Just Kobe

Sin is the father of chaos, confusion's incubator. Kobe Bryant's lawyers, press conferences, and a four million dollar diamond all scramble to try to bring some semblance of order out of the chaos of sin. Fingers point, and mouths deny as the machinery of the law grinds its way toward a legal conclusion. The mass media convene for yet another circus as our sports sections become crime reports.

The choice of words is indicative. Denying a crime, one side calls "just" into service, as in "just" adultery, linguistically making the act inconsequential. Yet the consequences of "just" adultery engulf individuals and families, turning lives every which way but loose. There's far more to it than the word "just" indicates.

Three thousand years ago, one man's "just" turned him and his nation upside down. When we think of David and the sin, we think II Samuel 11-12, sometimes missing a key verse, verse 9 of chapter 12: "Why did you [David] despise the Word of the Lord. . ." Couple that with Nathan's up-front words to David when he, speaking for God, said, "I anointed you king over Israel, I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master's house to you and our master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all of this was too little, I would have given you even more."

David's sin was a package with roots sunk deeply into the soil of discontent. David's sin, at its base, was a despising of God's grace. God had given David everything: power, wealth, an army, position, and victory over all his enemies. If anyone could sing, "I'm Sittin' on Top of the World," it'd be David.

But David wanted more and what that "more" was, was a "more" to which he had no right. "Draw a circle and put in it all you've got and be content with it," God says. Yet David started wanting what some one else had, an illegitimate object outside the circle, a person who should've always been outside. Such was the way David despised God's grace.

Instead of focusing on what he had, David concentrated on what he didn't have. Discontent run amuck. Discontent that eventuated in "just" adultery, "just" lying, "just" deceit, and "just" murder. The "justs" began to dog pile on David until chaos reigned and David writes of the physical and spiritual price tag in Psalm 32.

Discontent is a despising of God's grace, and that can never be a "just" type of sin. Discontent runs wild ecclesiastically. Churches crave just one more acre, just one more building, just one more member, and just one more dollar. Nothing, no acreage, no building, no member, no monetary amount is ever enough. The giant ecclesiastical maw is a black hole demanding its preconceived due, a feeding that never ends.

Uriah, (the husband done wrong by his commander and king) and Moses are soul mates. Uriah was satisfied with what God had given him and the calling God gave him. He knew he couldn't accept what David was offering him, nor could he enjoy what was not his to enjoy. In the vocabulary of the theater, he's the foil to David. For him, he remained inside the circle, satisfied. After Moses starting receiving the people's offerings to build the tabernacle, he announced, "Enough. We need no more. Stop giving." Thus Moses becomes one of the few preachers who preached a "Stop-giving sermon. (Any preacher who dared to preach such a message today would be drummed out of the corps, considered a disgrace to the cloth and a heretic to the faith.)

Later, Moses would deal with a people for whom free manna and free meat were never enough, just as Uriah was dealing with a king who wanted one more. Uriah paid a high price for David's dissatisfaction, and the never-satisfied Israelites drove Moses to ulcer generating distraction.

There's a better way. Draw that circle and put in it everything God has given you. This is your circle of contentment. You can have more if you have two things: the means and the right to secure it. But that circle means that you don't spend your life saying, "I want a house, car, clothes like they have." If that's the focus, then one day, like David, we'll go after what God has not given us and chaos will come, a chaos that will change our lives forever, just as David's was.

The short of it is: learn to accept what God, in His grace, has given and what God, in His grace, has not given. It's the "just" one more that can become the breeding ground of death.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor