Opening illustration: Couple of years ago while Dennis and his wife were driving on an expressway heading to New York city, we saw a driver turn left into a median turnaround that was intended for emergency vehicles only. He was planning to make a U-turn and head back the other way.
Looking to his right, the driver waited for an opening in oncoming traffic, so he failed to notice that a police car was backing up toward him on his left. Finally seeing an opening in traffic, the U-turn driver pulled out and rammed into the back of the police car.
It’s not unusual for us to think we can get away with doing something wrong. After King David committed adultery with Bathsheba, he too was focused on “getting away with it.” But he was on a collision course with Nathan. His adultery, deceit, and murder “displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11: 27), so when Nathan exposed David’s grievous sin, the king was deeply remorseful. He confessed, repented, and received God’s forgiveness. But the consequences of his sin never departed from his household (12: 10).
If you’ve been trying to get away with something, remember that “your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32: 23). Turn yourself in to God. Don’t hide. Instead, seek His gracious forgiveness. (Illustration from Dennis Fisher, Our Daily Bread)
Let us turn to 2 Samuel 12 and check out where David was headed to …
Introduction: The story goes on as you well know, but we shall stop here, having focused on Nathan’s divinely directed rebuke of David. In our lesson today we will give thought to David’s repentance and to the immediate consequences of his sin. But let us delve into this message by considering some very important lessons for us to learn from David’s sin and Nathan’s rebuke.
I do not know how many people I have known who refused to rebuke or even caution someone close to them, thinking that they are being a friend by being non-condemning. The fear of losing a friend because of the non-acceptance of the rebuke is also high. A good friend does not let us continue on the path to our own destruction. Nathan was acting as a prophet, but he was also acting like a friend. Would that we had more prophet-friends? Would that we were a prophet-friend to one on the path of destruction?
What will it take us to be saved from sin?
1. Acknowledge your sin (vs. 13a)
These words went to David’s heart, and removed the ban of hardening which pressed upon it. If David would have just said, “I have sinned” it would mean nothing and would also exhibit his non-seriousness of his act, but we see him confessing to the prophet, “I have sinned against the Lord.” He knows and acknowledges his sin and is seriously considering the heinous act he committed. This is a good sign of a thoroughly broken spirit ... There is no excuse, no cloaking, no palliation of the sin. There is no searching for a loophole ... no pretext put forward, no human weakness pleaded. He acknowledges his guilt openly, candidly, and without prevarication. How serious this confession was, we may see, Psalm 51: 1-19. That is, so far as concerns his own life. As by his own sentence, 2 Samuel 12: 5, thou dost deserve, and may expect to be done by my immediate stroke.
No one sins in a vacuum. You might think that what you do affects no one but yourself. You are dead wrong! When you sin, your sin and the ripples it causes touch everyone around you. When you sin it touches your family, your church, your work, your school, your community, your friends, everything! God will forgive the sin when it is repented of and confessed, but that which was started in motion will play itself out in your life and in the lives of those touched by it. That is a sobering thought! Before you take that final step and go off into sin, think about how your sin is going to affect those around you. What will your family think? What will your church think? What will be the outcome? What damage will this do to the cause of Jesus? If you will stop and think, you will not commit that sin! Above all it will also reflect whether you genuinely have the fear of God (positive sense) in your life or not.
We may sow our wild oats and pray for crop failure, but I cannot stress too strongly the truth that we always reap what we sow, Galatians 6: 7. There is a high price on sin, are you willing to pay it? Are you willing to see it paid by your family, or by others you know and love? God help us to see how horrible sin is! For David the sword would never depart from his house because he had blatantly despised the Lord God of Israel.
Illustration: Sometimes people justify their sin by saying something like: “I’ve prayed about it and asked God to stop me if it is wrong. . . .” When God does not stop them, they somehow assume it must be right. God could have stopped David after he chose to stay home from the war, or after he began to covet Uriah’s wife, or after he committed adultery, but instead He allowed David to persist in his sin for some time. God even allowed David to get away with murder, for a time. God’s Word forbade David’s sins of coveting, adultery, and murder. God’s Word commanded David to stop, and he did not. God allowed David to persist in his sin for a season, but not indefinitely. God allowed David’s sin to go full circle, to reach full bloom, so that he (and we) could see how sin grows.
2. Repent of your sin (vs. 13b)
There are those who plan and purpose to sin, believing that God is obligated to forgive them, no matter what. They think that going through some ritual, through repeating some formula, they will then automatically be forgiven, and that life can go on, just as it was. Those who presume upon God’s grace in forgiveness confess their sins on the one hand, while planning to repeat them on the other. David confesses his sin against God, and then asks for nothing. He knows what he deserves, and he does not ask to escape it. In repentance there is no space for repeating the sin as it becomes a sin we knowingly do deliberately. Baby repentance is sorry for what we have done. Adult repentance is regretful for what it is. If I am merely sorry for what I have done … I will go out and do it again. Repentance is our part and that is why we don’t like to bring it up. What we really bring up is forgiveness which is apparently God’s part and that is available 24/7 with no strings attached. We love forgiveness because we think and believe that God is obligated to forgive us no matter what and we can continue to do whatever without an act of genuine repentance from our end. Remember that it is God’s grace that provides us forgiveness not something we deserve or is our right. (We are so caught up with our rights in America …)
One of the worst outcomes when any believer sins is the ammunition it gives to unbelievers. When a believer openly sins, God’s reputation is tarnished and His name is blasphemed. Our first thought ought to always be for God to be glorified, 1 Corinthians 10: 31. When we sin, we are seeking to glorify self! In other words, we put ourselves in the place of God. That is treason; that is blasphemy; and that is opening the door for the judgment of God to fall in our lives. Our lives are to draw men to Jesus, Matthew 5: 16; and not push them farther away. When we are guilty of low living that hinders the cause of Christ and that brings dishonor to the name of the Lord, we can expect nothing less than His chastisement! God responded to David’s repentance with grace, and thus David responded graciously to those who wronged him and repented.
Illustration 1: I have heard it said more times than I wish to recall, “Well, even David sinned …” What they mean is, “How can you expect me not to sin? If David a man after God’s own heart, as spiritual as he was, sinned as he did, then how can you expect me to do any better?”
If we look very carefully at the Bible, we will see why stories like that of our text were written. They were not written to encourage us to sin, but to warn us of the danger of sin, and thus to encourage us to avoid sin at all costs. After outlining the major sins of the nation Israel in the wilderness in 1 Corinthians 10: 11-13, Paul then applies the lesson of history to the Corinthians, and thus to us.
I have actually had people ask me what the penalty for a certain sin would be, planning to do it and then be forgiven. There are those who toy with sin, thinking that if they sin, they may suffer some consequences, but that God is obliged to forgive them, and thus their eternal future is certain and secure, no matter what they do, even if intentionally. I know of one situation in which a seminary staff member left his wife and ran off with the wife of another, planning to later repent, and then expecting to be welcomed back into the fellowship of the seminary and his church. This is presumptuous sin, sin of the most serious and dangerous kind. Rather than open a “can of worms” at this point in this message, let me simply say this: “No one ever chooses to sin, and then comes out of it with a smile on their face.”
Illustration 2: I used to teach at a school. From time to time the principal would call a misbehaving student to his office. I will never forget when one of my students was called to his office, and then returned with a smirk on his face. One of my students protested publicly, “Will you look at that? He went to the principal’s office and came back with a smile on his face!” My young student was absolutely right. Being called to the principal’s office for correction should produce repentance and respect, not a smile. In those few times when I found it necessary to use the “rod” of correction, I purposed that no student would come back into the room with a smile, and none did (including the principal’s own son, I might add, who was not even in my class).
I have never met a Christian who chose to sin, and after it was all over felt that it was worth the price. David’s sin and its consequences should not encourage us to sin, but should motivate us to avoid sin at all costs. The negative consequences of sin far outweigh the momentary pleasures of sin. Sin is never worth the price, even for those whose sin is forgiven. David did not plan to sin, as many who try to use his sin as an excuse do. David “fell” into sin; those who would use his sin for an excuse “plunge headlong” into sin. There is a very important difference. In addition, David’s sin was the exception, not the rule.
3. Forgiveness through the blood of Christ (vs. 14; 1 John 1: 7)
Isn’t it amazing that David was so blinded by his own sin that he could not see it? It was by means of the story of the slaughter of a poor man’s pet lamb that David was gripped with the immensity of the sin which was his own. David could see his own sin when he heard the story of what appeared to be the sin of another.
That is precisely what the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ does for us. We were dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2: 1-3). We were blinded to the immensity of our sins (2 Corinthians 4: 4). The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, His perfect life, His innocent and sacrificial death, His literal and physical resurrection are all historical events. But the gospel is also a story, a true story. When we read the New Testament Gospels, we read a story that is even more dramatic, more amazing, more disturbing than the story Nathan told David. When we see the way unbelieving men treated our Lord, we should be shocked, horrified, and angered. We should cry out, “They deserve to die!” And that they do. But the Gospel is not written only to show us their sins - those who actually heard Jesus and cried, “Crucify Him, Crucify Him” - it is written so that the Spirit of God can cry out in our hearts, “Thou art the man!” When we see the way men treated Jesus, we see the way we would have treated Him, if we were there. We see how we treat Him today. And that, my friend, reveals the immensity of our sin, and the immensity of our need for repentance and forgiveness.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is “Good News.” The “Good News” is that the death of our Lord, which reveals the immensity of our sin, is the immense work of God by which He can and will forgive us of our sin. By His innocent and sacrificial death, Jesus died in our place, paid the penalty for our sins. He bore ours sins on the cross! And by trusting in His death, burial, and resurrection, we die to sin and are raised to newness of eternal life, in Christ. The Gospel must first bring us to a recognition of the magnitude of our sin, and of our guilt, and then it takes us to the magnitude of God’s grace in Jesus Christ, by which our sins can be forgiven. Have you come to see how great your sins are before a holy God? Then I urge you to experience how great a salvation is yours, brought about by this same God, through the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a Savior!
Illustration: Once there was a little boy who had a bad habit of lying. He just couldn’t seem to stop telling lies. Fed up, his father said to him, "I have to teach you that you are not to lie. Every time you tell a lie I’m going to tell you to take a nail to the post in the backyard and drive a nail in that post." It wasn’t long until the post was just about full of nails. The little boy’s heart was touched and he said, "Oh, Daddy, I see what you’re talking about. I’m so sorry I’ve been lying. What can I do?" The father said, "Son, ask God to forgive you of your lies and then start telling the truth. Son, every time you tell the truth, I’ll pull a nail out." The little boy started telling the truth and nails started coming out. It wasn’t long until all the nails were out. The father came out and the little boy was sitting at the post crying. He said, "Son, don’t be crying. It’s so wonderful. All the nails are out of the post." He said, "I know daddy, but the scars, the nail prints, are still there."
Application: God will forgive your sins, but the scars will always be there. If there is anything to take to heart from this sermon that is it! Sin is horrible, it destroys everything and everyone it touches; but sin can be forgiven. Thank God! What we need to know is that when we commit sin, we are starting a process that may continue for years and that may touch many people before it ends. Is that really a chance you want to take? You will surely be on a Collision Course.
There may come a time when you will hear God say to you, “Thou Art The Man / Woman!” That time may be today! If there are issues in your life that need to be dealt with today, now is the time to bring them to Him. If you have never trusted Jesus as you Savior, you are in the greatest trouble of all times. Come to Jesus now and be saved.
We have to face our sins before we can put them behind us … time to get our act together before God.
