'Divided Heart, Divided Home', Ravi Zacharias, Part 1

There are many lessons we can learn from the life of David. We often think of his military might or his literary genius. But what does his life tell us about being a good husband? What does he show us about the role of a father? Hello and welcome to ‘Let My People Think’ with Christian author and apologist Ravi Zacharias. This week we are listening to a classic message from Ravi titled ‘Divided Heart, Divided Home’. And while his message contains truth for all, it is specifically geared towards the men in the audience. David was a man who had everything going for him and yet he still made so many missteps. That, in and of itself, is an important lesson to realize. Sin affects us all. No one is immune from mistakes. In this presentation, Ravi is going to take a look at one story in particular and illustrate the important principles that especially apply to husbands and fathers. Here is Ravi with Part 1 of his message ‘Divided Heart, Divided Home’.

Turn with me please this evening to the 51^st chapter of the book of Psalms. Psalm chapter 51 – this is one of those most beautiful and memorable Psalms. If you were to ever ask anybody, who has studied the history of preaching, this question “Which is the most preached from book in the Bible?” It is the book of Psalms. There is no book in the Bible that has been more sermonized from and more studies drawn from than the book of Psalms. Even Robert Murray McCheyne in his system of Bible study for the year, keeps us in the Psalms for 60% of the time. He says it is good for the sole to keep your spirit sensitive to sin and to confess sin when God speaks to you about it. And here is David:

¹ Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.
² Wash away all my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.

³ For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is always before me.
⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
    and justified when you judge.
⁵ Surely I was sinful at birth,
    sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
⁶ Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
    you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

⁷ Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
    wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness;
    let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
⁹ Hide your face from my sins
    and blot out all my iniquity.

¹⁰ Create in me a pure heart, O God,
    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
¹¹ Do not cast me from your presence
    or take your Holy Spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation
    and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

¹³ Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
    so that sinners will turn back to you.

I’m going to be looking tonight at David as a husband and a father. And as I do that I would like to read for you a few paragraphs from a biographical sketch. Many of you will recognize it. I borrowed it from the couple of authors and I’ll read it for you:

He began his life with all the classic handicaps and disadvantages. His mother was a powerfully built dominating woman who found it difficult to love anyone. She had been married three times and her second husband had divorced her because of violence in the home. The father of the child I’m describing was her third husband and had died of a heart attack a few months before the child’s birth. As a consequence, the mother had to work long hours from his earliest childhood. She gave him no affection, no love, no discipline and no training during those early years. She did not allow him to call her at work. Other children had little to do with him so he was alone most of the time. He was absolutely rejected from his earliest childhood. He was ugly and poor, untrained and unlovable. When he was 13 years old, a school psychologist commented, “He probably did not even know the meaning of the word Love”. During adolescence, the girls did not have anything to do with him and he fought constantly with the boys. Despite a high IQ, he failed academically and finally dropped off during his third year of high school. He thought he might find a new acceptance in the Marine Corps, for they reportedly built men and he wanted to be one. But his problems went with him – the other marines laughed at him and ridiculed him. He fought back, resisted authority, was court-martialed and thrown out of the Marines with an undesirable discharge. So there he was – a young punk in his early twenties, absolutely friendless and shipwrecked. He was a small and scrawny man. He had an adolescent squeak in his voice. He was balding, had no talent, no skill, no sense of worthiness. He did not even have a driver’s license. Once again he thought he could run from his problems, so he went to a foreign country to live. He was rejected there too, for nothing had essentially changed. While there, he married a girl who herself was an illegitimate child and brought her back to America with him. Soon she began to develop the same contempt for him that everyone else displayed. She bore him two children but he never enjoyed the respect and status that a father should have. His marriage continued to crumble. His wife demanded more and more, things that he could not provide. And instead of being his ally against this bitter world that he hoped she would become, she became his most vicious opponent. She could outfight him and learn to bully him. Finally, she forced him to leave and he tried to make it on his own and was dreadfully lonely. After days of solitude, he went home and literally begged her on his knees to take him back. He surrendered all pride. He crawled. He accepted humiliation and came back on her terms. Despite his meager salary, he brought her $78 as a gift, asking her to take it and spend it anyway she wished. She laughed at him. She belittled his feeble attempt to supply his family’s needs and ridiculed his failure. On one occasion, she made fun of his sexual impotency in front of a friend, at which point he fell on his knees and wept bitterly as a greater darkness of his private nightmare enveloped him. Finally, in silence he pleaded no more. No one had ever wanted him. He was, perhaps, the most rejected man of our time. His ego lay shattered in a fragmented dust. The next day he was a strangely different man. He arose, went to a garage, took down a rifle he had hidden there, carried it with him to a newly acquired job at a book storage building, and from a window on a third floor in that building, shortly after noon, November 22^nd 1963, he sent two shells crushing into the head of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald, a rejected unlovable failure, killed a man, who to him, more than any other man on earth, embodied all the success, beauty, wealth and family affection, which he lacked and so dreadfully longed for.

When you read a little sketch like that… And frankly, I have not investigated into the details. I do not know to what extend this is true, and what is imagined and what is stretched. I really have no idea. I am just borrowing it from the couple of writers, one of whom is a psychologist. And many a secular behaviorists, psychologists, who would subscribe to the deterministic theory of a human personality, meaning the fact that you and I are totally the product of our environment, we cannot really rise above it. In a sense we are shackled to the home in which we were raised. A behaviorist or determinist could take this kind of a biodata sketch and drive home this point to almost any degree he wants to drive it and prove the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald really did not stand a solitary chance in being a successful husband and a father. In one sense it would almost be relieving to find out that this is true, because then in that instance it would explain away all of the criminalities that are born out of homes where violence is a daily routine. In that sense you could explain away many many derelict people, whose family life did not give them an option. But please listen to me carefully. The Bible denounces the determinists and firmly teaches that every human being has within him that God-given ability to rise above his environment or to shrink beneath it by virtue of the fact that God has created man in His image and through general revelation and special revelation God is able to speak to an individual, show him what is right and what is wrong. I can point to you young people today who’ve been raised in homes of complete turmoil, whose very spirits are so gentle and sensitive to truth and to the beauty of God.

David apparently had everything going for him but he made two or three cardinal mistakes. And I do not want to be hard on him, because any one of us could have made those mistakes. So if you’ll bear with me as I see that negative aspect and then end on that tremendous strength that David had. I would like to speak to you tonight on how God is able to help you make your home and your family the kind of family He wants it to be. And I am particularly addressing the fathers tonight.

See, David, the Bible reminds us, had a tremendous pursuit of affection for one particular woman. He had met her in her days of marriage to somebody else and David saw this woman Abigail in a very unique setting. This is the way it had happened:

David had a group of young men who surrounded him. These young men voluntarily protected the wealthy people and the land and the cattle that they owned. So this is what they would do: they would ward off marauding bands and at the end of their service would go to the wealthy landowners and take an offering of love. It was a voluntary offering but at the same time, it was understood that you would give in proportion to your own prosperity. There was a wealthy man in the land by the name of Nabal. ‘Nabal’ in Hebrew means ‘fool’ and he decided to live up to his name. He lived like a fool most of his life. David sent his young men to Nabal’s home and Nabal rejected these young men and said, ‘Who does David think he is? You go back to David and tell him I owe him absolutely nothing’. David was a young man, impetuous, I suppose and he says, “If Nabal doesn’t know who I am, he is going to find out today”. So he saddles up his donkeys, takes all of his friends and rides in the direction of Nabal. Somebody goes to Abigail… And I have no explanation for this, I suppose there were a lot of arranged marriages then too. I do not know how a fool like Nabal ended up with a wife like Abigail. The Bible says she had two tremendous strengths to her. One, she was a beautiful woman. Number two, she was a wise and Godly woman. That kind of combination was virtually irresistible. She hears what has happened, she hears David is riding in Nabal’s direction, she hears that Nabal is going to be killed by David and rather than saying “Serves him right”, she saddles up her own donkeys, rides in the direction of David, intersects him and says this, “David, my husband is a fool and he’s dealt wrongly with you. But there is going to be only one bigger fool in this land today and, David, that’s going to be you. And the reason that will be you is because you are going to draw blood and God has anointed you for a special task. Let not your hands drip with blood, David. What is that you want: gold, silver, food, clothing? Take everything we owe you, but please spare my husband”. David was virtually stunned by that miniature speech. He couldn’t believe what he’d heard, he was literally staggered by it. He picked Abigail off the dust of the earth and told her not to be troubled about it, he was not going to pursue her husband anymore. David turned around and went back to his home, but David was never able to get Abigail out of his mind. Abigail goes back home, she wants to talk to Nabal, because he’s been so foolish in what he did. But she sees him drunk and she waits till the next morning till he is sober. This is probably the only principal I would like to leave with the women here tonight, because I think it is an important one. With all of the propensity that womanhood has towards giving advice, my mother never lacked advice for any situation, she had a proverb or a story for the most remotest situation and it always applied and just popped into her mind. May I say this to you – advice is good. Solomon reminds us that a wise man listens to advice. But if the good advice is to be effective, it should also be timed rightly. Did you hear me? Advice is good – but if a good advice is to be effective, it should also be timed rightly. And ladies please believe me, particularly with the fragile nature of men. They are unable to admit their need and one of the reasons altars are more often lined with women than with men is because men find it very hard to admit that they need the advice that has just been given to them, it’s true for most of us.

She waits till the next morning, talks to Nabal, Nabal is troubled with what he hears, 10 days later he falls sick and dies (I have no implication to make at this point other than the fact that he died). And somebody comes to David and says ‘Do you know that Nabal is dead?’ David’s first response is “Aha, Abigail is a widow”. So he immediately sends for her. David wasn’t broken-hearted about this severance at all. He sends for Abigail and asks her to come and meet him. Abigail comes. And David proposes marriage to her and she in a very tremendous display of genuine humility falls on to the ground and she says ‘David, I am not worthy of marring a man of your stature’. And he, in the Hebrew description it’s a beautiful word, the idea that has conjured up in the mind is he’s placing his hand under her chin and lifting up her countenance to hold herself up high, lifts her up and he tells her that he loves her and desires to be wedded to her and they both are married. In one sense, this has all the thrill of romance that you’d want to have: he is a good man, here is a good woman unfortunately related to a fool somehow. That marriage came to an end. David pursues Abigail and they are wedded. Ironically, two things happen immediately after this. I don’t understand it, but the very next verse, immediately after we are told that David married Abigail, it tells us he also married another woman. William Barclay, the Scottish theologian, has rightly said that ‘polygamy’ is only a Greek word for ‘dunghill’. I think he is right. And David entered into this polygamous relationship, and interestingly enough, as far as I know, the only other major reference to Abigail after this marriage is that she bore his a child. I am going to explain something now that if I do not explain this properly, someone will misunderstand. But I think you men will be right with me when I say this: I am confused about this issue and I have no simple way to explain it. I do not know why it is that man has this tremendous pursuing ability within him (and I mean man in a sense of a male). The man has this tremendous pursuing ability within him to pursue and pursue and pursue and try his best in every winsome nature of kindness and generosity and tenderness to pursue the woman of his dreams and the girl that he wants to be wedded to him, the girl he wants to call his wife. I don’t understand how some men can pursue that woman for months and some for years and years, and once they have married that person, it’s like and African chieftain who has conquered a new territory and is bored because he has no new territories to conquer. It is a fundamental mistake in the male ego and this is the problem as I see it, the mistake is this : we make it a dangerous assumption that love consists of conquering rather than pursuing. Follow what I’m saying? We think once we have conquered , that sense of victory is there and that sense for romance no longer needs to be. I don’t need to win her anymore, I don’t need to impress her anymore, I DON’T NEED TO PURSUE HER ANYMORE. And yet if I understand the Biblical passage and when you look at the New Testament scriptures, by the way, particularly as you read the book of Ephesians, and you begin to see Apostle Paul drawing a parallel, I was studying that beautiful passage this morning. Apostle Paul begins that grand epistle of Ephesians, talking about the glorious person of Jesus Christ, in all of his adjectives and descriptions he is hardly able to nudge at the reality of who Christ is. And after he finishes describing who Christ is, he then comes to us as believers as tells us who we are because of Jesus. All right? Who Christ is and who we are because of Christ. And once he has taken that whole relationship, he moves in to the area of dwelling in unity one with the other as brothers and sisters in Christ. And then he comes to that climactic passage of man and woman living as husband and wife, and he says I am using this as a description and analogy of a very bridegroom who is Jesus who pursued us and sets us in those heavenly places and talks about how he continues to love us in spite of what we were at one time and he says we must understand this is an illustration of Christ love for His people. Jesus Christ never stops pursuing you and me. We often think of the hound of heaven as pursuing the sinner, we often think of the hound of heaven as God just leaving the sheepfold as it were to pursue the one lost sheep, because once He had found it, there is no more need for care and whatever it is. But the pursuing love of God as a Father and the prodigal son story says to the older son ‘All that I have is yours’. And may I challenge you as a husband to bring the romance back into your life by continuing to pursue the one you claim to love. Gentlemen, I have a very very strong feeling in my heart that Solomon had a tremendous emotion in his heart when he wrote these words in the Proverbs. He talks about the harlot and how she lures away the men, sprinkling the perfume on the bed, a husband is gone and so on and so forth, paints all of the criminalities of enticement and Solomon gives these two beautiful lines in his proverbs. He says this:

‘May you rejoice in the wife of your youth, May you ever be captivated by her love.’

If anything, he has seen you as the conquered one. You now belong to this individual and that pursuit of love and romance must remain so. David saw in Abigail that beauty. He saw in Abigail that wisdom, but once he’d got her, I have to wonder how much he gave her wisdom a chance to really influence him, how much he gave that beauty a chance really to dominate him.

And Sir, what I say to you is that if you were to look at the secular world today, they convince you that stolen waters are sweet, they try to tell you that every new experience is going to bring you something you never had before. There is a crass Spanish proverb that says, “He who loves one woman has loved them all, he who loves many, has loved none”.

Charlie Wedemeyer was a Michigan state quarterback. Hawaii’s athlete of the decade in the 60s, offered lucrative professional football contracts. And he gave all those contracts up because he wanted to be in touch with young people and teach the young people the thrill and the discipline of playing football and became a coach. Seven years ago while he was travelling with the professional football team for a few days, suddenly he felt dizziness and collapsed on the floor. I don’t have all the details. I spent two hours with him last week. When I went into his home, here is what I saw. What happened 7 years ago was tragically diagnosed to be a Lou Gehrig's disease. The man is now laid up in bed. He is a coach of the Los Gueros high school football team, which just won the Northern state championship. Here is a man who cannot even talk. There is no voice in him, there is not even a whisper in him and he coached a football team by mouthing the words through his lips and his wife reads those words, gives it to the quarterback and they go and play and they won the championship. Regan sent him a congratulatory note, all of the California has been talking about Charlie Wedemeyer. 24 film producers were after his life story. And ’60 minutes’ has just done a complete coverage on him, where he has just one year ago came to find a Lord in his life. And when I went to see him laid up in bed, and he asked me if I would share some of my sermon illustrations with him, he’d been hearing about them through the week, and as I talked about the conversion of the apostle Paul and telling him how Paul what he though was strong turned out to be his weakness, and what he thought was his weakness turned out to be strength. And tears coming down over his face as he clasped my hand and asked me to pray for him before we left. And what a triumphant victory he was facing that afternoon. But of all that happened, the one thing I will never forget, I was sharing it with friends over dinner, his lovely, attractive, strong, committed Christian wife, Lucy is her name, who for seven years has nursed her husband though all of the pain and the agony and the tragedies. Hours and hours and hours of no sleep, many times all day by his side, as he lives on a respirator. I said to friends at the table, the thing that I’ll never forget, is the way she would take his face in her hands and just talk to him and watch the mouthing of the words, you could see the love, the affection and the commitment so deep, I walked out of there, having witnessed a sermon in flesh and blood.

Love the wife of your youth, remain captivated by her love. I think what David lost out was that he had conquered her and then he thought that was all that he needed to do.

 LISTEN TO PART 1 OF THE MESSAGE HERE