David’s moments of shame

King David’s short but sincere confession of sin teaches us that when a man has fallen his words should be few lest he adds to his original sin verbal sin; for in a multitude of words sin is not lacking.
But his sweet confession was not immediate for he had attempted to cover up the first sin of sexual adultery by plotting the murder of Uriah. Knowing that all his sins lay bare before the all-seeing eye of God his heart continued to smite him for his moral blunders until the messenger of God, Nathan, approached him with a parabolic rebuke for his sins.
Seeing that his sins were no longer a secret to man, David confronted and confessed his sin as recorded in the opening scripture.
Admitting sin is one of man’s most difficult assignments in life; yet admission is the ignition power to change.
Sometimes it takes a mentor, a trusted friend or messenger of God to probe the depth of our hearts to expose the deep-seated sin before we acknowledge it.
David needed Nathan to point out his error in the Bathsheba affair. He also had Gad, the seer, to convict him of his mistake of placing his confidence in the national army instead of relying on God. Who do you have?
To every man great or small, holy or wicked, intelligent or otherwise comes the moments of shame. Only do not allow your moment of shame become a monument of shame that stands permanently.
Do not allow shame to lead you to self-condemnation but to conviction of sin and repentance. Man’s natural instinct is to cover the sin. And covering the sin can make you hardened in sin because lack of exposure of sin robs you of the shame necessary to deter you from sinning again.
Now if you fall and have no one to rebuke you, then you may never rise again. Our fear is not that we will ever sin and displease God but that we may never rise from our falling.
And our glory is not in never-falling but in rising up when gravity of sin pulls us down. The remedy of falling is rising up again for the scripture records that a righteous man falls seven times and rises seven times and afterwards he will gain stability.
Why do we attempt to cover our sin in the first place? It is because we do not want to be put to shame. Why do we want to avoid shame? Exposure of sin makes us look like little boys.
We have CVs, status, positions of honour to protect. David had a beautiful CV to protect. He was the greatest of the kings of Israel. He was one of the prominent figures in the history of the world; a mountain peak among the Bible characters.
He was the most famous ancestor of Christ. Christ was not called the son of Abraham or of Jacob but of David. He was the man after God’s own heart. So for him to admit sin would betray the integrity of his name, kingship and the title man of God.
But these things are not protected after  failure; they are protected before. After falling, shame must run its full course so we can repent, confess and forsake sin. Shame is, contrary to our thinking, a friend. When it comes it leads us back to our senses.
A shameless person can go beyond the reach of the redemptive arm of grace but a shameful one is always within the circle of redemptive grace.
Seasons or moments of shame usually come just after exposure of our sin. And yielding to temptation is the ancestor of shame. We must by all means guard against sinning. Sin is any thought, word, action, omission, contrary to the law of God. It is missing the mark, wandering from a marked-out path of uprightness and honour, doing or going wrong.
However, no matter how hard we can guard against sin we will still fail sooner or later. God, in His great wisdom, has already given us a remedy for sin — the sinless blood of Jesus Christ. But the holy blood will only cleanse sin that has been confessed. Sin that is being cherished or harboured in the heart will not be forgiven or cleansed. It has to be acknowledged, confessed and forsaken as David did in order for the divine pardon to be given.
Let us not pass the blame on others as Adam did or give many excuses as Saul did but let us follow the great King David who was humble and penitent
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