All right, let's look back at
2 Samuel 12. Our subject tonight is forgiveness
and chastening. God will not let our affection
be taken from off His Son onto other things. God will not let our affection
be taken off His Son and put on other things. Aren't you glad
of that? Aren't you thankful for that?
God said of King David, He said, He's a man after mine own heart
that shall fulfill all my will. That's about as good a commendation
as you can get. God said that about him. David
was a man that, before the foundation of the world, God chose him and
put him in Christ Jesus and blessed him with all spiritual blessings
in doing so, just like He's done every child that He saves. David
was a man that God sent Samuel to Him and called him out of
his father's house and anointed him with oil and made him a king
in Israel. That's what God does for His
children. He sends His preacher, He calls us out, He anoints us
with the Holy Spirit, and He makes us kings under God. God
had done for David great things in his heart, so that David effectually,
by God's effectual grace, David was faithful, and David served
God faithfully, just like all those do that God creates in
Christ Jesus We walk in the works that God has foreordained that
we shall walk in. God used David to typify His
only begotten Son. He used David to pen the Psalms
wherein many are the very words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
But David was also a sinner. He was a sinner. There were two
natures in David like there are in every believer. David was
a partaker of the divine nature by the grace of God, by the new
birth, by God the Holy Spirit giving him life, by Christ being
formed in his heart. And David had another nature
which was just flesh, just sin, just dead in trespasses and sins.
All it was, was the product of Adam by natural generation. So
sin was mixed with everything that David did. But one day,
David fell into a horrible series of willful sins. David committed
adultery with Bathsheba. He saw her, he called her, and
he committed the act. And when David heard that Bathsheba
was with child, he called her husband, Uriah the Hittite, who
was out fighting in a war. He called him in and got him
drunk and encouraged him to go down to his house to his wife
so that David could cover up his sin. But Uriah was faithful
to David, he was faithful to the army, and he wouldn't go
down to his wife. He laid there all night long
at David's door and slept right there at David's door. Did that
turn David's heart at all? No. Then David sent Uriah into
the forefront of the battle so that he would be killed. And
he was. He was killed. And so then David
took Bathsheba to be his wife. And nine months passed. Almost
nine months. She hadn't had the child yet.
So almost nine months passed. And there's not a word from God.
And then one day, Nathan the prophet comes to David. And through
what the prophet said, David was brought to confess his sin
to God. And we read in 2 Samuel 12, 13,
David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And
Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin, thou
shalt not die. How be it? Because by this deed
thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to
blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely
die." It's sinful flesh. Now listen to me carefully. It's
sinful flesh. It's our flesh. It's a man's
sinful flesh that looks at an account like this in David and
at our own sin beholding how freely God forgave David of his
sin, and then looks at his own sin lightly. That's flesh that
makes a man do that. That's flesh. I've heard men
use David to justify their rebellion against God. I've heard men point
to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and say, because Christ
died for me and put away my sins, God doesn't regard anymore, He
doesn't disapprove anymore if I commit sin. That's not true. That's not true. Paul said, shall
we sin that grace may abound? God forbid, that's not what we're
saying. He said, those who say such a thing, their damnation
is just. No, no, that's not what we're
saying at all. Listen to this from Ephesians 4.19. Paul spoke
of some who were past feeling, having given themselves over
unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness.
Their hearts were hardened against sin. He said, but you have not
so learned Christ. If so be you've heard of him
and have been taught by him as the truth is in Christ, the truth
is in Jesus, that you put off concerning the former conversation
the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lust
and be renewed in the spirit of your mind and that you put
on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness. Now that's the gospel, that's
what we preach. I want to show you that whenever
God convicts one of His children of our sin and brings us to confess
our sins and forgives us of our sins, God does some things before
and after that prevents His child from taking our sins lightly. That's what I want you to see
tonight. The first thing God makes His child see is that we
ourselves are the transgressor. Look, I said to you it was almost
nine months had passed and David appears in these nine months
not to, his conscience wasn't bothering him at all about what
he was doing. And then verse 1 says, and the
Lord sent Nathan unto David. God sent his prophet to David
to wake him up. He sent his prophet to him to
convict him of his sin. so that he wouldn't perish in
his sin. Maybe the Lord has sent his prophet
to somebody tonight to wake them up out of their sin. Maybe that's
the case. I pray God, if that's the case,
I pray God to give us grace to hear like he did David. One of
the worst things that can happen to us, brethren, is for us to
become hardened in our sin. Do you remember when you were
young? Something happened this week
that got me to thinking about when I was young and I discovered
somebody that I looked up to very, very much. I discovered
they were just a sinner. And it broke my heart. I mean,
it broke my heart. And don't we just get calloused
to sin? To where sin doesn't bother us
anymore. It just doesn't have an effect on us anymore. That's
a terrible thing to happen. David was utterly incapable of
recovering himself. David was utterly incapable of
making himself see what he had done. David didn't call for Nathan. David didn't call on the Lord.
The Lord sent Nathan to David. And David said in Psalm 23, Thou
restorest my soul. You restored my soul, God. You
see, we need God to restore us. But now when he sent Nathan to
David, I mean, yeah, Nathan to David, Nathan didn't go in there
and just right away tell him all this and say, David, your
sin's forgiven. He didn't do that. First off,
he went in there and he spoke a parable for the purpose of
bringing David to see that he was the transgressor. Look at
verse 1. This is the parable. There were
two men in one city, the one rich, the other poor. And the
rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds, but the poor man had
nothing save one little ewe lamb. And at the end there, it says
it was unto him as a daughter. He raised up this little lamb
and the rich man represents David, and the poor man represents Uriah,
the Hittite. Verse 4 says, And there came
a traveler unto the rich man, and he spared a take of his own
flock and of his own herd to dress for the wayfaring man that
was come unto him. He didn't go out of all these
many sheep he had and all this great abundance he had and get
a sheep for this stranger that came his way. What did he do?
He took the poor man's lamb and dressed it for the man that was
come to him. Now that was a parable. Nathan just told this story to
David. And David, it says verse 5, and
David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. And he said
to Nathan, as the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing
shall surely die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold. He's
not just going to give back one lamb, he's going to give back
four, four more for what he's done. He's going to make restitution.
And because he did this thing, and because he had no pity whatsoever,
David's speaking this out of his own mouth about this man
and this story. In verse 7, Nathan said to David,
Thou art the man. You see, before forgiving his
child, God's going to bring his child to see, Thou art the man. Thou art the man. Grace has to
enter into the heart and give a sense of our sin in our minds. What would you do? Think about
this. Nathan, if I came to your house, and I'm on your turf,
and I tell you a story like this, and I say, you're the one that's
guilty of this. If God doesn't give you grace
in your heart, I'll tell you what you'll do. I know what I'll
do. Fly back in the other one's face
and say, well how dare you speak like that to me? Try to justify
ourselves about it. Try to cover it up. Try to make
excuses for it. But grace accompanied this word.
that the prophet brought. And he made David to see he's
the man. He made him to see that this
is what he's done. And God knows about it. See,
we have to have this awakening. We have to have God to awaken
us by His grace and make us to see that we are the man. Because if we don't, we'll dismiss
our sin as a light thing. and we will do it and keep doing
it until God awakes us and says, hey, wake up now. Look what you're
doing. Thou art the man. God will make
us see, I have an issue with you. You know, long as you're
just here in sin, everybody's a sinner and we're all falling
in Adam and we're all depraved and we can't bring ourselves
to God, that doesn't really affect you too much. But when God speaks
in the heart and says, you're the one that's depraved, That's
when God starts dealing with us personally. So that's the
first thing God does. He makes you see you're the man.
And then secondly, in order to keep us from taking our sins
lightly, God makes us to take sides with God against ourselves. He condemns us out of our own
mouth often. God made David to know that what
David had just said, everything David had just said about this
man in the parable, It was what David deserved from God. God
made him to understand that. Look at verse 5. David's anger
was greatly kindled against the man. David got angry about this.
You know what? For my sin, you know what I deserve
from God? I deserve for God to be fiercely
angry with me. That's what my sin deserved.
That's what I deserve. But why doesn't God pour out
His fierce anger upon one of His chosen children? Because
Christ Jesus bore the fierce anger and fury of God's wrath
on the cross for his people. And so he made peace for his
people with God. So that now, though God's never
pleased with our willful rebellion against God, God deals with us
as justified sons. He deals with us as sons and
daughters who have been made righteous in the Lord Jesus Christ. because he poured out the fierceness
of his anger upon his son. And then look here in verse 5,
and David says, The man that hath done this thing shall surely
die. You know what my sin deserves? Death. Death. Why doesn't he
just strike down his children as soon as we sin? Why doesn't
he just strike us down immediately? because Christ Jesus the Lord,
in the place of his people, walked obediently before God, obedient
even unto the death of the cross. And you see, listen to this scripture,
the chastisement, the chastening, of our peace. The chastisement
that brought about peace with God. The chastisement that justified
us before God and reconciled His people to God. The chastisement
of our peace was upon Christ. and by his stripes were healed.
And now God comes to his child and he deals with us as a reconciled
child who he's at peace with. Legally, before his bar of justice,
he has nothing against us. And he's dealing with us as children
that he's at peace with because the chastening, that fierce chastening
fell upon his son and by his stripes were healed. In verse 6 he said, And he shall
restore the Lamb fourfold. You know what my sin deserves?
You know what your sin deserves? That we restore to God above
and beyond where we've transgressed against God. Why doesn't God
require His children to make restitution to Him? Because Christ
came and Christ says, I restored that which I took not away. Christ, before the law of God,
He restored to the law perfect obedience. He made restitution
to the law of God with a perfect justification of His people.
He made, magnified that law and fulfilled it in every regard
for His people. Before God, He's made full restitution
on behalf of the sins of His people. And He even restores
us in our inward man, because He restores unto us the image
of God in the new birth, when we're born of God. He's the restorer. That's who Christ is. And then
look here in verse 6. David said, this man had no pity. You know what God makes us to
see? We don't deserve any pity from God. We deserve no pity
from God whatsoever. David said, this man has shown
no pity, we're not going to give him any pity. And Nathan says,
David, you don't deserve any pity from God. But then the Scriptures
tells us this, like as a father pitieth his children, so the
Lord pitieth them that fear him. Why? Why? Because when Christ
hung on that tree, He bore, He tread the winepress of the fury
of the wrath of God all along. And this is what He said, Reproach
hath broken my heart, I am full of heaviness, and I look for
some to take pity. But there was none. And for comforters,
but I found none. You see, David is brought to
see he was the man deserving of all these things. And He's
brought to see now the very words I just spoke in condemnation
of this man in this parable. That's my condemnation. That's
what I deserve. Brethren, do you remember when
God did this in your heart in the beginning? Do you remember
when He did this to you in the beginning? I remember God making
me to see my sin and making me to see that I deserve nothing
from God but anger. I remember him making me to see
I couldn't make restitution, I couldn't make a payment, I
couldn't do one thing to make myself just and right with God. I couldn't do a thing. And I
began to see if God poured through me out of his presence today,
now, he'd be just to do it. A sinner's got to be made to
see he's the sinner and be made to take sides with God and condemn
himself. And I noticed something else
about this. David's been a believer a long time. And God's come to
him and done this. You see, God has to keep on waking
us up. He has to keep on convicting
us of our sin and bringing us to... That's how he brings us
to cast all our care on Christ and keep it there. Because otherwise
we get to being proud and thinking of how far we've come and what
we have and the things that are ours and what we have. And God
just takes them all away from us and brings us to cast our
care into His hand. And He keeps His child there.
That's a great mercy, brethren. That's love. That's faithfulness. Alright, thirdly, to prevent
us from making light of our sinful rebellion, God also makes us
see our sins in light of His goodness, in light of His grace
toward us. Look at verse 7, Thus saith the
Lord God of Israel, He says this to David, I have anointed thee
king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul.
I don't know why, The chastening, convicting hand of our God seems
strange to us because we do the same thing to our children. Have
you not ever told your children something like this? About what
you've done for them? That's what God says to them.
I've anointed thee king over Israel and I've delivered you
out of the hand of Saul. Brethren, by God's sovereign
free grace, He's delivered His child out of every enemy that
pursued us. Satan, we were the lawful captives
of Satan because when Adam sinned in that garden, we sinned in
Adam and we became captive to sin. Sin had us bound so that
we could not be freed from sin. The law had us bound and the
law demanded a perfect ransom be made before we'd be set free.
And death stood with its mouth wide open ready to swallow us
up forever and to take us away from the presence of God forever.
That's where we were, brethren. We were dead in trespasses and
sin. We didn't have God, we didn't have Christ, we didn't have any
hope in this world whatsoever. And you know what Christ did?
He came into this earth and because He took flesh, and He took our
place, and He took our sin, and He bore that wrath of God on
our behalf. God sent forth His gospel to
us, and God called us out of our father's house, out of rebellion,
out of our father Adam's house, out of our rebellion and our
sin, and He anointed us with the Holy Spirit of God, and He
made us kings and priests unto God. He made us to see, I've
delivered you out of every hand of your enemy that's chasing
after you, like Saul was after David. Christ is worthy of our
foolish devotion to Him, for thou wast slain and hast redeemed
us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and
people and nation, and hast made us unto our God kings and priests,
and we'll reign on the earth. God makes us see our sin even
greater whenever He shows us that by Christ Jesus, God's given
us everything. He's given us everything. Look
at verse 8. He said, I gave thee thy master's house and thy master's
wives unto thy bosom, and I gave thee the house of Israel and
of Judah. Believer, we've been made joint heirs with God's own
Son. by what He's done freely for
His people. He's made us joint heirs with
our Master so that what God gives to our Master, God's own Son,
God's own Son gives to His children. His house is our house. His bride
is our bride. His brethren are our brethren.
He's made us righteous. He's made us holy. He's made
us accepted in the Beloved. He's done everything and given
it all to us freely. The Spirit bears witness with
our spirit that we're the children of God. And if children, then heirs.
Heirs of God. And joint heirs with Christ.
If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified
together. Joint heirs with Christ. God
magnifies our sin by showing us He's given us everything.
And then He magnifies our sin by showing us, not only have
I made you righteous, not only have I given you free justification,
not only have I freely forgiven you of all your sins, I keep
giving to you everything, constantly, every hour of every day, all
the time. Verse 8, He said there, If that
had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee
such and such thing. Freely you have received, and
freely we keep receiving. Don't we? He said, He that spared
not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him also freely give us all things? God's been so
good to His people, He's robed us in the priceless righteousness
of His Son. by the precious blood of His
Son. That ought to make us abhor our sin. That ought to make us
constantly strive to want to be free from it altogether. To want to do nothing that even
appears like it's evil. But we just get so callous, don't
we? Just so callous to sin, like it don't even bother us. And
God has to do this over and over, show us what our sin is. Every
once in a while, every once in a while, sin becomes real to
us, don't it? It's very, very, very seldom
that God makes it real to us. If He made it real to us all
the time, we wouldn't be able to stand it. But He makes it
real to us just enough to bring us back down to Christ's feet
again. And He makes us to see what our sin is to Him. Look
here. We make a lot of excuses about
our sin and we call it different things and give it little funny
little names and stuff to make light of it, but look at this.
God says our sin is despising His command. Verse 9. Wherefore
hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord? You've despised
the commandment of God. What happens when you despise
the commandment of your earthly father? Is it a pleasant experience? Not if he's faithful. Well, it's
not with God's children either. He said, you've despised my commandment.
Now, we've been given the spirit of God, not the spirit of bondage
again to fear. We've been given the spirit of
children, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The believer is not under
the law, we're under grace. We were constrained by the love
of Christ, brethren, and therefore a believer has an earnest desire
in our inward man to obey every command of God throughout this
whole book. Paul said, I delight in the law
of God after the inward man. I think it was Martin Luther
that said, it's not good works that we abhor. It's looking to
good works for acceptance with God that we abhor. Believers
delight in God's command. Whatever He says for us is for
our good. It's right. It can't be more
right than what God says, can it? He says, but you despise my commandment. And God shows us that our sin
is evil in his sight. You see there at the end of verse
9, he said, you have done evil in my sight. Now, listen to this,
judicially, as a judge, as God is our judge, before God, the
child of God who's been redeemed by Christ and brought to faith
in Christ, before God, all our sins have been put away so that
God remembers our sin no more. That's what he says to us, I
will remember your sin no more. But God, we're in this flesh
and we're walking in a world of sin around fleshly people. And so God keeps His eye on each
of His children constantly to protect us and keep us from the
evil because if He didn't, we would end up like David here
and just be heading straight away into sin and be overtaken
by it if God didn't intervene for us. And so in that respect,
as God views His child, He sees us and sees our sin as evil in
His sight. Not as a judge, not as legally
binding upon us and cursing us, but just as his children. You
know, there's a difference between the way you see sin in some fella
out here on the street and the way you see it in your own children,
isn't it? Huh? David was crying out justice
for that man, but when it came to his house, you want to deal
with them tenderly, don't you? because they're your children.
That's how God deals with us. But this sin is still evil in
its sight. It's still evil in its sight. Every word that proceeds
from the mouth of our God is good. It's good for us. And through
his gospel, when he speaks affectionately in our hearts, in power, he makes
a believer hate what God hates and love what God loves. Listen
to this, Psalm 119, 103. How sweet are thy words unto
my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through thy precepts
I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. We didn't know what sin was until
we heard God's command, and God told us what sin is. We didn't
hate the false way until God spoke affectionately into our
heart. So we love every word God speaks, and we want to obey
every word because He's our Father. Not because we're trying to find
acceptance or become more righteous or more holy, because He's our
Father, and we love Him as a Father. God makes His child know in our
hearts what our particular crimes are. Look here at verse 9. He
said, Thou hast killed. He said, Thou hast taken his
wife to be your wife. And He says, And you've slain
him with the sword of My enemy. You see, God knows our particular
sin. and he makes us to see that he
knows our particular sin. Now nobody, listen to me, nobody
listen to me right now can be accepted by your obedience to
the law of God because you have none. I don't care if it's before
God called you or after God called you, of yourself, by yourself,
in yourself, we have no obedience to God's law. There is none righteous,
no not one. That is true of the believer
in himself by what he's done as it is when he was dead in
sin. We don't have any righteousness of our own. Not any. James says,
Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point,
he's guilty of all. We cannot come to God by the
works of the law. But it's by God making his child
to know our individual crimes that he makes us see There's
no way I could come to God in my obedience. No way. And then in verse 10, look in
the middle part of verse 10 there. This is what he makes us to see
our sin is. Verse 10, he said, Thou hast
despised me. Not just my commandment. Now
he takes it even more personal. He says, God says you've despised
me. You think about this believer.
Think about this. God who chose you freely by his
grace apart from anything in you whatsoever. That God who
sent his only begotten son into this earth. Who went to that
cross and bore the agonies of that cross on your behalf. That
God who has come forth in power and spoken into your heart and
given you a new life, a newness of life. He's given you eyes
to see and ears to hear and a mind to understand and a willing heart
to believe upon Him. Every time we willfully rebel
against this God, we are screaming out as loud as we can, I despise
you. And God makes us see this. Our
sin gives our enemies reason to blaspheme God. Look at verse
14. In the middle part there, third
word in, he says, By this deed thou hast given great occasion
to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. Now that, if none
of these other things strikes to the heart and strikes to the
root of a believer, I'll tell you this does because a believer
wants God to have all glory. He wants Him to have the preeminence. He wants Christ to be held up
and exalted and glorified before men. And when God brings it home
to our heart and lets us know, you've given my enemies reason
to blaspheme my name. That's hard. You see, sin never
appears black to us like it does when God reveals it to us in
light of His goodness to us, His grace to us, and what He's
done so freely for us. So He makes us to see. He makes
us to see we're the sinner. He makes us to condemn ourselves,
to take sides with Him, see what we deserve from God. He makes
us to see our sin in light of His goodness and see what it
is to Him. And then here's the fourth thing.
God prevents His child from thinking lightly of our sin by freely
and justly forgiving us of our sin. What an amazing God. Verse 13, And David said unto
Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. Now, God's going to
bring His child to confess our sins before God. Listen to this. John said, if we say that we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves. We're not deceiving God, that's
for sure. We deceive ourselves. And listen
to this, and the truth is not in us. And then he said, if we
say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar. And his word
is not in us. What's the problem with somebody
that's going around and he's saying, well, I'm not that bad. I'm not depraved. I have a will. I can come to God when I want
to. I can pull myself up by my bootstraps. I can turn over a
new leaf. What's wrong with that man? He
doesn't have truth abiding in him. He doesn't have the Word
of God abiding in his heart. That's what God said. That's
what he said. Turn over to Psalm 51. Just a
minute. Psalm 51. This is not that silly
charade that goes on in churches whenever the preacher says, now,
if anybody's got any unconfessed sin, then confess your sin now. And somebody will get to thinking,
they say, well, you know, I ran a traffic light today. I'm sorry
about that. I hid my bar tab from my wife. I'm sorry about that. This is
God breaking your bones inside. This is God bringing His Word
into the heart and bringing us down to His feet. Listen to David
here. The title of this psalm, Psalm
51, up there at the heading, it says, To the chief musician,
a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him after
he had gone into Bathsheba. This is what David prayed to
God. Have mercy upon me, O God. According to Thy lovingkindness,
according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out
my transgression. wash me throughly from my iniquity,
cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions
and my sins ever before me against thee and thee only have I sinned
and done this evil in thy sight that thou mightest be justified
when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest." And he takes
it further. He says, it's not just an act
I did. He said, I was shaping an iniquity. And in 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. Wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones
which thou hast broken may rejoice. I read somewhere about a shepherd
leading his sheep. If he has a little young lamb
that runs out and won't stay around him, you know, getting
out there too far away from the rest of the sheep and all that,
that the shepherd sometimes will take the sheep and he'll twist
his leg and twist his leg out of socket so that the little
lamb has to walk there beside him and he has to carry it and
help it along and so after a while he'll pop that leg back in and
that lamb just follows him because he's limping and he's hobbling
along and he keeps on doing that and by the time that lamb can
walk again, he don't want to leave the shepherd. because he's
walked beside the shepherd for so long. Isn't that what Christ
does to us? God does to us? He breaks our
bones when we begin to stray and he causes us to come back
to the shepherd and causes us to want to walk with the shepherd.
Christ. Christ. He said, look here in
verse 12, He says, Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation,
and uphold me with thy free spirit. You see, this thing of God making
our sin known in our hearts, it's not supposed to be joyful.
It's not. And that's why He's saying, Restore
joy of your salvation to me. And He says this, Then will I
teach transgressors thy ways. What have we been doing tonight?
I've been telling you what God does. how God deals with us,
hadn't I? Look, and sinners shall be converted
unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness,
O God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud
of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips, and
my mouth shall show forth thy praise. He's depending on God
to do everything for him. He said, for you don't desire
sacrifice, you don't desire burnt offering. The sacrifices of God
are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God,
thou will not despise. What was the whole problem here?
What was the whole problem here with David? In all of this, David
had become too proud. And that's generally our chief
problem in everything. We become too proud. And a broken
and a contrite spirit is what God won't despise. And so God
breaks us. He breaks us. And aren't you
thankful He breaks us? Alright, go back to our text
now. I want to show you another thing here. And Nathan said unto
David, verse 13, 2 Samuel 12, 13, And Nathan said unto David,
The Lord also hath put away thy sin, thou shalt not die. If we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He's faithful to do it because
He's our Father, and He's just to do it because He's already
put them away in Christ. God's free forgiveness for Christ's
sake is what brings us, brethren, to want to follow the shepherd.
It's what brings us down. It's what brings us to fear Him
and want to obey His commands and want to follow Him and walk
after Him and believe on Christ and love our brethren, which
He's commanded us to do. That's what He said. If thou,
Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But
there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared. Now there's one more point we
need to see. Verse 14 begins, how be it? How be it? Listen to me carefully with this.
David was forgiven of all his sin. But from that day forward,
the sword never left David's house. Look back up at verse
10. The Lord said, Now therefore
the sword shall never depart from thine house, because thou
hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite
to be thy wife. Thus saith the Lord, Behold,
I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house.
And I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto
thy neighbor. And he shall lie with thy wives
in the sight of this sun. For thou didst it secretly, but
I will do this thing before all Israel and before the Son. Look
at verse 14. Howbeit, because by this deed
thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to
blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely
die. The guilt of David's sin was
remembered no more by God. He said, the Lord hath put away
thy sin. But David himself is a child
of God. and he must be dealt with by
his heavenly father's loving, chastening rod. For whom the
Lord loveth, he correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he
delighteth. God teaches us several things
here by this. First of all, God will not wink
at our sin. He will not wink at our sin.
David was too highly favored of God, he was too loved of God,
for God not to correct the child of his love. And the same is
true of every child God loves. If you endure chastening, God
dealeth with you as with sons. For what son is he whom the father
chasteneth not? But if you be without chastisement,
whereof all are partakers, then are you bastards and not sons.
Though he visit the offenses of his child with a rod and our
iniquities with stripes, yet thy lovingkindness wilt thou
not take from him, nor suffer thy faithfulness to fail. And
then, number two, God chastens us for our profit that we might
be partakers of His holiness. For example, David was taught,
and we're taught here by this, by the rod of God, we're taught
where we are to sow. That's what he's being taught
here. He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. But he that soweth to the Spirit
shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. What do you reckon
David thought whenever he heard that his son Ammon raped his
daughter Tamar? I know now not to sow to my flesh. I know now that the child of
God should sow to the Spirit. If we sow to our flesh, we're
going to reap corruption. Sin always has an effect. It
always has an effect. Another profitable lesson, by
God making the child that was produced by this unlawful sinful
union to die, God taught us that our sin brings forth nothing
but death. That's all it does. James said,
let no man say when he's tempted, I'm tempted of God. We like to
blame our sin on God's sovereignty, don't we? But God cannot be tempted
with evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted
when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. And then
when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin. See how the sin she
conceived with child, he got Uriah drunk, he tried to cover
his sin, then he killed him. And when sin is finished, it
brings forth death. Here's a dead child now because
of all this. We don't like this stuff, do
we? You know why? We're a branch. We're a grape
branch. You ever seen a grape branch?
They like to grow wild and go all out in a place and everything.
They don't want to produce grapes. They don't want to produce fruit.
They got to be cut and pruned and made to bring forth grapes
because they're a grapevine. That's us by nature. Thirdly,
the rod greatly humbled David, and it turned all David's hope
and desire away from all others to God all his days. David loved
his children. He loved Absalom even after Absalom
rebelled against him. He still wanted that boy to turn
out good. But everything, his house was
a wreck, and God made it a wreck. He told him. But look at what
it did. Although my house be not so with
God. This is his last words. Although
my house be not so with God, yet he hath made with me an everlasting
covenant, ordered in all things in sure, and this is all my salvation
and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. God forced
him to where he couldn't look anywhere but to God. That's what
he did. And I'll tell you an amazing
thing. This is just a side note. This is something that has to
do with God's sovereignty and our responsibility. David, we
see here, was guilty for what he did. And God dealt with him
and corrected him and chastened him. And yet what he did... was
according to God's predestinated foreordained purpose, because,
not his sin, but to bring him and Bathsheba together, because
that was the union that brought forth Solomon, through whom Christ
came. You see, it's wicked hands that
does the sin, but we do what God determined before to be done.
God gets the glory, and the sin's our fault. Here's the chief lesson
I'm through. God can and will forgive us when
he has brought us to repent of even our greatest sins. He can
and he will. He faithful and just to do it.
And yet, though the guilt of our sin may be removed, the consequences
of it will subject us to much sorrow until that day when God
wipes away all tears from our eyes. Sin doesn't ever bring
forth anything good. Nothing. Now why are you telling
me all this, Clay? Here's why. My little children,
these things preach I unto you that you sin not. And when any man sins, we have
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and
He is the propitiation for our sins. And not for ours only,
but also for the sins of His people all over this world. Amen. estate.