Let us look to the Lord in a
word of prayer. Father, we are grateful for this privilege.
We ask that the Holy Spirit may bless the word as we read it
this morning and as we now attempt to open up the word to thy people,
we pray a blessing upon the service and pray that thy name will be
highly exalted and glorified. We pray for those who are not
able to be here, bless them, encourage them, and we pray for
their spiritual uplifting in the Lord. We ask that they might
be all strengthened and helped in the things of God. Bless this
service, we pray, and may each one of us make progress today
in the things of the Spirit. We pray it in Jesus' name, Amen. I invite you to turn back with
me, if you will, to the book of 2 Samuel chapter 7. The book of 2 Samuel chapter
7. Most of you recall that we're
here last Sunday morning that we preach from this chapter,
verse 21 primarily is our text. And we said at the close of our
service last Sunday that we would continue this message this morning. And so, open your Bibles, if
you haven't already, to the book of 2 Samuel chapter 7, and let
me read down through verse 22. And what can David say more unto
thee? For thou, Lord God, knowest thy
servant. For Thy word's sake and according
to Thine own heart hast Thou done all these great things to
make Thy servant know them. Wherefore, Thou art great, O
Lord God, for there is none like Thee, neither is there any God
beside Thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears. Certainly it is the ambition
of my heart, the obligation placed upon me by God having laid hold
of me and putting me into the ministry. My obligation is to
preach God up and man down, to put God in his right place. his
rightful place, and to put man where the Scripture places him.
We are here this morning to glorify God. We are here to worship the
God of the Bible. May the Spirit of God help us
and enable us to do that today. Now as we opened up our message
last week, We talked about King David and how he had a great
desire and ambition in his life to build a house for the Lord. He wanted to raise a temple that
was more magnificent and more blessed than any temple that
any heathen king had ever raised unto their false deity. And we
found that the prophet Nathan Not knowing the mind of the Lord
at that time said just do whatever's in your heart to do The Lord
be with you and that evening or night the Spirit of God came
the voice of God came to Nathan the prophet and said Nathan you
go tell David that he will not build this house that I'm going
to build him a house and I'm going to raise up from his loins
a seed of and this seed is going to rain and I'm going to establish
a kingdom for him and this one will proceed out of his bowels
and I will establish his kingdom and he shall build a house for
my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever."
And of course we know that he was talking about Immediately
he was talking about Solomon and then of course in the future
he was talking about the Lord Jesus Christ that would be raised
up the son of David to sit everlastingly on the throne of God. And so
we take note also that David submitted himself to the will
of God in this matter. him being a servant of God, he
only wanted to serve God in his generation and to do that which
God would have him to do. And so he submitted to God and
received with great thankfulness and astonishment, the promise
of these blessings which God had promised to him. And he sought
within himself to find a reason why God would so bless him, why
God would so promise these things and why God would offer fulfillment
of these things to him of all people. And in verse 20 it says,
And what can David say more unto thee? As David was musing, meditating
upon, and as he was praying unto the Lord his God, he said, What
can I say more unto thee? For thou, Lord God, knowest thy
servant. Can I come before you and can
I tell you something about me that you don't know? All things
are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
There's nothing hid from God. David said, I don't have anything,
Lord, to tell you. I don't have anything. I can't
come up with something that would answer this question, why are
you doing this for me and for my house? Why are you so blessing
me in this way? And he said, you know your servant.
And this is true. Don't ever forget it. If you
don't learn anything else under my ministry, you learn this,
that God knows every man. And he has no need that anybody
testify of man, because he knows what is in man. He knows you. He knows everything about you.
You cannot hide anything from the living God. God knows you,
and he knows me. And therefore, if we understand
ourselves, if we know ourselves, And certainly we do not know
ourselves as God knows us, but if we know ourselves in the sense
that we are aware and conscious of reality, we know that there
is nothing in us that should induce God or could induce God
to do for us the things that He's already done for us and
the things that He most surely, as we stand in Christ, will receive
from His hand. Now then, the question in my
mind this morning is, as we have opened up again by these remarks,
is how do we live as the people of God in this world that God
is in control of, God from the throne controls this world and
He gives according to the goodness of His own heart. God being the
source of all blessing, God being the source of all good things,
He's the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the
source of all blessing. David said this in verse 21 when
he said, and according to thine own heart, You've done this. You haven't done it because of
who I am, because of my greatness, because I'm great, you made me
great, that's the only reason why I am. But it's according
to thine own heart you've done all these great things to make
thy servant know them. God is the source of all blessings
unto his people. Now, how do we live and react
in a world where this is true? Where it's God's heart that is
the source of all blessing. We know that salvation is of
the Lord. We know that God is sovereign. And we know that whatever
God does, He does it because of His own will and purpose.
We know that it's for His own namesake, that He forgives His
people of their sin. We know that God has made provision
whereby He can deal with and whereby He can have mercy upon
His people through the sacrifice of His Son, it is the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now when I was thinking about
this, I thought about David and about the way he reacted to what
the Lord done in his life at the time of this great sin. Let me say that when chapter
7 of 2 Samuel was written, of course Solomon was not yet born. And the relationship between
David and Bathsheba had not yet occurred. That occurred over
in chapter 11 and we read chapter 12 this morning. But it was in
chapter 11 where David, in that time of the year when kings would
go forth to war, David stayed at home. He went up on the housetop
where the garden was and he looked down and of course saw Bathsheba. the daughter of Eliam, the wife
of Uriah, the Hittite. But there are some things that
I think we must face in being able to open up this subject
this morning to see how that the cause and measure of all
things are of God. I think that we need to open
it up by facing a few facts and to see how David handled this
situation. Now God has told him that there
would be one out from his bowels that he would raise up and that
this one would build him a house. He would be a man of peace. There
would be no war during his reign and he would be the man who would
be blessed of God to raise up this house. Now let me make this
point that David was one of the greatest believers that ever
lived in this world. One of the greatest believers
that ever lived in this world. Now you face this and you follow
with me and I think you will have a little better understanding
of how we are to live in this world and react toward the things
that happen in this world and how we're to keep on hoping and
believing in God who gives out of the goodness of His heart.
Now if David was in most churches today, we know about his sin,
we know about him killing Uriah the Hittite with the sword of
the Ammonites, We know about this. We already have that in
our minds. We know about what happened.
And if David was in most churches today, I think that most of the
fundamentalist churches of our day would conclude that David
was a lost man. and that if he had been converted
prior to him committing adultery and murder, that he most surely
would have lost his salvation when this happened. Now, we know
this is hogwash because we know that any sin that an unbeliever
can commit, that a believer also can commit. Now why is this so? Because when a person is saved,
barring the phrase from the wedding ceremony, there's something new
and there's something old in a person that's saved. The new
is the new nature, the divine nature of God, and the old is
the old nature. Every one of us have the Adamic
nature and we carry the baggage of the Adamic nature over into
our lives as believers. And every one of us have these
two natures and we're capable as believers of doing anything
that an unbeliever can do because we have that old sinful and Adamic
nature. Now some of the best people that
you meet in this world are Christians. I say some of the best people
you meet in this world are Christians. Some of the people you meet in
this world that are very nice people, very congenial people,
very kind and compassionate people are unbelievers. And also I would
like to say that some of the worst people that you can meet
in this world, some of the biggest con artists in this world are
professed believers. People who claim to be Christians. Some of the most proud, arrogant
people that I have met in this world have been associated with
religion. They've been associated with
religion. Some of those who feel that they're
just here in the world to collect what they have coming to them,
which of course must be all good because of who they are, have
been professing Christians, people involved with and associated
with religion. But I'm here to tell you today
that David was indeed truly a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now
the sin with Bathsheba, this happened 17 years approximately
after he became king in Israel and David had had many spiritual
victories in his life and of course defeats. He was a well-rounded
Christian. He was one who got up in the
morning. We can prove this by numerous teachings of the Psalms,
many verses in the Psalms, that he was a man who rose early in
the morning and studied the Scriptures, and he was a man of prayer. And
he was a man of prayer not only early in the morning, but he
prayed at other times during the day. And we know that he
was a mature believer. Somebody might say, well now,
I don't, you know, he must have been a very, very, he must have
been a novice in the things of God. No, he was not. He was a
mature believer in the things of God. And let me say this,
that David loved God more than anyone or anything in the universe. David loved God. Now, if David
truly loved God, and we know he did, He had a capacity, a
tremendous capacity of soul to love God. Now, we also know that
God loved David. Even when David sinned, God loved
him. God's love, no variation knows. God's love cannot be bought.
God's love cannot be taken from a soul. Once God puts and places
that love upon a man, that love is upon Him and nothing is going
to change the mind of God about loving His own. God loves His
own and He loved David. And we know that the Scripture
says that we love Him because He first loved us. And so David
loved God and he loved God more than anyone or anything in all
the universe. And so we know that God first
loved him, and we know that God continued to love him, and God's
discipline of his life was all in grace. Now this is not like
David. This was not the habitual bit
of his life. to be womanizing or chasing after
women and for him to be, well for an example, this was not
the time when David normally would even be home. He was normally
out to war this time of the year. He was normally out on the battlefield
this time of the year, and we're told that in the 11th chapter
of 2 Samuel here. This was not the habitual bent
of his life. To be looking, David had several
wives, and this was not something that he was given to. And I think
this is very important for us to note that, that he was not
a whoremonger. David was not a whoremonger.
He was a believer and a man who loved God. But on this particular
occasion he stayed home and you can say whatever you want to
about that. If you want to say that David
was geographically out of the will of God when he stayed at
home instead of being on the battlefield, you can say that
if you want to. I don't believe that myself. But now you might
also say that David was out of fellowship with God, and he might
have very well been. He might have very well been.
There might have been a season of time when David hadn't been
praying, and when David hadn't been reading the Scriptures.
I don't know. I don't know that. But nevertheless, here he was,
and he was upon the roof, and he saw a woman washing herself,
and the woman, we read here in verse 2 of chapter 11, was very
beautiful to look upon. She was fantastically beautiful
is the way the Hebrew puts it. Now this woman that David looked
upon, she was, we're told by some Bible teachers that she
was maybe one of the seven or eight beautiful women, extremely
beautiful women that have lived in the history of the world.
And David saw this beautiful woman, very beautiful to look
upon, and so he sent and inquired about this woman. And she was
brought, not without her consent, she was not brought to David
and she was not kidnapped and brought in. She willingly came
in and she consented to this arrangement with David. Now then
they entered into a relationship which and from that relationship
she became with child and we know that David went on out to
attempt to destroy or get rid of Uriah because he could not
deal with the case any other way. He had to get rid of her
husband. And so he did so, him being king,
he had ways of doing that. I'm not going to get into that
here this morning. But God did discipline David
for his sin. God dealt with him for his sin,
and the child died, as we read of it here in verse 18 of the
12th chapter, and it came to pass on the seventh day that
the child died. The child that was conceived
through this relationship that David and Bathsheba had, this
child died for the parents. Now it is very important for
you to notice that when Nathan approached David about this and
told him this story, that David pronounced judgment upon himself. And in verse 5 of the 12th chapter,
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. There David pronounces judgment
upon himself. Where did David get this idea
that this man ought to die? Well, he got that from the fact
that in the Old Testament, those that committed adultery were
worthy of death. And so, we take note that as
he pronounced death upon himself, because he was the man, We see
that the child, when both David and Bathsheba ought to die, they
ought to die, and that was the sentence of the Old Testament,
that we see that the child died in the place of the parents.
God had a purpose and plan for both David and Bathsheba, and
for Solomon that would later be born, the parents were spared,
the child died. And the child died, what we might
say, as a substitute in the place of the parents, and also the
death of this child, it was part of the discipline of God, part
of the chastisement of God upon David. Now, the child died. And we're told that here in verse
18. And David, we see that after
he had been fasting and praying and all the time when the child
was sick, David, he explained his attitude and And he explained
why he was fasting and why he wept, even though the prophet
said the baby's going to die and David knew that the child
was going to die. He fasted and prayed because
in verse 22 he said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious
to me that the child may live? One of the things that David
fully believed in was the grace of God. He believed that God
could be gracious and that the heart of God was so large and
he had no problem believing that God could do gracious things,
merciful things toward him. And he believed that with all
of his heart. And when God said your sin, I put it away David. I put away your sin. You're not
going to die. Then David believed that God
had put it away, he believed that God had forgiven him, and
he had no mental attitude problem with this. He didn't have a mental
attitude reaction that said, well, from now on, the rest of
my life, everything that bad happens to me is going to be
because of this situation. Now I will admit, and this is
true, that it took about 20 years for the events to occur that
happened in David's life as a result of the discipline of God in his
life and the chastisement of God upon him for this sin of
adultery and murder. And we, well just for an example,
David had children by several women. One of David's sons raped
one of his daughters, and that had to do with the direct dealings
of God, chastisement of God upon David and Bathsheba because of
their sin. Now let me say this, that one
of David's sons also killed one of his sons, which was, as it
were, as the Hebrew scholars explain it. It had to do with
the fact that David, the first, one of the sons raping one of
his daughters, that was connected with the adultery part of the
relationship between David and Bathsheba. It was direct discipline
for that. And one of David's sons killing
the son that did the raping, this was to deal with David. for murdering Uriah the Hittite. And then we know also that there
were other things that occurred. I'm not going to try to go ahead
into that because it's not necessary to do that this morning. But
I do want you to know that God did discipline David. But yet
when God said, I put away your sin, David believed that. He believed it. And this is so
very important. Now I want you to notice what
happened here. We read in verse 24 of chapter 12. And David comforted
Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her. And she bare a son, and he called
his name Solomon, and the Lord loved him. Well how do you explain
that preacher? Well I explain it like this.
David had been forgiven entirely and completely by the Lord for
this sin that he had committed. And he believed, and as 1 John
1-9 states it, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just
to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now David had confessed his sin
unto the Lord. He had confessed his sin. He
had acknowledged his sin. He said, against thee and thee
only have I sinned. You can read Psalm 38, begin
with verse 1. You can read Psalm 51, and you
can read Psalm 32, verses 1 through 5. These are what are called
Bathsheba Psalms. And you can read them and you
can see what was going on in David's heart over a period of
about one year from the time he and Bathsheba first come together
in their relationship until this time when the Lord has lifted the sin and
put away his sin and he's forgiven and it would be very interesting
if you would read those three Psalms. If you think that David
got off light If you think there's a double standard for men and
women, if you think in any way, shape, or form that David was
not dealt with and did not have mental and heart agony, you study
carefully Psalm 38, Psalm 51, and Psalm 32, and you will find
out what he went through in God's dealings with him in that year's
period of time. Now, I want you to know that
David lived for 23 more years after this situation. After this situation
with Bathsheba and this adultery and murder, God lived, or David
lived for 23 more years. And by who and what, God is. That's the way he lived. By who
and by what God is, he lived by the grace of God. And he did
not carry a guilt complex. He loved Bathsheba, his wife. He comforted her. And he bonded,
his soul was bonded with Bathsheba. Bible historians seem to believe
that this is the woman that David bonded with. His soul was knit
to her soul. He bonded to her like he bonded
with no other woman that had been given to him as wife. And he loved this woman. And
this is something that young people ought to look for before
they marry, and that is the bonding of the soul. Is your soul knit
to this one you're about to be married to? You say, preacher,
what is this bonding? What is it? Well, I can't tell
you what it is, I can just tell you this, that everybody's looking
for it. Everybody's looking for it. And
until you find it, a bonding of your soul, a knitting of your
soul to one of the opposite sex, you will not be happy and your
marriage may or may not endure. They'll have to be a great deal
of effort put forth on your part if that bonding is never there.
Now a lot of people carry a lot of scar tissue on their soul
into relationships, into their marriages, which make it rather
difficult for any bonding to take place between that man or
woman. And if the case, it's a big field,
but I'm not going to get too much involved in that. But I
wanted to try to explain to you here what happened. How was it
that David, you would have thought, well David would never touch
this woman again. That David would have nothing
to do with this woman. And that he would leave this
woman alone. But in the purpose of God, David had no guilt complex
about this at all. Once God said, I put away your
sin. It's forgiven. David believed in the grace of
God. And he was living on the heart of God. Expecting God's
heart to be gracious toward him. And so he went in unto his wife
Bathsheba. And she bare a son. He called his name Solomon. Solomon
is that one that will build the temple. He's this man of peace. He's this man that would seek
wisdom of God. The wisest man that's ever lived
on the face of the earth. He would be this one that God
would bless. And it says the Lord loved him.
The Lord loved him. The Lord loved him from eternity.
God knew what David was going to do. God knew all about this. But in the purpose of God, Solomon
would be born and he would come forth from the loins of David
and Bathsheba was to be his mother. Now this is important for us
to see this in order that we can understand. Now if you were
the neighbors, no let's say it another way. Let's say for an
example you were the mother and father of Uriah the Hittite. And you found out what David
had done in the killing of your son in order to have his wife. Now, let me ask you this question,
and you would have found out that there was a second son born.
Now the first one was born and died, you would have said, Amen,
that's exactly what ought to have happened. God ought to have
killed that baby, and God ought to have killed David, and he
ought to have killed Bathsheba too, but you would have been
happy. But when you found out that the
second son that was born, his name was called Solomon, and
God loved him. What would you think about that?
What would you think about? Say you were the brother of Uriah
the Hittite. Say you were the sister of Uriah
the Hittite. And you found this out. What
would you think about God? What would you say? What would
you say about all of this? Could God be so, could God be
such a God that could put away a man's sin, a woman's sin, and
then bless them mightily from His heart, and give them a son,
and love that son, and bless that son, and enable that son
to be a mighty man in Israel, king over Israel, and God to
be with him? Could God do that? Is God such
a God as that? Well now, if he's a God that
deals with people strictly on the basis of merit, then no,
it ain't gonna happen. But if it's out of the heart
of God, if God works his purpose out of his own heart, if God
has a plan and purpose, God can forgive sin on the basis of the
cross. I told you that the other day.
I'll put it away. I'll put it away." And he said,
I'll cleanse you from all unrighteousness, anything else going on in your
life that you maybe don't even know about. God said, I'll put
that away too. I'll cleanse you from all unrighteousness. This is what God said. You can
expect Him to do it. You can believe that He'll do
it. That word confess means to acknowledge. And over and over
you'll find that David said, My sin is ever before me. I acknowledge
my sin. David said, I'm the one that
sinned. David said, listen. He said to Nathan, I have sinned
against the Lord. And in Psalm 51, against thee
am the only have I sinned. God knows that David's sin was
against Him. Now there's something else here
that I want you to see. That David did not go out after God
had forgiven him of this sin. and try to straighten out all
the mess that was connected with this situation. Now this is very
important to see. Now, beloved, listen, let me
tell you this, and this is something that I believe wholeheartedly.
I believe that David left it to God to straighten out the
mess with Bathsheba's in-laws and outlaws. And he left it to
God to straighten out the mess in Israel and to straighten it
all out was in the Lord's hand. God said the sword is not going
to depart from your house. And this is going to happen and
that's going to happen. We read it this morning. All these things
are going to happen, David. But David didn't go on out. He
just went right on and lived his life. He just went right
on in the ways of God and went right on believing that God had
forgiven him and that this thing was in God's hands. Went right
on and Solomon was brought into the world. Now brother, there's
something very important that we need to see here. And that
is that there isn't any need for us to go on back and try
to straighten out a whole bunch of stuff that happened in the
past and try to straighten it out. Say, Lord, forgive me, but
I want to get up and confess it before the church. I want
to tell all this before the church. Listen, let me tell you something.
That's a bunch of foolishness. That's a bunch of Tommy Rock
foolishness for you to get up in front of the church and say,
I made this terrible blunder like we heard on the television
about Mr. Swagger. Get up and say, I have sinned
and he's crying before the whole world. That's a bunch of foolishness.
Now you let me tell you something. If anybody tries to get up here
and tries to publicly confess their sin here in this church,
I personally, if I'm here and if I'm able bodily, I will not
permit you to do it. I won't want you to do it. I
don't want you to do it. It's wrong for you to do it,
to get up here and publicly confess your sin to these people. Now
why is that so? Because they ain't gonna do nobody
here any good. It won't do them one dimes worth of good. And
really it ain't going to do you any good either. Because the
situation is going to continue on and on and on and it won't
ever be resolved. And if nobody knew anything about
it before, now they're going to know about it. And now you
really got problems because they're not going to forget it. They're
not going to forget it like God does. Now another thing is this,
we don't need to hear about your sin because we know about who
we are. We know who we are. And the truth of the matter is
that I could probably match sins one for one with anybody here
in this building. You get up and you start confessing
your sin, I could probably just stay right with you, at least
for a while. I could stay with you. And maybe I'd be here when
you got finished. And that's the way it is here
in this congregation. We all know that we're sinners.
And we don't need for anybody to get up and say, well, I've
done this and that, preacher. I've done so and so and so and
so. We don't need for you to do that. We don't need for you
to do it. We don't need you to go on and
try to straighten out all the mess that you've made in your
life. Because you might have made an awful mess. And you may
be very sorry for it. And you may say, well, if I could
do one thing in this world, it would go back and solve all the
problems that I've created in my life. I'd go back and I'd
work all of this out and there wouldn't be anything left to
it. I mean, I'd just work it all out. I'd straighten out all
this mess. But my friend, you're not able
to do that. You're not able to do that. And every one of us
are believer priests. And we come before God, we can
confess our sin. And we do in the privacy of our
own heart, in the privacy of our own soul, we confess our
sin unto God. And now, there may be things
that have to be dealt with because of the nature of them between
you and certain parties that absolutely have to be dealt with.
I know there are things between a husband and wife that has to
be dealt with, between a wife and a husband that have to be
dealt with. But I'm talking about a public
situation like coming before a church or like David coming
before that massive army of Israel and explaining to them why he
wasn't down there and why this happened with Uriah the Hittite
and why Gilad made the decision he did to get too close to the
wall so that the enemy could shoot the heirs from the wall
and kill some of the mighty men of Israel. He didn't go out and
try to explain all of that so that everybody would understand
that he was a sinner. No, he didn't. And I don't think
you and I ought to either. God can straighten out the message.
And He's the only one that can make straight that which has
been made crooked. God's the only one that can do
that. And sometimes not even God is pleased to do that. He's
not pleased to do it. And if He's not pleased to do
it, then it'll never be straight. And you'll have to leave it crooked
until eternity. But now remember the definition
of grace that we gave last week. Now you see, I'm in a dilemma
again. Here I have, I fooled around,
the time is almost gone again and I still haven't gotten to
what I was planning on preaching last week. Now what do you think
about that? Okay, this definition of grace.
Grace is all that God is free to do for the elect on the basis
of the cross. I gave you that last week. But
I want to go over this just a little bit. I want you to see how it
connects with David's mental attitude and how he could believe
that out of the heart of God all of this has come to pass
and that God can continue to be gracious toward him because
his sin has been put away. Now, grace depends, as we told
you last week. God deals with men. He's free
to do that. He can do that because of the
cross. Because all of our sins were
judged at the cross. in the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Every sin that the elect of God
have committed, will commit, ever will commit, have all been
judged already in the person of Jesus Christ. David's sin
was judged In Christ, later on, David was saved by looking forward
to the cross, we are all saved by looking back to the cross,
but the same cross, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the
object of faith, and Christ He suffered the just for the unjust. Our sin was charged to Him. He
paid our sin debt. And so God could put away David's
sin. He could put it away because
He was going to charge it and already had in His heart and
mind charged it to His substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now isn't
that a glorious thing? Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that
marvelous? That you can go as a believer priest and confess
your sin to God, whatever it is, and that God has charged
it to the Lord Jesus, and it's already been paid for, and He's
free to forgive you and treat you just like you never had committed
the sin. And that's exact... To me, this
12th chapter of the book of 2 Samuel, in verse 24, it's so wonderful
because what it shows me is that David could start right out Again,
just like nothing had ever happened. Here's David and Bathsheba, here
they are together and men don't understand it. People don't understand
it. Religious world's against it.
Everybody in religion is against David and against Bathsheba. But God, they start right out
as far as the Lord is concerned and the sin is put away and everything
is just fine before God. And God loves Solomon. Love this
baby, this boy, he loved it. I like that. Now you see what
that ought to do is to get rid of some of your mental attitude
sins. Back along the way, some of you people have done something
you shouldn't have done. And if you're here this morning and
you've never done anything you shouldn't have done, you are certainly
a rare one in this group, I'll tell you that. But let me tell
you this, that what we do is we have this mental attitude
that things will never be right again. And that we got to carry
that baggage. That we got to just keep on believing
that this thing, that this thing somehow or other, that God will
never treat us right again. He'll never say good things to
us again. The Lord will never bless us
again. Nothing will ever happen again that will ever be good.
Never will be. And that's a mental attitude
sin is what that is. And that is worse, now hear me,
that's worse than the sin that you committed that caused the
mental attitude sin. Now we're dealing with the God
of grace is what we're dealing with. You don't believe in grace
and that's your problem. You believe that God's still
dealing with you and that who you are and what you are has
everything to do with what God's doing toward you. And that's
your problem. That's your problem. And it's
the heart of God that determines His heart is the source of all.
David said, Lord, you know your servant. You know me. You know
who I am. I know these things that you
promised. These things that you said you'd
give. I know that they had to come out of your heart. They
had to come out of the greatness of your heart. And anything you
got, it came from God's heart. Not because of who you are, your
merit. And brother, sister, I can believe
in the greatness of the gift if I know God's doing the giving.
I know that there is nothing God can't do. And I know through
grace He will bless. So depend upon it. Grace depends
on who and what God is. It depends on His essence. God's
essence. Not on who David is. Never on
who and what man is. Grace depends upon the character
of God. That's why Solomon is loved of
God. It's grace. Grace entirely, all
together. You take note, and I don't know
whether you noticed this or not, but when Nathan was talking to
David, you know, when he was telling David about his sin,
he said, now, if you needed this, God would have just given. Given.
God would have given it to you. And I like that so much because
you know what that is. That's gift. That's grace is
what it is. Now look in verse 8 of 2 Samuel
12 there. And listen, if there's no homiletical
arrangement here, you don't worry about it, okay? I just got to
get these things off my heart. These are things that the Lord
has revealed to me that I want to leave with you. I want you
to understand this. Look in verse 8. He said, I gave thee thy master's
house, that's grace, and thy master's wives into thy bosom,
and gave thee the house of Israel, that's grace. God said, I gave
it to you, and of Judah, and if that had been too little.
I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. It's
all grace. God's been dealing with David
by grace, and He continues to deal with him by grace. And I
do hope that the Lord will be pleased to give us a measure
of understanding so that we will be able to get rid of our mental
attitude sins and that we will be able to live in a world where
God is dealing with men and where you and I are living by on who
God is and what God is. And we know that grace altogether
depends upon who and what He is on His essence and not on
who we are. Never on who and what man is. Grace depends entirely upon the
character of God. Now, this grace versus legalism,
and we touched on this last week, and let me touch on this again,
and then I'm going to close, and then next week I'm going
to preach the sermon that I intended to preach last week. Grace is
God doing the work. This is important to see. Grace
is God doing the work and man receiving what God does in a
non-meritorious way. what God has promised, and God
gets all of the credit. That's why we said at the outset
this morning that in our talk, God would be exalted, man would
be put into his place. If it was left up to David, David
would have went to hell, just like if it was left up to you,
you'd go to hell. Only by grace are we lifted out
of the dunghill of sin and set on a rock. That rock being the
Lord Jesus Christ. Legalism is man doing the work
and God theoretically is supposed to bless man for what man does
and man gets the credit or glory. Now you see if that was the case,
you see how the legalist, why the legalist would just keep
rattling lamb, blasting old David and say, God it ain't right for
you to love Solomon. He ain't right for you to bless
that union. He ain't right for you to do that. It's not right,
God, for you to do that. Uriah's brother said that. Never
ought God to bless that union. He ought never to do it. I can
just hear the legalists all over Israel. God cannot bless that
sinner. Well, he can bless sinners. That's
the only people he ever blessed was sinners. And God can bless
sinners. And all because of who He is.
And the reason why God does it is so men and women would finally,
if they could get it through their thick skull, so that men
and women would find out that God did it. He did it. And it was for His own sake that
He did it. Out of His own heart. But God's supposed, man's supposed
to do the work. God theoretically is supposed
to bless man for what man does. And man gets the credit of the
glory. Man wants a little glory for
what goes on. And this story about David and
Bathsheba just takes that all away. It just irons the sheet
clean. I mean, it wipes the slate clean. You can't, listen, and we're
going to face this as long as we live in this world. At every
turn of the road, the woodwork is full of legalists mixing law
and grace. We know it's true. But law and
grace can't be mixed. It cannot be. Now, grace is so
big, so large. Let me show you a verse of Scripture.
Let's turn to the book of Romans, chapter 11. And I'll close here
in just a little while, but I want you to see this verse of Scripture.
Romans, chapter 11. And look at verse 5 and 6. Even
so, at this present time. Well, let's back up. Look back
up to 9th chapter. To the 9th chapter. And let's
look here at verse 11. Verse 11 of the 9th chapter.
For the children being not yet born, neither having done any
good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election,
might stand not of works. Not of works. I told you last
week that human works, human goodness had no place in the
grace of God. That the grace of God excludes
human good. Here's a perfect example of it.
Here we have Jacob and Esau. Neither one of them having done
any good or evil. That the purpose of God according
to election might stand not of works, but of Him that calleth.
but of him that calleth. All right, now turn over to the
11th chapter and look here if you will, chapter 11, verse 5
and 6. Even so then, at this present
time also, there is a remnant according to the election of
grace. God still has those that he's called and he calls them
because of his purpose of election His purpose of grace. And we're
told here that specifically that this is according to the election
of grace. Got nothing to do with human
good. Because the Bible says plainly, who has saved us and
called us, not according to our works, but according to his own
purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before
the world began. 2 Timothy 1 and 9. And then also
Titus 3 and 5, where it says that not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, and
washed us in the blood. But now here in verse 5 and 6,
we read verse 5, look at verse 6, and if by grace, this is an
election of grace, and if by grace, then is it no more of
works. If it's of grace, it can't be
of works. You can't mix the two. The two
don't go together. But if it be of works, how could
it be any plainer? Then it is no more grace. altogether
on another level or basis altogether. Otherwise work is no more work. It can't be mixed. It's got to
be grace or works. God says the election is according
to grace. The purpose of God is according
to election and that is not of works but of him that calleth.
And so what I've tried to show you today is that that it's grace
that moves the heart of God toward His people and that all God's
dealings with His people is out of grace and that the foundation
of this grace is based upon what happened at the cross when our
Lord Jesus Christ took our place and when He suffered and bled
and died on that cross and our sins were all judged in Him so
God is free to forgive you God is free to put away your sin
as you confess it, as you acknowledge it to Him. God is free to do
that and then to bless you just like you had never, never committed
the sin before. Now that's what I'm trying to
say. That's what the scripture teaches. And I know, and we've
tried to show you that legalists are going to be fighting this.
They will not submit themselves to it. They won't have that God
can deal on this kind of a basis. They just won't have it. They
say, Lord, you've got to do it some other way. You've got to
take these people's good works into account, and you've got
to take their bad works into account. Well now, if that happens,
then you and I are lost. hopelessly, helplessly doomed,
damned for all eternity, no way out. Now my friend, listen to
me. If you're done with yourself,
if you're done with yourself, if you know yourself, if you're
done with yourself, Christ has already begun with you. He already
has. Are you done with yourself? Have you come to the end of yourself?
Do you see that God's dealings with men and women are on the
basis of pure, free, sovereign grace? See that? If you do, there's
hope for you. There's hope for the worst sinner
out of hell. There's hope for any sinner that comes to see
what I'm talking about here today. Marvelous, marvelous, wonderful
grace. Well, next week I want to talk
about the measure, the measure of God's goodness and show you
how, running parallel with the 7th chapter, 2 Samuel, these
great gifts that God promised to David and how they run parallel
with the gifts that He's given us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we can get a picture of the
measure of the greatness of God's heart toward us, so we can see
it clearly. And I just look forward to it.
I wish I could have got to it today, but God knows we have
to deal with things as we can. We don't have enough time to
deal with these things as we would like. We'd like to have
three services a week. There's things I'd like to do
for the glory of God. Last week, I mentioned David
wanted to do this, wanted to build this house. for the Lord. And he submitted himself, he
couldn't do it. But I would like to see this church have a meeting
place of its own. The October 10th, there's going
to be an interdenominational group come in here, and they're
going to be speaking here in the afternoons, and it's happened
before, this is not the first time. The afternoons on Sunday
evening, late afternoon I should say and then on Wednesday night
this interdenominational group will come in here and preach
off of my pulpit here that I built and they're going to be preaching
things contrary to what I preach to you and they're going to preach
up human works salvation is by your doing and by what you do
and so on and so forth and this of course weighs heavily upon
my heart. I think it contaminates the wood,
if you please, in this pulpit. It bothers me. It bothers me
immensely. Is that alright? I mean, would
anybody be put out with me if I told you that I don't like
it because somebody else is preaching from this pulpit something that
I don't believe? Would that bother you? Well,
I'm telling you what, it bothers me. And I'd like, before I die,
to see this church have a meeting place of its own. a place where
the gospel can be preached. Now the Lord may not permit it,
He may not allow it, but that's the desire of my heart, for the
glory of God, and I don't think it's wrong to desire that. So
you pray for me, and you pray for this church, and you pray
that God might, because of His great heart, you see, because
of who He is, And I looked out the other day and was going down
the road, David and I was going down the road and I looked over
and I saw all these cattle on this hill and I thought about
that verse. Well, he owns the cattle on a thousand hills. If
he's hungry, he wouldn't ask none of us. He isn't poor. God is not poor. He's not broke. He owns all the silver and gold
belongs to God. You believe that? Okay? You ask
God to give us a meeting place of our own. You ask the Lord
to do it. How He'll do it is up to Him. But I've been asking
Him. You ask Him. You ask Him. And according to His heart, He's
able. Father, we thank You for Your
Word. We thank You for this privilege today to speak these things to
Thy people. Bless them, we pray, and encourage
Your people through them. I do pray that, Lord, wherein
we've muddied the water, that you might be pleased to make
it clear for the benefit, for the comfort of these souls, and
for the glory of thy name. We thank you for all that you've
done for us. We thank you for each one of
these dear souls that make up this congregation. We love them,
and thou hast blessed us through them, and we pray that you'll
bless them through us. For Jesus' sake, Amen.