Grieved

 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die!

Nathan then said to David, "You are the man!" 2 Samuel 12:5,7......"You cannot confess what you haven't grieved." Paul Tripp

King David, who the Bible says was a man "after God's heart," had deeply sinned. He had seduced the wife of another man and impregnated her. Seeking to cover it up, he got the husband drunk in order that he might go and sleep with his wife so that he might be seen as the father. When he failed to succeed in this, he ordered the husband, Uriah the Hittite, to be put in the front line of battle, and then have the surrounding troops move away from him so that he might be killed in the fighting. In effect, he murdered him. Eventually, he took the wife, Bathsheba into his palace and made her his wife. He went on as if nothing had happened. Sin does that. It hardens us to our own wrongdoing. It certainly hardened the heart of King David.

God then instructed the prophet Nathan to go to David and tell him a story of a man who had abused and cheated another person. David was enraged and ordered the man punished, to which Nathan then proclaimed to him, "you are that man." With that, the heart of David melted. He saw his sin. He saw what its effect had been, upon the Father, upon Uriah, Bathsheba, and upon himself. He was overwhelmed by grief and remorse over what he'd done. 

Why do I write this? I do so because I think we have softened the idea of sin, its consequences, and our personal responsibility in it. We invite people to Jesus. to come to His salvation, but salvation from what? The captivity of sin? Yes, but of their captivity to their own sin? How many eagerly come to Him for what He may offer, but have no real sense of need, of personal cleansing from both the sin they were born into and the sins they have committed? How many really grieve over what the cost of their sin has been to others, to themselves, and to the God who created them and the Savior who died for them? How many have given their hearts to Him, but are unaware that those hearts are more stone than tender flesh. Heart that bear no remorse or grief for the price they have paid, and others have paid because of sin?

Paul Tripp says you can't confess what you haven't grieved. He doesn't mean that we beat ourselves up or that we live in condemnation over what we've done and how we've lived. He does mean that when the Holy Spirit is truly at work in us, at some point, we will realize what our actions, our sins, have done to all involved in our lives and how we have broken the heart of the God who loves us and the Lord Jesus who died for us. True confession and repentance will involve a real grieving over sin and its effects upon us and those we love. Especially the God we say we love.

Tripp has a kind of prayer for those who would truly be cleansed. "Cry for grace to be willing to stop, look, listen, receive, grieve, confess, and turn." Grace that shows us what we've been, but also shows us what we can be in Him. Grace that causes us to grieve what we've been and done, but grace that also offers a transformation into the person He created us to be. Grace that turns our grief into joy. Have you known such grace? Would you know it now? We are that man and we are that woman. The man or woman we have been, perhaps still are, and the man or woman He would make us.

Blessings,
Pastor O