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Sunday, June 15, 2003
Sermon: "The Dirt on David"
Scripture: I Samuel 17: 32-49
Reverend Larry Gerber

A statue in Florence gives us insight into the character of David, a man after God's own heart, who got dirtied by pride and sin. Only confession and repentance could clean him up and restore him to the greatness of the man who was a giant-killer.

There's dirt on David and it's about to come off.

After all, he hasn't had a bath in 130 years.

Michelangelo's world-famous sculpture of David is getting a serious scrubbing these days, courtesy of a group of restorers at the statue's museum-home in Florence, Italy. These cleaners are approaching their work with the care of generals planning a major battle, using ultraviolet light to expose surface chemical deposits, and photographic mapping to show every crack, chip and pockmark. They started their work last December, and should be finished any day now, in plenty of time for David's 500th birthday in the year 2004. So, why is David such a mess? The masterpiece is laden with deposits of dirt and grime from the years he had to stand out-of-doors, 24/7, exposed to billowing smoke and humid weather. He also had to endure lightning strikes and excitable city-dwellers: In 1527, rioters broke off his left arm, the one that holds his sling.

Michelangelo spent three years carving the statue from a single block of marble, from 1501 to 1504, and the finished David was then placed in a public square, where he stood for 369 years. David's one and only bath occurred in 1873, when he was moved into his current home. This was a rather violent scrubbing, however, one that involved the use of a high concentration of hydrochloric acid to dissolve the grime. This time, restorers are much more gentle. using specialized vacuum cleaners and instruments resembling Q-Tips to get at those hard-to-reach places such as the ears.

Crust will be removed, but not all the way down to the marble, since the stains themselves actually provide a kind of protection for the marble below.

This cleaning should help us to appreciate the David that Michelangelo created almost 500 years ago, the statue of a pure and youthful David who bravely killed the mighty Goliath. Which reminds us that the David of today's text was a remarkably clean kid when he faced the giant of the Philistines.

But then he got soiled, sullied and stained — soiled by selfishness, sullied by sin and stained by passion and pride. Only confession and repentance could get rid of the dirt on David and restore him to the greatness of the man who had once been a giant-killer. He started out as a model for Michelangelo: a model of youthful purity and strength. But over the course of his life, he went through a series of failures and restorations that turned him into a different kind of model: a model for God. He became a man after God's own heart.

The restoration project in Florence will be spectacular, but still not as massive as the earlier version in ancient Israel. In our story, a mere kid becomes a giant-killer. It's an amazing triumph, and a shining example of David's faith in the power of God. But David's words and actions do not remain quite so clean and pure. It doesn't take long for the dirt to fall on the David of Bethlehem as it would later stain the David of Florence.

After Saul's death, David becomes king over all Israel, and he comes to the peak of his royal powers. But as his victories over the Philistines and other external enemies accumulate, his personal life begins to crash and burn. He has an adulterous affair with a married woman that leads to a pregnancy. He arranges for the murder of her husband.

Today, the man would be in prison for life with no possibility of parole. In Texas, he might be in the Huntsville Correctional Facility sitting on death row waiting for a lethal injection.

This behavior leads in turn to the judgment of God, and — in what would seem to us a sort of bizarre justice — the death of the child produced by this illicit union. David loses control of his family and watches as turmoil erupts among his children, with one son raping a daughter and another son committing murder to avenge her violation. David's son Absalom rebels and a civil war breaks out, a conflict that leads tragically to the defeat and death of Absalom — sordid chapters that amount to a biblical version of the Jerry Springer show.

It's a sad tale. Sex and violence and vengeance and self-destructive ambition — it's a mud-slinging family meltdown in which everyone comes out of the mess looking dirty, especially David. The good news is that David owned up to his misdeeds. Psalm 51 is a record of his impassioned plea for forgiveness.

So what can we say about all of this? The story of the dirt on David is a cautionary tale for all of us who are now Spirit- filled giant-killers. We're walking with God. We're armed against our spiritual foes with the weapons of faith. What gives us pause is that there isn't any one of us who is not vulnerable to the explosive effects of temptation, the seductive power of pride and any number of other sins. If it were all so simple! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the exiled Russian novelist, writes, "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

We don't see an evil young man in our text. Yet he was vulnerable and indeed succumbed to terrible crimes. Even in the moments of greatness for David as well as for us, lay the seeds of contamination, the potential for disaster. He might not have known then, as the giant fell to the ground, but we have no excuse for not knowing that in our hearts there are spiritual weapons of mass destruction.

What to do? We ask as David asked for God to search our hearts (Psalm 139:23). Do we need to be spiritually probed with Q-Tips, bathed in acids and soaps in a rigorous, vigorous cleansing operation? Probably — yes.

Then, are we willing to submit to the nature of this cleansing? David realizes this, even in the midst of his sinfulness, and his hunger for divine forgiveness is what makes him a man after God's own heart. "I have sinned greatly in what I have done," David confesses to God. "But now, O LORD, I pray you, take away the guilt of your servant" (2 Samuel 24:10). David realizes that he can never cleanse himself completely on his own — he needs the forgiveness of the Lord. Even as a mighty king, at the peak of his personal power, David is profoundly aware that he needs an even greater power to be at work in his life to remove the crushing burden of his guilt.

David trusts in God, even in his darkest hour. "Have mercy on me, O God," he pleads, after his affair with Bathsheba has been revealed, "according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin" (Psalm 51:1-2). For the David of Holy Scripture, cleansing is not going to come from specialized vacuum cleaners or instruments resembling Q-Tips. It is going to come only from the steadfast love and abundant mercy of God. "For I know my transgressions," he admits, "and my sin is ever before me."

There is no kingly cover-up being attempted here, no effort to pass the buck or spin the truth. "[I have] sinned, and done what is evil in your sight," confesses David, "so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment" (vv. 3-4). He is painfully aware that his moral dirt-removal has to begin with an honest confession of his sins. The scrubbing continues with repentance — with David's willingness to make a change for the better because of sorrow for his sins. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me," he pleads. "Then I will teach transgressors your ways," he promises, "and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance" (vv. 10, 13-14).

David realizes that it is not simply trust in God that leads to forgiveness, nor even trust combined with confession. Repentance is also required — repentance that includes a change of heart, a complete about-face and a desire to walk in the way of the Lord.

Trust. Confession. Repentance. These are the tools that transformed a dirty David into a restored and completely cleansed child of God. They are what restored this king to his earlier glory, to the condition he enjoyed as a giant-killer, pure and clean in body, mind and spirit. The David of our story — young, pure and innocent — is also the David who was capable of grossly disobedient behavior and misconduct.

The dirt on David was removed, thanks to the love and mercy of God. And we can be scrubbed clean in the very same way.

Let us pray..........

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766