Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
When life gets hard, does what we think we believe hold us up, or does it crumble under the weight of doubt? I'm your host, Dr. Lee Warren- I'm a brain surgeon, author, and a person who's seen some stuff and wondered where God is in all this mess. This is The Spiritual Brain Surgery podcast, where we'll take a hard look at what we believe, why we believe it, and the neuroscience behind how our minds and our brains can smash together with faith to help us become healthier, feel better, and be happier so we can find the hope to withstand anything life throws at us. You've got questions, and we're going to do the hard work to find the answers, but you can't change your life until you change your mind, and it's gonna take some spiritual-brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
When we're back after a three-week hiatus, we are on the banks of the river on a Sunday afternoon.
I'm here with my main man, Dennis McDonald. Hey, Tata. Hi, how are you?
I'm doing great. I can only make one conclusion if it's Sunday afternoon and
we're recording a podcast. It must be Tuesdays with Tata. I hope so.
I hope so. I want to share an email that I got with you, Tata.
I haven't shared this with you yet, but I want to give you a listener email that we got.
A lady named Gina who wrote in to say that she loves Chuses with Tata because
listening to him blesses the
younger version inside of me that didn't grow up with a dad or a grandpa.
You can feel his love for God and people just by listening. Oh, my goodness.
That's profound. How does that make you feel, Tata? Worthy.
That's awesome. Well, thank you, Gina, for writing in. And that's why we do this.
We want to get Tata's wisdom and get the insight that he has after a lifetime of following the Lord.
And it's always a blessing. And we're glad that people are listening out there. It's an honor. Amen.
Yes. Well, it's good to be noticed.
And far be it from me to even try to concede that I don't have needs and desires to be recognized.
Of course, everybody does. But everybody does.
But it feels good to let it be known that you make an impression on people's lives.
And you see that, and most of my comparison that I have or most of the experience
that I've had in my life has been with people that are in dire circumstances. Yeah.
And they are facing, you know, facing some of the trauma that none of us want to face. Yeah.
And they're in pain. And you try to, I have never looked at that.
The only thing that I ever tried to do was just remind people that they were
not in this alone. That's right.
And I can remember, and I think I said something about this once before,
that in one of the situations I was in, in a hospital,
and I always prayed for the doctors and nurses and surgeons and all the people and technicians even.
And a nurse was in the room with us.
She said, nobody's ever done that for me.
And I thought to myself, that's profound.
That you feel, and you can watch them, and I have.
I watched all those people that are in the medical field and in dire circumstances with people.
It's all mechanical almost.
Now, there are some that demonstrate compassion.
And they recognize that empathy is very important, and you have to understand where people are.
In their own mindset, as well as you know where they are, or you hope they know
where the doctor knows where you are in your physical state. That's right, you hope.
But that's why you're there. That's right. But knowing that someone cares about
you enough to understand what's going on with you mentally and emotionally, that's profound.
That speaks volumes right there.
And I guess it's the human touch.
We're all desirous of that.
And I can remember circumstances where, you know, I was in a,
and I found out later, and I was touched by it,
that I was in a car, I've been in three car wrecks in my life that were pretty severe.
One of them, I went out of the car and in my defense, I was the old passenger,
but tie rod in came off and the car flipped three times.
And I went out of the car on the second flip and landed on my head in the highway.
And a priest came out and gave me the final rites. Wow.
And so that's when I was in a coma for three days.
Now you understand the limitations.
That's why you use small words.
Oh, that's beautiful. Nothing more than two syllables.
That's right. We're so grateful for the opportunity to do this.
And Gina, your email means a lot to both of us.
We never forget that you're giving us the gift of your time to listen to this.
And all over the world, people are downloading this podcast,
and we're honored and grateful for that.
Well, and also the other part of it that we remember is that there are some
people that are facing circumstances right now that are real to them than circumstances
that you and I have never faced. That's right.
Some of the circumstances may be identical, but for the most part,
a lot of people suffer, and they suffer in silence.
No one knows. That's right. That's the sad part for me because I've always wondered.
And one of the things that I've always tried to do is when I see people,
and I see people that I don't know, I try to look them in the eyes. Yeah.
Because that speaks volumes right there. And when you smile at someone,
what do they do in return?
They smile back. Yep, almost always.
And friends, it doesn't cost you anything to do that, to be mindful of somebody else.
And it may be only briefly, and you may never know what the difference was.
That's right. Who would have guessed this woman? Where is she?
Alaska? She didn't say. Oh. Yeah.
So, you never know where some person might be in the circumstance that they're
faced with and maybe in the situation that they're trying to climb out of to
regain their sense of stability again.
But today, we want to talk to you, and I've struggled with it as well,
because in 2 Samuel chapter 11, we talk about David and Bathsheba.
And there's so many facets to this event.
I mean, we could spend our time just studying about Uriah, the man himself. Yeah.
But that whole chapter starts out with, in the spring, when the kings went out
for war, David stayed in his palace.
He stayed in town. He was supposed to be with his army, but he stayed home. He didn't go.
He sent the commander and sent his whole army out to challenge these people.
Now, why did he stay there? I don't know.
And you could say as you look
at this out of hand this was his
first mistake because what it did it
became a series of events that
led to his downfall that's a really good point I'm a trauma surgeon and I've
spent my career taking care of people who got in unfortunate situations and
accidents and traumas and it's not 100% And please don't misunderstand me,
listener. I'm not saying something.
Negative about trauma victims but there are almost no
true accidents almost none there
are some tragic child has an accident gets
hurt somehow but i would wager it's 95 or higher of people that are seriously
hurt in accidents it's alcohol it's the wrong time of day they're not wearing
a seat belt they were on a ladder they shouldn't have been on you know the guy
in my home didn't Didn't have a helmet on.
Didn't have a helmet on. Right. So not that the accident is any less tragic,
but this story you're about to tell us here.
Illustrates that when you have some misfortune in your life,
sometimes, or when you make bad decisions even, sometimes it's because you made
another decision ahead of that. That's right.
That's right. To put you in a situation to enable that to be possible.
That's right. So we had a guy in Wyoming who broke his neck in a really horrific way.
We were able to help him and he was able to walk again. but he
put a ladder in the bed of his truck to get
up on his roof to change to clean the gutters in
the middle of the night while the wind was blowing
60 miles an hour and why he needed to clean the gutters at that time of the
night i don't know but so there's a whole series of mistakes there right so
you're on a blood thinner you're elderly it's nighttime the wind is blowing
you can't reach with your ladder so you put it in the bed of a truck i mean
there's a whole bunch of reasons why that fall happened,
and it was an accident, but it wasn't a real accident.
Well, if you pull the string out all the way on any of those events,
it will lead you back to where someone made a crucial decision at a bad time.
Right. And again, that's not to say it's any less tragic or any of that.
But with that context, when you read the scripture like we're about to talk
about, look for the places where this event, this series of events,
didn't have to unfold the way that they unfolded. That's right.
So it starts with the kings went out to war, and David didn't go out to war. No, he stayed home.
And maybe that was part of God's plan.
I can't speak to that, but because none of this is God.
It's not a surprise to him. I mean, he knows what's going to happen. That's right.
And at one night, when apparently I'm guessing David couldn't sleep or he had
problems sleeping, and maybe it was very warm. It was in the springtime.
Maybe he felt guilty about not going to war.
Well, maybe he was thinking about his men who were living on the ground. That's right.
But he saw a woman bathing, and she
was very beautiful. And so he sent a messenger to find out who she was.
And when the messenger came back, he said, her name is Bathsheba.
And David knew who her father was, but also he knew that the messenger said
that he's your servant, Uriah the Hittite's wife.
Reminded him. Yeah. I mean, and the messenger was just reciting and answering the inquiry.
Who is this woman? He wanted to know.
David wanted to know. And so then David said, well, have her come over.
So there's another little layer in there, like his servant, who wouldn't have
been emboldened to speak up to the king and say, hey, don't do this. No, he would not.
Did present the information in a way that should have raised some flags for David. Oh, absolutely.
The flags should have had very simple words, stop. That's right,
stop. I mean, your guys are out to war, including her husband,
who you sent to war, and you should be there with him. And that's his wife, by the way.
He's your servant. That should have been enough for a compassionate man.
Well, because the servant made it very clear who this woman was.
That's right. And then later on, we see that, and David slept with her.
And so later on, we find out that she sends a message back to David that she
was pregnant. We need to also acknowledge there that based on the power dynamic
here, this is the king. Yes.
And she's the wife of an enlisted soldier.
In the military, this would have been like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff or the president of the United States requesting a nighttime visit
from one of the private's wives.
And she, in that culture, essentially could probably not have said no.
No, she could not, because it would have probably been her head if she had said no.
So it's effectively rape that we're talking about. That's right.
And then the story gets very twisted after that, because you see the plot and
you see the scheme that David has come up with, and that's to bring Uriah back.
So he sends a message to his commander to send Uriah back to him,
and David tells him, well, you've been at war, go home, wash your feet.
Been a night with your wife. But what did Uriah do?
He goes to sleep at the door with the servants on a mat. He's honorable.
My guys are in the field fighting. I'm not going to go home. That's right.
And on a second event, David said, well, why didn't you go?
And he said, my Lord, the Ark of the Covenant is in a tent.
The king's soldiers are in tents, our own army is sleeping on the ground.
I can't go home and be with my wife. He was a good man. Oh, yeah.
And you think about him, and that's what I meant by, we could spend our entire
thoughts talking about him because he was more righteous than even the king.
And bear in mind that the Lord himself said about David that he was a man after
his own heart. That's right.
And the story goes on. And then the Lord sends Nathan.
Nathan is a prophet. Yeah. So Uriah's killed in battle. Yeah.
Because David doesn't want to admit to what he's done. That's right.
Well, and then Bathsheba's in mourning. Yeah. Yeah.
But the story that Nathan tells is about a very rich man and a very poor man.
A very rich man owned flocks, and he owned herds of cattle.
And the poor man had one ewe, one female sheep. Like a pet, basically.
Yeah, it was. He had raised it from its child, from its birth.
And the thing that I noted was that this lamb drank from his cup.
Now think about that that's very intimate right there that's very close yeah,
and he treated the lamb like it was his daughter yeah,
that was profound but anyway the rich man had a visitor and the visitor that
came to him but the rich man did not choose anything from his own flock,
he went and took the poor man's lamb.
And slaughtered that lamb and fed and took care of the traveler.
And David was just, he burned with anger.
He was out of, he just went out of his mind.
And he said, this guy ought to be killed.
And Nathan said to him, you are the man. You're the man. That's where we got
that saying. You're the man.
He said, thou art the man.
David puts himself in the story, and boy, if they took my lamb,
I'd be outraged. That's terrible.
And then he finds out he's the one that did it, because that's exactly what
happened. He took the one thing that Uriah had, his wife.
And and the other the other part of it is that that that
since since david had made this contribution to uriah's demise because he sent
a message to the commander of the of the military to put uriah in in a place
of battle and then with withdraw from him and he had uriah carry that message.
And so Uriah was killed. Carried his own death sentence with him.
And Nathan told David, said, because of what you have done, the sword will never
depart from your house. That's right.
And your son is going to die.
And the sad part of all of that was, and David finally recognized his sin, and he verbalized that.
And he said that I have sinned.
But Nathan said to him, God has forgiven you of your sins and you will not die.
And you have to stop and think about that just a minute.
When we think about our own sin, and we're fearful that it might not be forgiven,
that the punishment for that would be hell.
We don't think about dying. Yeah. Now, in this time, they did. Yeah.
Because they had no concept of afterlife. That's right.
Because Jesus had not come. That's right.
So David was, he was very, in a very bad situation.
But one of the things that's very obvious
that you have to take into consideration, it was of his own making.
That's right. The whole thing. Yeah.
From beginning to end, and even to all of the things that happened during his
kingship, his own son raped his daughter, his own son tried to kill him.
And then the other part that sticks with me is what the Lord was saying to David.
Look, I made you king. I spared you from Saul.
And I gave you everything. I made you king. I gave you everything that the king had had before.
That's right. And if that hadn't been enough, I would have given you more. Yeah.
Think about that. So why did you do this evil thing? Why did you do this one thing?
Why did you despise me? Yeah.
That's a lesson. We all have so many gifts and so many blessings,
and yet we put our eyes on something that we want, and we forget who God is.
We forget all that's been done for us. And that's exactly what happened here.
Somebody listening to this right now, Tata, is going to have a question,
and it's a tough question. I know you've got to be prepared to answer it, but why the baby?
Why did the baby pay for the sin?
I have no concept of that other than the fact that that child was near and dear to David's heart.
That was a son. Yeah.
I don't know if David felt like that he was being punished for what he did.
He mourned the child. He prayed to God. He asked God not to kill him and spare
his life, not to take his life.
Yeah. But the only thing, I find myself in those kind of circumstances that
I would like to ask, I would ask God why, but I can't.
Who am I to even ask him? That's the perspective. I think that's the right perspective.
There's a lot of things you could say about this child.
Like this kid perhaps would have been raised with some shame and stigma.
Yeah. around him and so perhaps god was sparing
him that i mean obviously we as christians believe that when we die we get something
better that's right and so this child didn't have to suffer through all the
things that were going to happen in david's family because it was a mess you
read on in fact i wrote about this and hope is the first dose if you haven't read my book about hope,
i talk about this this passage right here david's response to losing that child,
was to not deal with it. That's right.
He basically didn't. He just washed his face and went back to work.
God said, hey, the sword's never going to depart from your house, and it didn't.
So there's a brokenness to this family that led out of all this sin of David's,
and maybe God was sparing that child from all of that.
Well, and then the other side of that is maybe David, as he looked inward,
as we all do, and examined himself.
He had to look in a mirror every day and he had to say to himself, I did that.
And then he had to say to God that he was sorry for it.
His other children may have been jealous or evil or mean to that child. We don't know.
But we do know that God acts with justice and with mercy.
And so perhaps this was mercy. Well, it could be.
Certainly it could be because there's so much, there's so many things that David did.
And just this one case and this one simple event of where he was,
where he found himself, that he violated so many laws of God that he was the king.
And he had been close to God. You think about his life. Yeah.
When we think of David, what do we think about? We think about him. He was a shepherd.
That's right. And in fact, he was anointed as king while Saul was king. That's right.
And he went and killed Goliath with a slingshot. Yeah.
And he talked about being, David talked about being rescued,
that God had rescued him from the bear and from the lion. Yeah.
That's appalling. That's profound in itself right there. Yeah.
And so he knew in his heart of hearts, he knew what he was doing. That's right.
He was not operating in ignorance.
Now, maybe he was ambitious. Maybe he was full of himself now that he was king.
I don't know. I can't speak to that. Yeah.
But I would think that it would be far from him to think about that.
Yeah. Himself in the light.
We don't know. All we know is the event, and we know the actions that he took.
And at the same time, so you think about this one thing.
If God could use him, can he use me?
Wow. Will he use me?
Am I worthy? No. Am I a sinner? Yes.
Do I have clay feet? Yes.
So you have to look at that in those kind of terms, and you can say to yourself,
and there should be some comfort for you there.
If God used him, he can use me. That's right.
And so, first of all, I don't have the right to beat up on myself at all about
that, because what I have to do is say this.
What do I have to do to be pleasing to you? Yeah, that's right.
And that's where we all fall down.
Sometimes we get so embroiled in our own misery that we can't see beyond that.
And what it amounts to, sooner or later, it amounts to a refusal. That's right.
And it also amounts to rebellion. The first thing that we have to acknowledge,
and after that, the process, it becomes simple.
It's not easy, but it's simple. If we acknowledge that we do not belong to ourselves,
we're created in an image of God. I don't know what that looks like.
Do we look like God? Some part of us must, because we're made in His image.
And we belong to him and all he wants from us is obedience and he wants us home. That's right.
He doesn't want us to give up. Now, he knows because just like Nathan told him,
God has forgiven you of your sins, told David, you're not going to die. That's right.
But there are consequences. There are consequences.
And you brought these consequences on yourself. The sword will never depart from your house.
Trouble, destruction, death, all of those things.
And as you'll see, if you looked at this whole piece, you would see that all
that plays out exactly as prophesied. That's right, it sure does.
So we have to start very small and trying to understand what it is that God wants us to do.
And the one thing that, and I have to, you have to ask, you have to ask this, I think. I know I do.
I try every day of my life to ask this one question. Okay, Lord,
what do you want me to know now?
What do you want me to know now? And there's only one way you can find out.
That's right. You got to read, you got to read his word. You got to look into
his word. Be in the word and in prayer.
That's right. And talk to him in prayer. That's right.
So in the final analysis of all of this, what do we say about David?
We see that most of this, the event that we've seen looked at up to this point
is that it was self-inflicted.
He fell on his own sword and he, and I don't know you don't know what his mindset
was about then, I can't speak to that,
but he must have been very weak in his resolve and,
But why did he go to the extreme that he did with Uriah?
Can't speak to that either. But at the same time, did I know this, that we cannot hide?
That's right. We can't hide from God.
So as we think through this, I think that the first thing we need to remember,
is all the different ways that David either directly disobeyed God's word or will.
Or ignored customs and standards that he was supposed to be following and setting
as the king and ignored sound advice from people. So you look at the first three things.
He wasn't at war with his people where he was supposed to be.
The Ark of the Covenant went out.
God's presence went out, and he didn't go. So that means he had gotten complacent
or lazy or he thought he'd had enough fighting or he thought he'd earned the
right to stay behind or something. I don't know.
But it doesn't say in the word that in the spring when some kings go out to
war. It said when the kings go out. That's right.
And so he was supposed to be at war with his people, and he wasn't.
So he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and observed her on her roof
from his roof when he should never have been there in the first place.
And there's all kinds of things you say about that. Why was Bathsheba on her roof?
Yeah, well, I think that was a custom. But we're not blaming the victim here, for sure.
But the idea was, what a Christian man is supposed to do, if you accidentally
see something you're not supposed to see, you divert your eyes. You go the other way.
You don't send a servant to find out who that woman is. That's right.
Just like Job said, I made a covenant with my eyes.
That's right. Not to look lustfully on a young woman. And so if you,
you know, somebody, some preacher told me once when I was a boy, like the first the first.
The glimpse of something you're not supposed to see isn't your fault,
but the second one is. That's right.
That's not always true because sometimes you put your eyes in places they ought not to be.
But the principle is generally true that if you walk around the corner and something's
there that you shouldn't see or something you shouldn't be involved in,
you turn around and go the other way.
And David did not do that. He chose to gather information about this woman.
And then the servant said oh that's
the wife of your servant who's off fighting the war
that you ought to be fighting too you know basically hold up
a big sign like you said that's right do this and he
does it anyway and then when he's with her he doesn't just have a cup of coffee
in a conversation you know takes her to bed which is essentially rape here because
she like we said earlier she didn't have the capacity to say no to that engagement
and so he has now put himself in the wrong position,
ignored good counsel, and now committed a sexual assault.
And then he gets caught because she gets pregnant. He was hoping it would just
be a one-time thing and it'd be over.
Now she's pregnant. He sends for Uriah, thinking that he'll sleep with his wife
and cover it up. That doesn't happen because Uriah is honorable.
Then he sends Uriah with the scroll that carries his own death sentence and
kills a man to try again to cover up the fact that he'd done this.
And then God calls him out through the prophet.
And then has the audacity to be offended by somebody doing the same thing he did.
That's true. So, a long set of things to say this.
A good way to not live out the story that David did here would be to go the
places that God's called you to go. That's right.
Be in the places and at the right times when he's asked you and then live according
to the code that he's given you.
Like, like don't sin when you have an opportunity.
And so David has, has just made misstep after misstep.
And it resulted in, if you keep reading in a disastrous outcome for his family,
ultimately, and ultimately the division of the kingdom that he was supposed to be the king of. Yeah.
And so sin has real consequences. Yes.
Well, and bear in mind, too, friends, if you're listening to this and you think
about this, this is a case where this was overt.
I mean, he did this.
But in a lot of cases, sometimes things happen to people that are not of their
own making. That's right. Yeah.
And so, but there's still, no matter what kind of circumstance we're in,
there's still no substitute for reaching for the hand of God,
because he's always near to us. That's right.
He's always near to the brokenhearted. He's always near to the ones that are suffering it.
And one of the things about our suffering, and I think we talked about this.
Is that it's for our own good. That's hard to believe, isn't it? Yeah.
Because we spend our lives trying to avoid those situations where we will suffer. That's right.
We do all of the things. We eat the right food. We drink the right drink.
We exercise. We do all kinds of things.
And some people carry these things to extreme, but by that I mean they try to defer aging to it.
But it's a natural progression that can't be deferred.
But all of it is this. We have to depend on our God to get us through it. That's right.
And nowhere in here do we find this, where David said he was depending on God.
That's right. He didn't say to God, is this okay that I do this? That's right.
So we have to take into consideration where we are in our relationship with God.
Are we trying to please him? Are we hoping that he'll please us? That's right.
And what's the good news here? The good news is David doesn't go on to become a degenerate.
No. It goes on to be described as a man after God's own heart. That's right.
And what does that mean? It certainly doesn't mean that he was sinless,
as we've covered in this episode quite clearly.
It doesn't mean that he always made the right decisions. It doesn't mean that
he always did everything just right. It means that when he fell,
he knew where to turn. That's right.
And he knew what to do, which is to repent.
And he knew whose hand to reach for.
And he knew where his help came from. That's right. It didn't come from the hills.
And one of the things that we know about that is Ezekiel was looking in the
hills, and he said, open my servant's eyes so he can see.
And that's where all the chariots were. That's right. In the hills. That's right.
And there's all kinds of other cases where God came to God in a small whisper. Yeah.
And so what does that say? We have to be attuned.
That's right. We have to tune our ears. We have to tune our eyes. Our hearts. Our hearts.
That's why I love Lectio so much. It just helps you get into that place where
you can tune in and listen.
But I want to finish with this. So the evidence that David was a man after God's own heart is in Psalm 51.
And he told him the story about the ewe lamb. And David's heart was broken because
he finally realized, when you're embroiled in sin,
you don't stop to think what you're doing, and you don't stop to think about
the consequences of it. You're just following your heart, your pleasures.
As Jeremiah said, the heart is wicked and deceitful above all things.
But what David does here is shows us why he's a man after God's own heart.
And we'll finish with this.
Have mercy, O me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your
abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
He goes on. He's just saying, please, God, purge me, wash me,
cleanse me. I know what I've done. The key to that is I know.
That's right. It's confession.
It's not blaming it's not why was she naked up on
the roof it's not why wouldn't uriah do the thing he should have
done it's none of that stuff it's god why did you send us off to war
it's it's i know what i did yeah and i'm admitting and i'm acknowledging it
i'm living up to it i'm accepting it and so i think that's the lesson for us
today is is we have to be people who because we're going to be people who make
mistakes for sure absolutely but when we do we have a broken and contrite heart right.
That's right. And we go to God. That's right. We take it to God.
Not to shame, not to guilt, but to God. Our guilt.
That's right. I want to say before we wrap up here, Tata, I'm going to ask you
a question in a minute, and you know it's coming.
But I want to just say thank you to John Seidel. He did a wonderful job with
two episodes of guest hosting for us in the last two weeks. John did a great job, didn't he?
Amazing. We have a couple of other guest hosts coming up. Mead Shirley and Christy
Osborne are going to do their take on the Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery
for us, and we're excited about that.
And then we have Gina Berkmeyer, the counselor therapist, who's going to do
a couple of episodes for us.
So this platform is going to be bigger than just the two of us,
and I think that's wonderful.
So we're excited about the future of spiritual brain surgery,
and we're glad that you're listening.
Please follow the podcast and share it with your friends wherever you listen
to podcasts. And leave us a note if you want to send an email,
lee at drleewarren.com.
We're always happy to hear from you.
And Tata, I have a question for you. If we're going to be the kind of people
who are going to get after it when we make a mistake and become the people that
could be defined as after God's own heart, when should we start?
Start today. Start today.