Monday message: The cold thing

I am working on a Wednesday Bible Study (T is for, actually) that is bothering me for what I don't understand more than most.  The biggest hurdle for me is that it involves David, a man whose relationship with God I am having to extract piece by stubborn piece to make it make sense to me.  And while I was hoping to do this particular post after The Lord's Prayer series finishes (something I should of done yesterday, but was not prepared), God has hinted to me that I won't get where I am going until I do this first.  So here we go. 

We were studying Psalm 51 on Church- the one where David begs God's forgiveness over the whole Bathsheba and Uriah thing- and Pastor Dennis Miller pointed out something that he found curious- but didn't delve further into- that really threw me.


Psa 51:14  Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. 

There is the confession of the specific sin of setting up Uriah's death.  But the entire confession before God, not one word of the ADULTERY that precipitated it is mentioned.  Is it only David that ignores that part? Well...

2Sa 12:9  Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 

2Sa 12:10  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.' 

This is the prophet Nathan, calling David out for the crime.  And while he mentions Bathsheba, he almost makes it sound like it was just a corollary of the bigger crime, and not its genesis.  And further on...

1Ki 15:5  because David did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. 

"...except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite."  Now this bugs me, because somehow David seems to be getting "off the hook" with God on this.  Not actually, I realize, since he paid for the adultery with the life of the child.  As well as all the other wonderful things that befell him, some of which will be touched on in that future WBS post.  But I have often wondered at the phrase, "a man after God's own heart" which Samuel used to describe David.  With all this crap that he managed to do, outside the will of God, how was he still this man after God's own heart?  And I realize it has to do with the extent of forgiveness, which apparently I have a lot to learn about.  And it was that in nearly everything he did- 99 44/100ths % of it- he was dead faithful to God.  "Except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite."

Why the exception?

Then it came to me.  Any other sin, any other fault, that you can lay at David's feet- including the tryst with Bathsheba, which I have my reasons to believe were more her fault than his- they were from love towards another.. they were warm-blooded sins.  Uriah's death was cold, calculating, and with no thought of love whatsoever.  What David did in heat of love or passion, God didn't get angry at- but the Cold Thing?  THAT he despised.

Which of course made me look at the many Cold Things I had done, and seek forgiveness for them.  Thing is, you can never undo the consequences of the Cold Thing.  It's the sin that lives on in the lives of others.

And that is why David's exception.  And so too mine.