2 Samuel 12:1-15 The God Who Pursues

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak is preaching from his series,

The Warrior Poet King, Study of Second Samuel. Let's listen in. Welcome to Recast Church.

Glad that you guys are all here. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and it is a great morning to be gathered together.

In the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, it's so great to be together with others who are on a journey to draw closer and closer to Him.

How many of you are glad for that? You're not alone. You've got others around you. You've got community around you.

There are others. I mean, you can just look around the room and see there are others who love Jesus, and that's an exciting thing.

I recognize that all of us are at different stages of our journey. We're all at different places. Each one of us are unique in terms of the challenges that we're facing.

We all have our own unique struggles. We have a variety of highs and lows this week. How many of you had some highs this week, some good things this week?

How many of you had some lows this week? I think it just comes and goes, right, just with what it means to be alive on a fallen planet, right?

And since we know that we're all at different places in our journey, and since this text this morning we're going to be looking at and reading in a minute indicates that God is a

God who is faithful to pursue us down any road we will go. No matter where we go,

God is faithful to go there with us. He's faithful to come down after us. I want to start with a reminder that we have a core value here at this church of authenticity.

Now, many of you know that our name is an acronym for our core values, and if you had a chance to take advantage of the donuts back there, then you notice right above the donut holes that there's a thing on the wall that explains that.

It's replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth are our core values, and that forms the word recast.

But the core value of authenticity requires a little explanation because since we started 13 years ago, that's a word that started to be used differently in our culture in a couple of different ways.

So I want to highlight what we mean when we say authenticity. We don't mean it like one might say that they have an authentic signed baseball from Justin Verlander.

Now, that would be pretty cool to have. How many of you would like to have one of those? That would be pretty cool. But we don't mean it like that because what that implies is that we're the authentic.

We don't mean that about our church. We're the authentic church, and others are fake. We don't mean it that way. We also don't mean it in a way that our culture has begun to say that we just need to be true to our inner being, our inner self.

Just be your most authentic self is the way that you're hearing kind of the battle cry of our culture right now.

We saw last week what happened to David, who was being authentic to his desires, and it led him down a really bad road.

We mean by authentic that we want everyone to be free to be honest about your struggles, that you're not alone in your struggles.

We don't want to wear masks and pretend to be something that we are not. We don't want to pretend when we get together that everything is just all right and everything is okay in our lives and everything's great with me.

I'm sure it is with you, too, and not enter into the deeper challenges and struggles and celebrations that are going on, too.

Our text this morning shines a light on the God who is faithful to pursue us down into the darkest pits of our lives.

He is not absent from the Christians struggling with pornography. He doesn't give up on those struggling with same -sex attraction.

He doesn't throw David to the wind and give up on his chosen man when he has done terrible things like we saw him do in the text last week.

And I encourage you, if maybe this is your first time with us or maybe you weren't here last week, I encourage you to go back and listen to last week's message if you missed it, just not during the sermon this morning, if you could do that for me, but you can go back and see those.

Those are available on the podcast. They're available on our website under the

Teaching tab there. But I encourage you to go back and check that out for some context. How far down into the darkness will

God go to pluck one of his people out of the pit? And I suggest to you he will go all the way down to call us back home to his loving arms.

Now, I hope you can see grace in this passage. It's here. The reality is when I read this passage here in just a moment, the consequences, the punishment is what's going to rest with you.

That's going to be the shocking thing to you. That's going to be the thing that you want your mind, it's going to capture your attention and grab your mind.

But don't miss what God is doing in the big picture flow of this text. He is calling graciously, kindly, calling and pursuing his servant who has sinned grievously, but he's calling his servant back.

So let's open our Bibles if you're not already there, your Bible, your device. No problem if the only way you can get to the

Bible is through your phone or whatever. A Bible device scripture journal to 2 Samuel chapter 12 verses 1 through 15.

So again, 2 Samuel 12, 1 through 15. We're going to read this together, so I encourage you to follow along.

2 Samuel 12, 1 through 15. Still hear some pages rattling, rustling, rattling.

Pages don't rattle. And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, there were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.

The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb.

Which he had bought, and he brought it up. And it grew up with him and with his children.

It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms. And it was like a daughter to him.

Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him.

But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.

Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, As the

Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die. And he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.

Nathan said to David, You are the man. Thus says the

Lord, the God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul, and I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah.

And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the

Lord, to do what is evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the

Ammonites. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the

Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of his son.

For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the Son. David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the

Lord. And Nathan said to David, The Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die.

Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.

Then Nathan went to his house. Let's pray. Father, it strikes our ears, the punishment, and it should because we know what we deserve.

We know that we deserve punishment upon punishment upon punishment, the things that we have done, the way that we have broken your law, the way that we have gone against you time and time again in our lives, even in our thoughts, the way that we think, the things that we hunger for that are not permitted by you.

Father, I ask that you would allow that punishment to settle on us, that reality of what we deserve, but also to not lose sight of the pursuit, that you could have just left

David in his misery and in his sin, wallowing in the filth, but instead you pursued him. Father, I pray that that would open our eyes to the glory of the way that you will go down into the pit to rescue us.

And I pray that that would make us more eager and more quick to turn to you, that we would keep short accounts, that we would not allow ourselves long leashes to run away from you, but Father, we would stay right close beside you.

Thank you for your salvation, and thank you for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ, only in him, as we reflect on David's sin last week, and then the consequences of that, and the conviction and the pursuit this week.

Father, I pray that this entire series of sermons through 2 Samuel would light our imaginations with your great glory, your great majesty, your great beauty, your great work in bringing forth a

Messiah who has rescued us and saved us. And then I pray from that place of being rescued, that we would now open our mouths and sing together with joy and with gladness here in this place.

Thank you for bringing us together this morning. Thank you for the hope that we share in Jesus Christ. And it's in his name that I pray.

Amen. Alright, yeah, go ahead and be seated. And if you can do me a favor, do yourself a favor, and keep your

Bibles open to 2 Samuel 12, verses 1 -15. We're going to walk through that passage, and so you can see that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's word, not just stuff that I'm inventing up here.

That would be very valuable. And then if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice, or donut holes, while supplies last, take advantage of that.

You're not going to distract me if you get up in the middle of the message, if you need to use the restrooms, those are at the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side.

But let's try to keep our focus on God's word for the remainder of our time together. Three main points this morning, or three,

I guess, I call them points, it's kind of like, but it's the structure of the text this morning.

It's verses 1 -4, remembering that we're in 2 Samuel 12, 1 -15.

Verses 1 -4 are the pursuit. Verses 5 -9 are the indictment.

And verses 10 -15 are the punishment. So it's the pursuit, the indictment, and the punishment.

Now, David performed what appeared to his mind to be a perfect cover -up last week.

He has sinned against Bathsheba, he has sinned against Uriah, he has sinned against God, but he thinks that he has covered it up.

And by the time that we open up chapter 12, we know that some time has passed. I don't know if you think about that very often, but when you're reading the pages of Scripture, I acknowledge that there's some time that passes here in between things, sometimes between chapters.

It seems likely that the child has already been born. David has been married to Bathsheba now for at least several months by the time that we open chapter 12, if not a couple of years.

It's possible that it's up to a couple of years that they've been married now. And even if it's just a few months,

I want to point out, if it's on the lower end of that scale, and it's just a few months that they've been married, David is likely starting to think that he's gotten away with his scheme.

How many of you know what I'm talking about? David thinks he's covered up his sin, he's covered up his tracks, and nobody knows.

Joab knows, but Joab is locked down, and he is in David's hip pocket. So the fact that he knows doesn't really bother

David that much, and he thinks, okay, good, I got away with it. Now back in chapter 11,

David was very active in the text. He did a lot of sending in chapter 11.

The word send is a theme in these two chapters. David sent for Bathsheba.

He sent for Uriah. He sent Uriah to his home for the night twice.

Uriah refused. He sent a couple of messages back and forth to Joab.

And ultimately we know he sent Uriah to his grave. Now it's

God's turn. Now it's God's turn to send. God is going to do some sending in verse 1.

And here we start with our first point, the pursuit. Of course, we know who's doing the pursuing. It is

God that is pursuing David. Well, God sends David's trusted spiritual director,

Nathan, a prophet, to share a story with the king. Now it's story time with prophet

Nathan. And Dale Davis mentions in his commentary that it's not just the devil that has subtlety at his disposal.

So too does God, and so too should God's people have subtlety at our disposal.

Too often we think power and conviction comes in direct and even at times harsh speech.

Well, what am I getting at? How would you approach David in this situation if you knew everything that happened in chapter 11?

And it was your job to go and tell him. How would you respond just being honest? If anyone deserves to be beat over the head with a

Bible, it's David. Right? In this situation, he needs the book thrown at him for what he did back in chapter 11.

By the way, I'm going to just keep alluding to chapter 11 a lot because this happens to be our fifth Sunday, and we've got a lot of kids in here.

So I keep alluding back to what he did in chapter 11, and hopefully you can fill in the blanks for everyone.

So I'm going to keep doing that. But what he did back there, pretty rough. And again, I said go back and listen to it.

If you have any question, you maybe aren't familiar with the story of David, aren't familiar with what we're talking about when we're talking about Bathsheba, I'll weave it in a little bit here.

But what God is doing in sending Nathan with this story shows that he has an interest in creatively disarming

David's defenses by appealing to an innate desire within David for justice.

David still has intact, somewhere within his conscience, a sense of justice. He is the king after all, which is to say he is the highest judge in Israel at this time.

Often the king would come down among the commoners into the city gates, the place between an inner and an outer set of gates, and he would sit there and hear cases and pronounce judgments.

So -and -so comes forward and claims that somebody has encroached on their property and moved their property cornerstone, and so the king judges.

Somebody else claims that so -and -so has stolen a sheep from my flock, and so the king pronounces judgment.

This was routine, this was common, this was an expectation of a good king during this era. He is indeed a judger between warring and conflicting parties.

And in case you're mystified at how David could do what he did back in chapter 11 and still have an innate sense of justice, just spend a moment in your own head for just a second.

Rehearse within your mind your own tendency to become more lenient to yourself.

How many of you have ever driven your car in a way that you would be frustrated if somebody else was driving their car that way?

But what justifies you? Well, you're in a hurry. They're not in a hurry, they're just a jerk.

But you're the one that's in a hurry, and so you drive your car the way that you're not treating others in the same way that you would want to be treated.

So we know that that's within our hearts. You have rational reasons for your own sins.

You were tired, you were hungry, you were seduced, you had a little too much to drink, or you had just a lapse in judgment.

We'll use all kinds of cutesy phrases for it, right? Just a moral lapse in judgment for just a moment.

But you're going to do a better job next time, right? I'll do a better job. And what I'm getting at here, church, is that David suffered from the same disease that every single one of us in this room suffers from.

It looks like this. Grace for me and justice for all. Grace for me.

I can be gracious to myself. Yes, I want more grace, God, more forgiveness, more grace.

You understand my circumstances, but justice for everybody else. That's how David gets to the place where he still has intact justice in his heart for others, but is blind to his own sin.

And God is expertly skilled, by the way, we see it in this text, at slicing into our own self -justifying tendencies.

Have you experienced it, church? Have you experienced God's skill at bringing you to conviction, at bringing about a finger on your sin?

So let me clarify a couple of things as we lay the groundwork for God's faithful pursuit of His people.

The first is fundamental. We all know what I'm about to say. We understand this, but it needs to be said, and we need to be reminded of it regularly, and it's simply this.

When it comes to God convicting us of sin, God knows. Did you know it?

God already knows. God is aware of all that we have done and all that we will do.

Nothing, nothing, nothing is hidden from the eyes of our Almighty God. While David was concerned to hide his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah from the eyes of men, he was concerned,

I said at the end of the sermon last week, he was concerned for the wrong eyes. I said, Joab, don't let this be evil in your eyes.

But at the end of the text last week it said, but what David did was evil in God's eyes.

God sees, and God knows all. But the second thing is equally true.

God is able to pursue us. God is able to win us back. God is able to pursue us and win our hearts back from sin.

God can bring to light what we think we've done a good job hiding. In this sense, coming clean to God is the best thing that we can do, right, church?

It's speculation, but not a stretch to say that I believe David was likely miserable, miserable, miserable during this time of cover -up.

However long that went, whether it was five months or two years, I think he was just wracked with guilt and frustration.

Why do I say that? Well, it's not clear when David wrote Psalm 38. It's clear that he did.

And when he wrote this in Psalm 38, 3 through 8, whether he did this before or after his sin with Bathsheba, the extreme nature over his grief and over sin in that passage indicates that David had a powerful and pain -inducing conscience.

He wrote this in a context that's not given in Psalm 38, but here we see his heart.

So I'm going to read it, Psalm 38. You can jot that in your notes if you're a note -taker. This is a really appropriate passage to have in the margins of 2

Samuel. This is David expressing his heart after sin. We don't know what exact sin.

I think it may very well have been right after Bathsheba. This is what he says. There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation.

There is no health in my bones because of my sin.

For my iniquities have gone over my head like a heavy burden. They are too heavy for me.

My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness. I am utterly bowed down in prostrate.

All the day I go about mourning for my sides are filled with burning and there is no soundness in my flesh.

I am feeble and crushed. I groan because of the tumult of my heart.

Sound like a guy who got over sin pretty quick? Sound like a guy who was okay with his behavior?

Sounds like a guy terrified and plagued by his sin. Do you agree with me on this?

I don't think David was in a good place when Nathan came to him. I think he may well have thought he got away with it and was kind of wishing he hadn't.

Not knowing where to turn, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go or who to trust with this grievous weight on his shoulders.

Certainly not confessing it to God, so no out there. In this state, I believe David is tortured by his conscience.

His own folly and sin is consuming him from the inside out. I think some of us have been there at times in our lives and we should be there at times in our lives.

But God knows and is following David down. David is not going anywhere that God cannot go.

Do you hear me? Let me say that again. David is not going anywhere that God cannot go.

Nor is he going anywhere that God refuses to go. Do you hear me, church?

God will pursue the wayward child. He loves us enough to follow us to the darkest places our hearts will ever go.

In David's darkest moments, God sent Nathan. Do you hear that as pursuit, church?

Do you hear that as the pursuit of a loving God? Do you hear that as grace? God sent

Nathan. And the pursuit takes the form of sending Nathan to tell a parable that appeals to David's role as king.

Nathan set it up as a routine request for judgment. The story is completely disguised as a common request for a judicial decision from the king.

A common conversation. Probably a conversation that had been multiplied times over with Nathan and David.

I've got this thing that happened. I heard about it. I need you to weigh in on it. What do you think? Rich man, poor man, they're neighbors.

Rich man had many flocks, of course. The poor man had one little ewe lamb. The poor man super loved the little lamb.

It was like a pet. This one curled up on his lap while he watched

Netflix. This was a lamb that he cared for. It ate from the food of his table.

He nurtured this lamb. He cared for the lamb. He loved the lamb. Rich man has a guest come to stay.

And so in a culture that highly values hospitality, he wants to feed the guest a nice hospitable feast.

So the rich man steals the poor man's one single lamb, kills it, and roasts it for his guest.

How many of you feel some indignation in that story? Feel like some judgment and some justice ought to happen in that context?

If that's a true story, if that's really happening, how many of you go off with his head? Are you serious?

How in the world can a person be this unjust? How can a person be this pitiless, this arrogant, what a jerk, right?

Now much of the detail of the story, you can read it there, and I'm sure we just read it together and you can see it.

A lot of the story is there just to add elements of realism. It's not an allegory. It's more of a parable. There's one main point to it.

Not every single thing in the story represents something else, but there are some things that represent other things, and the story is veiled in such a way as to avoid any and all sexual references to make sure

David doesn't catch on. He goes agricultural on this intentionally.

So God has sent Nathan in the pursuit of David in verses 1 -4.

God faithfully pursuing his servant. And now in verses 5 -9 we see the indictment.

There's the pursuit and then there's the indictment. David's deep sense of justice, against other people of course, kicks in and he gets angry at this point in Nathan's story.

He has swallowed the bait whole. It didn't take much work for Nathan to trap him, and he's on it.

This rich man who stole the poor man's only little lamb, his precious little ewe lamb, his precious little pet, is declared by David to be a son of death, as the

Hebrew language has it at the end of verse 5, where you see it say, this man deserves to die.

The literal translation is this man is a son of death. David even seals his judgment with an oath, as the

Lord lives. A solid, affirming, stronger, strengthening kind of statement from the king.

What this guy deserves, he is a son of death and should die. He's making a judicial statement.

This man deserves to die for this wickedness, but the law doesn't allow it. That's why he's couching it in his phrases.

That's why he's talking about it. The law doesn't allow him capital punishment for the theft of a lamb.

David proves himself knowledgeable about the Old Testament law. It's cool how the Bible is consistent internally, and I just want to point that out to you, because what he says in verse 6, despite his pronouncement of this fictional rich man being a son of death, he is not allowed to execute him.

The Old Testament law in Exodus 22, verse 1, prescribes very specific instructions for the theft of a lamb.

You go, wow, is the Old Testament law that specific? Read it. It's really specific, right? But why in the world would the

Old Testament law in Exodus declare specifics for the theft of a lamb? That's commerce. That's their trade.

That's what it was to live in an agricultural context. People weren't stealing tons of gold from each other, and coins were not that common, as far as currency.

Livestock was. And so the thief must return four lambs for every one stolen in Exodus 22 to make retribution.

Interestingly, David identifies the rich man's greatest crime, though. The greatest crime, the biggest problem with this man is that he lacked pity.

He lacked pity. It's not that he was merely greedy and wanted to keep his own lambs for himself and therefore stole this one poor man's only lamb.

The story of the poor man's love for this little lamb got stuck in David's heart, got stuck in his craw.

He goes, man, how could he not pity a man like that who just loves this one lamb so very much?

The rich man didn't have pity on this poor man with his one little lamb. This parallels, obviously, with David and Bathsheba.

And it's also part of what leads me to the conclusion that what David did was worse in the text last week than mere adultery.

And you can, again, go back and listen to that. And I would use a different word for that, not adultery. He took without pity a man's wife that that man cherished.

I hope it's as clear to you as it is to me in this parable. I mean, Nathan is not pulling any punches here.

He's like, they loved each other. They were together. This man cherished his wife, cherished the lamb.

The indictment is given by David in verses five and six, but he doesn't realize it as a self -indictment until verse seven.

So he's literally issuing his own indictment. And it isn't until verse seven that we get the iconic phrase from Nathan to David, the revelation, you are the man.

How would that feel to be David? In that moment, how many of you would be a bit like, uh, crumpled to the ground?

Like, I get it. I wonder if it took him a second to make the connection, but probably not.

How many of you know that if he was as wracked as we're seeing in Psalm 38, if that was his context, how many of you know that this sin was on his mind daily, moment by moment, hour by hour?

When is it gonna come to a head? When is it gonna all come crashing down? And it just has for him.

You are the man. Not, you're the man. You're the man in the story.

And now Nathan brings a direct message from God that gets down to the heart of the offense before a kind, generous, and faithful God.

The Lord says now, now the Lord speaks through his prophet direct words. What we have now is we have the direct speech of God from God through Nathan to David, and this is what

God wants to say to David in his sin. God says,

I anointed you. I delivered you from King Saul. I gave you

Saul's house. I gave you Saul's wives. I gave you Israel. I gave you

Judah. And if this wasn't enough, I would have given you equal amount more. I would have given you even more had you asked.

Now I'm tempted to want to read that list of things and just move on. God says he gave to David quickly, that he gave to David a bunch of things, and I hope you didn't see the one super uncomfortable thing on the list.

Did you see it? Anybody uncomfortable with that list? Is there anything on that list that makes you kind of, ew, a little gross inside?

Because one of the things on the list isn't a thing. It's people. I want to point out that there is no indication historically that David ever took any of Saul's wives or concubines as his own.

But this was a common ancient custom from about 3 ,000 years ago when these things were happening.

We are not reading a modern text with our modern morality, our modern understanding. And further, we are so removed from the notion that sex is for procreation that we cannot understand how this could be a good thing for a woman married to a king to become the wife of the new king after her husband, the old king, is dead.

But the present and future status of a woman was often wrapped up in her offspring in the ancient world. It's just the truth.

So that David's not taking Saul's wives to be his own could actually be seen in his culture as an irresponsible thing to do because children born to Saul's former wives would still be credited as his sons and his daughters.

And I'm not sure this does much to clear any of this up for us, but suffice to say that our cultural expectations of sexuality and marriage are substantially different than they were among humanity 3 ,000 years ago.

And if you are struggling with that notion in the text, I would love to sit down and talk with you. Anything that I ever mention from up front that bothers you, text me, email me.

If we can't resolve it by email, then I'd be glad to meet with you and talk through things with you. We're going to move on.

So I want to point out that most sin, and we see it here in this text, most sin comes down to ingratitude.

God speaking to David saying, look at all that I gave you. Look at everything that I've given to you, David. I've given you victory after victory after victory.

I've given you a kingdom. I've given you a throne. I gave you protection from your former enemies. All that I've given you, and you want something

I haven't given. Well, this is an echo of the garden, is it not?

I don't know how often we think about it. We miss a phrase in Genesis 1 that's kind of there, and we miss it.

And it is simply that God gave to Adam and Eve of all of the fruit of the garden, of all of the trees.

You remember that? Gave it all. Except one.

Gave it all. All the trees. All the fruit. Enjoy to your heart's content.

Just not one. Just not this one. All the trees of the garden.

But our hearts want the prohibited. The only one that God said no, that's got

Adam and Eve's interest. Not thanks God for all the trees.

Not thanks God for all the fruit. I want that fruit.

And an application here would be for us to train our hearts and our minds toward increasing gratitude for the good things that God has given to us.

How many of you could just say right now, I would do better to count my blessings every morning, to list them out.

My life would be better if I was more grateful. Anybody struggle with complaint? Anybody grumble a little bit on Monday mornings?

We want more than what God has given to us? He's given us everything.

Greed only thrives in ingratitude. Lust only thrives in the soil of a heart that feels like it needs more than what has been given.

Pride can only thrive in the soil of a heart that thinks that it deserves more than God has given.

The indictment that God speaks over David is in taking for himself what God did not give him.

And this amounts to despising the word of the Lord. He said, in this you have despised my word. Well, when he talks about despising the word, he means he has not kept the old covenant.

David knew, technically, that he was breaking three of the Ten Commandments. And my hunch is that somewhere in there he may have borne false witness.

He probably broke others in the process. And this is probably not the first time in his life that he's broken those commands either.

But God saw his coveting. God saw his adultery. And God saw his murder of Uriah.

And what David did was evil in God's sight. And in case there's any question if David really should be called a murderer for what he did, is a person a murderer if they take out a hit on somebody?

God declares at the end of verse eight that David is guilty of using the violence of the Ammonites to kill

Uriah. Yes, David did not swing the sword. Yes, he did not have his blood physically on his hands.

But he was the responsible party. So God has pursued David. He has indicted

David in a way that David is able to grasp. And lastly, we now take in the punishment.

I use the word punishment intentionally. And it will prove to be almost nearly unbearable for David.

Note that David gets no say in the consequences of his sin at all. First, the first punishment meted out.

The sword will never depart from David's house. From this point on in 2

Samuel, violence within the household of David increases, even becomes a theme of the book.

And spoiler alert, plug your ears if you don't want to hear it, but three of his sons, Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah, will all die violent deaths by the end of this book.

Second, evil will rise up out of David's own household. And related to that, like David took

Uriah's wife in private, someone close to David will take his wives publicly.

This will be fulfilled later in 2 Samuel in a passage I'm not looking forward to preaching. But 2

Samuel, and it's a very terrible accounting of Absalom's rebellion, his own son rebelling against him, trying to take

David's kingdom. And then third and finally, and of course extremely tragically,

God tells David that David and Bathsheba's child will die because he has utterly scorned the

Lord. Now I want to be clear about two things here that need to season and flavor our understanding about how

God is working in David and how does he work with us. The first is that I simply want to state we are looking at an old covenant text of law.

Law and punishment. The punishment for our sins. Hear me carefully, church, as your mind is wandering around what

God will do in our sin, what he will do and what he will return to us for our sin, we must understand this fundamental truth.

The punishment for our sins, if we are in Christ, have been laid on Christ. If you belong to him and you've asked him to forgive you, then he has taken your punishment for you.

God will not count our sins against us. Amen? No more punishment for us.

Now to clarify, he does discipline those that he loves, but he doesn't punish us like he did his

Old Testament people. You might think I'm merely trying to comfort you with semantics. Aren't you doing kind of a bait and switch?

Aren't you just kind of defining words and they all look the same and they all feel the same? What's the difference between punishment and discipline?

But what I think is true from Scripture is that God works with his people in a corrective way and not in a punitive way.

What do I mean? He is not trying to get back at you for your wrongdoing or the things that you have done if Christ has already covered your sins.

He will, however, discipline us to sharpen us with that intention, to make us better, to make us more like his son

Jesus Christ. The point is the difference in God's intention toward us. In discipline, he wants to improve us, but in punishment, he laid on Christ the grave and severe penalty and retribution that our sins demanded.

That's done. So he chooses to discipline those he loves. It is for our betterment.

Does that make a difference? Do you understand the difference and the distinction there? Any hardship that comes into our life is merely, merely, merely for a sharpening.

It is not punishment for our sins. The second observation here is that David is told directly by a prophet of God that what is going to happen in his household and the death of his son is punishment for his sin with Bathsheba.

In the New Testament, Jesus tackles this head -on when he encounters a man who was born blind, and his disciples ask him.

This betrays even the thoughts of his inner 12. Those who were closest to him had this mindset.

Was it this man, the blind man, or was it his parents' sin that had caused his blindness?

A complete and utter expectation that this blindness is because of someone's specific sin, and we want to get to the bottom of it.

Jesus explained it. And Jesus basically clarifies that not everything that appears to be tragic is punishment from God.

I am so relieved by that. I don't have to look at the difficulties in my life and go, what's

God getting back at me for this time? We can spend our lives worried about the causes of tragedy.

Is God getting back at me for that sin I committed back in college or yesterday?

So the punishment for David is disclosed and clear through the prophet Nathan. There is no question in David's mind why his family goes into turmoil.

He need not wonder if his sin has caused this slide in his kingdom. God told him.

God told him. He's not left questioning. He's not left in a grievous state of wondering what in the world is going to happen next.

He's told. But nestled in verse 13, in the midst of his punishment, we find that David confesses his sin.

He comes clean. He doesn't make Nathan pull it out of him over weeks or months. He says,

I have indeed sinned against the Lord. And on the spot, on the spot, shocking on the spot statement,

Nathan the prophet declares that the Lord has put away his sin so that he will not die.

What is the rightful punishment for adultery according to the Old Testament law? Death.

What about murder? What is the rightful punishment in the Old Testament for murder? Same. But here

God defers David's sin. And the logical question is how can

God do this? How can he just let the just consequences for David's sin go?

Let me point out that he has done that and is right this second doing that for all of us.

He chooses to be merciful to all of us moment by moment. He has always been a

God who is patient to judge. Amen? He has not yet brought me to the grave despite all of my sin against him.

And I think you can state the same. Every single day we breathe his air. Every single day we eat his food.

Every day that we enjoy his creation is a day that he has deferred his judgment.

We are dead men walking. And every new day is another stay of execution.

But hear me carefully, church. When I die, and that day is coming. I don't know when it is. But I want to be clear to any of you who are around to know it that God has been just to see me to my grave.

He will be just to see me to my grave. My death will not be a tragedy.

My death will be just. Do not blame God for my death. Do not blame

God for any death. Rather blame God for the mercy to let us live any days here at all.

It is only to his credit that I have breathed. It is only to his credit that I am able to stand before you today.

It's him and him alone. How can God put away David's egregious sins?

He defers punishment. But not indefinitely. He defers it until the cross.

I believe we have ample evidence from David's writings in the Psalms that he was indeed saved.

He was saved on the basis of his trust in God to grant him righteousness. Not in his own behavior.

Not in his own ability to pull himself up by the bootstraps and behave and act right. He may very well have even known that it was going to come through the sending of a

Messiah to rescue God's people from their sins. I think there's indications that David had a radically amazing understanding of the mechanism of salvation even back then.

Next week we're going to take a break from 2 Samuel. We're going to look into David's repentance clearly expressed in Psalm 51.

Psalm 51 was actually written in this context. In this text we see the events in all of their grisly details in 2

Samuel 11 and 12. But in Psalm 51 we see an actual song written by David at the time that Nathan confronted him regarding his sin with Bathsheba.

We're going to look at that next week and then we're going to come back to 2 Samuel after that. But I think it's beneficial for us to take a little bit of a side track into seeing what repentance looks like in this obviously horrendous season of David's life.

And there we're going to see the heart of a man apologizing to the Almighty God over dire things that he has done.

So let's consider how to apply this text to our lives. The first is a straightforward instruction.

Stop hiding from God. Stop hiding. It's miserable. I know that if you're hiding from God right now you are miserable.

I know that to be true of you. And He already knows. So whatever it is,

He knows and wants to call you back to Him. Whatever it is, stop hiding it and confess it.

Whatever it is. Stop hiding from God. The second is accept

His indictment. I mean that in general terms. He has correctly assessed us as sinners against Him.

I don't know much about all of you. Many things that I can say to be true of every single person in this room except this.

You're a sinner and of that I'm confident. You're a sinner and of that I am confident.

You are worthy of His indictment. You are even self -indicting. We talked about the way you drive.

You laughed. I mean we get it, right? You credit yourself with things that you won't even credit others with.

Just simple things. All of us need to accept

His indictment. And a major component of getting well is acknowledging that you are not well.

Acknowledging that we are not well. Confess your sin again. Confess your sin to Him. Run to Him. Don't run away from Him.

Run to Him with confession. With repentance. And turning from your sin and saying, I've messed up again,

Father. I've messed up again and I need Your cleansing. I need Your refreshing work in my life.

Cleanse me and purify me. We're gonna see a lot more of that next week. And the third thing and last thing is acknowledge the punishment.

Acknowledge the punishment. I'm not talking about the discipline. I'm actually talking about the punishment here. And that's what we're gonna do. What are we doing when we come to communion every morning, every

Sunday morning? What are we doing when we come to communion? We are acknowledging the punishment. We're taking it in with our eyes.

Let this epic scene of Golgotha, the epic scene of the cross outside of Jerusalem where your punishment is made for your sins.

Let that fill your vision this morning as we come to these tables for communion. Take in the place where your punishment was met.

We're gonna allow the death of the son to fill our view this morning.

And it is not the little infant son of David who died because of David's sin.

But it is the greater son of King David who gave himself as a ransom.

His blood shed for our sin. If Jesus is your Lord and Savior, then

I encourage you during this next song to come to the tables to remember that he took our punishment for our sins on himself.

His body broken for us, so we take the cracker. His blood shed for us, so we take the cup of juice.

How did the Lord put away your sin? How did he put away my sin? How far down into the darkness did our

Lord go to pursue us? He came all the way down to the cross.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the hope that we have in Jesus.

This is a dark text of conviction, of indictment, of punishment. And it seems strange to celebrate something so dire as the cross, but you call us to celebrate nonetheless because it is the work that you did to bring redemption to us.

So we rejoice in the great love that we could never earn, that we didn't deserve, but you have rescued us through the sacrifice of your

Son. Him taking the punishment that we deserved and granting us in exchange his great and glorious righteousness.

So Father, I pray that you would give us all a humility that accepts what you say is true of us and your just and reasonable indictment over our lives and that we would continually keep running back to you in confession and repentance.

I pray that you would keep us all in the battle. We know that it's a lifelong struggle. We know that it's gonna be a battle for loving you more every day, that there's gonna be a battle against sin every day, but I ask that you would keep us in that battle.

Keep us fighting sin in our own hearts. Keep us drawing close to you. We ask this in Jesus' name.