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PART 5 – EXPLORING THE EMOTIONS

Chapter 27 - THE MASTER STORYTELLER

We are all, I’m sure, familiar with the fact that Jesus used many and varied stories to illustrate different aspects of his teaching. But Jesus was drawing on a long established Old Testament tradition. Time and time again we see God using the art of story-telling to communicate with his people, especially when they are being rebellious and hard-hearted. Stories have the ability to cut to the heart, where reasoned argument falls on deaf ears.

We come to a stage in David’s life when he is settled and established in his role as King of Israel and Judah. The House of Saul has been vanquished, and there is no significant threat to his kingdom. His generals are still off battling their enemies, but it’s more a question of keeping troublesome neighbours under control. At the time of this present story Joab, the commander-in-chief of David’s army, is besieging the Ammonites in their city of Rabbah on the far side of the river Jordan. There is no substantive threat to Jerusalem, and David feels perfectly safe relaxing at his royal palace.

And that’s the crux of the problem. David has become complacent – has let down his guard. His fighting days are over, and he feel justified in taking time out to enjoy his secure and comfortable life of privilege. He is no longer so concerned about external threats, but he has also slackened his guard against more insidious threats to his position as God’s chosen king. Thus he falls victim to the temptation occasioned by the sight of a beautiful woman, allows himself to be lured into the sin of adultery, and then compounds the sin by arranging the death of Uriah. And having done the deed, taken Bathsheba as his wife, and rejoiced at the birth of their baby son, he settles down to enjoy his new family, seemingly unaware and unrepentant of the terrible deed that he has committed.

But God is not happy with what David has done. David needs waking up from his complacency. So God sends his prophet Nathan to confront David, with a story to tell. The story itself may seem very simple, very naïve, but the strategy has an extremely dramatic effect on David’s awareness of his actions and his response to the work of God’s spirit on his life.

This event also provides a perfect opportunity to delve into David’s emotional and spiritual inner life, since he penned Psalm 51 as a direct response to his confrontation with Nathan, and the realization that he had seriously damaged his relationship with God through “blood-guiltiness” – taking the life of an innocent man.

So let’s first look at how Nathan uses the story that God has given him to confront David with the reality of what he has done.

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David commits adultery with Bathsheba (summarized from 2 Samuel 11:1-17)

After David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, Bathsheba became pregnant with David’s child. David was determined to cover up his adultery, so he arranged for Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, to be sent back to Jerusalem from the battle field. David encouraged Uriah to go home to rest and to spend time with his wife, so that he could be deceived into thinking that the baby was his. But Uriah refused:

"My fellow soldiers are living in tents, and camping in the open fields. How can I go home to wine and dine and sleep with my wife? I swear, I won’t do it!"

When David saw that his plan had failed, he sent a sealed letter back with Uriah addressed to Joab, his commander-in-chief, in which he ordered Joab to arrange for Uriah to be killed in battle – and Joab did as David ordered.

In due course, Joab sent a messenger back to David to confirm that Uriah had been killed. When Bathsheba was told of her husband’s death, she went into mourning for him. But as soon as the required period of mourning was done, David sent for her, and had her brought to the palace. She became his wife, and gave birth to a baby boy.

Nathan confronts David with his sin (from 2 Samuel 12:1-13)

Now David seems to have put the whole affair out of his mind. But God was very angry and upset with David for using his position as King in such a deplorable way. So he sent the prophet Nathan to David, and gave Nathan a story which he was to tell in order to confront David the King with the reality of his behaviour.

This is the story which Nathan told:

"Once there were two men who lived in a certain town. One of them was rich, and the other was poor.

The rich man owned a great many sheep and cattle. But the poor man had only one little ewe-lamb. He had raised the lamb from birth, it grew up with his children, and ate and drank together with the rest of the family. It would curl up in his arms like a baby daughter.

One day a traveller arrived at the home of the rich man, who invited him to stay. That night, instead of killing an animal from his own flock, the rich man commandeered the poor man's lamb and killed it and roasted it to feed his guest."

David was furious with rage.

"As surely as the LORD lives, any man who could do such a thing deserves to be punished with death! At least he must give four lambs to the poor man in compensation for the one that he stole – and for showing him no compassion."

Then Nathan said to David,

"You are that man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says to you:

I anointed you king of Israel and saved your life from Saul’s evil intentions. I gave you victory over the house of Saul, and handed you all his wealth and possessions, including the entire kingdoms of Israel and Judah. And if that was not enough for you, I would have given you much, much more.

So why have you despised my righteous commands and grieved me by acting in such a cruel and despicable way? You arranged for Uriah the Hittite to be slaughtered in battle so that you could steal his wife.

Because you treated me with contempt, and took Uriah's wife to be your own, from this time on your family will be thrown into turmoil. I will cause your own household to rebel against you. I will give your wives to another man, and he will lie with them in public sight. You did this evil deed in secret, but your punishment will be served openly in the sight of all Israel."

Then David confessed to Nathan,

"Everything you have said is true. I have sinned against the LORD."

Nathan replied,

“For this, God has forgiven you – has taken away your sin. You will not suffer the punishment of death…”

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Nathan has more to say concerning the tragic consequences of David’s actions, which you can follow up for yourself (2 Samuel 12:14 onwards). But I want to focus here on the story that Nathan told, and analyse the effect it had on David’s emotional and spiritual response.

First, it’s important to note that Nathan’s story telling involved a two-stage strategy:

Stage 1: to get through to the sensory/emotional side of David’s brain and evoke a strong emotional response
Stage 2: to re-focus the story on David’s personal sin, and re-direct his emotional response in order to awaken his sense of personal responsibility and guilt.

So the first question we need to ask is, how did this story connect so strongly with David’s sense of righteous indignation?... Why did the situation described in the story make David so angry and upset?

There are some general reasons why this story should get David emotionally worked up, and some very personal ones.

General reasons for emotional involvement

This story, like so many stories that Jesus told during his ministry, describes situations that are very familiar to the audience. For instance, Jesus told many stories with an agricultural theme: the parable of the sower, parable that spoke of vines, vineyards, fig trees, etc. His rural audiences would have very readily identified with these stories as they spoke to their everyday experience.

How does a story concerning sheep connect with David’s former life and experience?
Why would David identify with the poor man and his relationship with the ewe-lamb?

The theme of the rich oppressing the poor is a common theme which runs through Old Testament narratives, and surfaces often in Psalms and Proverbs.

How long, O LORD will you allow the wicked to boast about their actions?

They are so arrogant, bragging about their evil deeds!

They crush your people, Lord, and oppress those who belong to you.

They commit murder against widows, orphans and foreigners, believing themselves immune from punishment. They say, "God can’t see what we are doing, and he wouldn’t care anyway!”

(Psalm 94:3-7)

How does Nathan’s story illustrate the general theme of rich versus poor?
How does it show the attitude of the rich as boastful and arrogant?

The stories that we identify with most strongly, as Jesus’ parables well illustrate, are those that connect with our own personal life and experience, and deal with topics and themes which are already our everyday concern.

But there are very specific reasons which this story would connect with David and evoke such a strong personal response.

Specific reasons for David’s personal response

David was not just familiar with sheep and shepherding in general terms, but grew up personally shepherding his father’s flock. We know that he was intimately attached to his flock, and was prepared to risk his own life to keep them safe from wild animals and potential thieves.

Moreover, it’s inevitable that, during his many years shepherding his flock, he would have had to look after orphaned lambs, feed them, nurture them, bring them up as if they were his own dependent offspring. So the image of the poor man bringing up the little lamb and becoming attached to it as a family pet would be one that brought back intimate personal memories.

When we lived in Mexico, in the 1970s, our landlord once brought us a rabbit – for the pot of course! Unfortunately we failed to kill it and cook it straight away, and our children adopted it and gave it a name. Fatal! How can you kill and cook an animal once you’ve named it! The idea of someone taking the poor little ewe-lamb and roasting it for supper would be abhorrent.

How would David’s personal memories of looking after his sheep, and caring for the new lambs in the flock, affect the way he responded to Nathan’s story?
What kind of emotions would it produce for him?

The theme of the rich oppressing the poor would also have a very personal and intimate connection with David’s own life experience. For many years, David had been in the position of an outcast, a fugitive, hunted down and living in caves and hideouts in the wilderness. So David knows very well what it means to be both poor (the story of David and Abigail reminds us how David was reliant on the generosity of others to provide food for himself and his men) and oppressed.

Which person in the story would David most identify with? Why?

But actually, I feel the story makes an even deeper connection with David’s essential emotional/spiritual make-up. Although David may have slipped into an attitude of complacency, underneath he is still the same David that God describes as “a man after my own heart”. David has a very strong and powerful sense of justice and fairness. At this moment he has a blind spot in his life, but God knows that he is passionate about defending the poor, the widows and fatherless. His desire is to uphold God’s righteous will and oppose the deceitful and the arrogant.

So the story awakens David’s latent passion to uphold what is right, and punish the wrong. Hence his angry response:

The story really seems to have got under David’s skin. David perhaps recognizes that his initial response is overly severe. After all, he could hardly sentence someone to death for stealing a lamb from his neighbor and cooking it for supper, although the way the story pictured the lamb as a member of the poor man’s family would make it feel as though the lamb was almost human – and I’m sure that was intended. So David revises his judgement to one of compensation.

We are all familiar with the Old Testament principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. The purpose of this principle is to ensure the punishment is proportionate to the crime committed, so in this case, only one lamb has been stolen, so according to the principle the compensation should amount to one lamb, no less and no more.

Why then does David give his judgement that four lambs should be given in recompense?
What is taken into account in his judgement, in addition to the actual crime of theft?
What does this show about David’s sense of justice and fairness?

So, having got through very emphatically to David’s better nature, and awakened his sense of justice and fairness, Nathan turns the situation around to challenge David with the truth of his own actions:

"You are that man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says to you…”

I asked the question above, “Which person in the story would David identify with?” Clearly he would identify with the poor man, both because of his past experience as a shepherd, and because he would identify as the one who was wrongly, unjustly persecuted and oppressed by Saul. But Nathan is telling him: “No… You are the rich man in the story, not the poor man. I gave you everything you wanted, including the whole kingdom of Judah and Israel, but you weren’t satisfied, so you stole Uriah’s wife, and you had Uriah killed in order to cover up your own sin.”

The parallels in the story are pretty clear:

The rich man is David
The poor man is Uriah
The ewe-lamb is Bathsheba

David’s sin is actually worse than that portrayed in Nathan’s story, since David not only stole the poor man’s lamb, but took his life in the process, so David’s initial judgement on the rich man in the story – that he deserved to punished by death – was actually justified. According to the laws of Moses anyone who commits murder (deliberately takes the life of an innocent person) should be put to death (see for instance Numbers 35:16-19). This is why Nathan states specifically:

“For this, God has forgiven you – has taken away your sin. You will not suffer the punishment of death…”

But there is another parallel in the story which is revealed, not so much by the story itself, but by David’s response. David recommends a more severe punishment for the rich man:

“… at least he must give four lambs to the poor man in compensation for the one that he stole – and for showing him no compassion."

David was pronouncing judgement not just on the rich man’s actions, but for his callous, uncaring attitude and his lack of compassion and pity. And once David had recognized that failing in the attitude of the rich man in the story, he must have recognized the same thing in his own behaviour. David was naturally a loving, caring, compassionate person. But with respect to his relationship with Uriah and Bathsheba he has (at least temporarily) lost that sense of compassion and care. This is quite astonishing, since Uriah is one of David’s best and most loyal military commanders, and is listed as one of “David’s mighty warriors” in 2 Samuel 23:39 and 1 Chronicles 11:41.

What difference would it have made to the actions of the rich man in Nathan’s story, if the rich man had a sense of compassion and care for the poor man?
How would that sense of compassion have protected David from falling into temptation and acting in such a callous way towards Uriah and Bathsheba?
Think of someone you know well who is especially known for their sense of compassion for people in need. How does that compassionate attitude affect their actions and behaviour?
Imagine how different this world would be if everyone had a well-developed sense of care and compassion for the poor, the needy, the refugee.

However well-meaning and good-natured we might normally be towards others, we all need to be careful to keep up our guard. The minister of the church we attended in Gibraltar in the 1980s was normally very understanding and even-tempered. But one morning he went to get his car out of the garage, which opened on to a narrow side street, and discovered that workmen had dug a trench up the side of the road, right across the front of his garage entrance. A friend who happened to be there at the time told us he had experienced a “sense-of-humour failure”! Looking back on it later, I’m sure he was able to see the funny side.

David’s “sense-of-compassion failure” was much more serious, and had very severe and lasting consequences. He was forgiven for his sin, and restored to a personal, Spirit-filled relationship with God. But Nathan warns David:

“… from this time on your family will be thrown into turmoil. I will cause your own household to rebel against you. I will give your wives to another man, and he will lie with them in public sight. You did this evil deed in secret, but your punishment will be served openly in the sight of all Israel."

Nathan’s prophecy was fulfilled in sordid detail. But in this study we will return to the effect of Nathan’s story, and the effect it had on David’s own emotional and spiritual response.

It’s actually quite rare to be able to match the composition of any of the 150 Psalms that we have recorded in the Book of Psalms with specific dates or events. But with Psalm 51 we can be absolutely certain because of the dedication at the beginning, which confirms that it was written in response to Nathan’s confrontation with David after his adultery with Bathsheba.

So let’s turn to Psalm 51 and explore what it tells us about David’s spiritual re-awakening and the depth of his repentance.

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Guilt, cleansing, and joy restored (paraphrased from Psalm 51)

For the choir director:

A psalm of David, regarding the time that Nathan the prophet came to him

and confronted him about his adultery with Bathsheba.

O God, my sins flow red as blood, the guilty stains run deep;

but your great love runs deeper still.

For mercy, Lord, I weep with tears of pain from my rebellious heart.

Lord, purify me from the sins that terrify and waking, sleeping,

haunt me and accuse.

Against you only, Lord, my guilt and shame. I stand

before your judgement seat. Your verdict I accept as true

and just, since you discern the inmost soul and mind.

From life’s conception – e’en before

I parted from my mother’s womb – sin took its course.

But your desire, from life’s first breath, is inner-most sincerity.

You taught me wisdom, from the first aligned my path with yours.

Now purify me, wash me clean from sins that stain my soul;

and whiter than the snow I’ll be when you have washed

and cleansed my heart, and made my spirit whole.

Oh, give me back my joy again; repair these broken bones.

that I might gladly sing your praise. Lord, may I raise

my voice in wonder, standing ‘neath your righteous throne.

Banish my sins, Lord, from your sight.

O God, remove the stain of guilt.

Create in me a new heart, pure and clean.

I long to feel the comfort of your Spirit lifting me

from sorrows deep, my heart to keep in faithfulness and loyalty,

renewed to serve with heart’s obedience, and pure humility.

Then will I teach your ways to wayward men,

and they will turn to you,

acknowledge you as Lord, and sing your praise.

Forgive me, Lord, for shedding blood, O God who freely saves

Then will I sing with heartfelt joy, the sinner God forgave.

You do not want burnt offerings, or I would offer these.

A broken and repentant heart, O God,

is what would please your righteous spirit,

so then, make my poor spirit right and I will give my heartfelt sacrifice.

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In the Joseph story, we arrived at the scene where Joseph is reconciled with his family. Here we also have a reconciliation scene – the reconciliation and restoration of David’s relationship with God.

Essentially, David’s inner sense of guilt and turmoil is a consequence of the fact that he has lost his relationship, his friendship with a loving Father. And God is grieved and distressed by this breakdown in their fellowship and communion. God says to David, “Why have you despised my righteous commands and grieved me by acting in such a cruel and despicable way?” David has driven a wedge between himself and God, causing God to be angry and grieved by his behaviour. But God desires a reconciliation. It’s not only David who has lost his joy!

Hebrews 4:19 tells us that “God’s word is alive and effective – sharper than a two-edged sword. It is able to reach into the depths of the soul, and exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.” The process of restoration has to start with God’s Spirit exposing the deceits of our heart and awakening a realisation that our sin has separated us from God’s presence.

We may well be accustomed to looking the topic of reconciliation between man and God in terms that are doctrinal, analytical and detached. But the experience itself can be extremely painful, intensely emotional, a spiritual tsunami. Psalm 51 shows us just how intense that transition can be, from deepest guilt and sorrow to the heights of spirit-filled joy.

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Questions for consideration and discussion

Here are some questions to guide you in exploring the effect that Nathan’s story, under God’s leading and direction, had on David’s spiritual response.

1. David confronts his own guilt

How does David describe his state of guilt before God?
What affect does the sense of guilt have upon his inner thought-life?
David says that his guilt is “against you (God) alone”. Surely David sinned against Uriah and Bathsheba. Why do you think he says this? What words in Nathan’s message might David be responding to?
David recognises that his sin and guilt goes back to his conception, which may remind us of the doctrine of original sin. But at the same time God “desired honesty” and “taught him wisdom” from the womb. How do these apparently opposite influences sit together in David’s life? How does this idea fit with our Christian understanding of personal sin and righteousness? (see Romans 7:15-25)

2. Desire for restoration

How does God awaken the desire for reconciliation and restoration?
What gives David hope that his relationship with God might be restored?
David recognises that his guilt has caused him to lose things that he previously experienced when he was in a right relationship with God. What things does he now desire to be restored and renewed?
How does David describe that process of renewal? How does his description correspond to our Christian understanding of renewal and new birth in Christ?

3. Joy restored

What activities does David see himself participating in once his spiritual state is renewed?
What attitudes of heart does David long to be restored?
Remember that God is also upset and grieved by the breakdown of the relationship. How does David anticipate this act of reconciliation affecting God’s attitude of heart?

CLOTHED AND IN MY RIGHT MIND

PART 5 – EXPLORING THE EMOTIONS

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Chapter 27 - THE MASTER STORYTELLER