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Some people loathe it. Some people like it. Confrontation can be a messy business. Motives, manner, messages and timing provide mixed results. It’s hard to know if we’re saying something right. It’s hard to know how another person will receive what we are saying. Even when confrontation is loving and well done, there is a risk involved. Receiving a confrontation is also tricky. Our natural tendency is to be defensive, to justify our actions, or at worst, to attack.

The Bible is a gift to us. It convicts, instructs, encourages, fills our eyes and minds with wonder and discloses to us the nature and character of the Creator of all things. And, the Bible describes people in all their humanity. Some scholars point to the honest treatment of the Bible characters as one of the proofs of inspiration. Humans typically describe other humans, especially at death, in the most glowing of terms—read some obituaries! However, the Bible contains stories about important people that are less than flattering.

Have you ever had a close call with death? Tree stands, highways, working with electricity and climbing ladders are just a few of the places that life can be a little precarious. According to our text for Sunday, Saul had a close call with death in the bathroom. He and David were in the same restroom, but Saul didn’t know it. The only thing that saved Saul’s life was the sensitive conscience of David.

On Sunday, we’ll look at the account of Jesus’ appearance to His disciples on the Sunday He was raised from the dead (John 20:19-23). It must have made quite an impression! On that day He sent them into the world to proclaim the message of forgiveness. God’s heart longed to forgive. Christ’s work paid the debt. But people must hear and receive it. For those who have received Him and His grace, there are four Old Testament passages that describe the extent of our forgiveness. I first learned these from Jerry Bridges’ book Transforming Grace. Psalm 103:12 “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

Many years ago B.C. (before children), Tina and I were attending a church that we had been at for a couple of years and found ourselves at a place where we were rather discouraged with our “church experience”. It happened to also be the church that my parents were also attending, so our typical Sunday looked like Tina and I getting up and driving from our second story apartment in East Town (Grand Rapids) and driving to our church in Rockford. We would walk in, find the pew my parents were sitting in (yes we still used pew’s back in the olden days) sat with them, did a little singing, listened to a sermon that occasionally held my interest, stood during the final prayer, and then walked out to my Escort Pony and drove to my parents house for lunch before we would head back to our apartment.