God in our image?

Most of us have heard or read of the story of David and Bathsheba.
David committed adultery because he was blinded and enticed by his lust and more than likely (the scriptures don’t say) he was drunk off his own pride and power that he thought he could get away with it. And by all accounts he did. The people that would have known were either dead or silenced by fear. He was scot-free. Except for the fact that God is all knowing.

Last night I spoke to a small group of high school students about the fact that at any given moment we could be face to face with the lord owning up to our sins. And how that reality needs to dictate every on of the choices that we make.

But after leaving the house and thinking more on the subject, I came to the realization that we are already face to face with God. We are already held accountable for our actions. He sees everything we do and think. That is the reality that we need to live with. David unfortunately lost sight of this fact.

He thought that he had made it; that no one would ever find out; that his dark secret was hidden away. But God had other plans. He revealed David’s sin to Nathan the prophet and he then went straight away to King David and had an audience with him. He used a parable of a king who doesn’t want to take any of his own sheep to entertain a guest and so he forcibly takes a lamb that a family raised and deeply loved. He paralleled this to David and Bathsheba and then told David of God’s impending judgment. And David responded with these words, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Then Nathan responded, “The Lord has put away your sin, …”

David’s repentant heart leads to God’s forgiveness. Weird how that works. Then we see David entreating God on behalf of his unborn child. He had already been told that the child would die yet he knew that God was a God of grace. Showing mercy to those undeserving of it.

The thing is it didn’t work. The child dies and here is where things start to get interesting. Instead of reacting to the death of his child the way that everyone expected him to, David gets up, cleans himself off and then eats a meal.

The servants are bewildered. They are taken aback by this response and it is because of the simple fact that they do not know the Lord as David does. Intimately.


Oftentimes, when God doesn’t come through the way we think or want him to, we react in the exact way the world would react. In the midst of the pain we ask God why? We think that our circumstances give us a reason to disobey God’s word when he says “rejoice always.” The worry and stress and amount to us trying to rush the Lord, “Come on God, show up already.” But the Bible says wait on the Lord.

The more we know God. Not the more we know of God or the more we know about God. But the more we know God than our expectations of him become more biblical and less “manlical“. The big one for me is that God is sovereign. Kind of like knowing and trusting as a child that my step-dad had everything under control and wanted our family’s best. Granted that probably wasn’t the truth. But we know that it is true with the Lord. A proper understanding (or at least what he allows us to grasp) of His sovereignty against the backdrop of his love should assure us. It allows us to live like David lived. To rest in his grace.