Severe-Mercies

God loves us as we are, but He is never content with leaving us as we are. He always wants more for us than we want for ourselves, particularly as it relates to our growth in personal-holiness. One of God’s most “severe-mercies” is showing us who we REALLY are by ripping our “mask” off…

King David is a classic-example of one of God’s “unmaskings“:

You are that man!
Nathan Rebukes David
12 Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him and said,
“There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor.
2 “The rich man had a great many flocks and herds.
3 “But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb
Which he bought and nourished;
And it grew up together with him and his children.
It would eat of his bread and drink of his cup and lie in his bosom,
And was like a daughter to him.
4 “Now a traveler came to the rich man,
And he was unwilling to take from his own flock or his own herd,
To prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him;
Rather he took the poor man’s ewe lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”

5 Then David’s anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die. 6 He must make restitution for the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and had no compassion.”

7 Nathan then said to David, “You are that man! Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘It is I who anointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I also gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these! 9 Why have you despised the word of the Lord by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon. 10 Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ 11 Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight. 12 Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.’” 13 Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has taken away your sin; you shall not die. 14 However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die.” 15 So Nathan went to his house. (2 Samuel 12:1-15)

David would have been content for his sin to be kept hidden, “swept under the rug“, his own “dirty little secret“, but God wasn’t going to allow that to continue. God sent Nathan the Prophet to confront David with his sin, to peal his “mask” off and show him who he REALLY was, and that “picture” wasn’t pretty.

How long did those four words, “You are that man“, reverberate in David’s head, and echo in the halls of his palace? God wasn’t going to allow him to just “put the past in the past, and move on” either, as our culture would encourage us to do. NO! The rest of his life would be plagued by troubles, by the repercussions of what he did. His son, Absalom, DID rebel against his father, and he DID rape his father’s concubines in public.

There was treachery and rebellion in David’s family for the rest of his life. Yes, there were real consequences, beginning with losing that baby, that plagued David until the day he died.

God WILL break us…
God WILL show us who we REALLY are. It isn’t a matter of “if“; it is a matter of “when“, “where” and “how” He will break us. It may be an easier process for some than for others, but that doesn’t mean that it will be “easy“. Peter got “broken“after he denied knowing Jesus. Paul got “broken” on the road to Damascus, because God couldn’t use them to do His work until they had come to the end of themselves. It wasn’t pleasant for either one, and neither has it been for me, but God does it for our own good and His glory. It is difficult. It is painful, but most of all, it is humbling, because we don’t want anyone else to know who we REALLY are.

I DIDN’T want to confess my sin to anyone in my church because I have a pretty good reputation which I didn’t want to spoil, but God didn’t leave me that choice, so on a recent Sunday, I “spilled the beans” to some of the officers. It was hard, but it was liberating. Owning-up to my past became more important than saving whatever reputation I have.

Severe-Mercies…
God is merciful and just, but even as He is merciful, His justice demands that we acknowledge and own our sins. If we keep short-accounts, confessing our sins as we commit them, God doesn’t need to call us into account for them, but if we stubbornly ignore, or even deny our sins, sometimes He has to “take us to the woodshed”. It is not that God is angry with us, He loves us too much to let us get too far “out of hand”.

We tend to think pretty highly of ourselves, particularly if we compare ourselves to the “heathens” around us. If you read through the Psalms, it is almost shocking how many times David says “in my integrity”, and how many times he brags about “loving God’s law”, yet 2 Samuel 11 reveals a very different side of him, the kniving, adulterous, murderer, so God sent Nathan the Prophet to wake David up to who he REALLY was. I may not have been as bold and brash as David, but I sure knew how to play the self-righteous “victim-card”, but God knows me better than that. God knows WHO and HOW we REALLY are, so sometimes He sends us a “reality-check” to pop our bubble. My reality-check came from losing my middle daughter.

Losing my daughter, and seeing how completely she had “painted” me out of her life, forced me to confront by role in destroying our relationship, and it wasn’t “pretty”. This doesn’t absolve anyone else of their roles in destroying my relationship with her. It just gave ME a strong “reality-check”. Only God knows ALL the facts, and it is up to Him to call them into account for their actions.

Final thoughts…
It would be easy for me to be upset or mad at God, but this was long past-due. As with David, God called me into account for my good and His glory. I will be a better man for it.

Sola Deo Gloria!