“Let Your Heart Be Troubled”

A Sermon based upon 2 Samuel 11: 25-12: 13a

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, Pastor

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

August 5, 2012

Most of us can recall the sick feeling we had in 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal became public.  

Even the most die-hard republican did not like learning that a sitting democratic president had disgraced the honorable position of President of the United States.   What made the matter even worse is that the whole matter didn’t seem to publically trouble President Clinton at all.   He even lied about the ordeal.  “I did not have a relationship with that woman….”, he said.  But he did.  Clinton’s boldface lie still rings in all our ears.  It was a dark time for the American presidency.  Let your heart be troubled.

There must have been similar “sick feelings” among the people of Israel when word got out about David’s illicit affair with Bathsheba.  To be honest, the situation then was much worse.  David was a popular military hero and promising political figure among the people of Israel.  The prophets even said, “He was a man after God’s own heart.”  David’s dramatic defeat over Goliath was the stuff of storybooks.  It gave hope and great expectations for future glory.  David could do no wrong.  Like a good boy scout, David seemed physically fit, mentally awake and morally straight; not to mention politically promising and militarily invincible.  That’s how thing appeared until…. the Bathsheba affair.   After that, David seemed as weak and vulnerable as anyone.  Israel’s hearts were troubled, very troubled.  

But it gets worse.  According to our text today, it was bad enough that the much beloved public figure had an affair with a married woman.   It was also sad to see him, like President Clinton, trying to cover up the affair, by commanding violence; even engaging in murder by sending her patriotic husband Uriah to the front lines and then ordering all others to retreat.  This is all very sad and troubling.  But the most troubling of all comes when David’s receives the military report of the casualties.   When word comes back to David that the battle was over and there were many killed, including Uriah, David does not even blink nor seem “troubled” at all.  “Say this to Joab”, David tells the messenger, “Don’t let this upset you… (11:25), these things happen.  

WE DON’T WANT TO BE TROUBLED  

This is a sordid tale.   It’s tragic.  It’s a biblical soap opera.  Maybe you heard about the woman who came to prayer meeting and made a prayer request for one of the stars on the T.V. show, “As the World Turns”.   She knew more about what was happening to her soap character, than what was going on in her own family.   That woman wasn’t living in reality, but what is before us in our text happenned.  No one can dream up stuff like this.  This is sin.  This is war.  This is unjustified violence.  This is murder.  This is adultery!  Just to read about it ought to “trouble” us all over again.   

But David is not “troubled.”  David is fine with how things are.  David has succeeded with his cover up.  These kinds of things happen in life and in the world, so let’s not be get upset, he says.  When people look out at the world,  at the brokenness of families,  the divisions in our churches,  the kidnapping and suffering of children, the mass murdering of innocents, and the continual darkness and impasse in American political life;  and then when someone suggests: “Oh, don’t be upset”, “This is just how things are”, “Everything is going to be just fine”; This is when I know for sure that it is time for us to “Let our hearts be troubled.”

Most of us don’t come to church to be troubled.   We’ve got troubles enough already.  Our children can be hard to handle.  Our jobs can be stressful and overwhelming.  The economic outlook is grim.  There are always “wars and rumors of wars”.   People come to church today with a great need to be “comforted”, not troubled.  We can understand this.  Didn’t Jesus say, “Let NOT your heart be troubled….?   How dare the preacher turn these beautiful words into “let our hearts be troubled”?   If you want to have people in your church today, you’d better tell them how “fine” they are and everyone is.  “I’m O.K. and Your’re O.K—that’s the watchword.  Haven’t you heard Joel Osteen preach?   You don’t get to be pastor of the largest church in the United States, with a congregation of over 20,000 in attendance every Sunday by troubling people with the truth of how things really are.  When Joel Osteen preaches, his constant theme is more like that cowboy tune “Home on the Range”….Where the deer and the antelope play.  Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.”  Now, to many people today, that’s preaching!   Encouraging is what people want. 

People are not looking for church to be a sanctuary, but they want church to be a retreat.  They go off to camp and come back and want to make church exciting!   We want to make everybody happy.  We want our children to have “fun”.   Some churches today work real, real hard to make sure everybody is happy.  We want the atmosphere of our worship to upbeat, positive and serene.   Most Baptist churches did away with the Prayer of Confession many, many years ago.   “This needs to come from the heart,” Baptists said, “so let’s not put that in the service or bulletin”.  Now, Confession of Sin is no longer in the Baptist service at all.   Who wants to come to church to confront our sins?   All this “sin” business is too troubling.   People want the worship and the pastor’s sermon to put a more positive spin on life just like the politicians do.   It’s doesn’t matter whether or not it’s true.   “Don’t worry, Be Happy!”   This is exactly what David is saying, isn’t it?   He living in constant denial of how things really are, and he’s putting a positive spin on sin, war, violence, and adultery.  He says to his general, “Don’t let this upset you!”  It’s all going to be O.K.  Just go out there and keep doing what you’ve been doing.  “Press the attack against the city and destroy it.  Say this to encourage Joab” (11:25b).   How better to a general than to tell him to go out, attack and kill somebody? Do David’s words trouble you?    

Many years ago, as a teenager, I read Sinclair Lewis’ book “Elmer Gantry”.   It’s about an evangelist who goes around the country drawing big crowds, but in his private life turns out to have a bad side, much like David.  But before Gantry falls to his bad side, he is planning to evangelize a mid-western town.  He does some research on the town and presents the local pastors with a list of addresses for those questionable places in town which he feels needs to be exposed…all the “bars, the speakeasies, and the brothels.”  He tells them he intends to read the list from the pulpit.  “I don’t advise it”, says, Dr. Binch, one of the pastors.  “It seems that all the buildings where these bars, speakeasies, and brothels are housed are owned by the prosperous Christian citizens who contribute money for the revival“.  “No,” says Dr. Binch, “it seems wiser to me and more Christian just to attack the vice in general.” (From “Blessed are the Troubled” by Patrick Wilson, www.goodpreacher.com, as quoted in Sinclar Lewis’ Elmer Gantry (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1927, p. 205).   That’s how most of us like it, isn’t it?   Preach against sin, but let’s not get too specific and trouble anyone.  We don’t want anyone to get upset.

GOD IS TROUBLED EVEN WHEN WE ARE NOT

Sometimes the Bible’s message comforts the afflicted, but other times it afflicts the comfortable.  David doesn’t want anyone to get upset, but there is someone who does get upset.    

When Bathsheba hears that Uriah was killed in battle, she mourns for a month.  She’s a little troubled, or at least acts like she was, but it doesn’t last long.  When the time of mourning is over, David sends for her, and she readily obeys, proving that she is not that “troubled”.   David is still not troubled either.  He has not contemplated nor considered the consequences of his actions.  He tells his general not to be troubled.  He doesn’t allow Bathsheba to be troubled as he makes her his new wife.  No one is troubled over the matter at all, if they know about it, until the storyteller says: “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord” (27). 

God is troubled.  God is very troubled by the actions of the King he has “anointed” to be King “after his heart”.  Because of our “sex crazed culture” and what is on television, at the movies, or in books these days, we are apt to focus mostly on the hanky-panky that went on between David and Bathsheba.  But this is only part of David’s “sin” and may not even be the main part.   

The worse part of David’s sin is not what he has done wrong, but what he has not done right.  David HAS FORGOTTEN WHO HE IS AND WHO HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE.   David was anointed to be the Shepherd King of Israel, but now he has become nothing more than another “predator” among the sheep.   Instead of being a “blessing” to his people, David has become “a person of death”.   God has a stake in what happens to his King and his people.  David was anointed to show compassion and declare God’s justice, but now David has traded the “things”, “the calling,” and the “anointing” of God and traded them in for satisfying his own desires.   David should have known better.  David had other options.  He could have dealt with his desires in other ways, as all kings had their harems.   But no, David follows his desires and does his own thing.  When people follow their desires and forget who they are, “let your heart be troubled”.     This troubles God the most.  

When someone like David, like Clinton, or like person lets us down, most of us give up and turn on them at once.   We don’t like to entertain the thought that a person can be “good”, even “great” and capable of such evil at the same time.   We want our heroes to stay heroes.  But more than this, we don’t want to think that we might be able to do the same.   Carlyle Marney, the late Baptist preacher, used to preach that he was always preaching both to “basement” people and to “balcony” people in his congregation.   Life can pull any of us in either direction at any time.   None of us are exempt from this pull in life.   No matter how good we think we are we might sit in the balcony today and in the basement tomorrow.  WE CAN FORGET WHO WE ARE!

To show how troubled he is about all this, God sends his preacher Nathan to David’s house.  He’s not a general, only a preacher.  What can a preacher do to influence a king?  And what can a King do to a preacher who gives him trouble?  Nathan is taking a big risk.  The scene is has parallels to an earlier scene.  This time, however, the roles are reversed:  Nathan is the unprotected, vulnerable “David” figure and David has become the powerful, threatening, imposing “Goliath.”  See how quickly everything can change!  All it takes is a couple of missteps and we can suddenly find ourselves opposing God.  LET YOUR HEART BE TROUBLED!

Nathan, the preacher begins with a story.  He’s careful and cautious.  He tells a simple story of a rich man who had all the sheep he needed.   It goes: When special guests come for dinner, instead of slaughtering one of his own sheep, a rich man takes a little ewe lamb which belonged to a poor man, who has made the little lamb into a pet.  Without thought of the poor man, the rich man takes the lamb and kills it to prepare a meal for his guests.  As David heard the story, his sense of justice is offended.  “How dare this rich man do this!”  “This man deserves to die for doing such a thing!”  “Has this man no shame, no pity?” “He must repay that poor man 4 times over!” After a moment of silence, Nathan looks David square in the eyes, saying: “David, You are that man!”  “This is what the LORD says, I anointed you King over Israel…I delivered you from the hand of Saul…I gave your master’s house to you…. I gave all kinds of wives into your arms… And if you had asked me for more, I would have given you more.”  So, why did you “despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil”?  “You struck down Uriah the Hittite….and took his wife….  You killed him with the enemy’s sword… Now, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took Uriah’s wife.” (12: 7-10).

Why do humans do the dumb things they sometimes do?  Doesn’t David know better?  Don’t we?   Why do we humans attack and hurt each other?   Why do we fight more with our brothers and sisters than with our real enemies?  Why do we refuse to ask and trust God for the things we need.  Why don’t we try to talk to each other and work things out?  Why do we refuse to consider the consequence of our actions, and why do we insist on being our own god and guides?  Do we not realize there will be consequences?  Do we not know that whatever we do in secret will one day come to light?   Do we not realize that when we go against the moral laws of life and love that we will end up opposing God?  What this will do to us and to our families, and most of all to our children?   Do we not realize that if do whatever we want in life; and if we drag others into our deceptions, we invite a war of the soul that will follow us all the rest of our lives?  Are our hearts not the least bit troubled?   Are we not troubled at the sick games people will play?

BECOMING TROUBLED CAN SET US FREE

David could have killed the preacher too, and no one would have known.  In a made for TV movie entitled “The Story of David,” it is at this time that one of David’s generals draws his sword to take Nathan’s life for insulting the king in his own house.  But then something amazing happens.  David stops him.  He suddenly becomes troubled within himself.  He could have evaded the issue.  He could have denied the charges.  And of course, he could have had Nathan silenced or worse.  But what David does is incredible and redemptive.  David does not protect himself from being troubled.   He does not turn away from the troubling truth about himself.   David acknowledges and admits that the truth.  “I have sinned against the Lord.” (13).

Those are simple words, but we make them so complex and complicated.  The truth is something both Kings, politicians, and too many people fear.   We fear that moment of self-discovery which troubles us with the truth about ourselves.  We’d rather hurt other people with lies than admitting the painful truth.  Self-knowledge can be painful.   It is hard to hear someone say to us, “You are wrong!”  “You are the one!”  But David does not fight it anymore.  Now, David welcomes the pain into himself, saying “Yes, I am the one…I am the man!  I have sinned against God and against others.”  Now, thank God, before this story ends, we see the true integrity of David’s personality come through.  He’s certainly not God, but he’s finally the man he should be, the man after God’s heart.  He finally comes back to his senses and allows himself to become a troubled.  He lets himself be troubled over his own sin, so troubled that he is ready to admit and confess what is true.

Everyone has a “defining moment” says, Mickey Anders.  David’s defining moment was not his sin, but rather this immediate repentance when confronted with the truth.   Most of us remember from the news a few years ago, the Atlanta woman, named Ashley Smith, who was taken hostage by Brian Nichols in 2005.  She had two defining moments in her life.  One was her decision to use drugs, which got her addicted and into bad company.  The other defining moment was when she decided to say no to drugs, during her kidnapping.  When the kidnapper took her drugs from her and offered her some, she refused.  Since the ordeal, she’s been clean ever since.  She did much better than President Clinton, whose defining moment was, not his affair, but to lie to himself and to the nation, saying, “I did not have relations with that woman.”

Our defining moment today is that we too can become troubled about where we are and where we aren’t in relation to God and in relations with others.   When we let our hearts become troubled over the right things, we can rid so many troubles over the wrong things.  When David became clean about his sin, it was the beginning of new level of opportunity and growth as a human being.  There is no greater words in the entire Bible than those words of confession he wrote in Psalm 51: 10-12, 17: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.  Renew a steadfast Spirit in me.  Do not take your presence from me nor take your Holy Spirit.  Restore to me the joy of my salvation and give me a willing spirit….MY SACRIFICE IS A BROKEN AND CONTRITE HEART.  Let your heart be troubled and you will find a new peace within.  Amen.