2 Samuel 12:1-14. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on the Sunday preceding Dependence on King Jesus Day, July 2, 2023.
The story of David's sin with Bathsheba can be found in 2 Samuel 11. It is a dark stain upon the otherwise righteous life and impeccable character of David. I mean a stain so dark that it causes many to balk at how he could have done these things without having been like this all the time before it. Chapter 11 ends with the statement that is translated in many versions as saying that David was "displeasing to the Lord." It literally says that "it was evil in the eyes of the Lord."
Temptation is a powerful thing. It started with David walking on his rooftop in the cool of the evening. From his vantage point, he happened to see a woman bathing who was a striking beauty. He should have walked away at that point. One cannot control that first moment of seeing something that you were not attempting to see. However, lust took root in David's heart. He had "beheld" her too long with his eyes.
The Bible speaks of making provision for the flesh. In this case, David did not know who this woman was. He could have left it at that, but his desire pushed him to inquire about the identity of this woman. It was then that he found out that it was Bathsheba, the wife of one of his elite warriors, Uriah the Hittite. He should have immediately walked away. She was the wife of another man, and thus, not a potential prospect for him (even though he had plenty of wives at this point).
Now that he knew her identity, David's lust pushed him further. He sends for Bathsheba to come to the palace. It is not clear how she is talked into coming to the palace, but it appears she was as willing as he to commit adultery.
It is not clear if David intended to continue meeting with her, but she later sends back word to David that she was pregnant. During this story, her husband Uriah has been with the army of Israel across the Jordan. They were battling against the Ammonite city, Rabbah (the modern city of Amman). We don't know how long they had been away, but Uriah's absence made it easier to commit the adultery.
David had a problem. Uriah would know that the baby could not be his. David had no doubt made some promises to Bathsheba. To solve his problem, David calls for Uriah to come back to Jerusalem under the guise of quizzing him about how the war was going. After this debriefing, David tells him to go home, even sending food to his house as a reward for all his faithful service. Of course, David believes that a man who has been away to war for months would immediately jump on a chance to be intimate with his wife. Thus, Uriah would never know that the child was not really his.
However, Uriah did not comply. He was too noble to sleep with his wife while his brothers in arms were still at war and perhaps dying on the field. They couldn't sleep with their wives, and neither would he take advantage of his trip home.
David finds out the next day that Uriah did not go home, but slept in the servants quarters of the palace. He tried one more trick by having Uriah eat with him and attempting to make him drunk so that he would lose his inhibitions and go home. Still, Uriah exercised restraint (unlike David) and again slept in the servants quarters of the palace.
David had to send him back, and so he sends him back to the battle with a letter for Joab the General. It basically told Joab to put Uriah in the front of the battle and then have the men pull back so that Uriah would die. Joab complied, and Uriah died at the hands of the Ammonites.
How could David have done such a horrible thing to anyone, much less a man who had been faithful to him during the many years of running from Saul? David had chosen to act like the very man he had replaced, abusing his power, and unrighteously seeking the life of a just man. He did all of this to satisfy his lust.
This brings us to our passage today.
Nathans story (v. 1-6)
One has to believe that the Spirit of God had been convicting David all along the sordid path of his sin. At the moment of seeing her, it would have been there. "Walk away!" But, David didn't listen and pressed on. "Don't ask who she is!" However, David did it anyway. "Don't send that servant to fetch her!" Yet, he did. "Don't take her into your bedroom!" "Don't call for Uriah!" "Don't send him home." "Don't get him drunk." "Don't write that letter!" "Don't give it to him!" All along the way, David trampled the warnings of his conscience and of the Spirit of God, letting his lusts drag him away.
Sin often creates problems and we see David scrambling to cover up his sin. However, he reached a point where he was no longer scrambling and it appeared that he had gotten away with it. Yet, when we refuse to listen to God, He has ways of getting our attention.
Let's recognize that David did not just commit two sins, adultery and murder. He was daily sinning against the Lord who had loved him, protected him, and raised him up to be king of Israel. He was sinning against God every day he hardened his heart. David was trapped in his sin.
However, God cared about Uriah's family. He cared about Israel, and about what David would become if he was allowed to get away with this sin. God cared how David's actions would affect the strategic position that he had within God's plan of redemption for Israel and the nations.
In 2 Samuel, God had promised David that the Messiah would come through his line, and that he would sit upon the throne of David forever. This sin was an obstacle to the work of God through David and so God steps in by sending Nathan the prophet to David.
Speaking truth to power can be a dicey prospect even when God sends you. God can protect you, but He can also be testing the authority to see if they will abuse his servant. Think about it. What happened to most of the prophets? They were killed by the powers to whom they spoke the truth.
Today, in America, people are slobbering at becoming a prophet. They are going to schools, and studying the lives of "prophets," so that they can learn to be one. However, becoming a true prophet of God is akin to receiving a death sentence in this world. It is heartaches and humiliations galore, not a giddy event.
Telling David a story allows Nathan to slip the truth in before David spits it out. You remember the song. "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..." There is a lot of medicine that we need, but we don't want to swallow it. We don't want to hear it. We are sick and tired of hearing it. We put our fingers in our ears and then angrily go away so that we won't have to hear it. Of course, in doing so, we have just testified against ourselves. On the day that we stand before God, He will ask us why we didn't listen. We may then reply that we couldn't have known. Yet, God will play that moment back to us, and we will be silenced.
Nathan's story is a classic rich man versus poor man plot. David would quickly empathize with the powerless poor man, having been the youngest of a lot of brothers. Also, he had been falsely accused by Saul who was the previous king. Saul had hunted him like a deer throughout Israel, seeking to put him to death unjustly.
The story is very straight forward. A rich man who has plenty of lambs to slaughter, and plenty of money with which to buy a lamb if he needed, is contrasted with a poor man who had nothing but a ewe lamb that he had purchased. It was a family pet, much like we would keep a pet dog. Like any pet, this lamb had become very dear to the poor man and his children.
One day a traveler came and stayed with the rich man. Instead of feeding him from his own flock, or buying a lamb from the market, he takes the lamb of the poor man and feeds it to his visitor. Though nothing is mentioned, the poor man would have never agreed to this. So, we are left to imagine what the rich man did to take the lamb, no doubt a group of his hired hands roughed the poor man up. Of course, such details are irrelevant. How does a person come to a point of such gross sin?
Of course, this is an analogy. The traveler represents the temptation and the lust of David being stirred up. Like a traveler from afar, lust shows up and asks for lodging for the night. He should have told it to go lodge somewhere else. However, David wished to entertain this traveler.
Though Nathan did not ask for a decision, David explodes with great anger. He is quite passionate in declaring judgment against the rich man. He calls upon the Lord as a witness, "As the Lord lives!" He then declares that the man will die.
Now theft was not a capital crime in Israel, just as it isn't in our Republic. His statement that the lamb will be paid back four times shows that David is quite aware of Exodus 22:1 and its prescription. However, because the rich man did this thing "without pity," David wants him to die.
Mitigating factors are things that lessen the gravity of a crime. Perhaps a man was an orphan, very poor, and had no food. Such a person who steals a lamb in order to keep from starving is not going to be judged so harshly. However, the rich man has aggravating factors. David thinks that his riches and insensibility requires death.
It is an interesting dynamic that people who are overly harsh in their judgments are often hiding sin of their own. They refuse to repent, and thereby punish themselves, so they take it out on others. David himself is guilty of several capital crimes. You might think he would be adverse to capital punishment. Instead, he insulates himself by becoming overly righteous. Sometimes people can become so bad that they lie to themselves. "I'm okay, and it is everyone else who is wrong!"
Jesus alludes to this in Matthew 7:5 when he talks about judging. "Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." When you have fought against sin in your own heart and mind, you tend to be more compassionate without excusing the sin. You know that fighting sin is hard, so you work hard to help your brother come clean before God without crushing him with harsh words.
Every son is disciplined by their fathers. As earthly fathers, none of us are perfect in our discipline. If you have any kind of heart for them at all, you try to do your best. Of course, no kid likes the discipline they receive at the time. However, discipline doesn't have to be perfect to do a good work in us. By its very nature, being disciplined to do anything in life builds strength and tempers a person. It can be directed in better paths latter, but the foundational skill is there.
This is why many in our society enter the work force and cannot keep a job. They were never disciplined, and taught how to discipline themselves at home. Parents know that life is tough, and if a person is not disciplined, it is even tougher.
The same thing is true spiritually. Let's get real. The effects of sin are devastating, and harsh. If you are not disciplined, get ready for a lot of lumps. Of course, there isn't a one of us who hasn't received their fair share of lumps from sin. However, God is gracious to keep reaching out to us.
Nathan waits until David's response is made, and then, he masterfully reveals that the story was a picture of his actions with Bathsheba.
The meaning of Nathan's story (v. 7-14)
"You are the man!" With this simple sentence, David quickly sees that Nathan knows everything, and that God is not going to let him get away with it. You are the man in this story David. And, this time, you are not the poor, persecuted man. You are the abusive, rich man.
Nathan quickly moves to the judgment that God has given. Notice that God is not as harsh in His judgment as David was in his. You could say that God didn't keep the Law of Moses. I remember a Jewish man asking me a gotcha question. "Is there grace in the Law of Moses?" I told him that there was grace all through the Law of Moses. He was surprised that this would be my answer as a Christian.
The prophets of Israel understood that the Law could not save them in and of itself. David himself got it. In Psalm 51, which he wrote following this event, he writes that if God really wanted the blood of bulls and goats that he would give it. Instead, what God really wanted was a broken and contrite heart. Such a man God would not turn away.
Have you noticed that our society seems to be exalting a principle of not having to pay the consequences of sin. However, mercy is not mercy unless sin is sin. What I mean is this. If we detach sin from its natural consequences, then we are no longer being merciful. We diminish sin to something that isn't your fault, poor you. We enlist the taxes of the rest of society to mitigate, and even erase as much of the consequences as we can. This is not mercy; it is insanity. It creates a society of thankless, entitled brats who have lost connection with reality. It also creates an elitist class that grifts off of the tax pools that are enlisted to "help these poor people." Yes, they are poor, and yes they need help. But, this is the last thing these grifters would ever hope to happen. Thus, every year the helpless and hopeless pool grows larger, and the pot of money needed to "help them" grows larger, and the amount of money that ends up in the pockets of the elite and their cronies grows exponentially.
This is why God designed homes to be a protected environment for kids to learn about the consequences of sin. Parents are not perfect, but they have the greatest interest in this child maturing into a man or woman that is able to discipline themselves for their good, and the good of society. Believe me, when you leave home and go out into the world, the stakes become much higher, and the consequences of a poor choice can mean your life, and much more, your eternity.
We should see consequences as the grace of God that tell us that we can't ignore and run from sin. It tells us that it is better to nip it in the bud because the effects of sin grow exponentially the longer we cling to it.
David was running from his sins, and it needed to be nipped in the bud. God had staked a lot on David, but he doesn't hide his sin. He makes him face it publicly. In fact, God knew what David would do when He removed Saul and placed David in his place.
It is important to recognize that the Bible does not present King Saul as all wicked, and King David as all righteous. They both are raised to power as good men, and they both end up in a place of abusing their power and being rebuked by God. So, what is the difference between Saul and David?
The difference is this. When confronted with their sin by the Lord, David repented, but Saul blamed it on everyone but himself (including God). David turned away from a heart that is hardened against the ways of God with a broken and contrite heart, but Saul hardened his heart and persisted in his ways of wickedness.
This has always been the difference between the righteous and the wicked. It is not that the righteous have never sinned, or haven't sinned as much as the wicked. It is that they repent when God sends the message, "You are the man!" Of course, we need to walk repentance daily. It is a trap to think that you no longer have to worry about repentance because you did it already.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus identified with His Church knowing what a mess we would make of it. Jesus is not for our sin as a Church. He despises what it does to us and to a fallen world. Don't be deceived. He will always rebuke and discipline the ones He loves. He will not walk arm and arm with us and pretend like our sin is no big deal.
However, God is not afraid to be connected to us and our sin. We are His Church. He is faithful to do the work of purifying His children, and His Church as a whole. Ultimately, the end times will bring forth a polarization of the external Church into a false church vs. a True Church. Christ will allow the Beast to destroy one and will stand in defense of the other.
An aggravating factor is that David sinned in the face of great blessing from God. David had difficult times during the years of King Saul. Yet, God protected him, and sent men to rally around him. God gave him victory over Goliath when no one else had the faith to stand against him. God blessed him as a victorious general in Saul's army. God blessed him with a family, and ultimately that his dynasty would last forever. Verse 8 shows us God's heart. "If that had been too little, I also would have given you much more!"
We should note that it was normal for kings throughout the world to have whatever women they desired under their rule. In fact, it is even still normal for presidents today to send word to a woman, married or not, that the president is interested. Power goes to people's heads, and people will protect and feed the lust of an individual simply to stay close to the levers of power. No one would have batted an eye at what David did if he were in a nation other than Israel. However, this was Yahweh's land. The God of Truth, who raised up kings and put them down at His leisure, made this a different story. The God of Israel would not countenance such a thing without repercussions.
However, I am talking about America today! We have been so blessed, and we have been gobbling up blessing after blessing, to the left and to the right, just shoving it into our mouths like a bunch of porky pigs. Still, we just don't have enough. We have to go out and straddle the planet with our military and global corporations, taking as we please and cloaking it in a deceptive cloak of morality.
We do similar things in our cities and towns. Family members do it to family members. In so many ways, we are gobbling up the grace of God, and we are taking it for granted. You can't do that for very long and survive the wrath of God.
Yet, God in His great grace is faithful to send voices out of the wilderness to tell us a story, to try and get our attention. I believe that God is greatly displeased with these united States of America. I think that He is trying to get some Nathan's to rise up and confront the people of this Republic. Yes, truth must be spoken to our government officials, but the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court are not the highest human authorities in this land. No. The highest human authority in this land is We the People who ordained and set in order the highest human law of this Republic, the Constitution of these united States. The rebuke must first be heard by We the People, and a response of repentance must first be walked out by We the People before God will hold our criminal servants in government accountable.
Ours is not a message of destruction. God gives grace to David. He deserved a death sentence, but God actually wanted a repentant heart that would quite the lawlessness. There is hope in repentance. God hasn't cast you off yet. He is not calling for your death!
David is told that he has despised God's commands (v. 9), and then later that he has despised God Himself (v. 10). David knew the truth of God, but in this moment he wanted to sin.
It is a great blessing to know the heart and commands of God. Many people in this world don't know their right hand from their left hand. It doesn't excuse their sin, but it does mitigate their guilt before God in comparison to ours. Some might say that no sin can be mitigated, but our sin can be done with aggravating factors that make it even worse.
Yet, over the top of this, David did his sin anyways. He then continued to sin in order to cover up his previous sin. Temptation and sin is precisely a trap. The bait may be delicious, but now Satan has you in his hands. He will manipulate you into more and more sin, worse and worse sin, in order to defeat the work of God in your life and sphere of influence. Sin knows no boundaries, and there is no "bottom of the barrel." There is only a descent into the abyss, into the bottomless pit of degradation and wickedness.
The word "despised" has the sense of lifting your head disdainfully against God and His Word. Is this not a picture of our Republic today? Is this not a picture of many Christians who give lip service to God, but despise His Words in their hearts and actions? Let not a man bound by sin think that he can have freedom. God will be faithful to send gracious rebukes, but if we do not repent, we will continue in slavery to sin and the powers that He places over us.
Nathan tells David that his actions had given the enemies of the LORD occasion to blaspheme (v. 14). There were those in Israel who refused to serve Yahweh in their hearts. There were also some who refused to believe that God had removed Saul and placed David on the throne. They hated the ways and decisions of Yahweh. To blaspheme is to declare things as true that are not true of Yahweh and His work.
This is happening all across our land today. Some of it is the fault of the Church. We give ammunition to the enemies of God when we hide sin and refuse to deal with it. This also gives ammunition to the spiritual powers to keep them from coming to see the truth of God and switching allegiance.
In this case, it is most likely that the blasphemy would not be centered on the idea that there is no Yahweh, or that He is not really about righteousness. They would speak out against the decisions of Yahweh that were pronounced by prophets like Samuel and Nathan. They could even reject the idea that a Messiah figure would come from the line of David. How can a righteous man come from such a line? One can't in the flesh, but by the Spirit of God, all things are possible!
It is one thing for people to despise God and His ways when Christians do what is righteous. Jesus said in Matthew 11:6, "Blessed is he who does not stumble because of me." Jesus had done nothing wrong, but he knew many people would not understand what He was doing. However, the American Church is not pure. We have become like David in many ways. Have we also insulated ourselves so that we don't have to hear the voice of the Nathan's in our land?
Let me end with talking about God's mercy on David. David would not be executed, and God would not cancel the covenant promise that He had made concerning Messiah. Furthermore, God would remove David's sin from him.
This is not favoritism. This is about God's love for all sinners of the earth, and grace for those who will turn from their sin, repent, and turn towards Him and His righteousness. Messiah would not come from a perfect family of a perfect tribe of a perfect nation. God's work within all of us is at its best mercy upon a sinner who deserves death. Even the people that He uses in our lives are merely sinners saved by the grace of God.
In the midst of God's grace is also chastisement. The child would die, and David would continually have trouble with "the sword" among his family. On top of this, God would raise up one who would sleep with David's wives in the full view of all of Jerusalem. This was done during the rebellion of his son Absolom. God sends a signal to Israel and to the nations that no man, no matter how much authority God has given him, is above the Word of God and the call to repentance by anyone in society.
America has been sinning for a very long time, but the greatest problem is those who claim to know Jesus who are refusing to repent. They don't want to give up their authority and will not be held accountable to any religious notions. Do you remember the phrase, "No king, but King Jesus!"? Just like God knew Israel would fail from the beginning, so God was quite aware of the faithlessness of this nation that would grow through the centuries. Yet, He decided in our favor during the War for Independence.
We must quit looking at the nations when God is saying, "You are the people!" We must quit looking at the sin of others when God is saying "You are the person!" We must once again become a repenting people, even as we pay a chastising price for past sin.
I believe that God can and will give mercy to this Republic if we will humble ourselves and turn away from our wicked ways. We have to quit excusing sexual immorality in the Church. We have to quit excusing the sacrifice of our children for a better life. We have to quit eating, drinking, and being merry in our own houses while the rest of the Republic goes to hell in a hand basket.
Let me close by reminding us of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Eric Metaxas talks about this in his book, Letter to the American Church. Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January of 1933. November 6, 1932, on Reformation Sunday, Dietrich was preaching from Revelation 2 in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. All the bigwigs of society were there with many pastors in attendance. This prophetic message focused on the message to the Ephesian Church. "I have this against you, that you have left your first love." They were celebrating the work of Martin Luther and that they were the spiritual descendants of him, the Lutherans. Yet, the harsh pill, the medicine, you are not at all like Martin Luther. He stood against every demon of hell in order to follow the Spirit of God in obedience to Jesus. Yet, this group would not take a stand against the Nazi Party's racist policies. The Church of Jesus could never compromise with such ideologies.
Dietrich was pushed off as a young man who was just looking for a fight. Years of experience would tame him. This is often true, but Dietrich was not looking for a fight. He was simply seeing that they were already in a fight that precious few could see, a fight for the soul of Germany.
Metaxas says that there were 18,000 pastors in Germany at the time. Three thousand were like Dietrich and stood steadfast against the Nazis from the beginning. Another three thousand were Nazi lovers who had no problem with the invectives and signaled threats against the Jews. That left twelve thousand (2/3rds) in the middle. The problem for Germany was not the 3,000 Nazi-loving pastors, but the impotent two-thirds in the middle. Some of the 12,000 eventually woke up, but after it was far too late to save their society from the great evil that was threatening it and the world.
Metaxas mentions that Hitler took power in January of 1933. Bonhoeffer was already scheduled to make a speech via radio address in February 1933. His topic was servant leadership. As Bonhoeffer described the kind of leadership that Christians must exhibit and require of their leaders, the power to the whole radio station was shut down. It had become to late to make a difference as Hitler quickly began to flex his power and take control of the media in Germany.
We can point to lost people who are doing lost things as the problem in our society. They are a problem, but they are not the problem. The problem is not even those lost pastors, bishops, and denominations that embrace wickedness in the name of love and tolerance. No. The problem in these united States of America is the two-thirds of pastors, elders, and Christians who are on the fence about how to move forward. The enemy does not care if you don't embrace wickedness, as long as you are feckless and afraid to take a stand exactly where the Holy Spirit is calling us to take a stand today (like Dietrich against Hitler, and David against Goliath). God is looking for people in His Church who love truth more than their reputation, or a nice cushy position. Martin Luther lost his place in the Roman Catholic Church. He was hunted by the powers that be.
God will be gracious if enough of us wake up, and say yes to the Spirit of God. Our actions right now actually say that we are just here for the American Dream. But, have you ever considered what Jesus' Dream for America is? We can stiff arm the Spirit and try to get back to "normal," having a good Church service with wonderful music, happy family, happy BBQ in the afternoon while watching sports. It is not that these things are wrong and bad, but that they become all that we are living for while people are dying in a lost state, going to hell, and we are losing our Republic.
Perhaps you are of the ilk to simply give up. Yes, that's what happens when people sin. Que sera, sera. O, friend, you don't want to go through what can be next, and how bad things can get. God is removing the middle ground because it always belonged to Satan in the first place. We must choose this day whose side we are on. And, the only way to stop it is to repent and follow Jesus.
Pick up your cross and let's follow him!
It's Me audio
Pastor Marty