just a small slice of bread. We're going to cut off today. Second Samuel chapter 12 and verses 24 and 25. Then David comforted Bathsheba, his wife and went into her and lay with her. So she bore a son and he called his name Solomon. Now the Lord loved him and he sent word by the hand of Nathan, the prophet. So he called his name Jedidiah because of the Lord. Father, we thank you for this, your word, and it is our desire to understand it in the full scope of your redemptive history. Help us, Father, to live it out. Help us to be a church that lives out the transforming grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen. Back in 2011, I told you how Sir Edwin Lancer, the famous painter painted his first painting on a wall. The situation was that he had gone to this inn where he was eating some breakfast, I believe it was, and one of the fishermen at the next table was gesticulating as he was describing a story to his friends and one of the times he was moving his hands it knocked the teacup out of the waitress's hand and it splashed against the newly whitewashed wall creating a dark stain there, broke the teacup. And this fisherman was extremely apologetic, just profusely apologizing, was humiliated over this. And Lancier, who was in the table next door, witnessed the big kerfluff. He said, hey, let me see if I can make something beautiful out of this. And after getting permission, he made this beautiful royal elk out of, I believe it was India ink that he used, some kind of ink. And I was looking for that illustration because I thought that's exactly the illustration I want to use today. And when I was looking, I discovered, well, that's not the only time that he did a wall painting. There's a guy by the name of J. Stuart Holton who has a little summer cottage up in the highlands of Scotland. And he said the mansion next to him has a room in it where the walls are absolutely covered with sketches that have been done by various prominent artists down through time. And apparently it was this Sir Edwin Lancier who made the first sketch on that wall this time. It was some soda that was on the wall and he used the outline of that soda to make a beautiful waterfall bordered by trees and Scottish wildlife. So there you go. He had two ugly stains turned into beautiful paintings. And I want you to keep that those two images in your mind as we go through the sermon. The first image years ago actually was an image that has kept me from being discouraged by my past, letting the past get me down. And I hope that these are images that will stick with you as well. I think most of us have had times in our lives where we've done something that when we think about it we're tempted to just cringe and just feel horrible about our past and we are so thankful that any new people that we've gotten to know don't know anything about that past event in our lives. And it's interesting that David did not take that perspective. We have already seen in Psalms 38 and 51 and actually the other Psalms he wrote during this time He actually tells other people about his sin. He gets these psalms to the chief musicians so that the whole congregation can sing about the sins of David and, of course, the glories of God's grace that covered over those sins as well. and enabled him to look at that sin without cringing in absolute shame. Rather than feeling sick every time he saw the stain on the wall of his life, David used it as an opportunity to glory and to magnify God's grace. And some of you, I think, need to learn to do that because you still have that cringing and that sense of paralysis from things you've done in your past. What Jesus did for David was on display for anyone who visited the proverbial mansion of his life to look at. And as he said in Psalm 51, Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners shall be converted to you It was realizing what God had done to the stain of his life That made him such a good counselor of other sinners He went on to say in that psalm Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation. And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offering. In other words, God doesn't want you beating up on yourself, constantly cringing, being paralyzed over your past, maybe for the hundredth time, confessing a sin that you've already confessed numerous times before. He says He didn't take delight in that. That's like slaying the same sacrifice over and over and over again. That's not what God is about. He wants you to get on with life. And so this passage we're going to be looking at in 2 Samuel chapter 12, is a passage where David is getting back up on his feet, he's moving on, and he's making something beautiful and God-glorifying out of his stain. Sort of like the friend that I mentioned, I think I mentioned her last week, who had had an abortion, but God's grace had done such a beautiful work even over that sin that she has been used by God to bring healing and hope To many women who were like her just like David has brought healing and hope to countless people down through the years through the five psalms that he wrote During this period of his life. So each phrase in this these two verses here what we're gonna do we're gonna be pulling together some of the the thoughts in the five psalms that he wrote during this period and Try to apply it to our life And I think each phrase is really illustrated beautifully in those psalms of how God brought beauty out of ashes how he brought a painting out of an ugly stain. Now verse 24 records the first stroke that God the master painter painted onto the ugliness of David's sin. It says then David comforted Bathsheba. Now prior to chapter 12 David had really used Bathsheba. And when he was done with her, he sent her back to her home. It was lust. It was not love that David had displayed toward her. He used her and he dumped her, so to speak. And in my estimation, chapter 11 is as selfish a stain of sin as you could possibly get in any person's life. And for men who have had ugly sexual lifestyles in their past, this is a chapter that I think can bring hope in their lives that they can change. They can change by God's grace and God can make them into trophies of grace. And really in the first verses, of chapter 12 that we've already looked at in the past is showing the beginnings of God's grace at work in David's life as David now for the first time in quite a number of months is showing more concern about the life of another person than he is concerned about his own life. He wept and wept over what he had done to this poor baby. We saw before that it's probable that we can't prove it that the disease that the baby had is probably the same venereal disease that David had and perhaps there were other diseases that were involved here and David felt so bad for that baby He wept he prayed he interceded that God would heal this child and based on the Psalms that David wrote those first verses show that God had begun to do a work of grace in his life moving him from selfishness to and moving him into ministry and care for others. Well this verse shows the same ministry and care for Bathsheba that he had shown for that child. And I believe that the Psalms indicate that God had comforted David to the point where he was fully equipped to be able to do so. And let me explain what I mean. We've already seen the hell that David went through in the previous week. He had suffered horrible guilt, alienation from God, alienation and disgust from family members over his smelly venereal disease, possibly other diseases, but especially the crime that he had committed. Psalm 38 indicates that his family hated him for what he had done. And you can hardly blame them. David was in the pit of misery. And during this week, God helped David to process through that agony via five Psalms. It's Psalm 6, 32, 38, 51, and 103. And when you read through those Psalms, you see that God had done such a work in David's life that God had brought healing both to his body and to his soul. God didn't heal the baby, but he does seem to have healed David. And I'm not going to give an exposition in this series of Psalm 103, but I do want to read just a snippet from that psalm to show how deeply grateful David was to God for what he had done. Let me read you just a little bit of it. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your iniquities. And what a marvelous phrase that is. who heals all your diseases. And that too is a marvelous phrase. Who redeems your life from destruction. Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. Who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. And commentators say that this psalm was likely composed during the time frame of the latter part of this chapter. I imagine David being given inspiration to write that psalm on the day that he washed himself, got a new pair of clothing, went into the temple and worshipped in verse 20. I can imagine that all five Psalms formed a theological and a pastoral basis for him to be able to wash his wife with the water of the word and to bring true comfort to her. But in any case, David was uniquely enabled to bring comfort because he had learned how to gain comfort by God's grace. And here's how Paul words it in 2 Corinthians 1 verse 4. who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. You see, apart from the dark stain of chapter 11, David would never have known the depths of God's mercy or seen the beauty of God's painting in his life. And while I have in past sermons given you every reason in the book why we need to avoid anything that even remotely will lead us to the sin that David engaged in, It was because he had gone through this that David has been able to minister to people deeply in ways that no one else Perhaps could do certainly in Bathsheba's life This was true out of the ashes of his selfishness God raised up an attitude of ministry and care that as psalm 51 words that would enable him to teach transgressors God's ways okay, the second thing that we see in these verses is that is that God redeemed an unlawful marriage and enabled David to bring something good out of an absolute mess. And really this is something that we have got to understand if we're going to be able to reach out effectively to a messed up culture. And actually any culture. My parents were missionaries for thirty years in Ethiopia. and uh the first station that they went to i was there they planted the first church that was there and i tell you that church was filled with some pretty messed up people uh people that would make our family integrated churches just a little bit nervous i mean there were men there that had three and four wives what do you do with that i mean obviously they're disqualified from being elders they couldn't be elders but my parents integrated them into the church and ministered in their lives to enable them to have children who would not repeat their sins, who would not be as messed up as the parents were. So they brought them in. My parents simply could not ignore the messy issues that this chapter addresses. And I think as our society progresses in its downhill slide, we as a church cannot ignore the messy issues that we're going to be looking at this morning. And here's the point. God's grace can make something good out of even the stains of unlawful marriages. Now let's think about that. Churches that reject people because they've got unlawful divorces and unlawful marriages are never going to be effective in reaching our culture and doing what that last song that we sang is all about. Now I in no way want to communicate that because God can bring a beautiful painting out of a stain that we should just think of stains as being not that important. Oh well, I'll just ask God's forgiveness. No, no, no, no. We've seen in the past the absolute disastrous consequences that came out of David's sin, not just in his life, but for his descendants as well. And again, we've seen that we have to, it's imperative that we avoid the marital problems that David saw. But can God paint something beautiful when a sinful marriage has already happened? Yes He can. And I want you to see the significance of the next two words in the text. The next two words are His wife. Now to understand the significance of that we need to back up a little bit. We need to ask the question was David's marriage to Bathsheba a horrible sin? And we saw in a previous sermon, yes, it was. We gave a number of reasons why he should never have married Bathsheba. Yes, he should have owned up to his sin. He should have given financial support to her. He should have supported the baby. But he should not have married her. And in fact God was so offended by the marriage that even though David had already been married to Bathsheba in chapter 11 and Had been married to her almost eight months Take a look at what verse 15 says it calls her Uriah's wife. It's very interesting says in the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bore to David and it became ill and Now that's not by accident that it's calling her, Uriah's wife, eight months after he's married her. In God's eyes, she should not have been David's wife. It was a sinful marriage. There was nothing about that marriage that was good. Okay? It was a marriage based on adultery and polygamy and a cover-up of sin. As far as God was concerned, she should have still been Uriah's wife, even though he was dead, of course. And even apart from the earlier adultery, Jesus would have described this as being an adulterous marriage. He would have described it as not being legitimate. But with David's repentance, a whole new chapter opened up on their marriage. God himself calls David's marriage to her. something that transcends that adultery as it were. He declares her to be David's wife. Though David's polygamy is clearly called a sin in Deuteronomy 17, kings were not supposed to have more than one wife. Okay? It was a sin for him to have done that. Yet God was able to redeem and regulate such marriages, even though they had been entered into unlawfully. And those two words, his wife, I think, bring hope and comfort to people who have started off with unlawful marriages. There are a lot of divorces in America that should never have happened. A lot of remarriages in America that should never have happened. And so what do you do when those kind of people come into your church? What you do is you draw them into God's painting parlor and you help them in this process of having God's grace make a painting out of that stain. And it shouldn't have happened in the first place, okay, but God is making something beautiful out of something that should not have happened. Even though we don't have a lot of polygamy in America, we certainly have a lot of serial polygamy. We have all kinds of other things like marriages of believers to unbelievers that should never have happened. Sinfully entered but permanent. And so while the laws of harvest that we looked at before are still going to bring negative consequences even when there is forgiveness. And I think verse 14 makes that crystal clear. God's law seeks to minimize those negative consequences, and God's grace enables such marriages to still be vehicles of His healing work. Now, unfortunately, some Christians have become so legalistic on this issue, or what Ecclesiastes would describe as overly righteous, that means going beyond the law of God, that they want the stain to remain permanent. They don't want any of us painting God's grace onto that stain. For example, Bill Gothard, as much as I appreciate a lot of the things that he has done, has created havoc with divorced and remarried couples. Though already married to a second spouse, and sinfully married, granted. He mandates that those people divorce the second spouse and remarry the first spouse, something that the law of God so clearly says is a sin and an evil and an abomination. I just don't understand how he can do this. But he has made people do that numerous times. So listen to Deuteronomy 24 and what the law of God says on this. When a man takes a wife and marries her and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, when she has departed from his house and goes and becomes another man's wife, If the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as his wife, then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled. For that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance." Jeremiah 3 says the same thing, even if it was a A lawful marriage to a second, whether it's lawful or not lawful, it doesn't matter. You cannot go back to the first spouse. So beyond contradicting Gothard's legalism, that passage indicates that God's law makes provision for the messiness of life and regulates the messiness of life, though it indicates, hey, there are limits beyond which you could not go. And there's a lot of other limits that scripture lays out. For example, if you married your stepmother, which I can't imagine people doing, but they did it, Old Testament, he said, man, you've got to divorce that woman right now. And you've got to leave her, leave the relationship right now, even before the divorce happens. And Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Same would go for any incestuous relationship, any homosexual marriage. You leave it right now, even if legally you have to get a divorce. So there is limits to which God's law regulates the messiness of life. But Deuteronomy 24 indicates that even though David had defiled Bathsheba, even though he should never have married her in the first place, pregnant or not, and we looked at that. Once he sinfully married her, he now had responsibilities toward her that he could not throw off. And so I want you to get it. This is God inspired this narrative here. It's God himself who calls her his wife. Okay, that's God's opinion. It's now a marriage contrary to the opinion of Gothard and many other people. It is a marriage according to God's opinion. But David's marriage to yet another wife illustrates a similar messy problem that Christians have had to deal with in Africa and that's polygamy. Now there are a number of agencies in Africa who have gone way beyond the word of God and they have forced a polygamous man to divorce all the wives except for his first wife. And this has left these women in a horrible, vulnerable position, many of them having to engage in prostitution to even survive because they had no one to take care of them. It's just not consistent with the Old Testament or the New Testament. In the New Testament, Paul says polygamists can't be elders. Well, what does that imply? It implies there were people who engaged in polygamy within the church of Jesus Christ. It was a sin and God was going to disciple them out of that, but they still were welcomed in. Now, the next two phrases illustrate a better way to deal with yet another sticky issue related to polygamy. One mission agency in Africa is a little bit better than the previous ones that I mentioned. They cared for those women. And they mandated that the polygamist man had to set up a house for each of his second, third, and fourth wives, had to provide food and clothing, financial support, but that he could not engage in any kind of Romance, any kind of sexual intimacy with his second, third, and fourth wives. But that too left the poor wives, again, very disadvantaged. And often the marriage, the first marriage in this country that a 20-year-old or an 18, 19-year-old would enter into was to somebody who was 20 to 40 years older than them. It was like a forced marriage for the political gain of their parents. It was just an absolute mess any way that you looked at it. But think about the women in this situation. Even though they were financially cared for, even though there was some room that was made for painting some beauty into their lives, God's law about providing for the emotional and the sexual needs of the second and third wives was ignored. And so this too is a form of legalism. The next phrase in verse 24 addresses that point as well. God's grace changed the adultery into legitimate relations between husband and wife. Now it does appear from Psalm 38 that David was in the doghouse with all of his other wives and his children. And you can definitely understand that. And so Those two were able to care for and minister to each other while David sought to repair the other relations that he had destroyed. And from the Psalms I really do believe that he was trying to work on his other marriages. and take responsibility for this one. Verse 24 says, then David comforted Bathsheba his wife and went into her and lay with her. Now again, was David's sin to Bathsheba, I mean marriage to Bathsheba sin? We say yes. Deuteronomy 17 made it very clear husband, kings were not supposed to multiply wives to themselves. But once the marriage had happened, what was David's responsibility? Well, the law of God, again, makes it very clear that he was responsible to nurture her, to provide food and clothing for her, and to minister to her sexually. Exodus 21 10 says, if he takes another wife, he shall not withhold her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. Now, if a polygamous man took Exodus 21 verse 10 seriously at all, he would be one worn out man. because he would be responsible for providing for all of these wives ministering to them and anybody who studied polygamy knows it's virtually impossible to do satisfactorily. Another good reason to stay away from polygamy. But my main point is that life is messy and yet like the two stains on the wall that Sir Edwin Lancer turned into beauty, We can look to God to bring some degree of beauty out of messed up marriages that we're progressively going to be seeing more and more and more of in America. There's no reason to let yet another marriage go sour. We should let them make something out of the stain and turn it into a painting. So the Bible gives consequences for sin, but it also gives some beauty for ashes. The fourth area of David's life that was painted by the brush of God's grace was in giving and in loving a new son from that messed up relationship. Verse 24, so she bore a son and he called his name Solomon. Now the Lord loved him. God did not curse all of her offspring. He opened up her womb. He gave her a special son whom it says He loved. Now earlier He had comforted David with the first child that had already died with the knowledge that that child would be in paradise. Here He comforts David and Bathsheba by letting them know that He loves this child. In fact, he goes to all of the extra effort of sending a prophet. He says, Now the Lord loved him and he sent word by the hand of Nathan the prophet. So he called his name Jedidiah because of the Lord. Now this would have been such a comfort to not only David and Bathsheba but also to Solomon as he grew up. When you're the child of a less than ideal union It's very easy to feel unloved. This was the problem with Jephthah in the book of Judges. He had developed an orphan spirit because nobody in his family cared for him. They treated him with disrespect. Solomon may have received persecution from his other brothers. Psalm 38 makes clear that the rest of the family was absolutely disgusted with David and Bathsheba. And he may have grown up with at least some of these brothers and sisters kind of stiff-arming Solomon himself. Certainly David cried out in anguish in one of his Psalms here. My loved ones and My friends stand aloof from My plague, and My relatives stand afar off. And given the strong attitudes that his family had toward David and Bathsheba in Psalm 38, I think it would be very, very easy for the three of them to allow those attitudes to make them feel I'm a stain. I'm a blot. I'm useless. There's nothing that I can do that will be pleasing to others. It would have been so easy for that to filter into Bathsheba's sense of self-worth as Solomon grew up, for it to factor into his lack of self-worth. But they now know God loved them. God loved this child. In fact, verse 25, has, as I mentioned, God even putting it into prophetic form. And this is an incredible comfort to the children of criminals and the offspring of fornication and of incest and survivors of botched abortions or other parental relationships that just are not good relationships. I've known adults who have taken on their parents' sins as if it is their identity. and as if it means that they are second-class citizens. They're Jephthahs in effect. They just cannot come to any grips with their life being having God's approval. In fact, they desperately long for the approval of others. And if you're one of those people who desperately longs for approval from others, let me remind you that it's God's opinion of you and God's love of you that should really drive your life. And Ed Welch's book, When People are Big and God is Small, I think can help you to sort through that. Now the fifth gift from the stroke of God's paintbrush was that the turmoil that resulted was finally replaced with peace. And David named his son appropriately Solomon. Now Solomon is pronounced in the Hebrew Shalomon. and it means His peace. Commentators are divided. Does the His refer to David's peace or does it refer to God's peace? And I really can't settle that question for you this morning. But either way, it doesn't matter, the name speaks of the depth to which God's paintbrush of grace was at work. The dictionary amplifies on the meaning of this shalom or this peace by saying that it means, quote, completion and fulfillment of entering into a state of wholeness and unity a restored relationship. And isn't that exactly what David was longing for in the Psalms that he wrote during this time? He was longing for that wholeness, that restoring of relationship with God. He prayed, Lord, give me your shalom, and God granted it. He was praying for shalom with his wives and his children. And whether he got it, how soon he got it, we don't know. But the Psalms seem to indicate David was certainly going to be working seriously on that. Shlomo refers to the reversal of all that was lost in the fall, and it can include wholeness of body, soul, relationships, and fulfillment. To me, it's just a beautiful testimony to the fact that God delights in bringing beauty out of ashes and a painting out of a stain. Now because Solomon stands as a symbol or a type of the Lord Jesus Christ in the book of 1 Kings, it is possible that it has a messianic reference here. Now certainly several of the commentators believe that it has a messianic overtone here. And if that is the case, then what's going on here is pointing to Jesus. It would ultimately be through Jesus that the ugliness of David's marriage stain would find some beauty. It was through the final Solomon, Jesus, that David would receive forgiveness and cleansing and restoration that we looked at in Psalm 51 last week. It would be through the shalom of Jesus that judgment could be replaced with favor. Now the final stroke of God's brush is the name Jedidiah. Commentators point out that Jedidiah has the same Hebrew root as David. It might not look like it, but in the Hebrew it definitely is. David means beloved and Jedidiah means beloved of Yahweh, okay? And as one commentator said, its connection to his father's name hints at the fact that Solomon Jedidiah would become the successor to his father David. Now, if that is true, then it indicates that covenant succession is what is being talked about here, the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant, that God would not cut off his blessing. And so to me, this is so encouraging. Covenant succession can happen even in messed up families, okay? Covenant succession can happen even when the marriage did not start off as being lawful. Now obviously the sins are visited to the third and fourth generation as well. And Solomon picks up the sin of polygamy and you see other kings who do the same thing. So yes there's bad things that are passed on. But praise God where that happens to the third and fourth generation God's graces go to a thousand generations of those who love Him. And so this I think hints at covenant succession. So even though it's a tiny little passage I think it points to the fact that God delights in bringing beauty out of ugliness. He loves to turn what Satan used and intended to absolutely destroy David and Bathsheba into something that actually strengthened David and Bathsheba. Made them cling to Christ the stronger. Made them more committed to Him. Now in conclusion I want to remind you of three lessons that I gave to you back in 2010 when we began this whole series with the genealogy in Matthew. And I think that these three applications are tightly knit together with this passage that we've been looking at. First of all, Matthew, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, made it unmistakably clear by the names that he emphasized that Christ does not just associate with people who have it all put together, okay? Instead, we find that He is a friend of publicans and sinners. You look in the gospels. You see that Jesus welcomed into His inner circle a lady who was a former prostitute, right? He was not ashamed to associate with the worst of men and women because that was the whole purpose of Him dying, coming to the earth and to die on their behalf. And so the genealogy leading up to David was preparing Him to depend upon the Messiah alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. David knew that if God withdrew His grace for even a moment, he would be in deep trouble. He's experienced it in this chapter. And so he learned to hunger for God, to depend upon God. And so the stories leading up to David, as well as his own experience in this chapter, made David look to the coming Messiah for his security, for his righteousness. And so the first names in that genealogy taught us, like this passage does, God turns unbelievably ugly stains into paintings that we treasure, into treasures of grace. And if God welcomed the Davids and the Bathshebas of this world into His kingdom, we need to welcome the Davids and Bathshebas of this world into this church, even if they look different, even if they make us somewhat uncomfortable. In fact, I've invited a friend of Joel's and told him, invite your whole motorcycle gang to our church. It's Christian Bikers Association. But some of these guys are former Hells Angels. They're covered with tattoos. They look different. They wear their leathers and everything. And brothers and sisters, when they come here, if they come here, I want you to give them a warm welcome, okay? I want you to say, welcome, brothers. We're so thankful. They're doing some awesome ministries in the pro-life arena. They're doing some awesome things. working, trying to witness to prostitutes. And one of these guys has a special ministry to women who are trying to rescue them out of prostitution. Some of these girls have been kidnapped, so to speak. And there's other neat things that they're involved in. So give them a warm welcome even if they look different than we do. Anyway, that's the first lesson. A second lesson that we learned from the genealogy from David to the exile was how much trouble David's polygamy led to. It led to a lot of problems, obviously one of them being that some of his sons, grandsons, great-grandsons thought polygamy was an okay thing to do. After all, Grandpa David did it and he's a man after God's own heart. Why can't I engage in polygamy? And we saw how critical it was that men be one-woman men and women be one-man women, okay? We saw how critical it was to take seriously courtship and to prayerfully be praying for a godly spouse Be preparing yourself to be the best spouse that you can be before you even get married over half of David's descendants from the time of David to the time of the exile. Over half of them had messed up lives. Why? Because they had adopted some of the same problems such as being driven more by romantic attractions than biblical blueprints. They had some of the same problems that led to David's sin in this chapter. But we saw God's grace went through all of that even though sometimes it was shining pretty faintly. And so our actions do have consequences. Do not take the sermon as an excuse that, you know, that because God turned stains into something beautiful as an excuse for sin and saying, oh well, sin's not that important. It is disastrous. The last lesson that I want to remind you of from 2010 as that we should strive with all of our might to lay up a spiritual heritage for our children's children in covenant succession as successfully as we can possibly do it. The men in David's line after the exile had finally learned the valuable lesson of covenant succession. And you all know what covenant succession is, right? That means passing the faith on to your children, to the next generation, and next, and next without any stop. It's not enough to be a good guy like David and then lose your family. The men in the last section of Matthew's genealogy learned from their ancestors you cannot take your children for granted. They learned what a disaster it is to have multiple lives and they abstained from polygamy. They learned how important it is to take care of your own household before you try to fix culture. David was so intent on fixing culture he neglected his own family. He did not give the discipline that he should have. They learned how important it is to catch the hearts of your children before they grow up. They learned the power of God's grace to make generation after generation of godly descendants. Now David longed for that, but he messed up so bad, not just with the polygamy, but his failure to discipline and nurture his children that he didn't see it as effectively in the next generations as he could have. So strive with all your might to lay up a spiritual heritage for your children, not just having lots of children. So the bottom line from this passage is that God can make an ugly stain into a beautiful painting of God's grace, but it's better to avoid the stains in the first place. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word, the warnings that it gives, the encouragements that it gives. We pray that our own hearts would be encouraged to press hard after you. and to apply your grace daily in our lives. Help us to be a welcoming church that welcomes the Davids and the Bathshebas who have blown it in the past but who really desire to follow after you. Help us to be a transformational church, not only transforming relationships within, but drinking so deeply of the Lord Jesus Christ that out of our innermost being would flow rivers of living water out of this church into the communities that each one of us represents. Father, we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.