David and Bathsheba

I think God is using the Psalms to teach me one of the lessons of the Psalms.

Well how profound is that?

After confessing to God that I really don’t like the Psalms and asking for His guidance in better learning from His Word, I did receive guidance from Him (amazing how that works).

Instead of sitting through this week’s sermon wishing it would hurry up and be over, because after all, it was on one of the Psalms and I don’t like the Psalms, I really tried to open my heart and listen to what the Pastor was preaching.

One of the first things I learned was that I was going to have to take seriously David’s sinful past, which calls to mind the story of David and Bathsheba. I have never liked thinking about David and Bathsheba. (Are we seeing a theme here? I am. I seem pretty quick to judge everything according to whether I like it or don’t like it. Hmmm. Pretty self-centered…)

David was considered a great King and a great man (including by God) but he also was a terrible sinner. I have trouble with that concept. I like heroes and villains. But that’s not David. He was both. And God forgave his sins, That’s what God’s grace is – undeserved forgiveness. (Note: David pre-dates Jesus.)

There’s not a one of us who deserves for Jesus to have died to save us. I don’t deserve it, you don’t deserve it, Martin Luther King, Jr. doesn’t deserve it, the Pope doesn’t deserve it — none of us deserves it. But we received it anyway, without deserving it.

So did David, and he knows it. The Psalms are David’s conversations with God about the forgiveness he knows he has been given by God despite the fact that he doesn’t deserve it. There is much I can learn from that.

I ended the day by listening (again) to Leonard Cohen’s song, “Hallelujah” which is about this, as sung by Pentatonix: