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Morning to you all. Welcome. We'll begin with our gathering music this morning.
It's number 187 in the Trinity Hymnal. 187. That was a practice session. I thought.
That was a familiar hymn, and it wasn't even, didn't even turn out to be familiar to me. So I thought I knew that song. But anyway, that is our gathering music, and we will look to do better after we have our call to worship.
I have a couple of announcements before we have our call to worship. First of all, we have a lot of visitors today. This is always an interesting time of year because we have, a lot of our people are gone, and then we have people that come in from elsewhere.
It's always a joy to meet people from other places that are visiting at this time of year. So we welcome all who are visiting with us. We have lunch after the service as well. We do that every week. There's a lot of stuff going on also in the church at this time.
Different families are hosting things and whatnot. So tomorrow there's a barbecue at the Quicks, and there's details about that in the bulletin. Okay, visitors are welcome. Yeah, so Ken, Lori, here, that you can talk to them if you're interested in coming, if you're visiting.
They live about 45 minutes from here, 40 minutes. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, you're welcome to join. The Valley softball game and barbecue, that's at Covenanters ARP. That's going to be Saturday, August 8th at 1 .30.
Men's camping trip at Eldridge Camp in Wentworth area. That's on Friday, August 14th, and check the July 3rd email for details. And then the Big Knees are hosting a barbecue on Saturday. They're away for a wedding in Ontario this week, but anyway, they're going to have a barbecue on the 22nd at their place.
That will be at 11 to 3. Again, the details are in the bulletin. And I think that's all the things I need to announce. That's a lot of things. Okay, but now we are here primarily to worship the Lord. So please stand and receive the call.
Let's take a minute for.
Silent prayer and preparation before we hear the call. Hear now the call to.
Worship. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice you righteous and shout for joy all you upright in heart.
Let's look to our God in prayer. Oh, gracious Heavenly Father, how we praise you for the mercy that you have shown to us as your people. You are a merciful and gracious God, and you are the God who has redeemed your people from their sin.
We praise you for sending our Lord Jesus Christ, that he died on the cross for our sins and that he rose again for our justification and that you have declared that righteousness is found by trusting in him through faith in him.
And we praise you that you have also sent your Holy Spirit into the world and that the Spirit has come to work and to change our hearts, to renew us so that we might respond to the gospel and that we might receive the precious truths of your word and that we might walk with you, that we might have a desire to be reconciled to you in the first place and then to continue in your grace.
We thank you, Lord, so much for your restoring grace that also comes to us when we have sinned and gone away from you, that you restore us. You relentlessly pursue us until we are brought back into the fold.
We thank you that you will not let any of us perish. Jesus has made that very clear. And we pray that we would have confidence and hope. Oh, Lord, as we come before you, then we come with great thanksgiving because you have been so gracious and kind to us.
And we pray that we would respond to you with adoration and joy, with thanksgiving and with a holy walk. We pray, Lord, that you would enable us this day to hear and receive your word and that we would be made better, Lord.
And having been gathered in this place, that by your grace, that there would be transforming work that goes on in our lives through the means of grace. Oh, Lord, we come as recognizing that there is still much in us that is sinful and defiled.
And we ask you, oh, Lord, to please forgive us for our sins and to help us to have a clean heart that delights in you and that is consistent and steadfast in serving you and walking with you. Oh, Lord, we pray for those who are under various trials and temptations, whether they're the kind of trial that is an enticement for the things of the world to draw them away from you, or whether it is a kind of trial that is hard things that make it burdensome and that may be tempted toward bitterness or or toward turning away from you in despair.
We pray, oh, Lord, that that you would guard us from such responses, that you would keep us, oh, Lord, in the way of trial. But we also pray that you would spare us from trials and temptations. We pray, oh, Lord, that you would be merciful to us in that way.
We know that every day that you spare us from many such. We know that if Satan could have his way, that we would be completely beat down and with discouragement and enticed constantly. We praise you, Lord, for your mercy to us.
And we ask you, oh, Lord, indeed, to continue to show that mercy and in your own way that you do, Lord, with such wisdom and such such purpose. We pray that we would trust you as our heavenly father who loves us and we would not question your providence and the things that you bring in our lives.
Oh, father, we thank you and praise you for the fellowship that we have with the saints. We thank you for those who are visiting here from other places. We thank you for those among our number who are elsewhere worshiping today and ask that you would give them good fellowship where they are, that we might spread encouragement to one another in the things of the Lord.
We thank you, Lord, for the bond that we have in Jesus Christ. We thank you, Lord, that it is deeper than any time. And we pray, Lord, that we would live accordingly, that we would love one another and that we would care for each other.
Father, thank you for all that you've done for us. Thank you for all that you provide for us in this world. We thank you, Lord, for those who are in authority over us in our land. Lord, we know that you guide them in terms of in your providence that you bring about hard things as well as is blessed and sweet things.
We pray, oh, Lord, as we see much that is not right. We see much that is sinful and contrary to your ways and our and laws that are being made and practices that are being carried out. And we pray that you would have mercy on our nation in that way, oh, Lord, that you would grant repentance and that you would remove those who have no regard for your name and that you would give us those who do have a fear of God and who desire to serve you and honor you.
Oh, Father, thank you so much that we can ask you for these things. Thank you that you give us food on our tables and thank you that you give us such care with again in all of your wisdom. Oh, Lord, be with us now then and bless our worship.
Help us to honor you for you are our God and you are a great God who is worthy of all praise and honor and adoration. We ask all this in Jesus name. Amen. Now, let's confess our faith as we come together as God's people.
One of the things that's very precious to us as believers is God's preserving grace. And so Psalm 121 expresses that to us. Let's confess these words are printed in the bulletin, so we'll all be using the same version.
So people of God, what do you believe about God's preserving grace? I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be moved.
He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber or sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve you from all evil. He shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, even forevermore. And now let's sing of our God's mercy.
Psalm thirty six B and the book of Psalms for singing. If you're visiting, we have the two books. This is one that we'll be using for the rest of the service. Thirty.
Six B. Be seated. We have two New Testament scripture readings this morning. One of them.
Is from the first one is from Hebrews chapter twelve. And I'll read the first eleven verses. And this talks about God's restoring grace, how he chastens us when we go astray because of his love for us.
He will not let us continue in our rebellion and in estrangement from him. So receive here the word of God, hear the word of God. Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every way in the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance.
The race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
And I'll just pause there for a few minutes. The the joy that was set before him, Jesus did the work that he did because of the joy of reconciling his elect people to be his forever and ever through his saving work.
He did all that he did because of that. He delights to restore sinners. Verse three, for consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons. My sons, my son do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him.
For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.
Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.
Now, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. And that's where we'll end the reading of God's word from Hebrews.
Our second reading is from Galatians, chapter six, and only the first three verses here again is the word of God. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted.
Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. And there will end the reading from Galatians. Now let's sing before our God a song of his gracious promise to restore us.
It's in Psalm 89, Psalm 89 F in the book of Psalms for.
Singing. 89 F, please stand to sing. So God, God made the promise of that to David when he.
Established his covenant with him as king and second Samuel seven, which we saw earlier in our studies in Samuel. It's interesting for the promise here is it's worded there that I'll repay with heavy stripes when they go astray.
I'm going to punish you in a significant way, God says, if you go away from me. And that is a wonderful promise. What a wonderful. Yes, because God will restore his people. Israel would have been just like all the other nations if God had not done that with them.
Whenever they started to go away from him, which they did frequently with idols or immorality or whatever it was, God would come and he would deal with them and then they would repent and they would come back to him.
He did that over and over and over again. And he continues to do that today with his people to keep us and preserve us. It is part of his faithfulness and we should be very thankful for that. That's what we're going to be looking at today and in second Samuel.
So that's that's where we have come in our our study now in in Samuel, second Samuel. Chapter 12 is where we are. Last week, we looked at what is perhaps one of the most discouraging chapters in the Bible.
Second Samuel 11, where David, who has been an illustrious example of godliness and serving the Lord with with dedication as a king and by God's own reckoning, was chosen to be king because he was a man after God's own heart.
And yet, you know, we we see here how David goes astray. We we've read this. We read in the Bible, the Psalms that he has written. We we see his passion for God and the way he acts. We saw him slay Goliath and with great courage, trusting in the Lord.
We saw him refusing to lift his hand against the anointed as we've studied about him. We saw his just and merciful disposition and we saw the covenant that God made with him that I just mentioned that that, you know, his that the son, a son born to David, would be the one who would be the promised son that would save his people from their sins and would reign forever and ever.
Then second Samuel. Eleven, we saw him use his authority in all the wrong ways, something that he had refused to do before. He used his kingly authority that God had graciously given him in order to pursue his own sin and selfish agenda in a way that we could have very little sympathy for.
If a man sins when he is starving, then we might have some sympathy for that man. But David had an abundance of the very thing that he took his neighbor's wife. God had given him wives multiple. He'd allowed him.
It wasn't something that was really according to what God had said. We've studied that before, that it was a violation and yet one that God tolerated at this time. But here, David took another man's wife when he already had all of these wives.
And then instead of repenting, then he arranged for the death of that man for which he was responsible, using his authority to bring an end to that man's life in order to cover up what he had done. In chapter eleven, then we saw him using the authority that God had given him in order to establish God's righteous kingdom for his honor and glory for purely selfish ends.
We see him sending people to do things whenever there's an emphasis. The word send is used over and over in chapter eleven. Whenever you have someone that sends people, it shows that they have authority.
The centurion that that whose faith Jesus marveled at commented that he knows what it is to send people to go and do things. And he told Jesus, you don't even need to come to my house. Just say the word and my servant will be healed.
And Jesus marveled that he recognized the divine authority that Jesus had. But the sending that David did was increasingly sinful. First, he sends Joab to defeat the Ammonites instead of going himself.
That could be debated, but probably he should have been there. Then he sends to inquire about Bathsheba when he lusted after her from the rooftop. And then he later sends to her to he finds out she's Uriah's wife.
And still he sends for her and brings her into the palace in order that he might lay with her. She later sends to David and tells him that she is with child. Then David sends to Joab with using his authority to get to send Uriah to him with the expectation that Uriah will sleep with his wife and then think that he's the father.
But it fails because Uriah is so honorable that he says, if my brothers and comrades are out fighting in the battlefield, I'm not going to have this pleasure. I'm going to abstain from that. He's too noble to do that.
So then David sends Uriah back. First, he tries making him drunk and that fails. And then he sends Uriah back with a sealed letter to Joab to expose him to the danger of the battle in order that he might fall in his duty.
And Joab does this and sends a servant back to David to report that he has been successful in ending Uriah's life. Then David sends for Bathsheba and marries her. There is a lot of authority being used here in all the wrong ways.
God is not mentioned until the last verse when it says that God saw all of this and was displeased. In chapter 12, which we take up today, it is now God who does the sending. And that changes everything.
God is now going to exercise his authority. And what does he do when he exercises his authority? Let's take a look. This is 2 Samuel chapter 12, the word of God. I'll read the first 15 verses. Then the Lord sent Nathan to David and he came to him.
You see that? That's how it starts. Then the Lord sent Nathan to David and he came to him and he said to him, there were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb, which he had brought, bought and nourished.
And it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom. And it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him.
But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. So David's anger was greatly aroused against the man. And he said to Nathan, as the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die and he shall restore fourfold for the lamb because he did this thing and because he had no pity.
Then Nathan said to David, you are the man. Thus says the Lord God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your keeping and gave you the house of Israel and Judah.
And if that had been too little, I would have given you more, much more. Why have you despised the commandments of the Lord to do evil in his sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword. You have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon.
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 adversity against you from 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 this son for you did it secretly.
But I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun. So 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, however, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme the child also who is born to you shall surely die.
Then Nathan departed to his house. And there we end the reading of God's holy and infallible word. May he use it and help us in our understanding of our gracious God. Thanks be to God for his precious word.
Our gracious God is a God who sends to restore sinners. He enacts his authority to restore sinners. This is his way. This is something that he does all of the time and how good it is to see this. The opening words show us that all of the wretched sending that David did with the authority that God had given to him.
Now, the Lord sent Nathan to David. David had been going on in his sin without repentance for probably a year. The child that Bathsheba had conceived had been brought forth and was now in their arms. He who had walked so closely to God, David, who had walked so closely with God, was now out of fellowship with God for a whole year.
He likely went through the motions, went down to the place of worship and and did various things, talked about God and use God in his language and all of these things. But his heart was not right in any of it.
Perhaps you know what it is to go to worship when you are not as you should be before the Lord. You can't have fellowship with God when you do that. You can go through the motions, but there is nothing of fellowship.
But now God is doing his own sending and he sends Nathan and he does it to restore David. The eternal God is characterized by sending to restore his people. His central act in history was the sending of his only begotten son in order to die on the cross, in order that his people might be redeemed, that they might be pardoned, that they might be saved from their sins.
He testified to Adam and Abraham that he would send his son to bless. He sent Moses to redeem his people out of Egypt as the people who had the promise of reconciliation by the son that was promised to Abraham that would come.
He sent prophets to testify of him and to correct his people as they waited for him until the fullness of time came. And then he sent forth his son, born of a woman made under the law, to redeem those who are under the law.
After Jesus died and rose for our sins, he sent his spirit to testify of Jesus. Jesus himself sent his church and his spirit to testify to the nations that God is reconciled through his saving work, that whoever believes will be saved.
God shows throughout the scripture that he is a relentless restorer of his people. He will not have them estranged from him. He will pursue them and he will overtake them by his grace. Jesus told how he has sheep that are not of this fold.
And do you remember what he said of them? He said, them I must bring. It was no option. He would not have it any other way than to bring those all those that the father had appointed to salvation. It was unacceptable to the father and to him for any of them to perish.
He went on to say that no one can pluck them out of my hand, Satan or anyone else. We have testimony of scripture that no one can take us out of his hand. It is contrary to God's very disposition to let those that he has set his mercy on perish.
He tells the parable. Jesus tells the parable of leaving the ninety nine sheep in the fold who are following him in order to go out to the one that has gone astray, emphasizing that not one is allowed to perish under his care.
Yes, he has stepped in to do his own sending because he cannot tolerate his servant David, whom he loves, staying away from him. This is true of all of you as God's people. God has that same love and that same commitment for you.
He yearns to have us back with him. He reveals promises of restoring us, and he also reveals his passion to restore us. In other words, it is not just that he's made promises and has to fulfill. Oh, I have to go and restore them because that's what I promised.
But he promised because of his delight in restoring and his love in doing so. For example, in Hosea, Ephraim has been so wicked that the Lord tries to give him up, but he testifies that he cannot do it.
God reveals himself in this way in order to show his commitment to us. Listen to Hosea 11, seven. My people are bent on backsliding from me. Though they call to the most high, none at all exalt him. In other words, they go on praying, they go on asking God for help.
They do their worship thing, but their hearts are far, far from God. They have no regard for him. He said, but he says, how can I give you up, Ephraim? That's the name for the northern kingdom. How can I hand you over Israel?
How can I make you like Adma? How can I set you like Zeboiim? My heart churns within me. My sympathy is stirred. See, God condescends to reveal himself this way to us. He says, I will not execute the fierceness of my anger.
I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man, the holy one in your midst. And I will not come with terror. They shall walk after the Lord. He will roar like a lion when he roars. Then his son shall come trembling from the West.
They shall come trembling like a bird from the from Egypt, like a dove from the land of Assyria. And I will dwell. I will let them dwell in their houses, says the Lord Christian. This is your God. He will come after you if you are his child.
He is holy. He is also gracious. His grace pursues us until it overtakes us and restores us. Praise your God for this. Praise him for being a God who cannot let us go when you're trying to avoid facing your sin.
You know what it's like. Exposure of your sin and what you have done is the last thing that you want. You want to avoid God and any closeness with him or any meddling that anyone would have in inquiring about how you're doing.
You were like David was when Nathan came to him. David had been not really, but in his own way at this time, getting along pretty well. In the public eye, he had simply married the widow of one of his faithful servants who had fallen as a war hero, dying on the battlefield.
It would even be seen as a kindness to the dead for the king to take his widow. It is pretty clear that during the course of the year when Bathsheba had carried David's child, that that's the time which actually follows in the scripture.
It's not chronological here, but in the following chapters when Joab had finished subduing Ammon and he called David to come and complete the job fully so that he could get the honor for it. You remember the passage?
We're going to get to it later. But David, there was a big jeweled crown and David put it on his head and, you know, victory, victory. There was celebration that occurred during the time of probably of her pregnancy around in there in that period.
It was a great diversion for David. Everybody was celebrating. David has victory again. He's conquering the whole world. Israel is leading. It was a time of great rejoicing, a nice distraction for David's torn conscience.
As for the Bathsheba thing, yeah, David would probably say something like, yeah, you know, I made a mistake, you know, but I'm just moving on. You know, I'm going on with my life. Everything's going okay.
I'm just doing my best, you know, I'm going to keep on going. And he didn't, of course, he didn't say that to anyone because he was trying to hide the thing. He was just trying to forget the past. You know, I'm not going to live in the past.
I'm just going to move forward and do the thing next thing, you know, got got a whole kingdom here, got a lot to do. Exposure was the last thing that he wanted. But it was exactly what David needed. It's exactly what you need when you're trying to avoid God.
David's old buddy, Nathan the prophet, had come by. Now, I could imagine that David was probably too busy to see Nathan very much. He probably didn't really seek him out very much, you know. You know, he had the affairs of the kingdom.
He was running the kingdom and all. There was a lot going on, celebrating and all different things. But Nathan came to him and he seemed to have something on his mind, you know. You know, David, you know, of course, received him.
And he told David about this guy with the lamb that he kept in his house like a pet and how this cruel rich man took the man's lamb to host a traveler who had come by to take care of this traveling man.
Perhaps the rich man thought that this guy's lamb would be really tender because it had been brought up in his house and everything. We don't know exactly what it, we're not told. And that's part of it, isn't it?
Why would this guy who had all these, all of his own flocks and everything, why would he take a lamb from this man, his only lamb, when he had plenty of his own? David was incensed. His indignation flared and he said, this is, this is horrendous.
That man deserves to die. And of course, that was more a higher penalty than what God appointed for such things. He also mentions what the law required, the restore fourfold, what he had taken. But to, you know, David is, he's right.
I mean, this is unreasonable cruelty that this man has shown. How could anyone be so cruel? I might mention with David here that we could suppose that this is a bit of a reflection of how David had probably been lately.
Kind of, kind of cranky, kind of severe. When people didn't do things that, you know, like, what are you doing? Probably not very pleasant around the house. Probably his children were kind of like, you know, wonder what's going on with David.
He's, with my dad, you know, he's, he's all cranky. Something is, something is going on here. How could, so David has this, this strong reaction. So Nathan had David right where he wanted him. David's really mad that anybody should do anything like this.
He's really angry and incensed. As one man put it, it's like the sword of the spirit that Nathan had in his hand was an inch away from David's heart and David didn't even know it. Right. He had no idea that that sword was ready to pierce his heart, to pierce his soul and expose him.
So what happened? Nathan thrust the sword into David's heart. He only needed two words in the original. You are the man. That was it. More words in English, but in Hebrew, it was just two words. You, you're the man.
The sword went in. David could not escape. That sword pierced deep and there was no way that he could escape. Nathan did not withdraw the sword either. He took that sword and he twisted it in David's soul.
First, he reminded David of how God had been so gracious and so beneficent to him, giving him the kingdom, giving him the whole, all of Saul's estate and giving him even many wives. He would have given him more.
Nathan or rather the Lord speaking through Nathan puts one of those awful why questions to David. Why questions? They're so, they're so irritating, aren't they? When you're trying to avoid something. Verse nine, spelling out exactly what David has done.
Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord? Is there a good reason why you despise the commandment of the Lord? Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword.
You have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. David, who is known by his love for God, is now told by this prophetic revelation, this oracle from God, that he has despised the Lord.
Verse 10. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me, God says. First he said you despise, why did you despise the commandment of the Lord? Now he says, you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.
Now, truly all the punishment here is suited, it fits the crime. David disrupted Uriah's wife, Uriah's house with the sword. So the sword is going to disrupt David's life for the rest of his life, disrupt his house.
David has taken another man's wife. So we read in verse 11 and 12, the Lord says, behold, I will raise up adversity against you from 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 the sun. For you did it secretly, wasn't secret before God, was it? You did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel before the sun. And then with two words of his own, David confesses his sins.
These words are translated in English, I have sinned against the Lord. It's a lot more words in English, but it's just two in Hebrew. Marvelous. The light has flooded into David's soul. The sword of light has pierced into the darkness that was in David and everything is changed.
Exposure was just what David needed and it was just what he got from the gracious hand of the Lord who sent Nathan. Now before we look further at David's restoration, which we'll do at the end, I want to first encourage you to imitate the Lord and be an agent of restoration for him like Nathan was.
You should be someone who is praying for the restoration of sinners and who is pursuing with all the opportunity that God gives you, the restoration of sinners. You should be like your God, delighting in who he is.
Now, this is very hard to do when it is a brother who is in rebellion against the Lord. Who wants to go to a brother or sister when they have sinned? And especially when they know that they have sinned.
Nathan knew that David knew this, of course. And when they're trying to avoid it like David was, perhaps they won't receive you. Maybe they'll hate you for the rest of your life. Maybe they will. And if they do, it shows that they're not even a child of God.
You see that. But think how hard it must have been for Nathan. He was a friend of David. He was also a man who is, of course, a prophet and kings at this time had great authority. David could just cut his head off for messing with him like this.
How would Nathan know what David was going to do? Oh, well, David's not like. No, David killed a man just to cover up his sin. A man that was a war hero that David also knew who had fought. He was one of his mighty men, we're told later, in his army.
And David killed him just to cover up his adultery. Why would he not kill a prophet if the prophet came to him? Nathan didn't know, but Nathan went anyway. I want you to think about that. What are all your excuses for not going?
You have a lot, don't you? Nathan went anyway. Because God told Nathan to go, my friends, God has sent you to he has spoken his word to every single one of you, his prophetic word, his revealed word. He has he not commanded us, as we read in Galatians six.
Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted. If you don't deal with your brother, you might be the next one to be tempted and to fall into the same sin.
By not dealing with sin, you open yourself up to it. Don't challenge people about gossip and you'll be participating in the gossip. Maybe it bothers you and troubles you, but you don't say anything when people are doing it.
It's not going to be long till you're sharing in the gossip too. Same thing with drunkenness, same thing with Sabbath breaking, all of the things that people fall into. You're going to do that if you don't address it in other people.
That's the way it works, and it's so easy not to address things because it's hard. But are you so proud that you think I would never do that? Take heed. You can fall if David can fall, so can you. And parents, the Lord has expressly commanded you to correct your children.
Sometimes parents are afraid that their children will hate them if they do. But it is the opposite. Now, of course, if a parent is cruel and curlish and selfish and all the rest, that can certainly cause hatred.
That's not the correction. We're talking about the Lord's chastisement here. But the fact is, your children will hate you if you don't correct them. Christian children especially. When Jesus spoke of going after the lost sheep, he warned parents that they could be the cause of the stumbling of their children.
And if they are, then it would be better if a millstone were hung around their neck and they were cast into the sea. David didn't correct his children, we're told. And we know that this is all part of God's overall providence because we've seen that this was a sentence that was given to him that he would have trouble in his household.
But the cause of it, as far as how David behaved, was that he never corrected his children. With David, Samuel and Eli, we see what happens when parents don't correct their children. And all of us are to be involved in testifying to others of Christ.
He has commanded his church to go into all the world and to preach the gospel. I say what a privilege it is to imitate your heavenly father as a restorer of souls. When you delight in him as the God who restores sinners, when you love him as a restorer, and when you admire him for it, it's natural for you to imitate him.
You want to be like him. When you're thrilled to be restored, you want other people to be restored too. You don't want them to go on alienated from God. Jesus, you remember the woman at the well, she went and told her, come and see a man.
Is he the Messiah? He told me everything I ever did. He exposed her, right? Jesus says those who are agents of restoration are God's children, that they're like God. His words were, Matthew 5, 9. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.
They're called the sons of God because they're like God. They're out to restore people. What a delightful thing it is to see sinners restored to God, to be freed from darkness and the tyranny of Satan and brought into the kingdom of God's son.
We need more Nathans who will restore those who have gone astray. I love to see children whose parents do not let them go on with a guilty conscience. You see so many children going around with a guilty conscience, and they're miserable, they're cranky, they're unhappy.
How happy such children are when their parents address them and deal with their conscience. They don't leave them with that guilt-ridden soul. Recently, a little boy was playing with a selfish, unhappy child who was harming his toys and doing all kinds of malicious things.
And the little boy said to his parents, he's so unhappy, I want to help him. That's the kind of spirit you want to have. He didn't say, I don't want to play with him, he hurt my toys. He stood up to him about the toys, this little boy.
He said, don't do that. And the little boy said, don't do that at my house. He said, this is not your house, don't do that at my house. This is a six-year-old kid. And then he said to his parents later, he's unhappy, I want to try to help him.
The kid had a guilty conscience. And when you go, go as Nathan did. Galatians tells us to be gentle when we go. Nathan was obviously because he was speaking to a king who, as I said, could have his head.
Yeah, he was going to be gentle. But you know what? You need to be gentle when you're an authority too. And that's what I was talking about with parents. Yeah, you need to go and you need to address the guilty conscience and you need to deal with that guilty conscience.
And you need to be firm, but you need to be gentle. You don't go in a harsh, selfish manner. That's not that's not seeking to restore. That's just being irritated and venting your irritation. That is not what we're talking about.
We're talking about going to restore a guilty soul to God. Parents who use the rod consistently with their children are less likely to become enraged with them and to have the wrong kind of anger. If they quickly discipline their children because they have gone astray before the parent is even irritated yet, that's when the correction will do the most good when it's just an expression of their own anger.
It's a whole different matter. We are to correct in love and we're to do it firmly. We're doing it consistently the way God does. Go also with cleverness. Even craftiness. Nathan thought about how to approach David.
He used the lamb story. David had been a shepherd and he had loved lambs. Nathan knew that. Imagine taking care of all the, you know, sheep are a little different. You know, you're not taking care of them to butcher them.
You're taking care of them in order to harvest their wool each year. And you know, they become, shepherds love their sheep. They call them all by name when they're the owner. So this parable, this story touched David's heart.
Nathan, as I told you, got David right where he wanted him to be, seeing the extreme wickedness of what had been done, that David might see the wickedness about that he had done. This was a very clever way of reaching David.
It's not that you ought to always use this same tactic. There's other approaches that are appropriate for other situations that are used. But the point is, you should think about how you're going to approach because you want to help the person, not just because you want to avoid their wrath or whatever, though that was certainly probably part of Nathan's motive.
But you want to try to reach them. You want to win your brother, as Jesus said. But so also be direct. Nathan speaks plainly about the wrong that David had done. He doesn't tell David, oh David, you know, you messed up, you know, or oh David, you had poor judgment in this situation.
There's none of that rot. He tells him that he sinned against God, that he despised God. He goes straight to the heart of the matter. People need to face their sin. They don't need it to be soft-pedaled.
They need to know what they have done and to see what it's really all about. And Nathan is also complete. He leaves nothing out. You need to be complete. He spells out all that David had done and he reveals the chastisement that God has pronounced against David for this sin.
Truly restoring sinners should be something that every Christian is involved in. We need a lot more of it in our congregation. I am delighted to see some of you doing it, and I encourage you to keep on doing it.
Our restoring God is a wonderful God, and we want to join him in reconciling the world. Now, let's look at the nature of this reconciliation. Let's look at how beautiful restoration is that we may admire it even more.
See David confessing his sin, as I say, after perhaps a full year of living in the shadows, avoiding God, the God that he loved and once walked with in sweet communion. God would not let him go on like that.
He wants him back. So David has this beautiful confession. I mentioned already that in the Hebrew it's but two words, just like Nathan's initial rebuke when he said, you are the man. David said simply, I have sinned against the Lord.
The simplicity here is beautiful. He does not make excuses. He does not try to blame Bathsheba for bathing on the roof. He doesn't suggest, this is true of David, that he has stronger passions than most people.
He certainly does, but he doesn't use that as some kind of an excuse, sort of a boasting excuse. Well, I'm such a passionate man that, you know, it's understandable that I would do something like that.
Nor does he complain about the punishments. He doesn't say, oh, this is too much for me to bear. He doesn't say a word about that. He says, I send. That's what he says. I send against the Lord. Those are the two key words, send against Lord.
He does not claim that he did not do it against God. That he, you know, I was just, I was just lusting after this woman. I was just following my sinful desire. I didn't mean it against God. David knows better than that.
If you send, it's against God. If you send, you have set aside God in order to pursue your lust. We've talked about that as we studied Psalm 51. You can't send without rejecting the most high God. Adam and Eve, we talked about that they rejected God for a mere piece of fruit.
And that's what you do. That's what's so offensive about what they did for a mere piece of fruit. They set God aside, said, I'm not going to follow God. I want to I want to eat a piece of fruit when I want a piece of fruit.
That was their that was their their sin. No, David just simply says, I have sinned against the Lord. Now, this does not mean that the full confession that we saw that that wonderful, helpful confession, Psalm 51 was not an appropriate thing.
But if you look at that confession, if you summarize it, it simply is I sinned against the Lord. And then he's asking God for restoration and for mercy and all these other things. But he doesn't make excuses.
He doesn't try to justify. He makes it clear. He doubles down on how the wrong that he had done. But you see, when he was first confronted by Nathan, that was not the time for all that. Psalm 51 is what he did when he went to his closet, when he went to pray before God.
But when he was first confronted with his sin instead of saying, well, he said, I sinned against God. That was it. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. David is back. Learn from David's example here. He stands in contrast to unbelievers like Saul.
When Saul was confronted, he made excuses, he tried to explain and said, well, I really did obey the Lord and I didn't mean that. And it was. You know, and, you know, you know that kind of thing. Why does someone do that?
They do it because they don't trust the Lord. They don't trust him to be a merciful God who atones for sin, who has atoned for sin in our case, who is going to atone for his people's sins in the case of the people in the Old Testament.
They had all the sacrifices that testified to that to them every day. And we now look back and see what God did in sending his son. Is that sufficient? If that's sufficient, then you don't have to come and make up a story about why you did stuff to try to make it less offensive.
You can go ahead and own it because there's atonement. You don't have to atone for it. You don't have to make excuses to justify and explain why you did it. Just confess your sin and rejoice in the mercy of our God.
It's an insult to God when you try to minimize your sin or when you try to make up for it somehow, when people think that they have to do some kind of penance to make up for their sin. It's like you're taking your pennies and here's the atonement of Christ.
He's he's been offered for you and you take your pennies and you throw them on the with the with the rest of it to say, my pennies are going to make the difference here. That's that's offensive. No, Jesus, what he did on the cross is sufficient.
Beware also of a resentful attitude when your sin is exposed. I mean, what could be worse than if David's main concern, like Saul's had been, was that he got exposed. Oh, no, he was grieved because he got exposed.
Well, don't let the people think this and don't let that was that was Saul's attitude. No, that complaining that God put you in circumstances that you could not avoid. That would be another thing. That's not all right.
That's a lie. I hear all the time. I couldn't help it because this and this first Corinthians 10, 13, no temptation is overtaking you, but such as is common to man. God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it.
No excuse. See that you don't object in your soul that God is too severe just to have a disposition like that. Well, God's too hard on these. He made his law is too severe. It's too hard or that it's unreasonable or that he's petty or that God is one who is hard to please or that he's too restrictive.
The question for you, if you are like that, is who do you think you are? God is the judge. He is the most high God. You are the condemned center. It is not for you to decide whether something that God said is appropriate or whether his standard is too low or too high.
Are you going to quibble with God about justice when he has graciously provided for atonement for your sins and you can come to him and receive his mercy and be welcomed into his kingdom forever and ever, and you're going to stand in judgment of him and quibble about whether he was too restrictive and too severe?
There should be none of that spirit in us. Of course, there is that spirit in us, isn't it? Because we're still not made perfect. We still have remaining corruption. And that's why we constantly need to come to God and ask him to forgive us.
And we need to ask him to preserve us and keep us. He is a preserving God. How much better it is to simply admire his restoring grace. His mercy is unspeakably marvelous. David is back in fellowship with God.
David, who had done so much wrong, is now immediately back in fellowship with God. You see how Nathan reveals by prophecy to David the happy news of verse 13. The Lord has put away your sin. God has revealed that to all of you who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord has put away your sin. It is taken care of by Jesus Christ. Even in uttering that God put away David's sin, Nathan adds, though, that the child that was in his arms was going to die. So wait just a minute here.
How is it that God had truly and fully forgiven David when there was this whole list of things that were going to characterize David's life for the rest of his life because of what he had done? And now added to that the death of this child.
David would rather have died himself than to see the lives of it ended up being four of his sons taken. And to bear the shame of having one of his sons fulfill that prophecy of taking his wives on the rooftop, the very roof where David had lusted after Bathsheba.
How is this? What kind of forgiveness is that? How is that forgiveness? It is that God has accepted David. David can once again walk with God. He can pray again. He can experience God's grace working in his soul to transform him.
He can delight in his God and come to know his love, his beauty, his glory, his majesty, his justice, his wisdom, his holiness, his power in fresh ways. David can grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus.
He can have fellowship with him in his sufferings and have an assurance of his love and a hope of a glorious future and eternity. He can know surely that goodness and mercy will follow him all the days of his life and that he will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
And even this in this terrible season of sin and hiding that he has experienced, he can look back and he can know that all the while that the Lord God was yearning to restore him and was planning to restore him.
God lets us go sometimes in order to test us and that we may see what is in our hearts. But then the whole time it is his plan to restore us again. And that is exactly what David can remember about this thing.
Forgiveness is a miracle that only happens by God's sovereign pleasure. He reveals himself. He is the one who sent Nathan to convict David of his sin. It is his spirit that opened David's heart to respond to Nathan's rebuke.
It is God who provided atonement for that sin or was going to provide the atonement, had promised the atonement and applied that to David. It is he who revealed by prophecy that David's sins were forgiven.
Have you been forgiven? Have you been restored? Do you know God as a restoring God? Do you love God as a restoring God? Are you trying to avoid God as a restoring God right now? If you are, then you need to welcome God as a restoring God and welcome his restoring grace and deal whatever you need to deal with and come to the living God.
David. If if if you do not know him, then you know what you need to do. Please stand and let's pray. Oh, Lord, our God, how thankful we are for this wonderful account of the restoration of King David, a man who was a man after your own heart, and yet who, like us, fell into sin.
We know, Lord, how quickly their hearts will turn away. A day doesn't go by that we aren't starting to look with desire upon something that you have forbidden. Well, Lord, have mercy upon us. Help us to deal with our sin quickly, as we talked about last week, not to let it go on and on.
As soon as we see the the eye that is looking after sin that in a favorable way that we would repent of that, recognizing that we have rejected you to indulge that thought, that lust, that it would not take dominion over us.
Oh, Lord, we cannot we we cannot extract ourselves from that, except by your grace. And we pray that you would help us to trust in you. But Lord, when we have sinned and when we have fallen into sin, even deep sin, we pray, Lord, that we would delight in you as a restoring God, that we would experience that, Lord, and we will experience if we are your children, we will experience it.
And we pray, Lord, that when we do that, we would rejoice. And father, if we are believers and all of us have experienced that many times and we thank you, Lord, that you are restoring God and we pray that we would cherish living in a conscience that is without offense, being able to walk with you, being able to have communion with you, to know you, to worship you, to grow in our grace and knowledge of you, to be able to understand your word, to be able to teach transgressors your ways, to be able to rejoice before you and worship you with a pure, adoring heart.
Father, help us to grow in these things. We want them to develop. We want them to flourish. And father, thank you that you are committed to us and that you will never leave us or forsake us and that you will always come to us and deal with us as sons until we are restored.
Oh, Lord, thank you for your wonderful grace. We pray that if there are any who have not yet come to you at all, oh, Lord, that you would also awaken them and that they would see their need and that they would see the kind of savior you are and that they would come to you.
Oh, Lord, we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. All right, let's join together in singing our song of supplication at Psalm 51 F. We're seeing portions of Psalm 51 while we go through this section.
51 F. Please be seated. Let's prepare for the Lord's Supper. That Psalm reminds us about how.
Sacrifices of worship, the sacrifice of praise and the ordinances of God, we can go through those ordinances in a way that God doesn't desire them at all if we're trying to use them to atone for our sin or something like that.
But if we come to those ordinances in a way of rejoicing in God's mercy and forgiveness and seeking his mercy and forgiveness, then it's a whole different. It's a whole different spirit by which we come and God is pleased with us doing things like coming to the Lord's table or whatever it might be.
Last week at the table, I began by saying the Lord's Supper is given to us to be a means of grace. One of the reasons it's given to us to be a means of grace that when received by faith brings the benefits of Christ to us as we we seek him by faith.
The benefit I then spoke about was preservation, in particular, how he strengthens us when we come to the table. He strengthens us in order to fortify us against falling into temptation. This week, the benefit that comes to mind is one that we need when we have given way to temptation.
The Lord's Supper benefits us in this way first by calling us to repentance before we dare to come and partake, lest we eat and drink judgment to ourselves. First Corinthians 11 tells how God even sent some to the grave who came when they partook and partook while harboring sins from which they would not repent.
So this is a time when we should renew every week. We should renew our our walk with God. We should it should be a wake up call from when we're in a spiritual coma like David was that we would realize that, you know, we need to we need to repent and we need to to come to God in an honest way.
The Lord's Supper always calls us to that when we when we before we partake shouldn't come if you don't repent. But there is a second benefit related to restoration as well. When we have been restored, the Lord's Supper is a time for us to give thanks for God's restoring mercy, both for ourselves and others, and even to grow in our gratitude.
It also helps us to behold afresh what Christ has done for our forgiveness and renewal to delight in and rest in the sufficiency of his work as we consider it when we come to the table. This serves to expunge us from any silly notion that I spoke about in the sermon that we must do some kind of penance or some sacrifice to make things right between us and God.
It helps us to see how insulting it is for us to take our penny and add it to the debt that he paid for our sin is if our penny is going to make any difference. Set before us the bread. He sets before us the bread which represents his body broken and the wine which represents his blood shed.
And he appoints the eating of these to represent our partaking in faith of the benefits of Christ. Eating testifies that we have fellowship with him as crucified and that in him we have all of the blessings of redemption that that he is.
He is provided for us. You know, like last week, we're going to read the words of institution from First Corinthians 11. So here is the word of God. The apostle says, for I receive from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, take eat.
This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
But let a man examine himself and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
For this reason, many are weak and sick among you and many sleep. And there we end the reading of the institution of the Lord's Supper. You may eat at this table if you're a communicant member of a faithful reformed church.
You need to be baptized and to have professed your faith and not be under discipline of the church. And if you want to learn more about that, then we will be happy to talk to you any time after the service.
Let's look to our God as we come to receive the bread and the wine at this table. Oh, Lord, our God, we come to you with thanksgiving for you are restoring merciful God. And we praise you that this table testifies to what a restoring and merciful God you are.
You are the one who gave your son an offering for our sins. The bread represents his body broken in the wine, his blood that was shed to atone for our sins. It is by this by his saving work that we have eternal life.
We have full forgiveness of sins. We have grace by which we may live. And Lord, we thank you that the atonement is complete, that we can be no more justified than we already are. But we also recognize that this table calls us to be nourished up because we can be more nourished spiritually.
We need to be more nourished spiritually. We need to grow in your grace. We need to become more like Christ. We need to become those who are a people that love restoration more and a people who want to restore others more, who love others and want to restore them.
And we pray, Lord, for your grace as we come. We look to Jesus who is crucified, whose blood was shed and who is now reigning at your right hand. We look to him who is our savior and redeemer and whose sacrifice has been accepted for our sins.
We look to you, Lord, in order to do this great work in us to change us, Lord, and make us more and more what you have called us to be, to make us those who love you better and who serve you better. Lord, there's so much room for us to grow and we want to feed on Christ.
And we thank you. You've given us this sacrament that is a portrait of that feeding, feeding for nourishment, feeding for growth. And we pray, Lord, that you would be pleased to meet us here and to give us that growth.
We pray that you would use all of your ordinances to work in our lives. This prayer that we're bringing now and the word of God that we read and that we hear, oh, Lord, work in us to bring about what is good in us.
Our eyes are on you. Our eyes are on Christ, our redeemer. Thank you. We praise you. We come to you with hope. Oh, Lord, please help us to know the full forgiveness of our sins through Christ. Yes, we we are sinners.
We confess that. But we thank you, Lord, that we're also fully forgiven. This is in Jesus name. We pray. Amen. You may eat and drink as soon as the tray is passed to you, and then we'll give thanks for what we have received.
According to the holy institution, the command and example of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, I take this bread and having blessed it, break it and give it to you. Take eat. This is the body of Christ,.
Which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of him. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive.
Ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sin, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.
My little children, these things I write to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with a father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.
According to the institution command and example of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, I also take this cup and give it to you. This cup is the new covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ, which was shed for the remission of the sins of many drink from it.
All of you who.
Are trusting in him, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not.
Impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long for day and night. Your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was turned into the drought of summer.
I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity. I have not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. For this cause, everyone who is godly shall pray to you in a time when you may be found surely in a flood of great waters, they shall not come near him.
Father, thank you today. Now let's sing Psalm 23b where we sing about God restoring our soul.
And at the end of the psalm we talk about how he pursues us relentlessly. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. It talks about grace that pursues and overtakes, that doesn't give up until it has.
Got us. Psalm 23b, God received the blessing of the Lord our God. The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace through the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.