by Nate Powell
So I’ve been doing a series at ACCYG on Wednesday nights on David. You can access and listen to all of the past talks on the sermon audio page here on our website. So far in our series, we have explored David as a young man and his love for God’s Word. We’ve seen him as God’s anointed, defeating a Giant. We’ve seen his great friendship with Johnathan and we have seen him run for his life from Saul.
But tonight, we are going to talk for a few weeks about some difficulties with David. David was a man after God’s own heart, but his life during his time as king (and some of the things in his life earlier) raise some serious questions. And I think these questions are the reasons that you don’t hear many preachers talk about the whole life of David.
If David was a man after God’s own heart, then why did he:
- live such a violent lifestyle, going to war and killing so many people? Doesn’t God command us not to kill?
- take multiple wives? Isn’t marriage intended to be between one man and one woman, rather than multiple women?
- have such crumby kids? If the New Testament holds up leaders of the church who raise and manage their children well, why are David’s kids so out of control?
- commit such atrocious sins as the adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah to cover for his sin? How could God let such a man, let alone a king, get away with such a thing?
I think that our lack of willingness to answer such questions has sometimes led skeptics and doubters to a distrust of God and His word. But we are going to be meeting these questions head on.
And I believe we will see, at the end of the day, that scripture is justified to hold a high view of David and an even higher view of his God, whom David had such a heart of worship, service and gratitude for.