Nathan's Legacy

Thoughts from my reading in Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy by Paul David Tripp. Devotional is indented.

. . . when Nathan the prophet went to him. Title of Psalm 51

No shouts
No pointed fingers
No flashing eyes
No red-faced accusations
No inflammatory vocabulary
No bulging forehead veins
No derogatory names
No scary threats
No arrows of guilt
No cornering logic
No "how dare you?"
No "I can't believe you would!"
No "what were you thinking?"
No public confrontation
No, none of these.

There is so much to learn from this story of David, his horrible sin and Nathan’s confrontation. There is the way we usually confront someone and the way God confronted David through Nathan.

Just a humble prophet
Telling a simple story
A sinner with a sinner
Not standing above
Alongside, together
Wanting to be an instrument
Hoping to assist a blind man to see

There is the difference! The objective wasn’t to expose and humiliate David but to bring him to repentance and back to God. The messenger came as a fellow sinner.

And letting God
Do through a familiar example
Painted with plain words
What only God can do
Crack the hard-shell heart
Of a wayward man
And make it feel again
See again
Cry again

The words of this meditation are so powerful. I’m not giving all of them here. Get a copy of the book and enjoy all of them for yourself.

But the harvest
Of a man of grace
Giving grace
To a man
Who doesn't deserve grace
But won't live again
Without it.

How powerful we could be in other’s lives if we would come to them in this way. Not confronting because we are angry or because we were messed with but because we are agents of God’s grace; coming as a fellow sinner, humbled by our own failures.

A question from the meditation:

Are there people in your life whom you are tempted to motivate toward change by harsh words, increased volume, tight logic, and angry accusation?

That’s the way I usually do it, especially to my kids. But I’m starting to see the emptiness of that approach. Hopefully I will abandon it completely; to stop before I start; instead to bring the words of grace that will represent God’s heart to them.

Philip

Here is a video of the author, Paul Tripp speaking this meditation and giving some background on the book.



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