The Psalm 23 Adventure, Part 57
September 15, 2017
For the past three
weeks, we've looked at the "goodness" portion of David's statement
that, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life." As you will see in the next
few weeks as we wrap up this Psalm 23 Adventure, goodness and mercy are so
intertwined that it is difficult to separate them. We will see how mercy and forgiveness are
intertwined together.
In order to understand the significance of
David's statement that mercy would follow him all the days of his life, let's
look beyond David's life for a minute before we actually consider some of the
events that transpired throughout his years.
Take a look at something that Paul was
preaching when he and Barnabas went to the city of Pisidia:
And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which
was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children,
in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second
psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. And as concerning that he raised him up from
the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I
will give you the sure mercies of David.
This
is a startling statement when you juxtapose this against David’s statement in
the 89th Psalm.
Psalm 89:1-4: I
will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known
thy faithfulness to all generations. For
I have said, Mercy shall be built up for ever: thy
faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens. I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have
sworn unto David my servant, Thy seed
will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to
all generations. Selah
With
that in mind, how did we get to the place where the Lord speaks of the “sure mercies
of David?” Let’s go back to an event
that unfolds in his life in which he experiences the sure mercies of the Lord.
In
II Samuel 11 and 12, we have the story of David and Bathsheba. Everyone is pretty familiar with this story,
so I don’t need to recount the whole event here. There are some hidden facts to this picture
that we do need to take a look at.
First
of all consider the rebuke that David receives of the Lord through the prophet,
Nathan.
II
Samuel 12:1-14: And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and
said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other
poor. The rich man had exceeding
many flocks and herds: But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe
lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him,
and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup,
and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveler unto the rich
man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for
the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and
dressed it for the man that was come to him.
And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he
said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing
shall surely die: And he
shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had
no pity.
And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith
the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee
out of the hand of Saul; And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s
wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that
had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such
things.
Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do
evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast
taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the
children of Ammon. Now therefore the
sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and
hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up
evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before
thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy
wives in the sight of this sun. For thou
didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and
before the sun.
And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD. And
Nathan said unto David, The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not
die. Howbeit, because by this deed thou
hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child
also that is born unto thee shall surely die.
The
way this is recorded in II Samuel passes over David’s real response to the Lord
and the repentance that took place. Take
a look at how he prays:
Psalm 51:1-13: Have
mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the
multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly
from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before
me.
Against thee, thee
only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest
be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin
did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou
desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt
make me to know wisdom.
Purge me with hyssop,
and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that
the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all
mine iniquities.
Create in me a clean
heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take
not thy holy spirit from me. Restore
unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then
will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
If
there was anyone who knew how to repent, it was David! One thing I learned from him was the depth of
his sensitivity to the heart of the Lord.
When
he heard the rebuke from Nathan, David felt the disappointment in God’s
heart. That he grieved the Lord like he
did caused a response in him that — in my understanding — brought a depth of
repentance that many folks have yet to experience.
The
greater the degree of our sensitivity to the Lord, the greater the reality of
our repentance when we grieve the Lord.
Allow me to share a couple of personal experiences to illustrate.
Most
of you know that I was working with David Wilkerson in his Teen Challenge
outreach in the San Francisco Bay area while I was attending Bethany Bible
College. I became engaged to a young
lady who was also a student there. David
heard about the engagement and called us both to talk to us. His word was a strong warning from the Lord.
“I
forbid this marriage,” he said. “This is
not God! If you pursue this
relationship, it will end in disaster.
God has not designed either of you for each other.”
He
turned to the fiancée and said, “Young lady, you are not equipped for the kind
of ministry that God has called Regner to.
You do not have that kind of calling on your life, and if you go through
with this marriage, you will both suffer consequences you don’t want to face.”
At
that point in my life, my sensitivity to the Lord was greatly lacking. I treated the warning instead as unwanted
interference. Neither did I respect the
prophetic anointing in David at that time.
I rebelled against the word, and not long thereafter, my fiancée and I
eloped. On the night of my wedding, I
knew I’d made the greatest mistake of my life.
Being
in ministry, I was afraid of the consequences of a divorce or an annulment and
decided to grit my teeth and “make it work.”
Folks, you don’t make things work that God has said, “No” to. Gritting your teeth and trying to make
something work in opposition to the Word of the Lord only magnifies rebellion
and stubbornness. The results that it
produces are not wonderful!
Sixteen
plus years later, after fasting and praying for three weeks and asking the Lord
to “fix” our relationship (we’d already been separated twice), I heard Him
speak in an almost audible voice saying, “I don’t change my mind. I do not say, “Yes” to something I’ve already
said “No” to.”
By
this time, the sensitivity in my spirit to the heart of the Lord had increased
enormously. For the first time, I felt
the grief of the Lord over my disobedience.
The weeping that followed was genuine repentance and a crying out for
mercy. Without getting into a lot of
detail, less than two years later, our third separation took place and divorce
followed soon thereafter.
You
will appreciate my understanding for the sure mercies of the Lord when I talk
about the gift that He gave to me in Della.
When He joined the two of us together, for the first time in my life I
experienced real joy in marriage. I
understood the concept of being joined by the Lord, and the significance of
Jesus’ statement in Matthew 19:6, “What God hath joined
together, let not man put asunder.”
Far
too many marriages are marriages of convenience, marriages whose origins are in
lust, “shotgun marriages” — you get the picture. They are not marriages where the Lord has
joined two people together.
Unfortunately, the body of Christ has had little teaching on the true
concept of marriage and what it means to be joined together by the Lord. Many marriages that are not put together by
the Lord have lasted but only because of the mercies of the Lord being extended
to them in their ignorance of His perfect will in their lives.
OK. That was a bit of a rabbit trail, but it was
and is borne out of my own coming to understand the sure mercies of the Lord in
the face of sheer stupidity and stubbornness.
One
more event occurred many years later in which I learned again the sure mercies
of the Lord. This was a totally
different kind of situation, but it took place in the face of my compromising
the Word of the Lord.
In
the early 1990’s, Della and I had developed a relationship with a couple. He was one of these computer geniuses who
created massive server arrays for big corporations. He was also something of an entrepreneur and
got into a business promoting alleged health products.
The
Lord sent me to him one day to warn him about the dangers of one of the
specific products he was promoting. It
happened to be something that he was making a lot of money with. Up to this point, our relationship with one
another had been open, warm and as connected as any friends can be. The Word that the Lord gave me to share with
him was that this one particular product he was promoting had hidden dangers in
it and that he needed to cease promoting it; that future liabilities against
him could result if he continued.
When
the Lord sent me to share that Word with him, I did not know how accurate it
was. It was several years later that I
learned from a physician in Houston that there were many deaths and/or severe
physical consequences resulting from the long-term usage of that product.
In
any case, the warning was not received and it ultimately resulted in division
between us and other families with whom we fellowshipped. Over the course of a year or so, the division
increased and the resulting tension with some of the other families caused them
to come to me and ask if there was some way I could breach the gap and heal the
division.
A
couple more months went by and we were invited to a wedding in which our
erstwhile friend was a participant. In
fact, we were asked if we would spend the night at their home in Seattle (we
lived just out of Spokane at the time) and use that opportunity to try and heal
the breach.
We
agreed. After the wedding, we were
talking in their home and I tried to come up with a way to “fix things.” In the process, I watered down the Word that
the Lord had given me to share. It was a
case of human compassion getting in the way of what God was saying. The Word of warning that God had given was
not given in any way to bring hurt but rather to protect from future
consequences. My feeble attempt at
resolving the issue didn’t work. It may
have mollified things momentarily, but the warning was still there, and it was
real.
(The
real truth of it was that despite my attempt to “fix things” and heal the
breach, it didn’t produce any change in our broken relationship, our erstwhile
friend ignored the warning, and some ten years later died, still in a place of
rebellion against multiple warnings from the Lord.)
That
night when I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep.
I received a stern rebuke from the Lord, the likes of which Nathan, the
prophet, might have delivered to David.
The essence of the Word of the Lord to me was, “How dare you water down
and compromise the Word I’ve given you to deliver? When I give you something to deliver to
someone, you don’t get to try and make it palatable out of your compassion for
them!”
Whewww!! That was one sleepless night. I felt the anger of the Lord, but at the same
time I felt His mercy when I repented and vowed to never again alter
in any way the Word He gave me to deliver to someone. Della and I couldn’t wait to get out of there
and get back home.
It
was more than one lesson learned that night, but once again I saw and
experienced the mercy of the Lord. It is
this kind of repeated thing that occurs in our lives that brings us to the
place where God’s mercy becomes our mercy.
We'll
stop for today and continue next week.
For those of you
who’ve been participating in our Monday night Healing Prayer Conference Call,
we just want to let you know that beginning with the month of July and
continuing until the first Monday night in October, we will be taking a break
for the summer. We’ve found during the
past three years of doing this call that participation during the summer months
drops significantly because of folks taking their vacations, and being involved
in other activities. That said, we will
resume our prayer calls on Monday night, October 2nd.
At the same time, in
case you are missing out on real fellowship in an environment of Ekklesia, our
Sunday worship gatherings are available by conference call – usually at about
10:45AM Pacific. That conference number
is (712) 770-4160, and the access code is 308640#. We are now making these gatherings
available by Skype. If you wish to
participate by video on Skype, my Skype ID is regner.capener. If you miss the live voice call, you can dial
(712) 770-4169, enter the same access code and listen in
later. The video call, of course, is not
recorded – not yet, anyway.
Blessings
on you!
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Temple, Texas 76504
Email Contact:
CapenerMinistries@protonmail.com
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