Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 2 Sam 12:7-9
I know, I know. I could have picked a happier verse to drive home the point of gratefulness. I could have picked something more warm and fuzzy like “Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” Eph 5:19-20. We could all hold hands and sing Kumbaya. Does anyone even know how to spell that word? Did I even spell that word right? Probably not. Well, you get the point.
But really, it’s easy to sit here and judge King David and say, “I can’t believe you committed adultery AND murdered someone. How could you even live with yourself after that?” You dont often meet people who do both of those things in a lifetime. Actually, I haven’t ever met anyone who has done both those things…at least, not to my knowledge. But the point is, we find ways to justify our sin. “Well, God you didnt give me enough” or “Well, God you weren’t meeting my needs” or “Well, God you didn’t give me what I so desperately wanted or needed so I had no choice but to go out there myself and get it.” And then God spoke to David, “And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.” God is for us, not against us. So often we take for granted how blessed we really are and how much God desires to bless us.
We lust for the things of this world. And lust is not just sexual, we talk about it like it is but most of the time when the word lust is used in the Bible it is describing an intense desire to possess something, something you don’t have. It is coveting, setting your heart upon and craving with unruliness what you do not have. David had SO much, yet he acted like he didn’t. But we do it too. We have so much and sometimes we act like we don’t. So we justify sin and take matters into our own hands to get what we want. I think gratefulness and thankfulness are a remedy to lust. Grateful and grace come from the same word, which means “pleasing.” May we be pleased with what we have and recognize that everything we do have is grace from God.
