The Object of our Affection

Random thoughts:

David became the manifestation of what the people asked for

David came to the point that he deserved everything that he wanted

David forgot who he was. He began believing what the people said. Whenever you start believing you are as great as everyone says you are, you set yourself up for certain defeat.

Humanity is notorious for giving objects human traits or characteristics while turning other people into objects. (Here is a good opportunity to tie into what the mission team is doing regarding human trafficing.)

Introduction:

In the Movie Bicentennial Man, an artificial life form searches for a way to become human. The robot, played by Robin Williams, wants to become human. While he is treated almost as if he has human characteristics, he is just a machine. Out of the movie emerges a most profound questions. “What is it that makes us human?” Of course we know that, no matter how human some device of artificial intelligence may appear to be, it will never be human. However, the question still remains. What is it that makes us human?

Its really a good question because you see, we humans have a tendancy to treat objects like people and people like objects. A friend of mine tells the story of his very first automobile. It was on old car that had managed to buy with the money that he had earned at his part-time job. He said that it was a beautiful car, although it never ran very well. As a matter of fact, it stayed parked more that it stayed on the road. My friend was very resourceful. Even though he could not keep up with all of the repair jobs that his car required, he still loved his wheels. He kept it polished and shined even though it spent more time sitting beside the road than on it, still he loved his car. He named it Bessy and, since he was unable to drive it very often he’s sit in his car and wave at the girls as they drove by. It was not uncommon to drive past his house and see him sitting behind the steering wheel of that shiny broken down car, with shades and the best “cool” look he could master. If you engaged him in conversation about Bessy and didn’t know that he was talking about a car, you’d swear that he was talking about his girl friend.

As it turns out my friend is not alone. Research shows that over a half of U. S. drivers have names for their cars. So prevalent is such a practice of giving inanimate objects human names that marketing has gotten on board and today we have objects that actually answer to human names such as Alexa and Siri etc. In certain extreme cases there are people who actually claim to have fallen in love with inanimate objects so much so that their affection toward such an object conditions where and how they live their lives.

This brings up an interesting question for me to pose for you consideration this morning. What is the “Object of your affection?” Notice, I didn’t say who, I said what. It seems to be a very good question in a world in which we tend to treat objects as people and people as objects. There is perhaps no better illustration of this in the entire Bible than we find in .

If we were to remove all of the names from our text and you did not know that we were reading from the Bible, this story would sound a lot like a story we’d expect to read in tomorrow’s newspaper.

DAVID FORGOT WHO HE WAS AND WHOSE HE WAS.

David’s greatest problem was that he started believing what the people were saying about him.

Reference: “Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his tens of thousands.”

There is a big difference between the David that we see here in Chapter 11 and the David that we see in chapter 7. Listen to the prayer that David prayed in :

The King David went and sat in the Lord’s presence. He asked: Who am I, Lord God, and of what significance is my family that you have brought me this far? But even this was too small in your eyes. Lord God! Now you have also spoken about your servants dynasty in the future and the generation to come. Lord God! What more can David say to you? You know your servant, Lord God. For the sake of your word and according to your own will, you have done this great thing so that your servant would know it. That is why you are so great, Lord God! No one can compare to your, no god except you, just as we have always heard with our own ears.”

In Chapter 11 David has begun to think that he deserves whatever he wants. When we start taking God’s grace for granted we set our selves up for trouble.

Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord

When he began to believe what people were saying about him, he began to treat people like objects and objects like people.

One of the reasons that our Vision statement is bringing hope to today’s families is because there are parents and children who long for the joy that can only come in Christ.

Cumberland county had more than half of the cases that were reported across the state in human trafficing, incidentally that is the ministry that our mission team is doing in the Dominican Republic right now.

FORGETTING WHO HE WAS SET DAVID UP FOR THE JUDGEMENT OF GOD.

“But God was not happy with what David had done.