed it's remarkably easy to see everyone else's sin?

But then we get remarkably creative on the inside when explaining away our own.

Like, but Nathan holds up a mirror, and David can no longer look away.

And I just try to imagine the stunned silence that followed Nathan's statement as David sort of absorbed what had just happened.

He had literally convinced himself that his secret would remain hidden.

And I don't know if you've ever noticed, but it's easy to assume that because no one has confronted us yet, we're in the clear.

But see, I would argue that deep down we kind of know we're not.

We feel it.

It's something we carry with us.

And that's why sometimes I think the most loving thing God can do is to stop us from living a lie.

And so David, after some stunned silence, as I imagine it, his knees began to buckle as it dawned on him that the greatest enemy he ever faced wasn't Goliath or Saul.

It was the man he had become.

He just looks at Nathan in humility and says, I have sinned against the Lord.

Like he comes clean.

He confesses without qualification.

And in response, this is so interesting.

Nathan shares a message that, as it turns out, God had ready for this moment, should David choose this path, he looks at David and Nathan says, the Lord has taken away your sin.

Isn't that something?

Like before David can try to explain or minimize or deflect or promise to do stuff to earn his way back, God extends forgiveness.

This, my friends, deep in the Old Testament, is amazing grace.

But what happens next reveals something that I would argue every follower of Jesus eventually discovers.

Forgiveness doesn't always remove consequences.

Like God removed David's guilt, that's clear, but David would still have to live with the fallout from his choices.

And if we're honest, that's kind of hard for us.

Like we find ourselves wondering, okay, God, um, if you've forgiven me, and I fully believe you have, the you know, the blood of Jesus covers my sins, my theology is intact.

Why am I still dealing with this?

Like if I'm forgiven, why do I still have to carry this with me?

And the answer is because even though forgiveness restores our relationship with God, it doesn't always erase the consequences of our decisions.

So David was still forgiven, he was still loved, but some chapters simply can't be rewritten.

And I want to be careful here because um not every painful circumstance in life is the direct result of something we've done.

Like sometimes uh we suffer because of someone else's choices, and other times we suffer simply because we live in a broken world and broken things happen.

But if we're honest, there are also times when the pain we're experiencing can be traced directly back to something, a decision that we made.

And when that happens, God's forgiveness doesn't always shield us from the reality of consequences.

Instead, his grace gives us the strength to face reality and to take responsibility and to make amends when possible and to trust him with what we can't repair.

That's the way forward.

Well, as the story continues, years pass, and David remains king of Israel, but beneath the surface of what looks to be a pretty good life, his family is quietly unraveling.

And eventually it sort of reaches a point where something rips, something breaks, and one of his sons assaults his half-sister, and another one of his sons murdered his brother in revenge.

And then the same son that murdered his brother declared himself to be king of Israel and launched a rebellion against David.

And that's ironic if you think about it, because David found himself on the run again.

Years earlier, he had fled Jerusalem because Saul wanted him dead, and now he's fleeing Jerusalem because his own son wants him off the throne.

And if you think about it, David wasn't just in danger of losing his kingdom.

It was that, but there was more.

He was watching the people he loved most tear one another apart.

And then as he's leaving Jerusalem, the story takes a really interesting turn.

Um, as David and his family and members of his household cross the Kidron Valley, which runs along the eastern edge of Jerusalem, and he heads towards the wilderness.

Somewhere along the way, a group of priests arrive, Jewish priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant.

And you know about the Ark of the Covenant because, of course, of Indiana Jones.

Thank you very much, right?

Yeah.

And the Ark, as you may know, in the ancient world, it represented the presence of God.

And where the ark was, the person who had the ark won the battle.

So the idea here is that, man, God must be on David's side.

That's what David's men would have thought.

But see, um, instead of using the ark as a guarantee that God will give him back the throne, David, in this moment of broken clarity, frustration, decides to let it go.

And what he says next reveals just how much his failures and watching the people he loves hurt has changed him.

He looks at the priest and he says, This, take the ark of God back into Jerusalem.

If I find favor in the Lord's eyes, he will bring me back and let me see it and his dwelling place again.

But if God says, I am not pleased with you, David says, Then I am ready.

Let God do to me whatever seems good to him.

In other words, David says, I am placing my life and my future into God's hands.

This is a different David.

This is this is no longer the David who tries to hide his sin and control outcomes.

I mean, he still hopes God will bring him home.

He wants God to bring him home, but he refuses to presume that God will bring him home.

He has surrendered his life and his future to his God.

I would argue he's learned to pray a very different kind of prayer.

Not the prayer that says, God, get me out of this, please, but a prayer that says, God, do whatever you need to do in the middle of this to make me the man you want me to be.

Those are very different prayers.

One asks God to change our circumstances, to rescue us, the other invites us, or invites God to use our circumstances to shape our character.

And so God, uh so David sends the ark away.

And then as the story continues, strangely enough, David's continuing to move away from Jerusalem.

This random guy appears and begins screaming at him.

The guy looks at David and he says, Get out, get out, you murderer, you scoundrel.

And David's men that are with him, they can't believe what they're hearing.

I mean, this guy isn't just insulting David, he's publicly criticizing the man they still believe is their king.

And one of David's commanders immediately responds.

He takes, he takes matters into his hands, he says, This, why should this dead dog curse my lord the king?

Let me go over and cut off his head, problem solved, right?

And if this whole idea, like the let me go over and cut off his head, if that sounds familiar, um, it's because we've been here before in David's story.

As it turns out, years earlier, this same commander had offered to kill Saul while he slept, and David had told him no.

And now David has lost his throne or is in danger of losing his throne, and David's commander is once again asking for permission to kill, and once again, David says no.

And then look what he says next.

He says, Leave him alone, let him curse.

For the Lord has told him to.

God sent him.

It may be that the Lord will look upon my misery and restore me to his covenant blessing instead of his curse today.

And again, just notice how much this whole experience with Bathsheba has changed David.

He no longer assumes that he deserves the throne, he simply places his future in the hands of God.

And that's that's so incredible if you think about it.

I mean, the young David trusted God while he was waiting for the throne, and now the older David, the broken David, is trusting God when it looks like he's losing the throne.

Anyway, David's um David's son's army eventually engages David's army in battle, like a battle for the throne.

But before the fighting, David gives his commanders one clear instruction, and it's so interesting.

He says, be gentle with my son for my sake.

In other words, David's son wants David dead, and David wants his son alive.

Even after the betrayal, even after all of the brokenness, David continues to hope for reconciliation, for restoration.

He still loves his boy.

But tragically, David's commander sort of ignores the order, and when he finds David's son, he kills him.

And when a messenger returns from the battlefield, David doesn't ask about the victory or the state of his army or even whether or not he still has the throne.

He asks only one question.

He says, Hey, is my son safe?

Did my boy survive the battle?

And the messenger looks down instead of responding, and David knows instantly.

The authors of the account tell us David was shaken.

He went up to the room over the gateway and wept.

And as he wept, he said, and these are some of the most famous words in the Old Testament, my oh, my son Absalom, my son Absalom, if only I had died instead of you.

These are not the words of a victorious king.

David's priority was not the throne.

These are the cries of a devastated father.

And I can't help but wonder if there was a little more going on inside of David's mind and heart here, because I would argue, I don't think he was just grieving the loss of his son.

That was certainly front and center.

But maybe he was also grieving all of the decisions that had led to this moment.

I wonder, did he go back to the rooftop that night when he saw Bathsheba?

And what followed?

I wonder if he went back to Uriah and the lies and the cover up and the deception and all of the brokenness that followed.

Here's the painful truth if you think about it.

There are moments in life, and I think we've all experienced this when we would give anything to go back.

Like to have one more conversation, to make one One different decision.

I mean, a decision that just set us on a dangerous path and choose a different path.

But as you know, life doesn't work that way.

Like sooner or later, all of us discover that there are chapters, there are moments in our stories that we wish we had never written.

And honestly, that's one of the reasons I'm so drawn to David's story.

I've been drawn to him for years.

It's so real, it's so raw, it's painfully believable.

And strangely enough, if I'm being honest, it's a bit comforting.

Not because I enjoy watching someone else fail, but because David's story reminds me that God's grace isn't reserved for people with perfect stories.

It's for people with broken stories.

People like David.

People like us.

Maybe that's why David could write words like these in what became known as the Psalms.

So the Psalms are the ancient song book of Israel.

They're found in the Old Testament.

David is the author of many of the Psalms, but one of them I just love.

Speaking to God, he says this.

He starts, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.

God, I know.

I know I'm broken.

I know I'm sinful.

He says, Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

Confession.

David doesn't minimize.

He doesn't defend.

He doesn't try to shift blame.

He just brings the full weight of his regret to his heavenly Father.

But here's what's so interesting.

He also doesn't remain trapped in his past.

As he continues to write, his confession becomes a prayer asking God to take what's been broken and to create something new within him.

Here's how he says it.

He says, Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.

I'm telling you, David had learned something through his experience that most of us spend a lifetime discovering and believing simply this the safest place to take your greatest regrets is into the presence of God.

The safest place to honestly take your regrets is into the presence of God.

And again, not because God always removes the consequences of our choices, but because he refuses to leave us trapped in our shame.

And he never asks us to carry our regrets alone.

So what do you do when you can't change your past?

Like what do you do when forgiveness has been received, but the consequences remain?

What do you do when the broken relationship or the missed opportunity you're grieving?

It's your fault.

What do you do?

And I think most of us instinctively choose one of two paths, and I think it's based on our disposition, but some of us spend our lives punishing ourselves by replaying the conversation or the decision or the mistake and wondering what if I had done what I should have done instead of what I did.

That's one path.

I think the other thing that others of us go sort of the opposite way, and we try to minimize it and justify it.

Like we convince ourselves it really wasn't that bad.

But here's the thing: neither shame nor denial has the power to heal a wounded heart.

Shame says what you did is who you are.

You'll never be anything more than your worst moment.

That's what shame says.

Denial says what you did really wasn't that bad.

You don't even need to face it at all.

Just move on.

But if you think about it, neither denial nor shame tells us the truth.

But grace does.

Grace says what you did was wrong.

And it may have caused real damage to you and to the people you loved, but it doesn't have to define you.

Grace doesn't ask us to pretend our worst chapter was never written.

It simply refuses to let that chapter become the end of our story.

And it gives us the courage to take responsibility without surrendering to despair.

David, I think, did the only thing he could do to begin to heal.

He brought his brokenness to God because he knew God was the only one who could redeem what David could not rewrite.

David couldn't change the past.

Some choices, they just can't be unmade.

And I would argue that's where David's story actually points us beyond David.

Because centuries later, on the night Jesus was arrested, he also crossed the Kidron Valley on his way to the Garden of Gethsemane, the same valley David and his family had crossed when they were running from Jerusalem.

But there was a remarkable difference, right?

David crossed the Kidron Valley fleeing the consequences of his sin, and Jesus crossed the Kidron Valley walking towards the consequences of ours.

And remember David's words when he learned his son had died?

He said, I, if only I had died instead of you?

Like David wished he could take his son's place, and Jesus willingly took ours.

And that's why, friends, this is so cool.

Your worst chapter doesn't have to become your final chapter.

Your worst chapter, your worst regret, your worst decision doesn't have to become your final chapter.

It doesn't mean your life is not over.

And then of course, again, this doesn't mean that following Jesus magically erases every consequence.

It didn't with David.

Some scars remain, some relationships aren't restored, some opportunities don't return.

Some things that we've lost we don't get back.

But the gospel, the good news of what Jesus did for us, says that none of those things get to have the final word.

Grace does.

And I can't help but wonder if that is what some of you needed to hear today.

You came in this place and you weren't sure what you needed, but you're carrying something, and it's just grace gets the final word.

Whatever your regret, whatever it's in your past, right, broken as it is, the damage that it's done, that's all fair, but grace gets the final word.

You can't change yesterday.

But you don't have to spend tomorrow running from it.

So I think the invitation here from David's story and the invitation of Jesus don't run from your heavenly Father, run to him.

Because the same God who met David in the middle of the mess, he made, wants to meet us in our mess.

Which brings us back to where we started.

David spent 15 years dreaming about becoming king.

He probably thought, man, if I can just get there, everything will be okay.

And eventually he got there.

He got the throne and the power and the success and the authority.

He got the life he'd been waiting for.

And then he discovered that none of it could save him from himself.

Because as it turns out, David's greatest need was never a throne.

David's greatest need was the same thing every human needs.

David's greatest need was grace.

And eventually David achieved the throne, and David received grace.

And that is still how grace works.

It's received, never achieved.

That is the good news of Jesus.

You don't have to rewrite your past to have a different future.

Because your worst chapter doesn't have to become your final one.

That, my friends, is the hard one wisdom that the story of David leaves us with.

It's a message of hope from wherever we are right now.

That God meets us in grace and moves us forward.

And so with that, if you're here in the room, I'd love to invite you to stand and I'll close our time in prayer.

And uh especially with a topic like this, if something is stirring in you and you want to pray with someone before you leave, we'll have some friends under the screen to the left who would love to do just that.

But let me close our time.

Heavenly Father, thank you for preserving the brutally honest account of the life of David.

Thank you for the lessons that we can take from his story and apply it our own.

And I just pray especially for friends who've gathered who are just carrying all sorts of regret and shame.

I pray that by your spirit you would help them surrender it all to you.

Help them receive grace in a way that they can not only understand but feel and help them move forward into the life that you have for them.

We thank you for Jesus, for his life, for his light, and for the invitation to follow him from wherever we are.

It is in his name, in the name above all names, that we pray.

And everyone said, Amen.

Grace and priest friends, we'll see you next week.