The Danger of Idleness // David Swart

So good to be here.

I'm uh back.

I had a little little vacation.

Uh yeah, I'm back.

Would rather be at the beach, but no.

Hey, who's gonna win today?

How many how many for Argentina?

How many for Spain?

Okay.

Not too bad, buddy.

Who has no clue what we're talking about?

Anyone?

Okay.

World Cup Soccer, 3 p.m.

Go watch the finals.

Okay.

It's gonna be fun.

Go, Argentina.

I was walking down Neal Avenue this week.

You all know where that is?

Not too far from here.

And I happened to come across a little flag.

There's a little picture coming up here.

Do you know that flag?

Anyone seen that flag?

I love it.

The same thing happened in the 9 o'clock service.

Everyone got nervous all of a sudden.

Like, wait, what are we gonna talk about?

I am not gonna talk about politics.

But as I was reading, uh praying, I was walking in and praying, like, Lord, I've got to preach this week.

What are we gonna talk about?

I saw that.

I'm like, that is applicable.

And I want to show you today, we are not talking about politics, we are not talking about the president.

But that flag represents something that is so applicable to the series we're in.

The message we're gonna look at today, and I believe what God wants to speak to us, each one of us, you may be surprised, but the Bible really supports that idea.

So there was a time in the history of Israel when uh they were led by the patriarchs.

We've been going through that.

If you've been visiting our church and been in our church for a while, the w that we had Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and we had Joseph and Joshua, we had these men who were leading the nation of Israel.

And then there came a time when the people of Israel said, no, no, we want to be like the nations around us.

They all have monarchies, they have kings, they have systems like that, we want to be ruled like that.

And God actually took that kind of complaint fairly personally.

In 1 Samuel chapter 8, verse 7, he tells the prophet Samuel, he says, they have rejected me from being king over them.

1 Samuel 8:7

They rejected me from because God never wanted his people to be ruled by a king.

He is the king.

He wanted to be their ruler, he wanted to be the king over all of us.

But they insisted, so God gave them what they asked for.

He even anointed some of them to be kings over the nation of Israel.

But what we're looking at in this series from last week we started through the end of September, is we're gonna look at the era of kings.

Step back a little bit broader.

We've been going through the Old Testament this year, and we will be until the end of this year, where we're looking at the trajectory, the path, the timeline of the dealings of God in the Old Testament.

Started from with Abraham, uh, Adam all the way to Abraham in the first three months we looked at, then we looked at the era of the patriarchs from uh April through June, and then now the next three months, we're gonna look at the era of kings.

When God said he didn't want them to have kings, but he gave it to them because they insisted, we're gonna see the consequence of what happens when a human king rules over God's people when really that was never supposed to be the way it was.

We're gonna see over and over, unfortunately, how these human kings were evil.

They failed, they didn't obey the word of God, and the consequences were significant, they were great, and it's gonna be a kind of heavy series to go through, but we need to understand the story of God's dealing with these people because it informs how you and I should live today, and hopefully we're gonna learn a lot from that.

Now, here in America, we don't have kings, no, no, uh, but we do all bow to something.

We are firmly, I believe, in the era of idols, and we are the idol of career, the idol of our algorithm, the idol of the American dream, the idol of other people's opinions, and if it's not those idols, we make ourselves king, and we become the main thing.

We are the main part in our stories.

The consequence we have been seeing in the headlines over and over is how our leaders have fallen.

How they have fallen, and especially in the church, it grieves me.

It should grieve you how many leaders around our country have fallen, people who have got to the pinnacle of their church, of their ministry, or whatever it is, and then been exposed, and the church has been greatly harmed by that, and the witness of the gospel has been harmed when men have been put themselves in these positions without accountability, without following the will and the ways of God, and we're gonna look at how the story keeps playing out over and over.

So many of you have been in situations where these human authorities have hurt, have harmed, and perhaps you don't trust anybody on a stage at this point.

And I get it, I understand it.

But we've got to keep going back to scripture.

The answer to an abuse of authority isn't to do away with authority altogether, it's to come to a right understanding and a right practice of it.

God puts you in a family, God puts you in a church, God puts people over you who are supposed to care for you, love you, and do it the way and the will of God.

And that's the way we're supposed to be.

So I want to look at today.

We're gonna look at David.

Would you open your Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter 11?

2 Samuel 11 · chapter mention

David, perhaps the best king that Israel ever had.

We're gonna look how he recorded one of the worst sins of any of them.

And then we're gonna look for something that most of us miss in this story is what is the road back?

Because after something like that, is there one?

Is there a way back?

So, second chapter, 2 Samuel chapter 11.

2 Samuel 11 · chapter mention

I love to hear so many physical Bibles.

If you have your digital Bible with you, if you accidentally open Instagram, probably gonna go to hell.

Joking, just joking, just joking, just joking, just joking.

While you find your way uh to 2 Samuel chapter 11, let me let me help you understand where we are in this story.

2 Samuel 11 · chapter mention

So this is a story of uh I'm just joking.

Uh this is a story of David and Bathsheba.

If you've been around the church for a while, around the Bible for a while, you maybe have heard it.

If you're new, we're gonna go through this story of uh the one of the most beloved kings of Israel who just did an atrocious, atrocious thing.

And we're looking here, but let's let's look at the context quickly as we get up to here.

David is at a point in his king career where he has absolutely made it.

Uh battles have been won, kingdoms have been taken, the nation of Israel has been established, and in a sense, David was at the point of his reign where he had actually arrived.

He was the man, right?

There was there's all these things happening.

So that's kind of important.

It's not that he was a struggling man, he he was there, he has made it.

So we're gonna read from verse 1, the first five verses.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, underline that part in your Bible.

The time when kings go out to battle, there's a few very important details in this little narrative that help inform us how did we get to this type of sin.

When the king goes out of battle, David sent Joab.

Joab was one of the commanders of his army.

David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel.

And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbat.

But David remained at Jerusalem.

Note that.

Verse 2 it, or we're gonna look at, it happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw, underline that, from the roof of a woman bathing.

And the woman was very beautiful.

And David sent, underline that, and inquired about this woman.

And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam?

Eliam was one of the David's mighty uh listed warriors.

This Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.

Keep that in mind, Uriah the Hittite.

So David sent messengers, underline this, and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her.

Now she had been purifying herself from the uncleanness.

That little detail is in there to show she was living according to the law of God.

Then she returned to her house, and the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, I am pregnant.

Let's stop there.

The first thing this text wants us to see is that David's collapse didn't start on the rooftop with taking Hawaii uh Bathsheba.

David's collapse started in verse 1.

It says, When the time when kings go out to battle, David then sends Joab and he stays at home.

It's late one afternoon, the scriptures tell us.

These details is very important.

Late one afternoon, and David arose from his couch.

Dude was sleeping in, having a relaxing time when all of Israel was out going to do the battle and he should have been there.

This is the detail we got to see.

Nothing sinful has necessarily happened at this point.

But everything is already wrong.

His location is wrong.

David had been abdicating his responsibilities, abdicating from where he should have been.

The start of this entire fall, this um sleeping with Bathsheba, and then the whole cover-up and the murder, all of this started with David being out of position.

David abdicating what he should have been doing.

He sends everybody else to do work, his responsibility, and in his leisure, it's like the the verse that was told to um Cain when he was getting jealous of Abel.

It said, Sin is crouching at your door.

David was sitting there on that, on that on that rooftop, leisurely in the afternoon while he should have been at war, and sin was crouching at the door.

His position, his location was all wrong.

Then watch what David does.

These verbs are important.

David saw that she was beautiful, verse 2, and then he took her, verse 4, and then essentially the rest of the chapter, he hid.

He tried to cover it.

He saw, he took, he hid.

Does that sound familiar to you?

It should.

It's the fall of mankind.

She saw, Eve, saw the apple, she took the apple, they hid from the presence of God.

The whole fall of mankind was happening all over again here on the rooftop.

David was rerunning the story.

Meanwhile, Uriah, what was the detail we saw about him?

Uriah the Hittite.

That detail is important again.

Essentially, what it's telling us, David was a Hit, Uriah was a foreigner who had converted into the nation of Israel.

He was in the army of Israel.

He had essentially come from the foreign nations, come in, or was maybe taken over, however that happened.

But he was now following the will and the ways of the Israel people.

This Hittite, this foreigner, acted so honorably, refusing to go to his bed, and we'll we'll get there in a minute.

What this text serves for us, friends, is a warning to all of us.

Now I'm pretty sure none of us are planning to wake up tomorrow and think, how can I destroy my life?

How can I really royally screw everything up?

Don't do that.

I'm sure that's none of us.

But what this is showing us is that's not how it works.

It works far more subtly.

Perhaps you've won some battles, and you're like, okay, it's time for me to step back.

Perhaps you've gained some ground and you're like, okay, I'm gonna step back from my responsibility.

I'm gonna send somebody else to go do what I'm supposed to do.

And the next thing you know, you found yourself and you're on the couch.

You're in a period of idleness, of not doing what you're supposed to be doing.

See, sin, so often we can look at these stories, and this is not just about sexual sin.

Any of these sins, so often it starts not at the place of the deed, it starts at the what did I see, and then what did I do with what I saw?

What did I think, and where am I beginning to ruminate these thoughts, which then begin to sit with me and I feed it, and it begins to grow in my heart.

Next thing you know, I am now sending someone to go find out what's her name.

Next thing you know, now I'm telling my servants, go bring her here to me.

It didn't start there, it started with he saw and he kept on looking, and his mind started going, and he's like, There's something I want to do about this.

So often the sins that we're finding ourselves living in and the consequence of that it didn't start there, and we've got to start here.

We've got to come back to I saw, and what are we gonna do about that?

Are we gonna take those thoughts captive?

Are we gonna carry on looking?

You and I live today with quite literally the entire internet in your pocket at all times, the good and the bad.

We have access to it all.

And so now you're scrolling and you're watching and you're you're having fun, and you know, I'm not against social media.

I I social media knows me and sends me the best jokes.

It's it's just so much fun.

But then, no matter what you look at, social media, ESPN, the news, ABC, wherever, something's gonna show up on the screen that you're gonna, oh, okay.

Now what?

Where does the sin start, friends?

Does the sin start with you casually looking through your phone and seeing something?

Or does the sin start after that where I'm now beginning to think, hmm, I have a choice to make.

The temptation has come.

Am I gonna carry on looking?

Am I gonna go a little bit deeper?

And am I gonna search a little bit longer?

And am I gonna begin to think, ooh, what could this look like?

What could this be like?

You name the topic.

We're living in this place.

We're out of position, friends.

We're out of position.

We're letting our minds get to these places when the Lord wants us to be in the front lines, He wants us to do what He's asked us to do.

That's the safest place for you and I to live.

I've got to ask you some questions.

I'm gonna ask you a few today because this is gonna get a little heavier.

But I want to ask you, where are you abdicating your responsibilities?

Where are you abdicating your responsibilities and you're actually just sitting on a couch, going on kind of casually, comfortably with your life?

Have you abdicated the responsibility of leading your families?

And rather sitting on the couch mindlessly every night scrolling, when there's something for you to do in your family to bring the purposes of God into that home?

Have you abdicated responsibility of leadership that God has called you into?

Perhaps you were leading a life group or you're you're leading a group of friends, and God has put men and women around you to disciple, but you're like, that's too much work.

I would much rather be sitting on my couch in the afternoon.

And there's something that He has called you into, invited you into, but you're choosing the comfortable way.

Friends, this is where we get the most vulnerable.

This is where we get what's that phrase?

I idleness is the devil's playground.

When God has a job, a responsibility he wants to give you, but we're choosing the comfortable way.

Only you know.

I I can't tell you what I think your responsibility should be.

I'm asking you questions.

Ask yourself these questions.

I've been wrestling with this myself.

David's story, in a sense, tells us don't sit on your laurels, on your on your successes, and then step back from your responsibilities.

In our story, 614 Church is about to get 12 years in November, and it's been such a fun journey, such an exciting thing.

One of our mission um prerogatives is to reach our city through planting sites all over the city so that every every neighborhood in our city could have a 614 in it where the word of God is preached and the Spirit of God is encouraged.

We want to see many people reached through church planting.

And I'm let me tell you, it's not just 614.

Statistically, let me just tell you some math.

We need 50 churches planted in Columbus every year for the next 25 years just to reach people moving into our city.

Okay, so I'm not trying to say 614 is trying to take over.

I'm trying to say God has given us a responsibility to reach the two to three million people that are in our city.

So, great.

We want to plant churches, we want to go.

Here we are just this year.

We planted our our second site, so now there's three locations.

Here's where I felt God was just stirring me a little bit as I was reading this story.

I'm like, that's awesome.

Having three churches, that's amazing.

People are getting saved, and and that.

I can have, I have a tendency, because I'm I can be lazy to step back and think, huh?

I mean, we've done well.

We've done okay.

Someone else can take over.

Someone else can go do the heavy lifting.

I can just come in and do a little bit here or there.

That's what I'm talking about.

God has brought things to us, but there is work to be done.

There are people to be reached, there are churches to be planted, there are groups to be started, there are people to be reached, there are disciples to be made.

This is a mission of God given to every believer until Jesus returns.

Let's not sit back and abdicate the responsibility because we're gonna find ourselves on a roof, on a couch with wondering eyes.

And then wonder, how did I get into this mess?

Because we've stepped out of what God has given us.

This is for each one of us, friends.

Each one of us, God is speaking to you, has a responsibility for you, has a calling for you, has people for you to disciple, to reach, to tell about Jesus, to be a witness for him.

The rest of the story in chapter 11 shows us what David then does.

He then goes to great lengths to try and cover this up.

First, he gives Uriah a furlough.

He he basically, so Bathsheba's pregnant.

He's like, Okay, how can I cover this up?

Let me quickly get the husband back, you know, then whatever, and then they can say, there's no DNA testing, you know.

Let's let's my I think that's how what he was thinking.

So he brings him back, brings him back from war.

What does Uriah do?

Act so honorably.

He sleeps outside the house.

David's like, why?

He's like, come on, man.

Like, you know, you're married and she's beautiful, whatever.

He's like, how can I, he says, how can I do that?

How can I eat my wife's food?

How can I be comfortable in the house when my brothers are in the front line, intense, doing what you've called us to do?

David's like, plan B, let's get him drunk.

Maybe we can get him drunk so he feeds him and gives him alcohol.

Maybe then his guards will come down.

What does Uriah do?

The Hittite, the foreigner who came in.

He acts so honorably.

He goes again and sleeps outside.

David's like, this dude.

Plan C three.

Joab.

Take this boy, put him in the most dangerous part of the war, put him in the front lines, don't care what his position is.

When he's there and the fighting is heavy, pull everybody else back.

Can you imagine how many people are involved with this?

Pull everybody else back.

Uriah dies, a bunch of other people die.

David takes Bathsheba, and now he's feels justified.

He covered it up.

And then someone walks into the palace.

The prophet.

Now keep this in mind it's almost an entire year.

From when he slept with her.

The baby is born.

And then Nathan walks into the chambers.

Think about who knew what David had done and who didn't say anything.

At least it's not recorded.

David had a Joab around him.

David had servants who knew what was going on.

David had sent people.

He inquired about her.

He sent for her.

People knew what was going on.

People had died on the front lines because of this cover-up, but no one addressed him.

The entire palace was full of people watching the king take a soldier's wife and then take the soldier's life.

It was a system designed to protect this king.

And everyone kept executing orders.

Go to chapter 12.

Nathan steps in.

Let me paraphrase.

He tells the king a story.

He says, a rich man, he thinks she has a lot of flocks, huge flocks, and then there's a poor man with one little lamb that he loved like a daughter.

The guest arrives, and the rich man steals the poor man's lamb and serves it for dinner.

David is outraged.

No, that's not right.

That man should die.

Then Nathan looks at the king of Israel and says to him, You are that man.

Imagine the tension in that room.

You know the authority David has.

You know the position David was in.

But Nathan says, You are that man.

And he knew exactly what was going on.

Nathan stepped in when nobody else was saying something.

Now, as a side note, we've got to understand how Nathan frames the story and where Bathsheba fits into this.

She's the lamb in the story.

She's the innocent one.

She's the one who was taken.

Count the verbs in chapter 11.

David saw, David sent, David took.

Bathsheba gets three words in this whole story.

I am pregnant.

That's all we know about what she says.

But we have to know when an absolute monarch like this sends an armed messenger to your door, you have no other choice.

Scripture is not calling this affair.

Scripture calls out one person.

In chapter 12, verse 9, he says to David, why have you despised the word of the Lord?

Now I know for some of you this isn't just an ancient history story.

Someone with power, someone with strength took something from you, and you had no real way to say no.

And I want you to hear what the text says in this part is that God saw, He counted it.

He's not going to let it go.

He sends the prophet.

And the Bible doesn't just wash over the story, it sees it, and the story now gets written into the entire genealogy of Jesus.

God saw what happened.

Now let me bring us back to the headlines we see today of so many people who have fallen.

And we've got to realize this that every leader that you and I read about had a similar pattern.

They had Joels, Joabs around them.

They had people around them who saw but didn't say something, who didn't raise the alarm bell.

There was too much of a system that didn't give anyone permission to talk.

I think what's happening for the most part is these leaders have built a structure around them where there's no Nathan in their life who can look them in the eye and say, You are the man.

We surround ourselves, we isolate ourselves, and no one can speak into your life.

So again, let me ask you some big questions.

Who have you given permission to speak like this to you?

And don't, friends, don't assume it's gonna happen.

Don't assume it's gonna happen.

We live in Ohio and we're all so nice and we're so conflict avoidant here.

So that just assuming, if you live in Boston, maybe someone's just gonna call you out, but we live here.

Can you give someone permission in your life to say, hey, can you call me out on my nonsense?

Can you call me out of my attitude?

Can you call me out of my sin?

Can you call me out on my behavior?

Because I need a Nathan in my life.

David, the beloved of God, who wrote the most beautiful love psalms and songs in Scripture, got to a place where he was isolated.

And thank the Lord God sent Nathan to speak to him.

Now, if you've given someone permission in your life, let me ask you another question.

When last did they use it?

Because if they haven't used it, friends, then perhaps it's not understood what the assignment is.

See, my assumption here, and hopefully you're picking up on this, is we all sin.

We all make mistakes, we all get proud, we all get arrogant, we all get, we you name it.

We all go through it.

You need someone that you've given permission to to call you out on your nonsense.

And if they haven't, friends, go find someone who's willing to do it, who's willing to have a tough conversation this week.

Would you do it?

Would you?

Friends, if we're not willing to take the word that we're hearing the week in and week out, we're just being entertained.

We're just being entertained.

And the Lord is asking us to become, to become like Him.

Will you go ask someone?

There are men who hold this position over me, elders in this house, people in our church families around the world that that speak to me, and I can tell you the last time someone used it, it was painful.

When they addressed something in my life, it was painful.

And at first I was mad, but soon after that, as soon as I got over myself, I realized what a gift.

What a gift this is to me.

Friends, confrontation is not the opposite of grace.

Confrontation in this story is how grace arrives.

Confrontation is the vehicle for that grace.

There was no Nathan, there's no Psalm 51.

If nobody walked into David's palace, David would have died, a hypocrite with a secret.

The person who tells you the hard truth in your life, friends, is not attacking you.

They might just be rescuing you.

So David says, Here's from Nathan, you are the man, and let's move on.

What does he do?

Chapter 12, verse 13.

Immediately David says, I have sinned against the Lord.

I've sinned against the Lord.

There's no spin, there's no carefully crafted statement drafted by the palace.

He said, No, I have sinned.

No, no, like curated message, you know.

Sometimes like when we're feeling bad and we we put this kind of half apology on the Instagram, and it's just like uh your mistakes were made, you know, and we don't we don't own it.

We don't own what we've done.

David goes, I have sinned right away.

And then here's the part that just right away Nathan's reply comes, the Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die.

Lord has, did you see how fast that was?

I don't get that.

I wrestle with that.

I'm still a bit of a legalist.

But how does David wreck Bathsheba's life, murder Uriah, have multiple other people implicated in this sin?

Multiple other people died in that war that David kind of fabricated there to get Uriah dead.

And in an instance, he says, the Lord has put away your sin.

How does that happen?

That's grace.

That's grace that we do not deserve, that I don't fully understand, but I'm receiving and I'm beginning to and I continue to receive from the Lord.

How does that work?

I don't know.

You see, here's why it's even more significant in this moment.

Under the law of Moses, which David was under at that point, there was no offering for what David did.

There was no sacrifice for premeditated adultery and murder.

There was no offering for that.

There was no system for that.

So the system had nothing for David.

He stood completely outside of that.

He should have died right away.

But the mercy of the Lord on full display for him says, your sin has been put away from.

Listen what David writes right after this confrontation with Nathan.

If you open your Bibles to Psalm 51, I'm gonna read a few verses there.

Psalm 51, verse 1, David says, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

Psalms 51:1

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

Does this verse make more sense now when you understand what he did?

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin.

Jump to verse 10.

He says, Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

I grew up with a song that says, Creating me a clean heart, oh God.

Anyone know that song?

And it's like such a nice song, creating me a clean heart.

Man, can we get the context here?

Create in me a clean heart.

What just happened?

He just got called out for adultery and murder and bringing the whole system under the judgment of God.

He just got called out.

He says, create in me a clean heart.

That word create is the word bara, which is the only used in the New Testament, in the Old Testament, with the Lord creating something from you.

In the creation of the world, he created.

That's the word.

He's not saying, Lord, um, wash my heart.

He's not saying, Lord, turn my heart.

He's like, Lord, give me some tips, Lord.

Give me, give me a better strategy.

He's like, create a sovereign, creative miracle of the Lord to put a new heart in him.

That his heart would be after the Lord.

And then he pleads with the Lord, take not your Holy Spirit from me.

He would have stood in that room when the Spirit left Saul, and he would have seen what that looks like, a man under the Spirit of God and a man without the Spirit of God.

And he pleads, Take not your Holy Spirit from me.

There's a deep repentance in Psalm 51.

If you're wondering about this forgiveness, uh, what does this look like?

Here it is.

God erases the record, but he does not unsend the letter.

In a sense, he gives forgiveness of the guilt, but the consequences have been written into history.

It's written into the story.

The baby was born.

Uriah was still dead.

The consequences are there.

The guilt has been removed.

For God to just cover this up, to just undo this, would not be uh fair.

It wouldn't be justice.

And I've wrestled with this for a long time.

I used to think that David never fully recovered, and and but that's not the story.

The guy who did this wrote Psalm 51, perhaps the most prayed prayer of repentance in human history.

For the last 3,000 years, Christians all over the world have used this prayer to repent.

When Paul in the New Testament needed an example to show how God forgives and forgives completely, he picks David's story after Bathsheba.

Bathsheba's son, later Solomon, God names him Jedediah, which means beloved of the Lord.

And then when Matthew writes the family tree of Jesus, he includes this chapter on purpose.

Look at it.

He says, David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.

Come on, God.

You're gonna bring it up all the time.

What David was the son of Solomon, you know, Bathsheba's daughter.

No, no.

By the wife of Uriah.

See, God doesn't go around our weakest moments, friends.

He goes straight through it.

He goes straight through it.

This is the road back for you and I.

Friends, you've made mistakes.

You've asked the Lord for forgiveness.

It's not now to say, okay, let me move city and let me try and get away from it completely.

Maybe no one will know what happened.

It's going straight through it.

It's telling the story, owning your part in it, receiving the forgiveness from the Lord, and walking through it as God calls you to do it.

This is the road to redemption for us.

This is the road that we have to walk, each one of us.

So let me ask you one more question.

What if the worst thing that you ever did no longer gets a vote in your mind?

What would you do next?

I want you to sit with this for a second because some of us have been letting that thing, that mistake you did, dictate your present and your future.

It vetoes your dreams.

You're like, yeah, but I did that.

It downplays the fact that God can and will completely forgive and restore because you keep bringing it up.

It disqualifies you before God ever gets a word in.

What if you no longer remember that thing and you can carry on with your life through it, learning from it and receiving the forgiveness of the Lord.

I believe that's what the Lord wants to do in this room today.

So I've brought up some big things.

Let me just do a little quick summary here.

I don't know who you've resonated with today.

I don't know what the Holy Spirit has brought up in your heart, but perhaps you're the chapter 11, David, and you're currently engaged in things you know you shouldn't be.

You're out of position and you're trying to cover it up.

I want to read you a uh two verses from Psalm 32.

Theologians think that David wrote this psalm in that in-between period before Nathan called him out.

Look at this.

Verse 3 for when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up.

Friends, David felt it, he knew it, but he didn't do anything until Nathan came along.

Where are you today?

Are you chapter 11, David, sitting in it, trying to cover it up, trying to run away from it?

This is your day of redemption, friends.

If you would but repent before the Lord and say, Lord, today I want to get out of this.

Today I want to walk into a new, today I want to receive forgiveness.

I'll do what I need to do.

But if you're sitting in deliberate, habitual sin right now, today is your day to repent.

Let's not stay in that place.

Second group of people, maybe you're the victim.

Maybe you've experienced abuse, manipulation, power plays.

And I've been praying for this day.

I believe God wants to set you free.

God wants to set you free.

You cannot undo what happened, it's done, but we can do what we can deal with what happens from here on out.

Will you receive the healing from the Lord?

When Jesus said, I have come to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to heal the sick, to bind up the brokenhearted.

Jesus' ministry is to bring you to healing and wholeness.

I know you're sitting in it, and I know it's hard.

And I know asking you to begin the process of forgiveness is not easy.

I know it's probably the hardest thing to do because you keep thinking you're saying it's okay what happened.

It's not.

I want you to sit with this truth of what we've just read.

God, like in the whole genealogy of Jesus, calls out Uriah's wife.

You know what I'm saying?

He calls it out.

He doesn't avoid it.

God sees what happens to you and he wants to bring you into wholeness.

It may be a part of your story, but it doesn't have to define you.

It doesn't have to define you.

Can we bring and understand and feel the Lord wants to bring you?

Now listen, third group of people, perhaps you're chapter 12, David.

You've been called out, you've asked forgiveness for the Lord, but you don't know how to walk in it.

You don't know how to stop remembering what happened.

You don't know how to stop living with the condemnation of your sin.

And you have to understand the gospel.

Jesus died for those sins.

He rose from the dead, from the grave.

He conquered the power of that sin.

He took on the penalty that you should have paid.

He took it on himself.

This is the absurdity of the gospel that someone would love you and I so much that in your sin he died for us and wants to bring you to healing and wholeness.

This is the gospel, this is his invitation.

Will you receive the forgiveness that's been spoken of you?

Will you receive it and let it live out in your experience, in your life?

And some of you are sitting in this room and you don't know Jesus at all.

You know about him, you know the religious practices.

Maybe you even go to church regularly, but you don't know Jesus.

You don't know this Jesus who died for you, who brings you into a place of healing.

I'm gonna ask you to close your eyes for a second.

I'd like to lead anyone in this room into a prayer of salvation, we call it a prayer of recognizing, acknowledging who Jesus is.

A prayer of asking forgiveness for your sins and telling him that you will follow him, you want to follow him, you will serve him, you want him to be the Lord, the actual Lord of your life.

This is how we become a Christian.

It's not what family you were born in, it's not what practices you have, it's what your answer is to this question.

Who is Jesus and who do you serve?

So, with every eye still closed, I'd like to know who would like to receive Jesus.

And I want to lead you in this prayer.

Would you put up your hand so I know who I'm praying for?

Thank you, sir.

Anybody else?

I just really want to see who I'm praying for.

If you would just all put your hand up again so I know who I'm praying for.

You want to receive Jesus today.

If that's you, would you pray this with me?

Say, dear Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God.

And I want to give you my life.

Would you forgive me of my sins?

And now, Lord Jesus, I receive your forgiveness that was purchased through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus, I want to follow you.

Will you help me follow you?

Amen.

Friends, there's no magic to those words specifically, other than if you meant it in your heart and confess it, the next thing you need to do is tell somebody.

Tell somebody.

And we'd love to walk with you on a journey.

What does it look like practically to follow Jesus?

Church, could we stand together?

We're gonna close with a song.

And while we're singing this song, our prayer ministry team, if they could come up right now, they'd love to stand here and pray with you.

Just call on the Lord for you, just stand with minister over you.

If any of these things that I've brought up today have have come up and you're like, man, I need to process this with somebody.

Can someone just pray with me?

Can someone stand with me?

This is what they're here for.

And they'd love to stand there.

But if you need to do some business with the Lord in your seat as we worship, it's just take five more minutes before we go and just engage with the Lord.

He is here, friends.

He is here, and he's here for you, and he wants to bring you to wholeness.

Let's worship.