The ravages of sin were brought to the full in David and dispelled by the touch of the Spirit of God forever. In Adam and Eve you had the immediate beginnings of sin as murder in all of its ugliness appears on the scene. By the time you get to David you have the sophistications of the human capacity for treachery and self-gratification. In his sin with Bathsheba, David not only slakes his own thirst for evil, but savages the simple people around him. How can such a sin go unpunished, how can it avoid total destruction of the sinner? The truth of the matter, of course, is that it did not go unnoticed and did not go unpunished. The tragedy is that it occurred among the most high sovereign leader of God’s people. Can there be any true forgiveness for such high crimes? Once again God comes to the rescue. It was not that such sin was minimized, but rather that the power and grace of God was maximized. In his plea for mercy, David recognizes that there is no sacrifice great enough to handle the heinous nature of the sin, but this is what the whole of the Bible is all about. Can the sin of Adam and Eve ever be recovered? Is the standard God set for His creation too high for God’s recovery? The answer is obviously "no" when we employ the vital life of the Son of God. Nothing less would do. Nothing more was needed. The simple truth was that Christ came to take away sin. He came not just to assuage it, but to take it away—"Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world."

This had been the universal wrestling. God had made the humans in His image and likeness and intended to recover His creation to the full extent of its devastation. He would not ultimately leave desolation upon the earth. He would dispel both Satan and all his works. But it would take thousands of years to do this, not because He did not have the power to do it, but because humans were not ready to recognize their own woeful inadequacy.

Finally comes the Son of God to offer His own life a sacrifice to take away the sin of the world. The Pharisees were always dealing with sin on the outward level—meaning that following the law was adequate and doing such penance as was required. It took two thousand years to finally show that the outer man was merely a form and that the power had to come through the inner man. Nothing less than a rebirth in the Spirit of Christ would do.

David was the prime example of the ultimate requirement of the regeneration of God’s people. He could not get away from his responsibility for sin. He would be the forerunner of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, yet had himself to experience the reorientation of his life. He then became the symbol of the regeneration as outlined in the Pentecostal. experience of the book of Acts.

In his great speech on the day of Pentecost, Peter quotes David and his magnificent Psalm 16—"For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for He is on my right hand, that I should not be moved: therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell neither wilt Thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with Thy countenance" (Acts 2:25-28). With all that David had going for him, nothing was ever adequate apart from the presence of the Holy Spirit within.

David’s recovery was dramatic and thorough. The heinous nature of David’s crime or crimes might have made it seem impossible of recovery. However, in Psalm 51 the nature of David’s prayer shows that he felt forgiven. "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 convened unto Thee" (Psalm 51:7-13). That is the way of the Holy Spirit. When He is involved in our transgressions we find forgiveness from Him. It was the same with Peter who had so heinously denied the Lord in front of the court where Jesus was tried. He went out and wept bitterly. But later when Jesus came to the disciples, walking on the water, Peter was the first to rush to Him ashore, indicating the sense that he really felt forgiven. As David said, sacrifice is not adequate else He would give it. He felt confident that his broken spirit would gain response from the Holy Spirit to him.

David represented the ultimate in the God-oriented man. He was a man of great faith; great heart; great prowess. And yet in the course of his life he too came to grief—broken on the anvil of human inadequacy. There was no way for any human being to be recovered and restored to what God’s original intent was apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat, yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto Me and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto Me: hear, and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and a commander to the people" (Isaiah 55:1-4). David, who was of course, a type of Jesus as prophet, priest and king—failed in a major particular to be the ultimate type. Jesus, of course, was sinless and David was not.

And so God gives us the greatest possible development of human quality; shows us the other inadequacy even so such a one shows the complete recovery as expressed through the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Even the best of humans could not recover themselves and yet the most vile sinner could be completely recovered.

David Morsey

September – December 1995

www.harvestermission.org