After The Tears

I don’t know anyone anywhere who hasn’t done something they were sorry for afterwards. What’s the most recent one for you? Maybe it’s something you said - thoughtless or angry words. Maybe it’s something you did - or something you didn’t do. Perhaps it was something that you fight against and keep backsliding on, perhaps it’s something that took you completely by surprise that you never expected you’d ever do. Perhaps it was something big, something that really messed you up; perhaps it was just one of those niggling small things that get in the way of your self-image.

Whatever it was, there are a lot of different ways you can deal with it, aren’t there? You can beat yourself up for it, thinking, “I’m such a bad person, how can anyone put up with me, I never do anything right.” You can shrug it off, saying, “I’m only human,” and “everybody makes mistakes.” And of course that’s true. But of course neither one of these is particularly productive. The first response makes you feel bad, but it doesn’t fix anything; the second response makes you feel good - but it doesn’t fix anything, either. And the big problem with mistakes - which is a kind of mealy-mouth apology word for sins - is that there are consequences. There are always consequences, even if they don’t show up for a while. And, of course, the longer you go before dealing with them, the worse they get.

Fortunately, few of us have anything as big to repent of as King David. You remember the story, don’t you? David has been staying home in Jerusalem reveling in the luxury of kingship and letting Joab lead his army. After years of running around the desert with Saul on his heels, maybe he deserves the time off. But it was a BIG mistake. Maybe he was having a midlife crisis, maybe he was just bored, but David was ripe for mischief and found it with Bathsheba, whose husband was off with the rest of the army. He seduces her, gets her pregnant, and has her husband killed to avoid getting found out. And he would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for the prophet Nathan. And God, of course.

Nathan forces David to confront what he has done by telling him a parable, a story of a rich man with huge flocks who, instead of taking one of his own animals, kills, cooks and eats his poor neighbor’s only lamb instead. Nathan then asks David what should be done to the rich man. And David is outraged, saying, “As YHWH lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.” And that is where today’s passage begins, with Nathan saying, “You are the man.”

The rest of the passage is about the aftermath, how this story played out in David’s life, and in the history of Israel. We can divide it up in a lot of different ways, or focus in on just one of the pieces, but I found three particular things that I want to talk about.

The first, of course, is David’s repentance. A lot of people over the centuries have wrestled with the question of how David could be considered “a man after God’s own heart” when his record of sexual misconduct is so blatant. But we’re all sinners, big or small; what makes us men or women after God’s own heart is how we deal with our sinfulness. What we learn from David is how to repent. He gave us the most complete, heartfelt picture of the cost of sin and what is required to return to God that we could possibly ask for. We see the cost of sin in Psalm 32:

While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to YHWH,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. [Ps 32:3-5]

The cost of sin is estrangement from God. David had stuffed this sin down inside himself for probably about a year: time for the child to be conceived, carried, and born. That’s a long time to be hiding from God.

The price of readmission into the presence of God is confession. Psalm 51 shows the steps: Open acknowledgment of sin comes first. Justifying yourself and making excuses isn’t confession; remember, that’s how Saul reacted every time Samuel confronted him with his actions, and eventually God got tired of it and washed his hands of Saul. Confession means admitting you’re wrong.

"I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment." [Ps 51:3-4] After that comes a plea for mercy and renewal. “Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me." [Ps 51:9-10]