Abuse of Power
Sermon by Rev. Steven McClelland on 2 Samuel 11: 1 – 15; 12: 1 – 15. Focus on King David’s abuse of power and how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Be sure to listen to Alex Pikarsky’s solo: How Great Thou Art.
Having battled for years to secure his kingdom David is finally granted rest by the Lord from all his enemies and the kingdom of Israel is at its political and geographic pinnacle. Never again will Israel be this large in terms of land or power. From here it will be a slow but stead decline into exile.
All because of David’s sin – A sin that inevitably comes from unchecked power and pride! The sin of coveting, leads to the sin of adultery, leads to the sin of murder, leads to the decline and exile of Israel.
- Therefore the issue before us is one of actions and consequences. It applies to the greatest but it affects all of us.
In 2008 the western world’s financial community had a complete melt down. Not since 1929 has anything like this happened. Our political leaders, who for years boasted about the self-evident benefits of light-touch regulation, had to sink billions of dollars into the world banking system to keep it from collapsing.
On April 18, 2011 the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 650 page report concerning its two-year investigation entitled: “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse”, and it concluded that the financial crash and ensuing recession were the result of systemic fraud and deception on the part of the mortgage lenders and banks, carried out with the collusion of the credit rating corporations and the complicity of the government and its regulatory agencies.
As the executive summary stated: “The investigation found that the crisis was not a natural disaster, but the result of high-risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street.”
Notice. No mention of people like us for one simple reason – we don’t have the power or the money. But we are now fighting among ourselves because the sins of the bankers, and the regulatory agencies and the politicians became our sins too. We wanted to borrow as if there would never be a day of reckoning, which leads to a lack of justice, which leads to our decline.
Nick Mathiason, a reporter for The London Observer, predicted on Saturday December 27, 2008 “The ramifications of the Banking Collapse will not be measured in years, but in the decades.”
- So the prophet’s job – Nathan’s job – is to get the king to take responsibility for his actions. And Nathan’s Method is to tell a story of a rich and poor farmer.
There’s something about stories that work so much better than a frontal assault, and the best stories we have to share are the ones that have come from our lives. When we share our stories especially stories of where we have fallen short we remind ourselves of our capacity for self deception, the idea that I can have whatever I want no matter what.
And because of this story David pronounces his own sentence: “As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die. He must make restitution for the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and had no compassion.” (vs. 12: 5 – 6) The problem for Nathan is that as king David has no one over him except God. He is the final authority over his kingdom. In short, he can do as he wants by human standards, but he cannot do what he wants by God’s standards.
I like how the great theologian Karl Barth puts it when he writes of David and the Bible’s standards of morality.
In the Bible the chief consideration is not the doings of man, but the doings of God… Not the unfolding fruition of love as we may understand it, but the existence and out pouring of eternal love, of love as God understands it, not industry, honesty and helpfulness as we may practice them in our old ordinary world, but the establishment and growth of a new world, a world in which God and His morality reign.
In the light of this coming world a David is a great man in spite of his adultery and bloody sword… Into this world publicans and the harlots will go before your impeccably elegant and righteous folk of good society. In this world the true hero is the lost son who is absolutely lost, feeding swine and not his moral elder brother…
We may say, ‘I do not need this. I do not desire it. It tells me nothing. I cannot get anywhere with it…’ If we read the Bible carefully it heads straight for the point where we must decide to accept or to reject the sovereignty of God.
As Isaiah reminded Israel, “The ways of God and not the ways of man.” God makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike. God allows the wheat and chaff to grow together.
From beginning to end the Bible shows us a God who picks the cowards, the scoundrels, the cheats, the murderers, the prostitutes, the sinners to be the bearers of God’s will and word.
That said it also is true that David suffers the consequences of his actions and in the end David loses two sons and his kingdom. And yet David is regarded as Israel’s greatest king.
- Which raises the question why is David a role model for us today?
In 1 Kings 15: 5 it says this: “David did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, expect in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.”
What he did that was right was to take responsibility for his actions and own up to them. How different would it be today if our leaders and politicians took responsibility for there actions the way David did?
- What makes David great is what makes all of us potentially great! Owning up to our stuff, repenting of it and changing it. Amen
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