David & Nathan

Follow Along with the Message

Two questions to contemplate:

• What does this teach me about God my creator?

• What does this teach me about myself?

This teaching highlights that true leadership involves listening to God's voice and being responsive to His guidance. It calls Jesus followers to create spaces for accountability and encourages all believers to align their desires with God's plans.

3 benefits to having a mentor, a person of accountability:

2 Samuel 7: 1-3 (NLT)- “When King David was settled in his palace and the Lord had given him rest from all the surrounding enemies, the king summoned Nathan the prophet. “Look,” David said, “I am living in a beautiful cedar palace, but the Ark of God is out there in a tent!” Nathan replied to the king, “Go ahead and do whatever you have in mind, for the Lord is with you.” 

Proverbs 20:18 NIV- “Plans are established by seeking advice; so, if you wage war, obtain guidance.” 

Proverbs 11:14 NIV- “For lack of guidance a nation falls, but victory is won through many advisors.”

2 Samuel 7:11-14, 16- “‘The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son… Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever’” 

2 Samuel 12:1-13- “The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.  Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own...”

Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Proverbs 12:1 ESV- “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid.”

Proverbs 3:11-12 NIV- “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves,

as a father the son he delights in.”

Psalm 51:11-12- “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your Presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.”