A Needed Rebuke
(2 Samuel 12:1-14)
I. Nathan
A. Confronting the king was risky
B. Confronting the king was necessary
II. David
A. God’s judgment
B. God’s warning
C. God’s grace
Introduction
The British sent Brigadier General Ivan Simpson to Singapore in August 1941. His mission was to improve local defenses. However, Simpson had been met with complete indifference. He was shocked to see the northern beaches undefended, and had pled for resources to fortify them. In every case his superior, General Percival, had ignored him.
Finally, on December 26, 1941, almost three weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Brigadier Simpson went to Percival’s house to plead his case one last time. When Percival again refused to listen, Simpson said, “General, I’ve raised the question time after time. You’ve always refused, and you’ve always failed to give me any reasons. At least tell me one thing—why are you taking this stand?”
Percival responded, “I believe that defenses of the sort you want to throw up are bad for the morale of the troops and civilians.” Simpson was stunned for a moment by the general’s response. Then he said, “Sir, it’s going to be much worse for morale if the Japanese start running all over the island.” Within two months, Singapore had surrendered (Noel Barber, “The Fall of Singapore,” Reader’s Digest Illustrated Story of World War II, p. 44).
Last week we took another look at the fall of David. In particular, we focused on the cycle of unrepentant sin. We saw how easy it is for us to get trapped in the quicksand of sin and find ourselves unable to get free from its downward pull. David’s first step into sin eventually led to a cover up attempt involving the murder of an innocent man.
When we left the story last week, it seemed that this would be the end of the repercussions for David. It appeared as though he had gotten away with his crimes. Yet, the final words of that account make it clear that David’s troubles were far from over. The writer of 2 Samuel records this conclusion to the matter, But the thing David had done displeased the Lord (11:27b).
This morning we will pick up the story where we left off and look at what transpired after David’s sin and attempted cover up. This is the account of the famous confrontation between a humble prophet and a haughty king. It gives us some practical insight into dealing with the problem of unrepentant sin.
The story of the confrontation between the prophet Nathan and king David teaches us about the importance of listening to the voice of God. God’s words are not always pleasant. His commands are not always easy. But when we heed His instructions, we discover that they always lead us to salvation. We need to listen to what the Lord is saying to us at all times, even today. Please turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Samuel 12:1-14.
This story deals with two main characters and exhibits the importance of their individual obedience to the voice of God with regard to dealing with sin.
Nathan
The first person mentioned in this account is the prophet Nathan. The first time we read about Nathan is in 2 Samuel 7 in connection with David’s desire to build a house for God. Nathan was used of the Lord on that occasion to give David the promise that God would establish the house of David forever. He bought David the good news: “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever” (7:16). From that time on, Nathan served as a prophet and royal advisor into the beginning of the reign of King Solomon.
It has been said of Nathan that he truly “lived up to the meaning of his name, ‘He [God] has given.’ He was a necessary and helpful gift from God to David. He served as God’s spokesman to David and proved himself a fearless friend and counselor, always willing to speak the truth, even when he knew great pain would result (LAB, Nathan, p. 515).
2 Samuel 12 is the account of one of those painful moments for Nathan. King David had committed a great sin and then had tried to cover it up with an even greater sin. V. 1 tells us, The Lord sent Nathan to David. Nathan had heard the voice of God calling him to confront the sins of the king. He had a choice to make: take the immediately easy way by ignoring God, or listen to God’s necessary command and face an uncertain reaction from a guilty king. Nathan’s decision teaches us the importance of listening to God even when what He asks us to do is not easy. I want to look at Nathan’s response from two perspectives.
Confronting the King Was Risky
First, obeying God was not easy because confronting the king was risky. Nathan had no guarantees that David would accept what he had to say. Upon learning from God what David had done, it must have shocked him. This was not the David that Nathan knew. He might have begun to wonder if David’s entire personality had changed. He had obviously committed some atrocities that Nathan could not have imagined him doing, so who’s to say that David is stable at all? What assurances did he have concerning his personal well being? Would David’s anger flare up? Would he threaten Nathan? Would he have Nathan murdered to continue his cover up scheme? Or, would he listen and repent? Nathan had no way of knowing what the king’s reaction would be. There was great risk involved in confronting David with his sin.
And that’s a fact that we still face today. Often times God asks us to take risks in order to be obedient to Him. This is especially true when He speaks to us about our need to confront others when they are unmistakably caught in the cycle of unrepentant sin.
I realize that I am talking about an area with which most of us are uncomfortable. And I want to be careful so as to be misunderstood in what I am advocating here. I am not calling for an “open season” on pointing the finger and accusing others. I’m talking about a true conviction from the Lord, wrought out of a deep prayer life, that He is calling you to confront someone about a sin issue in his/her life. I’m referring to a God-initiated confrontation. We don’t confront someone about an issue in his/her life because we don’t like what he/she may be doing; rather we sense that God is sending us to confront some matter that is offensive to Him. I hope that is clear.
Having said all that, it is my observation that we have a tendency to believe that it is never our business to actively confront others with their sin. It is an unwritten code that you just don’t go up to others and tell them that what they are doing is wrong or harmful—including those we say we love. Yet, there are numerous commands in the Bible concerning our duty to step in and show the faltering that they are on a path toward destruction. It seems clear to me that our convictions against lovingly redirecting another are based on cultural relativism or bad experiences from the past rather than the precepts of God as recorded in His word.
God calls us to show the wayward the errors of their ways, but all too often we are more concerned about being offensive than about their eternal welfare. Martin Luther once said, “I find it impossible to avoid offending guilty men, for there is no way of avoiding it but by our silence or their patience; and silent we cannot be because of God’s command, and patient they cannot be because of their guilt.”
God’s commands are not always easy. Sometimes they involve risk. You might be labeled a fanatic, a “holier than thou,” or a bigot. You might offend some people and even lose friends. But there comes a point in our lives when we must go ahead and count the cost and decide who it is that we are really more concerned about offending—people or God. Nathan ran a great risk in confronting the sins of the king. And we will be taking risks, too, when we decide that obedience to God is more important than the momentary feelings of others. We have a God-ordained obligation to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).
Confronting the King Was Necessary
The command of God was not easy for Nathan to follow because it involved great personal risk, but he understood that confront the king was necessary. There is no indication in this narrative that David showed any signs of turning from his sin on his own. He had taken Bathsheba to be his wife and carried out the charade that their newborn son arrived as the result of a legitimate marriage relationship. David had deceived everyone into believing that everything was on the “up and up” between his new wife and himself, and in the process, he even deceived himself. With the self-deception now complete, there was no need to seek forgiveness—his guilt had been disposed of.
It was essential that Nathan confront the king with his sin because his vision of himself and his true condition had been blurred—he no longer felt the pain of his wrongdoings. Self-deception had successfully carried out its awful intent, to keep its victim from seeing the truth and thus making it impossible for reconciliation with God to take place. The only hope for the self-deceived is to face a confrontation by an outside influence. Once commentator points out that “God still provides two safeguards against self-deception: his Word and true friends. In each case we get a view beyond ourselves (LAB, Nathan, p. 515).
This is the reason that you and I cannot remain silent when God prompts us to speak to a loved one caught in the quicksand of sin. Yes, it’s painful to tell someone, “What you’re doing is wrong.” No one likes to be viewed as the “heavy” or the bad guy. There’s a good chance that you will be scoffed at and talked about. But when an individual is caught in the cycle of unrepentant sin, there may be no way of escape unless someone is obedient to the voice of God, willing to take the risk, confront the sin, and point that person in the right direction. It was necessary for Nathan to confront David with his sin, and in God’s design, it is necessary that we care enough about those around us who are trapped in sin to take the risk of lending a helping hand, telling them the truth about their condition, and showing them the way out.
That’s one view of listening to God’s voice with regard to sin. He commands us to lovingly confront those who are caught in the cycle of unrepentant sin because our intervention is necessary to their eternal welfare.
David
But obedience to the voice of God with regard to sin has another view—that of the one being confronted with his/her failures. In this account, David affords us with an example of how we should properly respond when confronted with the truth of our sinful condition.
God’s Judgment
The first thing that David was confronted with was God’s judgment. David had sinned. The adultery was bad. The cover up scheme involving the murder of Uriah and the taking of Bathsheba to be his wife was even worse. As much as God loved David, He could not overlook David’s sins.
When Nathan confronted David, he did not water-down the enormity of what David had done in the sight of God. He conveyed the very heart of God to David in a manner in which there was no mistaking the fact that God was displeased with him and had judged him as guilty.
Nathan began his presentation concerning God’s view of David’s recklessness by means of a parable with a nasty hook. “The use of parables [was] a favorite style of speaking among Oriental people, especially in the conveyance of unwelcome truth” (JFB-WS). The parable was about a subject near to the heart of David: shepherding. In it, Nathan described how a ruthless rich man with many sheep had selfishly stolen the only possession of a poor man, a little ewe lamb, to serve as a meal for a traveler who had come to visit him. “The atrocity of the real, however, far exceeded that of the fictitious offense” (JFB-WS).
When Nathan had finished his story, according to the custom of ancient kings, David quickly passed judgment upon the actions of the rich man. V. 5 state, David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” David readily saw the wickedness of the rich man actions and pronounced his judgment: guilty! As one commentary points out, “The sympathies of the king had been deeply enlisted, his indignation aroused, but his conscience was still asleep; and at the time when he was most fatally indulgent to his own sins, he was most ready to condemn the delinquencies and errors of others” (JFB-WS).
In my mind, I imagine that as soon as David had pronounced his judgment against this man, Nathan pointed his finger at David and declared, “You are the man!” Like a shot between the eyes, David discovers that he was not able to hide the truth from God. And his words of judgment against a merciless rich man quickly fall back upon himself as God’s judgment against him for his sins against Bathsheba and Uriah.
Unlike Nathan’s directness, we have a tendency to water-down the awfulness of sin or to shift the blame over to extenuating circumstances or other people. We feel that we are doing the offender a favor by treating sin in this manner. While we may be successful in salvaging earthly relationships, I wonder what the eternal significance of our refusal to call sin by its first name will be.
In an article for Christianity Today, Larry Thomas refers to this movement away from owning responsibility for our own sinful actions or requiring it of others as the creation of a guiltless society. He writes, “We have fabricated physiological, psychological and sociological causes for the woes…that beset mankind. We have created a guiltless society in which people are no longer responsible for their actions. We have ignored sin and found a medical, emotional, or social phenomenon to blame for our problems.”
While we were pastoring in the small, rural community of Lee, Maine, Judy and I got into a conversation with a woman in our community that served as CJ’s babysitter. During the course of this conversation, the subject of gossip came up and Judy mentioned that I had spoken against this sin and that it had led some to become angry at our church in general and with me in particular. As soon as she had finished talking about this, the woman quickly retorted, “Well, you just don’t do that in a small town!”
What she was saying in effect was that there are different rules that apply in different contexts. There are no absolutes. What the Bible has to say on certain subjects may not be applicable to the particular setting. One must first check out the local customs before proposing that something is acceptable behavior or not. Culture is the ultimate authority that we appeal to—not the Bible.
Friends, we’ve got it all backwards. God and His word are not on trial—we are. He is right and His word is true. We cannot allow ourselves to be sucked in by the world’s con-cepts of right and wrong—judgments that are based on personal preference or political correctness. Our morality and behavior must find its origin in the revelation of God, which we can only come to understand through prayer and the study of His word. Thomas goes on to say in this article, “as Christians, we must understand the role of guilt in the plan of salvation. Without guilt, there is no conviction of sin. Without conviction, there is no repentance. Without repentance, there is no salvation.”
God’s judgment of sin is clear. The Bible tells us that God hates sin and that He cannot be in the presence of sin—any sin. We must accept God’s judgment as true and final when He points out our sins. Acceptance of God’s judgment is the first step toward restored fellowship with Him.
God’s Warning
The second thing that David was confronted with was God’s warning. God, through the prophet Nathan, communicated His verdict: guilty! The penalty for two of the sins that David committed (adultery and murder) was, by God’s law, deserving of death. I believe there’s a good chance that if we were in God’s place, we would “shoot first and ask questions later.” In our righteous anger, we would have killed David on the spot without allowing for any recourse on his part.
But we see in this passage the real heart of God. In His boundless love, God is always reaching out to those who have faltered and failed and sinned. He is always longing for reconciliation and offering redemption. Although God cannot for a moment tolerate sin, He also cannot turn His back on His creation. His love is extended to all.
This is the story of the cross. The God of love demonstrated in that horrific act both His utter contempt for sin and His limitless love for a fallen world. The God who cannot tolerate sin became sin for us, as Paul tells us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). And His love is not only demonstrated in that act at one point in history, but it continues to reach out to us when we fail Him today. He pronounces us guilty of our sins as a warning against continuing in our sinfulness and then offers us a way of escape through forgiveness.
God’s Grace
This is the final thing that David was confronted with—God’s grace. One commentator writes, “One may wonder, perhaps, why David was not punished with death as he had so sternly advocated for the guilty man. Adultery and murder both were sufficient cause for the execution of even a king (Ex. 21:12; Lev. 20:10). The answer surely lies in the genuine and contrite repentance which David expressed, not only in the presence of Nathan but more fully in Psalm 51. David’s sin was heinous, but the grace of God was more than sufficient to forgive and restore him, as Nathan could testify” (BKCOT-WS).
The sin that David committed did have its consequences, which God explained to him. He told David that his sin would result in disruption and rebellion within his own family, his wives being defiled by one close to him, public humiliation and dishonor, and the death of the child born to him.
On the surface it may not sound much like grace. In fact it sounds like a pretty hefty price to pay for his sins. But the reason we don’t see it as grace is because we are prone to define grace as meaning “forgiveness without consequences.” We like to believe in a God who forgives us and frees us from having to experience any causal effects of our actions. However, the true meaning of grace is an unmerited favor. And as an unmerited favor, God relents from giving us all the punitive damages that we deserve.
God passed judgment on David and warned him against continuing to walk in disobedience. David heeded God’s warning and repented of his sins. This opened the way for forgiveness and restored fellowship. While David was no longer liable for his sins before God, the effects of his sins were still in operation. The grace of God meant that David would not receive what he deserved—death. The grace of God limited the consequences of David’s sin, but sin has its consequences. By nature, sin is destructive and it leaves it mark in some way.
I wish I could promise you that removing all the effects of sin was as easy as erasing a chalkboard, but that’s simply not true. You see, sin is not like chalk on a chalkboard; it’s more like a knife on a chalkboard. It doesn’t leave dust in its path; it gouges and leaves an indelible mark. But when we accept the grace of God, He comes along and heals those wounds. The sin may leave scars, but the pain is gone. The scars remain simply as reminders of what sin can do to us and as testimonies of God’s grace to rescue us from sin’s power.
Conclusion
This passage teaches us the importance of listening to God’s voice. We need to learn to hear Him when He is speaking to us—both His calling us into action on behalf of another who is caught in the cycle of unrepentant sin, and His warnings against remaining in that vicious cycle ourselves. Therefore, it is imperative that we are in the practice of being in God’s presence on a daily basis through reading His word and prayer. We will never hear His voice if we are not in communication with Him.
For those times when we are the recipients of God’s judgment on our sin, we must accept His warnings as evidence of His love. Don’t fight against Him. When He points out your failings, recognize that He is not so much condemning you as He is offering you a way of escape from His judgment through forgiveness. Our Father in heaven loves us all very dearly. He wants what is best for us at all times. Respond to His love. Listen to His voice. Obey His promptings. Know His salvation.
