2 Samuel chapter 11. This is a long chapter, but we'll
look at just about all of it, but several passages together. Chapter 11, 2 Samuel, and it
came to pass after the year was expired, at the time when kings
go forth to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with
him in all Israel, and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged
Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem.
And it came to pass in an evening tide that David arose from off
his bed and walked upon the roof of the king's house. And from
the roof he saw a woman washing herself, and the woman was very
beautiful to look upon. And David sent and inquired after
the woman, and one said, is not this Bathsheba, the daughter
of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And David sent messengers
and took her. And she came in unto him, and
he lay with her. For she was purified from her uncleanness,
and she returned unto her house. And the woman conceived and sinned
and told David and said, I am with child. And David sent to
Joab saying, send me Uriah the Hittite. And Joab sent Uriah
to David. When Uriah was coming to him,
David demanded of him how Joab did and how the people did and
how the war prospered. And David said to Uriah, go down
to thy house and wash thy feet. And Uriah departed out of the
king's house, and there followed him a mess of meat from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of
the king's house with all the servants of his lord and went
not down to his house. And when they had told David,
saying, Uriah went not down unto his house, David said unto Uriah,
Camest thou not from thy journey? Why then didst thou not go down
unto thine house? And Uriah said unto David, The
ark and Israel and Judah abide in tents. And my Lord Joab and
the servants of my Lord are encamped in the open fields. Shall I then
go into mine house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife?
As thou livest, as thy soul liveth, I will not. do this thing. And David said to Uriah, Terry
here today also, and tomorrow I will let thee depart. So Uriah
abode in Jerusalem that day and the morrow. And when David had
called him, he did eat and drink before him, and he made him drunk.
And at even, he went out to lie on his bed with the servants
of his Lord, but went not down to his house. And it came to
pass in the morning that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent
it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter saying,
set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle and retire
ye from him that he may be smitten and die. And it came to pass
when Joab observed the city that he assigned Uriah unto a place
where he knew that valiant men were. And the men of the city
went out and fought with Joab. And there fell some of the people
of the servants of David. And Uriah the Hittite died also.
Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the
war, and charged the messenger, saying, when thou hast made an
end of telling the matters of the war unto the king, and if
so be that the king's wrath arise. And he say unto thee, wherefore
approach ye so nigh unto the city when ye did fight? Knew
ye not that they would shoot from the wall? Who smote Abimelech,
the son of Jerubisheth, And did not a woman cast a piece of millstone
upon him from the wall that he died in Thebes? Where went ye
now the wall? Then say thou, thy servant Uriah
the Hittite is dead also. So the messenger went and came
and showed David all that Joab had sent him for. And the messenger
said unto David, surely the men prevailed against us and came
out unto us into the field. And we were upon them even unto
the entering of the gate, and the shooters shot from off the
wall upon thy servants, and some of the king's servants be dead,
and thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also. Then David said
unto the messenger, Thou shalt say unto Joab, Let not this thing
displease thee, for the sword devoureth one as well as another.
Make thy battle more strong against the city and overthrow it, and
encourage thou him. And when the wife of Uriah heard
that Uriah, her husband, was dead, she mourned for her husband. And when the mourning was passed,
David sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his
wife and bear him a son. But the thing that David had
done displeased the Lord. Let's pray. Our Father, thank you for your
word. I pray, Lord, as we look into this, that we'll see our
own wretchedness. And again, as we always do in
your word, see your grace, your mercy towards your people in
spite of what we are. How gracious you are to forgive
and to not impute our trespasses
unto us. Now, because of the precious
blood of our Lord Jesus, we're free from sin and all of its
consequences. Thank you for him. May we rejoice
in him tonight in his name. Amen. Now, we love to see King
David as he typifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and he does so
much in the studies in 1 and 2 Samuel, but not here. That's
not what we see tonight. I thought about long and hard
of a title for this message because I always like to take the title
from the very text if I can. But I couldn't really find anything
and just thinking about the whole chapter, there's really just
one title that you can put upon this message, one word, sin. The Lord teaches us concerning
our sin. But also how it can be put away
because we'll see that chapters 11 and 12 really need to be seen
together. But we won't have time to look
at them in their entirety tonight. We can't really talk about chapter
11 without looking into chapter 12 and so we will do that. But
we learn a lot about our sin and it's just overwhelming. And I think you'll see that.
David was on top of the world. All of the enemies of Israel
were destroyed, and David was the cause of it. Before David
was king, it wasn't that way. They're either all destroyed
or being destroyed, and God was using David to accomplish that.
David's greatly respected and admired in his own country. And
indeed, he was a great king. No question about it, he was
a great king. But the flesh. We have occasion often in the
scriptures and in our own lives to remember the words of our
Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. The flesh is weak. The spirit
indeed is willing, but the flesh. There's not a day that goes by
that we don't have to say that. On our best day we would have
to still say, but the flesh. There's a saying in the world,
I know you've heard, power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. And many would look at this instance
in David's life and say that applies here. It was because
he had such power that he did this thing. But the saying is
wrong. Power does not corrupt. David was corrupt on his own,
willingly. He was corrupt before this happened.
He was corrupt after this happened. He was corrupt while it was happening.
He was corrupt when he was born and he knew that. And we do too. He was willingly sinful. The
power that he had just gave him the means to express the evil
that was in his heart. It's important that we always
remember that power does not corrupt. The fall corrupted us. And we are willfully and entirely
corrupt. We don't need any help being
corrupt. But the more power a man has, the more occasion and means
he has to express and exercise that corruption. For example,
now there's not a man on this earth, and no man that knows
the Lord would question this for a second, there's not a man
on this earth that isn't fully as sinful as David is here. We
all have the same sin nature. People say things like, oh, I
don't see how he could do that. Don't ever say that. We do see
how he could do that. We're all wretched and sinful
in our hearts. To say I would never do that
or something like that is just ignorance of what we are, of
what sin is, and what we deserve before God, and what we are before
God. But if you could do what you want to do, Without any consequence. Without fear of it costing you
anything. Do you really want to know what
you would do? I don't want to know. And David had that feeling because
of the power he had. I can do anything. He had that
feeling. He could say in verse 4, Fetch
her. It says he sent and took her. That's the word. And incidentally
the same word he used concerning Mephibosheth. that they sent
and fetched him. David sent and fetched him. Same
word, he went and fetched her. And they did. They did what he
told them to. How many people could do that? Could pull that
off? But David was able to do that. And he did everything that
he knew to do to keep the evil that he had done from Uriah.
He tried to cover it up. But even if he gets found out,
what's anybody going to do about it? He's the king. And you know
all of this is in his mind. So the first thing we see here
is that sin is not just a fulfillment of lust of some kind. It's an
exercise of perceived power. And I say perceived power because
you could say he had power. He did have earthly power to
do this. But the truth of the matter is
he didn't have it. He just thought he did. Man couldn't do anything about
it. But that's not real power. But
you see how sin is a, it is an exercise of perceived authority. Remember what Satan said to Adam
and Eve in the garden. Ye shall be as gods. It's not
just that fruit is the best fruit in the garden. That really didn't
have anything to do with it. It wasn't just a desire to fulfill
a hunger of some kind. Power. You should be as God's. That's
how David's feeling right now. Like he can do anything he wants
to do. He can have anything he wants. And he'll just take it. And nobody can do a thing about
it. That's clear in this text. He sees a beautiful woman. And instead of saying, man, that's
a beautiful woman. A beautiful woman catches the
attention of any man. That's just the truth. But instead
of just saying that and going back about his business, he said,
I'm king. I can do what I want. I can have
what I want. And that's what he did. Integral to our sinfulness is
the desire Still, born in the garden and still alive and well
in us, in our hearts, to be God. That is integral to our sinfulness. We want to be God. It's not just
about the pleasure of it. It's about the authority. The problem is, although there
wasn't truly anybody on earth that could bring David to account,
that could impose any accountability on him at all, and he understood
that. And yet the thing that David
did displeased the Lord. And our wretched hearts and our
depraved will may tell us that we can do what we want, but God
says different. But you see that question of
the authority of it. The second thing is that sin
is always flagrant. Now we see that here. It's an
extreme example, but sin is always flagrant. And you might say, well, why
are you using that word, Chris? Well, it means shockingly obvious
and openly, openly wicked. It's shocking. When David was given a watered-down
version of what he had done, and he thought someone else had
done it, he said, they shall surely die. That's how flagrant this was. In the next chapter, we'll read
that in a minute, he doesn't have any problem seeing the evil
of it then, did he? Boy, he said, what, really? It
was, that's a flagrant. He had a whole herd of sheep,
and this man just had one little ewe lamb, and he took that man's
lamb. Are you kidding me? It's shocking, isn't it? It's
incredible that somebody would do something like that. It's
you, David. It's me. And though this is an
extreme example now, you think about who you're sinning against.
Sin is always flagrant. Think about the advantages that
you have. Nobody sins out of need. It's always flagrant. We see this in the story that
Nathan told. Let's look at it again because
again I want to impress on us that these two chapters now we'll
have to keep with all of this chapter in mind when we're looking
into chapter 12. And when we're looking at this chapter, we've
got to look at some of chapter 12 too and see what this is talking
about. See the whole story here. Look at chapter 12, verse 1.
And the Lord sent Nathan unto David, and he came unto him and
said unto him, There were two men in the city, the one rich
and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many
flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing save one little
ewe lamb. which he had brought and nourished
up, which he had bought and nourished up, and it grew up together with
him and with his children. I can tell you from experience,
if something's precious to your children, it's precious to you.
It's more so. Just something that's precious
to me, you want to quadruple that? Let my children fall in
love with that little lamb. Now, it's a whole other story. And it did eat of his own meat,
and drink of his own cup." We can all relate to that, can't
we? And lay in his bosom, it was like one of his children,
like a daughter. And you see what we're saying
now, sin is always flagrant. It's shocking, it's openly, shockingly
evil. And we don't always see it that
way. You can see it clearly now. But even in this extreme example,
David didn't see it when he was doing it. But when somebody said,
look what this man did, he saw it then. It was shocking. He was appalled. And there came a traveler unto
the rich man and he opened He spared to take his own flock
and of his own herd to dress for the wayfaring man that was
coming to him, but took the poor man's lamb and dressed it for
the man that was come to him. And David's anger was greatly
kindled. You see what I'm talking about?
It's flagrant. He was right to be angry against the man. And he said
to Nathan, as the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing
shall surely Sin is always that way. If we
could see it as it truly is, it'd make us angry. And we sin in spite of great
advantage. Think about the, in spite of
great advantage, sin is never committed out of need. It's a
selfish extravagance. It's cruelly selfish. It's morbidly selfish. The flesh
has desires and even needs. There are needs of the flesh
that have to be satisfied. But cannot David be fulfilled
in that which pertains to the flesh in a godly way? Does he
not have the means at his disposal to satisfy every need and desire
even that he has in a godly way? Did he not have opportunity as
king to do things that way? 2 Samuel 12 again, look at verse
7. And Nathan said to David, You
are the man. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the
hand of Saul. Look what I've done for you.
You see how this defines our sin? Every sin that you've committed,
and we can't even count them, what we've done today that falls
short of God's glory. Look what God's done for you,
and yet still, look how we are. And I gave thee thy master's
house and thy master's wives into thy bosom. There was nothing
that he lacked. And gave thee the house of Israel
and of Judah, and if that had been too little, I would moreover
have given unto thee such and such things. If David just asked
the Lord anything. Wherefore hast thou despised
the commandment of the Lord to do this evil, to do evil in his
sight that has killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword. Well
wait a minute, David didn't kill him. You remember he said you
know that one man dies in battle just like another. I mean he
didn't actually kill him. God said you killed him. You
took a sword and you plunged it in his heart. That's what
you did. You used a sword of the Ammonites. Look at it. You
killed him with the sword and has taken his wife to be thy
wife and has slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. You killed him. And he knew he
did. He knew he did. So we see that in spite of great
advantage, look at the garden again. What did we lack? We're living in paradise. We've
got perfect communion with God. There's one thing. You're not
going to be God. And that's what it was now. That's
what it was. The fruit itself was not going
to add or take away anything. It's what God did in establishing
that one law is saying I'm God and you're not. And when it came
down to it, that wasn't good enough. That's it. There's an element now of something
else that can't be ignored. And we have to move through these.
But boy, may God impress these upon us. And we might see ourselves
and see. And there's a reason now that
God shows us this. There's a reason that he doesn't
gloss over the evil of his people in his word. There's a reason.
There's a real good reason. And we're going to talk about
that, Lord willing, too. But listen, there's something else
we can't ignore here. There's another saying in the
world that pertains to what I'm talking about. And you see how
the world, when they say power corrupts, they're acknowledging
the fact that when somebody is in power, boy, wow, you give
them a little bit of freedom and a little bit of ability,
a little bit of money to do what they want to do or anything like
that, any kind of power. Wow, power corrupts. They're
seeing something. They're wrong about that. But this is like that too. There's
another saying that's kind of like that. They acknowledge something
that exists. They're wrong about the source of it, the truth of
it, the spiritual truth of it. But you've heard it said, idle
hands are the devil's workshop. Well, that doesn't really tell
the story. But it's an observation, how
be it a wrong one, about something that does exist. Something that's true, though
the saying itself doesn't get to the real problem. What is
true, though, is that when kings were out doing what kings do,
David stayed home. Did you notice that right at
the beginning of the text? David sent others to do that.
What he had always done himself before. And he did absolutely nothing.
Says he was laying on his bed in the evening. Well, that raises
questions, doesn't it? What was he doing on his bed?
If he was going to bed, that's one thing. But clearly he wasn't,
because he was laying there and he got up. So he's just doing
nothing. We do learn from this that we,
again, are more susceptible to the expression of the evil in
our hearts. It doesn't It doesn't cause the
evil. Our evil nature is the cause
of the evil. But we're more susceptible to
the expression of the evil in our hearts when we're not about
the business that God's given us to do. This is the time when
kings do this. And what's this king doing? Not that. You see, this is just true a
lot with young people, isn't it? You want to keep them out
of trouble, give them something to do. Something honest. Something worthy. And the scripture says that it's
good that a young man bear the yoke in his youth. Hard work. Well, that'd solve a lot, wouldn't
it? Ephesians 4.26, listen to this,
be ye angry and sin not. Is this a reference to our text? Not directly, but does this apply
to our text in this sense that David was mad at somebody else's
sin until he found out it was his sin. Can we be mad at our
own sin? Be ye angry and sin not. Is that what that's talking about?
Listen to the rest of it. And let not the sun go down upon
your wrath, neither give place to the devil. Don't give any place, don't give
any quarter, don't give any space, any opportunity to the devil. Well, what does that have to
do with? Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor.
working with his hands, the thing which is good, that he may have
to give to him that needeth. And notice the real noble way
to say it is not just so that he'll meet his own needs, but
so he'll be able to help other people. But you see how that applies,
the giving place to the devil and laboring with your hands
in the same teaching there. Now, here's another lesson that's
important. Sin has consequences in this
life, even for believers. And we need to get our mind around
this and understand the scriptural teaching about this, because
you've heard me say that believers do not, will not, cannot, shall
not ever suffer the consequences of their sin. And that's the
truth. And the simple reason for that is because the Lord
Jesus Christ has suffered the consequences for our sin if we're
His. If you believe on Christ, if
you love Him, it's because He first loved you. What defines
His love for you is that He suffered the consequences for your sin.
It's not a sharing thing. It's not He suffered most of
it. and you suffer just a little bit. That's not what suffering
in this life is. It has nothing to do with the consequences of
your sin. There are consequences of what
you've done, but to, let me say it this way. David is gonna suffer
some temporal, earthly consequences because of his sin. But it cannot
truly be considered suffering the consequences of his sin because
sin is eternal. It is the result of the consequence
of sin is infinite and therefore it's eternal for those who know
not the Lord. The consequence of all of our sin, each of our
sins is hell. That's what hell is. It's not
just some place that happens to exist. It's where God puts
people to punish them, to pour out his wrath upon them forever
for their sin. And so this has nothing to do
with that. Though there are consequences, temporal, earthly consequences
of it, the full consequence of his sin David will never, ever
suffer, and neither will any of God's sheep. Not even close. And people that say, well, I'm
suffering from my sins. You know, I've heard people say
that. Everything bad that's happening to me, because I've been so sinful.
If God deals with you according to your sins, you're going to
be in hell forever. And then you'll know that that
was a cakewalk, what you went through on this earth. That was
just a wake-up call. You may be suffering because
of your sin, but the suffering for your sin is eternal for unbelievers
and for believers It's born by Christ for them Now that's just
simple But verse 5 is more than just what it says listen to Back in verse 5 and the woman
conceived and sin and told David and said I am a with child, talking
about the consequences of sin. We know something about
what happens to this child later, and there's great sorrow for
David in the days ahead. And there's much consequence,
and we're gonna read that in a little while too, Lord willing,
for what David did, earthly, temporal consequence. But listen
to this, it's interesting because a child is conceived as a result
of the evil that David did. And listen to the way sin is
described in James 1.14, but every man is tempted when he
is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then when lust hath
conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished,
bringeth forth death. Now it's not to suggest that
this child was the sin itself that David committed, but the
word conceived being used there is interesting because it's used
for lust and sin, but also the result of David's sin was a conception
of another kind. But that baby was a living monument
to his sin. We're all sinful on our own.
It didn't inherit David's sin. We're all sinful on our own.
And we'll all stand before God because of our own sinfulness.
But we see there that sin always results in death. Sin, when it
is finished, it bringeth forth death. But in David's case, the death
was not his own. Listen to 2 Samuel 12 verse 13. David said unto Nathan, I have
sinned against the Lord. And now we see this all through
the scripture. Hadn't he sinned against Bathsheba? She mourned
that her husband was dead. Hadn't he sinned against Uriah?
Nope. He wronged them. He did them
wrong. There's no doubt about that. but sins against God, all
sins against God. As horrible as what he did to
Raya was, I mean horrible, he sent his own death sentence by
his own hand. Every aspect of this, it's shocking
isn't it, it's flagrant. But as horrible as that is, if
that's what you see here, you've missed it. You've missed what
sin is. We've got to somehow, by God's grace, through spiritual
enlightenment, see what sin against God is. See how horrible it is
to sin against the God that made us. The holy God of heaven and
earth. You see, we look at that and
say, oh man, poor Uriah and all that, boy. And we get a sense
of the horror of what David did from that. That's okay. But we're
not going to see what sin is until we look to Calvary. We've
sinned against God. And there's only one remedy for
that. But look what Nathan said unto
David. He said, David said to Nathan, I've sinned against the
Lord. And Nathan said unto David, the Lord also hath put away thy
sin. You shall not die. Well wait a minute, we just read
that sin when it's finished bringeth forth death. Well David's gonna
die someday but he's not gonna die for that. He's not gonna
die because of his sin. David's death is gonna be a blessing
because he's one of God's sheep. David's death is not gonna be Listen to this now if the wages
of sin is death and David sinned so horribly how can he not die
for that? Even he said he ought to die
when he thought he was talking about somebody else But here's why this is the reason
is simple the Lord hath put away thy sin No sin no death The wages
of sin is death and How does God do that? Paul said
in Hebrews 9.26, but now once in the end of the world, hath
he, Christ Jesus, appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself. That's how sin's put away. That's
not one of the ways it's put away. That's how it's done. There is one way. When he says,
God hath put away your sin, there is no chance that he's talking
about anything else but that. You name one other thing that
can put away sin. Paul said, all the blood of those bulls
and goats was shed, but it could never put away sin. You remember
those words in Hebrews? That could never put away sin.
But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin forever,
sat down on the right hand of God. Henceforth expecting till
his enemies be made his footstool for he hath perfected forever
those that are sanctified He put their sin away He put somebody's
sin away Yeah, well the next thing But you see how we're seeing
even in Even in seeing our sinfulness the horror of it the shocking
nature of it We're seeing the mercy of God Why did God, do
you think God could have stopped David from doing this? He prevented
others in the scripture from the same thing. That man that,
you know, when Abraham said, she's my sister, when it was
really his wife and that king, God kept him from committing
that evil with that, with Abraham's wife. Prevented it. You think
he could have done that for David? Pretty sure. No question about
it. Boy look at look at what we see
in this and then the next thing is this though about our sin
is it's the cover-up You know, this is coming. It's the cover-up
Adam sowed fig leaves to try to cover up his shame his guilt
Before God and it was not just useless to do that. It was not
just useless. It was not just in vain No, it compounded his sin Self-righteous
is me doing something about my sin. I'm not going to say it's
worse than the sin itself, but there is sin that's worse than
other sin, I'm pretty sure, in the scripture. But all sin is
infinite. But what makes some worse than
others is the way God describes it in the book, and how it seems
like that hell is going to be worse for some than others. I'm
pretty sure, though, there's not a good place in hell. So
I don't know. I don't really know how to talk
about that. But you've heard that and you've seen that in the Scriptures.
But here, covering it up, the self-righteousness, it's not
really our sin that keeps us from God so much as our righteousness. It's the cover up. What David did to hide his sin
was more sin. Where's sin? Sin heaped upon
sin, and it's always that way. It's always that way, because
we try to cover it, we try to justify it, and we get self-righteous,
and we say, well, you know, this and that, and we justify ourselves,
and there isn't anything more abominable to God than that.
That's why he despised the Pharisees and told them off the way that
he did, because of their self-righteousness. He ate with publicans and sinners
with harlots. But the religious, the ones that
covered, that cleaned the outside of the cup and said, we're not
sinners. He didn't do a whole lot of eating
with them. He did a little bit. He saved some. But you see how that just compounds
it. He tried to get Uriah to be with
Bathsheba. He said, you're on furlough.
I'm giving you a free day. Go home and wash your feet. You're filthy from the road.
Take care of yourself. Take a day off. Thinking, what's
a man that's been at war for no telling how long going to
do? And then everybody's going to just assume Uriah and Bathsheba
had a baby. Let's throw a shower. Not going to be that easy. But you see what he tried to
do, pretty clear, 6-13. We won't read it, because I'm
going to run out of time. Even if he had been successful,
he might be able to hide his sin from men, but not from God. And that's what matters. And God gives David warnings.
Think about this regarding how aggravated our sin is. God gives
David warnings. He gives him instruction throughout
this in the example of Uriah. Think about this. He gives him
space to repent throughout all of this by giving these... Notice
how honorable and thoughtful Uriah was. David said, go on
down and enjoy yourself. Have a good time. Take your day
off and take it easy. It's on me. And Uriah wouldn't
go home. He stayed on David's porch. And he said, my Captain Joab,
he's out in the field. And my brothers in arms, they're
sleeping in the field tonight. And I'm going to go down and
sleep in my warm bed. Enjoy the company of my wife.
I'm not doing that. As the Lord liveth. As the Lord
liveth. He honored God and he was honest
and honorable among men. And that's God. That should be
red flags going up for David. Look how honorable and thoughtful
this man is and look how thoughtless and wretched I'm being and dishonorable
and sinful. You see that? How obvious it
is. God's showing him what he's not. Does he not do that for us? David's
acting like an animal. The writer of Psalm 73 said,
Lord, I was as a beast before thee. Just for thinking for a
second that God was unjust in punishing, not punishing, but
in afflicting the righteous and letting the wicked go scot-free. It looks like the wicked are
having a party on this earth and all of God's people are suffering.
That's not right. And then when he went to the
sanctuary of God and saw the truth, He said, Lord, I was as
a beast before thee. What about David? What an animal.
No honor, no shame, no concern for anybody but himself. Just
animal lust. And boy, it's easy for me to talk
in an indignant manner about David, isn't it? We do that.
But even David did. if we can see things God's way. But at the same time understand
what we all are. God threw it into David's face
all along the way what a real man acts like and not a beast. It went completely unheeded. And when none of that worked,
when David gave him another day. Oh, you didn't? Yeah, I understand.
That's great. But take one more day. He's thinking
for sure he's going to be thinking about his wife and that warm
bed and the comforts of home. And as long as he's been out
there in that field, if I give him one more day, this will do it.
This will do it. No? No, because by God's grace, somebody
somewhere is going to honor God at some time by His grace. Because God works In sinners
both to will and to do of his good pleasure as it pleases him
to do so And when none of that worked David went further he
went a lot further Verses 14 and 15 and I'm sure you remember
what it says David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand
of Uriah What a horrible horrible heartless and And he wrote in
the letter saying, set you Uriah in the forefront of the hottest
battle and retire you from him that he may be smitten and die.
Leave him out there and make sure he don't come home. And
Joab did. He puts Uriah's death sentence
into Uriah's own hand. Flagrant. Shocking. We should not be shocked that
David would do this. Because so would we. If left to ourselves. But we
should be shocked that anybody, any of us would do this. Shouldn't
we? If we can see things God's way,
our own evil should shock us and sicken us as it did David
when he thought it was somebody else's sin. And when the Lord gives us a
glimpse of it, it does. And we know why the Lord shows
us our sin. He's going to show David what
he was. Just like he did Nebuchadnezzar. Because Nebuchadnezzar was strutting
around, popping off about all of his accomplishments and how
his name was going to be honored because of all that he had done.
And God showed him what an animal he was. The next thing you know
he's saying, now I praise and extol the God of heaven. He is the God of heaven and earth
and there's nobody like him. He sets up one and puts down
another. He knoweth how to abase the pride of men. Just like he did Simon Peter,
who boasted that he was better than his brothers, that they
might deny the Lord but he never would. And the Lord showed him
what he was, and he went out and wept bitterly. He was shocked
at his own sin, wasn't he? He wept like a baby. And he shows
us our sin for a reason. David talked about how that God
showed him his sin in Romans chapter 7. Let me... Oh boy, I better just read you this.
I'm gonna hurry. Paul said, wherefore the law is holy and the commandment holy
and just and good. Was then that which is good made
death unto me? God forbid. I caused my own death. I'm the
one guilty of my own death. It's not the law's fault that
I'm sinful. That's what he's saying. But
sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which
is good, that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. When I saw who it is I sinned
against. the holy God against his holy
law when we see that sin as awful as its earthly ramifications
are as terrible as it was what David did to Uriah and Bathsheba
when we see that all sin is against the holy God and we see who he
is and we see the spiritual nature of sin then sin has its full
impact on us and God causes that and what's the result? Later
in that chapter, Paul said, Oh, wretched man that I am. I see
my sin now, a little glimpse of it as it is before God. Oh, wretched man that I am. Who
is going to save me from the body of this death? I thank God
through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's who's going to save me
now. And that's why God shows us our sin. The law is a schoolmaster
to bring us to Christ. The law exposes our sin, our
wretchedness. It says to us, you're the man.
If I describe to you what the wretched people did to the Lord
Jesus Christ, how he was abused and misunderstood and hounded
and hated and opposed and they tried to trick him and when they
had him, when God allowed them to take him with
their wicked hands and allowed their will to be expressed upon
his son, look what we did to him. If I told you about all
of that and you thought it was somebody else, you'd say, boy,
hell forever for that one. But you already know it's you,
right? So I can't trick you like that. You already know it's you. But when we see our sinfulness,
it's going to cause us to flee to Christ and to cry to Him for
mercy. What is David's hope here? He's got one hope. He's got no
defense. How do you excuse that? If God doesn't just flat have
mercy on him. And this is how mercy happens,
and we'll have to talk about this in the next chapter, but
sin's got to be put away. God can't just say, well, that's
alright then. Sin's got to be dealt with. David was given a glimpse of
the exceeding sinfulness of his sin, but David's response shows
us something else about sin. We're quick to condemn others
for the same sin we commit. but we're quick also to justify
ourselves in it. When David thought it was somebody
else that did this terrible thing, and remember, he was told a watered
down version. Why do you say that, Chris? Well,
killing a lamb, as horrible as that story is, that don't compare
to killing a human being. He's given a mild version of
it. Deliberately. So he would see that even that
milder version deserves hell, it deserves death, it deserves
punishment, it deserves wrath. And I'm so much worse. David was quick to wrath and
judgment and condemnation when he thought this was somebody
else. I know we've said that throughout, but this is a separate point
all of its own. When it was him now, he said,
you know, Tell Joab don't worry about it. Don't be upset about
it that you've lost some men and Uriah was one of them and
you've lost some other men. One man falls to the sword just
like another. That's what happens in war. People
die. Wow. But notice also that though every
man is responsible for his own sin, sin is often a confederacy. Joab was in on it, wasn't he?
But David caused it. Now think about this. Men are
encouraged by one another in their own sin against God. It's
not the other person's fault. You're not going to blame the
devil. You're not going to blame peer pressure. You're not going to
blame the wrong crowd. You are the wrong crowd. But Joab himself, though he was
corrupt himself, no doubt about that, but this particular evil
was planned by David and Joab was included in it. So can David
be guiltless in Joab's part of it? No, no way. Joab's part of it makes David's
sin all the greater. And I'll just say this about
that. May God protect us from being pulled into sin in a similar
way or from being the instigator of it. So we get some idea in this chapter
what a horrible and destructive thing, just a cancer, sin is. David suffered the rest of his
life as a result of this. And I'll give you this as homework
and this will help me finish on time. Second Samuel 12, 7
through 12. God tells David everything that
he's going to suffer on earth temporarily because of his sin. But then, this is just the earthly
consequence of sin. And David, he said that the sword's
not ever going to depart from your house, ever, as long as
you live. Your family's going to be troubled. There's going to be trouble.
There's going to be death. There's going to be heartache and grief,
and there was. But this is not the true punishment
of sin. As we see in verse 13, David
said unto Nathan, I have sinned. And Nathan said unto David, the
Lord hath also put away thy sin. Thou shalt not die. The wages
of sin is death. So did David receive the wages
of sin? No. He just suffered some earthly
consequences. And I'll tell you this, I don't want to do that
either. Do you? I don't want to suffer for the
rest of my life because of what an idiot I am. I pray God will
spare me from that. So we don't pass that off as
a light thing. But the wages, what he deserved for his sin
was death. And there's a lot more in that word than this,
the heart stopped beating. You know that. Think of all that
is included in that word, die. And we know this, all sin is
punished. All sin has consequences. Eternal, infinite consequences. So if David doesn't die here,
who does? Somebody going to. And we know
the answer to that. And this is infinite death. It's
the wrath of God poured out against sin. And the more we're able
to see the exceeding sinfulness of our sin, the more we will
praise the name of our Lord for bearing our sin and its consequences
in our place. He died the just for the unjust
that he might bring us to God. Praise his holy name. David, let me read this. We're out of time, but I want
to go into overtime here just for one minute. Psalm 51. As a result of this whole thing,
David wrote Psalm 51. And he starts it out saying,
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness, according
to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. That's what God promised and
He's agreeing with the Lord. Put my sin away. Wash me throughly
from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. He knows that
that's the only way of sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions
and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, the only, have
I sinned. That's what he said, didn't he?
I've sinned against the Lord. He knew, he understood the nature
of sin by God's grace. And done this evil in thy sight,
that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear
when thou judgest. In other words, you condemn me,
I've got no defense. You're justified in condemning
me. Behold, verse five, I was shaped in iniquity, and sin did
my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in
the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me
to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall
be clean. The hyssop was what they dipped
into the blood of the sacrifice and splashed it upon the off
the mercy seat. He said, you purge me with hyssop,
and I'll be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow. And then let's just look down
to verse 13, and we'll close. Then I say that's the role of
verse 14 Deliver me from blood guiltiness. Oh God thou God of
my salvation and my tongue shall sing Why does God show us our
evil? Impress upon us the wretchedness
that the exceeding sinfulness of our sin Because we see more and value more and are more
thankful for that precious blood. And when God does that for us,
he shows us our sin, but he puts away our sin. And what we're
going to do, we're going to sing of his righteousness out loud. And so, David, Committed sin when you if you
ask somebody on the street, what's the what do you think about when
you think about? Somebody in the Bible that did
something horrible. You'd probably be David with
it And yet God brought good out
of David's evil And you'll find in the lineage
of the Lord Jesus Christ according to his earthly lineage his earthly
birth and You'll find Bathsheba there. Solomon is born later, also from
Bathsheba. And so the Lord brings good even
from our evil. We see that at Calvary like nowhere
else. The glory of Calvary doesn't
excuse our sin. That's our sin at its blackest
and most horrible. And yet God overruled it for
good. The same blood that we shed with wicked hands is the
blood that washes our sins away. By the grace and providence of
God, let's pray.