Sunday Snippets- God can use ANYTHING for HIS Glory!

I'm trying to finish up #27 on my list- read the Bible all the way through.  Today I started on Matthew.  It starts out with what I once thought of as the boring "so and so begat so and so and they begat this person..."  It is basically used to show linage because the messiah was to come through King David.  I was reading through this list but when I got to this verse (Matthew 1:6) I stopped:


"Jesse was the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon (whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah.)"

It goes on to list the rest of the linage up to Jesus. But the names David, Bathsheba, and the word widow brought that story rushing back to me.

It's one of the most shocking stories to me in the Bible- the story of David and Bathsheba.  David was a powerful king and saw a beautiful neighbor, Bathsheba, taking a bath.  He sends some people to get her and bring her back to the palace and he slept with her.  Bathsheba got pregnant.  David tried to cover it up by having her husband brought back from war and getting him drunk and trying to get him to go sleep with his wife so no one would ever know it was his child.  But all his plotting and planning didn't work.  So David had Bathsheba's husband sent to the front lines of battle so he would be killed.  Then he made Bathsheba one of his wives once she finished mourning the loss of her husband.

The story was just so shocking because David loved the Lord.  He had been blessed by him and was a good man.  How could he make such a mistake?! Why would he do this??

God sends a prophet to tell David a story of a rich man taking one poor man's beloved lamb to slaughter for a party he was having even though the rich man had plenty of his own lambs.  This outrages David in it's unfairness and the prophet tells David "you are that rich man" because of what he did to Bathsheba's husband.  David realizes his sin and confesses his guilt.

But when I read that verse in Matthew I realized if David would have never had that affair and killed Bathsheba's husband then would Jesus have ever been born?!  He came from the line of Bathsheba and David!!  It just made me so thankful.  God can use anything for His glory! 

It's just so comforting because I felt like around me there's been a lot of discussion "is this a sin? is that a sin? should I being doing this or that?" And I do think it is important to think about those things, but if you stress out about it too much it can become paralyzing!  If you are sinning, God is going to let you know.  The Holy Spirit will let you know when you are doing something wrong and when you should change bad habits.  But if you mess up, it is not the end of the world.  Jesus has paid the price for our sins.  We don't have to die for them!  We just need to confess and repent when we mess up!  AND God can even use those mistakes to bring glory to His name!  How awesome is that?!?