Thinking about David today...You know, the man after God's own heart who managed to make every conceivable mistake under the sun, from lust to murder? Yeah him. What a guy!
No really, I mean it. I heard someone talking about David today...about a time shortly after he messed up pretty badly. And since he was king, the punishment of the king became the punishment for his people.
(side note for a second - that'll preach! Who am I responsible for? Who's looking up to me? My actions, public and private, affect those people! Word.) K sorry, back to the story:
So poor, sinner, David is helplessly watching his people get ravished by a plague. He's shown remorse already, but justice is justice, and there's nothing he can do except pray that God gives him a way out before it hits Jerusalem. And sure enough, **queue God **, just in time the redemption comes! (who ever said that in the old testament God never showed mercy?!? False.) God sends a prophet to tell Dave the news: go make a sacrifice! If you get to Ornan's farm and make a sacrifice, Jerusalem can be saved.
Obviously, David gets going - he's got a chance to make things right with God and take responsibility in front of his people (talk about a good King), and he won't let it pass him by! When he gets to the field, though, something interesting happens. Ornan wants to give him the field and the sacrifice - a simple donation to the cause, really; the least he can do to help, right? Wrong. In that moment, David says something profound that gets preached about on a regular basis; the meaning of which threads itself through many of the songs that we sing:
"No...I will not offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing." (1 Chron. 21:24, ESV)
So much of what we base our faith on as Christians is built on this principle. Stories that Jesus told in the New Testament reflect the same truth as these words, spoken hundreds of years earlier by a broken and ashamed king.
Man, I've messed up before. I've even done things that affect other people, and I've had to humble myself and tell them that the awkward situation they're in right now, or the hard work that we all have to do to finish a project on time, is because of me; because I dropped the ball or made a selfish choice. It feels horrible. I've felt insecure and irritating and irresponsible and deserving of all of these judgements from other people...and I'm not even the queen or anyone really important! There were maybe two casualties of my bad choices. David was the king...hundreds of thousands of people were affected by his disobedience (he would probably know exactly how many, since it was a census that got him into trouble in the first place).
I can't even imagine what he felt in that moment at the threshing floor of Ornan's farm. The urge to defend himself, to claim that spark of respect shown to him by Ornan when he offered to donate the sacrifice, to display himself as a king and not a sinner, must have been overpowering. But David didn't waiver. This man, after God's own heart, humbled himself.
And in so doing, he spoke words that echo through history.
Oh the power of humility! I'll never forget the words of a wise and respected woman in my life when she told me that I'll always be closer to God when I'm broken and aware of my sinfulness than when I think that I'm doing ok. Even at my best, I don't deserve to be tracked into the kingdom of heaven on the bottom of someone's shoe! Or as Isaiah puts it, 'all my righteousness is as filthy rags.'
David had this figured out. He wrote about it often in his Psalms, but more importantly, he practiced it in his life and that's what made him a great man and a great king.
And that gets me to thinking: sure I need to work hard and incorporate school and work and peers and family and friends and exercise and balanced nutrition into my life, but if I want to be truly successful in life, maybe I should take a lesson from this shepherd boy-turned general-turned king. Maybe the first thing I need to incorporate is humility and, in so doing, learn to first and foremost be a woman after God's own heart.
So thanks David, for choosing the humble road and teaching us all a thing or two along the way!
No really, I mean it. I heard someone talking about David today...about a time shortly after he messed up pretty badly. And since he was king, the punishment of the king became the punishment for his people.
(side note for a second - that'll preach! Who am I responsible for? Who's looking up to me? My actions, public and private, affect those people! Word.) K sorry, back to the story:
So poor, sinner, David is helplessly watching his people get ravished by a plague. He's shown remorse already, but justice is justice, and there's nothing he can do except pray that God gives him a way out before it hits Jerusalem. And sure enough, **queue God **, just in time the redemption comes! (who ever said that in the old testament God never showed mercy?!? False.) God sends a prophet to tell Dave the news: go make a sacrifice! If you get to Ornan's farm and make a sacrifice, Jerusalem can be saved.
Obviously, David gets going - he's got a chance to make things right with God and take responsibility in front of his people (talk about a good King), and he won't let it pass him by! When he gets to the field, though, something interesting happens. Ornan wants to give him the field and the sacrifice - a simple donation to the cause, really; the least he can do to help, right? Wrong. In that moment, David says something profound that gets preached about on a regular basis; the meaning of which threads itself through many of the songs that we sing:
"No...I will not offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing." (1 Chron. 21:24, ESV)
So much of what we base our faith on as Christians is built on this principle. Stories that Jesus told in the New Testament reflect the same truth as these words, spoken hundreds of years earlier by a broken and ashamed king.
Man, I've messed up before. I've even done things that affect other people, and I've had to humble myself and tell them that the awkward situation they're in right now, or the hard work that we all have to do to finish a project on time, is because of me; because I dropped the ball or made a selfish choice. It feels horrible. I've felt insecure and irritating and irresponsible and deserving of all of these judgements from other people...and I'm not even the queen or anyone really important! There were maybe two casualties of my bad choices. David was the king...hundreds of thousands of people were affected by his disobedience (he would probably know exactly how many, since it was a census that got him into trouble in the first place).
I can't even imagine what he felt in that moment at the threshing floor of Ornan's farm. The urge to defend himself, to claim that spark of respect shown to him by Ornan when he offered to donate the sacrifice, to display himself as a king and not a sinner, must have been overpowering. But David didn't waiver. This man, after God's own heart, humbled himself.
And in so doing, he spoke words that echo through history.
Oh the power of humility! I'll never forget the words of a wise and respected woman in my life when she told me that I'll always be closer to God when I'm broken and aware of my sinfulness than when I think that I'm doing ok. Even at my best, I don't deserve to be tracked into the kingdom of heaven on the bottom of someone's shoe! Or as Isaiah puts it, 'all my righteousness is as filthy rags.'
David had this figured out. He wrote about it often in his Psalms, but more importantly, he practiced it in his life and that's what made him a great man and a great king.
And that gets me to thinking: sure I need to work hard and incorporate school and work and peers and family and friends and exercise and balanced nutrition into my life, but if I want to be truly successful in life, maybe I should take a lesson from this shepherd boy-turned general-turned king. Maybe the first thing I need to incorporate is humility and, in so doing, learn to first and foremost be a woman after God's own heart.
So thanks David, for choosing the humble road and teaching us all a thing or two along the way!
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