If you want to turn with me to
my text of Scripture I'll be preaching from this morning,
you'll find it in 2 Samuel chapter 12. If you don't have your Bible
with you, you'll find the pew Bible there in the pew. 2 Samuel chapter 12 is what we'll
be looking at this morning. If you don't remember the context
of this, this has to do with David's sin. the awful sin that
David had committed. You find that in chapter 11. To get something of the seriousness
of David's sin, we begin to see it there in chapter 11. Joab
and David's servants had gone out to war to fight with the
children of Ammon. And in verse 2 of chapter 11,
it came to pass in that eventide, 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 conceded, and sent unto David, and said, I am with
child." And then the rest of that chapter you read concerning
David's cover-up of this sin. He sins, and Grand Juriah, her
husband, tries to trick him into going down to his house. Uriah
refuses to. He's such a faithful servant.
He lays there at David's door all night long. So David writes
a letter, sends it back by the hands of Uriah to Joab to set
Uriah in the thick of the battle. And he gets him killed. Him and
some other men. And David covers up his sins. And then the Lord, it's said
in the last verse of chapter 11, that he was Displeased with
what David had did. And then in chapter 12, I want
to begin reading here because this is where the Lord sends
His prophet, Nathan, to rebuke and correct David for his sin. Now let's read it. 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 one 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 up and nourished up, and it grew
up together with him and with his children. It did eat of his
own food, his meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his
bosom and was unto him as a daughter, a child. And there came a traveller
unto the rich man, and he spurred to take of his own flock, and
of his own herd, to dress it for the wayfaring man that was
coming to him. But he took the poor man's lamb,
and dressed it for the man that was come to him. 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, because he did this thing, and because he had no
pity. And Nathan said unto David, Thou
art the man. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
I anointed thee king over Israel, I delivered thee out of the hand
of Saul, and I gave thee thy master's house and thy master's
wives unto thy bosom. I gave thee the house of Israel
and of Judah, and if that had not been enough, if that had
been too little, I would moreover have given unto you such and
such things. Wherefore hast thou despised
the commandments of the Lord to do evil in His sight? Thou
hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken
his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword
of the children of Ammon. 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, 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 the sun. For thou didst it secretly, but
I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun. And
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. 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. And Nathan departed unto his
house, and the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife burned
to David, and it was very sick. David therefore besought God
for the child, and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night
upon the earth. And the elders of his house arose
and went to him to raise him up from the earth. But he would
not, neither did he eat bread with them. And it came to pass
on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David
feared to tell him that the child was dead. For they said, Behold,
while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he would
not hearken unto our voice. Now will he then vex himself
if we tell him that the child is dead. But when David saw that
his servants whispered, David perceived that the child was
dead. Therefore David said unto his servants, Is the child dead?
And they said, He is dead. Then David arose from the earth,
and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and
came into the house of the Lord, and worshipped. Then he came
unto his own house, and when he required, they set bread before
him, and he did eat. Then said his servants unto him,
What thing is this that thou hast done? Thou didst fast and
weep for the child while it was alive, but when the child was
dead, thou didst raise and didst eat bread. And he said, While
the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept. For I said, Who can
tell whether God will be gracious to me that the child may live?
But now he is dead. Wherefore should I fast? Can
I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall
not return to me. And David comforted Bathsheba
his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her. And she bore
a son, and called his name Solomon, and the Lord loved him. And he
sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet, and he called his name
Jebediah, because of the Lord." I want to look this morning and
see if we can learn some things from the death of this infant. Some lessons learned from the
death of this infant. All the Old Testament is for
our learning. The Bible says that whatsoever
things were written aforetime were written for our learning.
And these people in the Old Testament are examples to us. They may
be good examples for us to imitate, or they may be bad examples for
us to avoid, but they're written for our learning. Now let's see
some lessons we learn from the death of this infant. And what's
the first lesson that we learn? That there have been good men
in this world. There have been great men in
this world. David was a great man. He was a man beloved of
God. He was a man after God's own
heart. He was a man that was called of God and regenerated. He believed in the Lord. There
have been great men who have fallen into sin and committed
great iniquity against God. That's the first thing we want
to see. There have been great men of God who have fallen into
sin and iniquity against the Lord. Here in verse 7 and 8,
I read to you the Lord had reminded David of how He blessed him. And we read David's life and
when David was just a small boy, the Lord had converted him and
the Lord was with him. David killed a lion. He killed
a bear that had came against him and his sheep. The Lord sent
him against a giant. He had slew a giant. And finally,
the Lord had anointed this young man to be king over Israel and
king over Judah. God had richly blessed him. this
man, made him a blessing to his people in his faith and in his
practice. I tell you, he was an example
of Israel and Judah in his life and in his faith. We read about
his soul, how he longed after the Lord. Listen to what he said
about his soul seeking the Lord. Listen to what a man this was.
This is why God said he is a man after my own heart. He said,
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I
come and appear before God? My soul longeth, it even faints
for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh crieth
out for the living God. This man's heart often went out
to the Lord. And that fellowship that he desired
and the communion with the Lord that he sought after He often
obtained it. He made that wonderful statement
that, Lord, in Your presence is fullness of joy. How did He
know that? He experienced it. At Your right
hand there are pleasures forevermore. And when you and I look at the
Psalms that this man wrote, inspired by the Holy Ghost, we see all
the things that he experienced in you. I'm just saying what
a great man of God this was. And yet he fell into sin. What does this tell us? It tells
us that old adage that the best of men are men at best, doesn't
it? And if such a man as this fell
into sin and sinned against God, it tells us that men like you
and me are not out of the woods when it comes to sin. It doesn't
matter what half we've obtained in our Christian life, our closeness
to God and our walk with Him, we have this capacity, don't
we? We have this potential to fall
into sin and bring great shame on the Lord's name, shame upon
ourselves, and shame upon the Lord's people. Brother Wayne
taught us this morning out of Romans 3. And I was sitting there
thinking as Wayne was talking about our throat being an open
sepulcher. And with our tongue, we're like
ass, poisonous snakes. What comes from our heart is
just full of poison and our feet are swift as shed blood. And
I thought to myself, God doesn't have one good thing to say about
this flesh. about the old carnal man. And
it's not because he would not. He cannot. He's a God of truth. Sin has ruined us. And even when
the Lord regenerates a person, when He saves us and reveals
Christ to us, I'm telling you, we're still not out of the woods.
We cannot watch against sin too much, can we? We cannot pray
against it too much. We cannot abhor it too much.
Because we have that potential to fall into it and to bring
shame on the Lord's name and shame on ourselves. That last
passage there in the 11th chapter, verse 27, and these words here
should go deep into our hearts as we think that this could have
very easily have been us. It could have very easily have
been me to fall into this sin. And you know we may not do it
outwardly, but God looks upon the heart, doesn't He? He looks
upon our thoughts and our motives before we ever commit a deed. But I thought here in the last
verse of chapter 11, the thing which David did displeased the
Lord. And then in chapter 12, verse
9, Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord,
to do evil in his sight. And he said in verse 10, the
middle portion, Because thou hast despised me. And I thought, how awful. The
Lord confronted David with such words, such principles. David, here is what you have
done. You have despised my commandment. You have despised me. These were not the actions of
faith These were the actions of the flesh. These weren't done
for God's glory, but this was done for selfish, flesh-pleasing
reasons. Someone said a child of God may
do great good in this world and bring great glory to God in doing
it, but a dear child of God also has the potential to do great
evil and bring the displeasure of God upon it. That's the first
thing we learn. First thing we learn, brothers
and sisters, we have no reason to get lifted up in pride. We
are poor sinners still, aren't we? We are poor sinners still. The second thing we learn from
the death of a child is this, that God is jealous for His glory. He is so jealous that He is willing
to take this child from David. Look what He says in verse 14
again. 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 die." David committed this gross, open
sin, and he said, David, by doing this, the enemies of the Lord
are going to blaspheme. Well, how would they blaspheme?
How would this come about? Well, let me give you three ways
in which this caused the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. When
the enemies of the Lord slew Uriah and these other soldiers,
do you know who they gave the glory to? Their idols. They always prayed to their idols
before they went out to war. And if they won a battle, they
always went back and worshipped their idols made sacrifices to
them and praised their idols for delivering them from their
enemy and delivering the enemy into their hands. When David
set Uriah in the heat of the battle and got him killed and
other soldiers with him, these men said, we owe this to our
gods. They worshiped their gods. He
had emboldened them to worship their gods. And secondly, David
David was a man after God's own heart. The Lord loved him, and
here's what the enemy said. God has and is a respect of persons. Look what he lets David do. When
Saul rebelled, he slew Saul. He took him down from being king.
He lets David do anything and gets by with it. Their God is
a respect of persons. That's the second way they blaspheme.
And the third way they blaspheme was this. David was a man of
grace, wasn't he? He was a man like you and me.
He believed in the free grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. David believed that a man was
justified by a righteousness that was given to him. You say,
Bruce, can you prove that David believed that back in the Old
Testament? Well, listen to Romans chapter
4. even as David described the blessedness of the man unto whom
God imputes righteousness without works." Now think about that
for a minute. Here's what David said. God gives
us righteousness without us doing anything for it, without us earning
it, without us marrying it. He gives us righteousness. And by that righteousness, he
justifies us. David believed that. And then
he said this, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven
and whose sins are covered. David believed that he was a
sinner, but he was justified by the righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He was saved altogether by grace. He believed that. But what was he saying here?
He was saying this, I can do anything I please and grace will
cover my sins. God has saved me by His free
grace so I can commit evil and it's all right. That's what he
was saying by this deed. What did the Lord say to him?
David, I'm going to chasten you openly. I'm going to take this
child, I'm going to make everybody see and know that I did not approve,
neither did I countenance your actions, but I abhorred them
and I resented them." Boy, somebody said God will go to great lengths
to reveal His redeeming glory, and He will, won't He? He gave
His Son on the cross to reveal His redeeming glory. But God
will go to great lengths, too, to protect that glory. And when
David said to the enemy, I can sin at will because I'm saved
by grace. Oh, he'd have never said that
would he? He'd have never stated that with his lips, but that's
what he was saying with his actions. So the Lord is going to teach
him here. He's going to teach him here.
David, I'm going to make everybody see. that I'm jealous for my
glory. I tell you, it's bad enough to
sin against the law openly, isn't it? It's bad enough to steal. It's bad enough to bear false
witness. It's bad enough to covet. It's bad enough to sin against
the moral law. But how much more evil is it
to sin against God's redeeming glory? To sin against His grace. To sin against His mercy. To
sin against His goodness and love that's in Jesus Christ the
Lord. And that's what David was doing.
And he said, David, you give great occasion to my enemies
to blaspheme. Thirdly, we can learn this from
the death of this infant. Boy, the Lord knows how to correct
His children. He knows how to get their attention,
doesn't He? He knows how to make it hurt. He knows how to instruct
them. Because you have done this deed,
the child that is born unto you shall surely die. A man was telling me one time
about a pastor. And he said the pastor, he knew
the pastor. And the pastor told him, he said,
I'd gotten so slothful. I'd gotten so neglectful. I wasn't
taking my position the Lord had called me to. He said, I wasn't
taking it seriously. I was playing around. I wasn't
being sincere. And he said, I knew it. I knew
it. And he said he was out late one
night and he was going up over this hill. And just as he topped
the hill, a carload of people had broken down and they were
out in the middle of the road. And he said, I could not stop.
And he said, when I went in the middle of that people, My car
was knocking them every place. All different directions, people
falling. And he said, when I stopped the car and got out and looked
around, there lay people everywhere. And he said it was like a voice
that just fell out of heaven into my heart. And it said, are
you ready to get serious now? You say, Bruce, would the Lord
deal so severely with His people? Brother, look here. The child
that's born unto you shall surely die. The Lord can deal very severely
with His people. He knows how to get their attention,
doesn't He? He knows how to make it hurt. Sometimes it's just a little
rebuke of conscience. That's the way the Lord chastens
His people. Sometimes it's a severe rebuke. And boy, sometimes that's not
enough, is it? Sometimes He can hide His face. And boy, when He does that, that's
awful, ain't it? When the Lord hides His face,
what a grief of spirit that is. And sometimes it's even more
than that. He afflicts the body and even kills His children. Paul said, many of you are weak,
many are sickly, and many of you sleep. If you would judge
yourselves, you would not be judged of the Lord. But when
you don't judge yourself, you are chastened of Him that you
may not be condemned with the world. Oh, brothers and sisters,
aren't you glad that you are accepted in Christ? Aren't you
glad that you are complete in Him? And once in Christ, We're
in Him forever? But boy, I tell you, our Father
chastens those who are in Christ, doesn't He? I remember my dad. My dad didn't
whip me too often. And I didn't understand then.
Boy, that's back in the day. Some of you young people don't
know what whippings are. But I mean my dad back in the
50's and early 60's. When he whipped me, he either
took off his belt or made me go cut a long switch off a tree.
And he always told me, son, I love you, but I didn't believe a word
of it. How can love hurt like this? But looking back now, I
realized he loved me. But I tell you what, when he
took that belt and laid it across my body, all I saw in his face was displeasure. He did it because He loved me.
But He wanted me to know that what I had done had displeased
Him. It had been wrong. And doesn't
the Father in Heaven deal with His children like that sometimes?
Those He loves, He rebukes and chastens. He scourges them. And though chastening for the
present seems to be joyous, but grievous. And I tell you, when
our Father in Heaven lays the rod across our back. We don't always see love in His
face, do we? He wants us to know. He makes
us to know that the things which we have done have sorely displeased
Him. And that's what we learn here
from the death of this child. There are three things. that
the Lord taught David here in this chastening. First of all,
He taught him that he was highly displeased with what David had
done. I am highly displeased, David,
with what you've done. I worry about those people that
think God is no more than just a robot, that He's some kind
of a machine, that no matter what His children do, No matter
what anybody does, he's never affected by it. Brothers and
sisters, that's just not so. And David learned this lesson
that what he had done displeased the Lord. Has the Lord ever showed you sometimes
when you've done something how it displeased Him? Well, that's
heart-breaking, ain't it? That's heart-wrenching. Here
David was going along and thought he was pleasing the Lord. Then
Nathan comes to him and the Lord said, I'm going to lay a rod
across your back and I'm going to make you know, I'm going to
make you know that I'm not happy with what you've done. I am displeased. That's the first thing chastening
does. It makes us to realize the Lord
is not pleased with what we've done. Secondly, Chastening does
this. It teaches His children this,
the exceeding sinfulness of sin. I don't understand, and you probably
can't understand this either. We forget our own depravity,
I reckon. But can you imagine what David did? I mean, just
think for just a few minutes. Here a man was that had He committed adultery deliberately. He looked out there and saw this
beautiful woman and sent for her. Involved other people in
his sin, and then he committed premeditated murder. Was there no little light going
off in his brain saying, David? David? Didn't he hear this little
voice that you and I often hear? That's not right. That's not
right. Don't you think that was there?
I imagine it was. But don't this show us how deceitful
sin is? Don't it show us how sin can
harden a man's heart? Sin can so blind our minds that
it won't let the light in. It deafens our ears. We can't
hear that little voice screaming at us saying, no, no. David went on for a year, and finally he reached the point
where he didn't have pity for anybody or anything. Not for
Uriah, not for the men he had involved in his sinning. He was a deceived, hardened man. And you know the only remedy
for that? is for God to re-break the heart. To re-break the heart. And that's what we see in Psalm
chapter 51, isn't it? David, when he was repenting
over this sin, oh, how everything had changed then. And he made
this statement. He recognized that the Lord had
did something within him and that was breaking his heart again
over his sin. The sacrifices of God, he said,
are a broken heart, a broken and a contract spirit. Oh, Lord,
you will not despise. Why doesn't God despise a broken
heart? Because he was the one that broke
it. We can't break our own hearts, can we? Here David had gotten
so hard and callous. And the Lord breaks his heart
over it. And there in that broken heart,
he begins to cry, O Lord, deliver me from my blood guiltiness.
Wash me thoroughly from my sin. Cleanse me with His, and I shall
be clean. Why is he repenting now? Why
did he go for a whole year and didn't recognize his sin? I tell you, when the Lord begins
to lay the whip across our backs and He begins to teach us, one
of the things He teaches us is this, you have displeased me.
What you've done I don't approve of. And when He lays the rod
upon our back, I tell you, we begin to see then the exceeding
sinfulness of sin. How many times have we done something?
How many times have we let our thoughts roam Do it for weeks
or months altogether, thinking upon something that we know is
not pleasing to the Lord. And we don't think much about
it until, boy, he brings the rod. And then we say, my word,
what have I done? The exceeding sinfulness of my
sin. Thirdly, the Lord's chastening
in David taught him this. It taught him to value the forgiveness
of his sins. You notice here in verse 13 of
my text, in chapter 12, and look in verse 13. This is somewhat
amazing to me. And David said unto Nathan, I
have sinned against the Lord. There's a lot of men that have
said that, haven't they? But boy, David knew it. Judas said
this, but he didn't. He wasn't a man of faith. Pharaoh
said this, but David said, and he knew it, God had taught him,
I have sinned against the Lord. And look what Nathan said unto
David, The Lord hath put away thy sin. Isn't that amazing? The Lord hath put away thy sin.
If I had only one verse to prove, 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our
sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse
us from all unrighteousness. Look here how so immediately
the Lord forgave David's sins. Immediately when he confessed,
what did Nathan say? The Lord hath put away your sins. How can God put away sins so
quickly? David never lifted a finger to
put his own sin away, did he? It's not confession that merits
forgiveness. It's not our tears that merits
forgiveness. We could cry until we die and
not put one sin away. It's not the sorrow of our conscience
that atones for sin. What is it that puts sin away
from the eyes of God? Jesus Christ and His blood. That's what does it. Our sins
are atoned for and put away from the face of God by means altogether
outside of ourselves by the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the way our sins are put
away. This is a mystery to me, and I'll be honest with you,
I'm not for sure if I even understand this, but I was talking with
a pastor the other day about this. Here in verse 13, Nathan
says to David, the Lord's put away your sins. He's put away
your sins. And then sometime later, sometime
later, David wrote Psalms chapter 51, in which he's confessing
this same sin and pleading for forgiveness. And I thought, how
do these things correlate? How does this, the Lord has put
away your sins, correlate with David confessing and seeking
for forgiveness? Is there a distinction to be
made in God putting away our sins before His face as opposed
to Him forgiving our sins and wiping them clean from our conscience?
There seems to be a distinction made in that. And let me appeal
to your own experience. Has the Lord forgiven you? And
you felt, as it were, the blood of Christ taking all your sins
away? That was in your experience,
wasn't it? But in reality, when were your sins put away? When
were they actually atoned for? Two thousand years ago. Before
you ever committed your sins. They were atoned for. They were
put away. What does that tell us? I think
it tells us something like this. A man that truly believes that
Christ has already atoned for his sins wants to live in the
light and the reality of that forgiveness. I can't bring these two things
together. I can't bring how God already atoned for my sins, and
yet I felt Him so upon my conscience, and I felt He was angry with
me because of them. I don't know how those things
go together. They just go together. And one dear man said this to
the believers, to a child of God. He said, while we weep over
our sins and while we confess our sins to God, yet we must
never look at our sins but in this light that they have already
been put away at the cross of Calvary 2,000 years ago. And when we see that, it makes
us value this forgiveness. Oh, I want to live in the reality
of it. Don't you? If God has put my sins away by
the death of His Son, O Lord, make that a reality upon my conscience. Let me feel the effects of that
in my conscience, the court of my conscience. Here's the fourth thing we learn
from this. Two more things and I'll close.
What do we learn from this infant's death? We can learn what happens
to dying infants. we can learn what happens to
dying infants. Look in verse 21 with me again.
2 Samuel chapter 12, and look in
verse 21. Then said his servants unto him,
What thing is this that thou hast done? Thou didst fast and
weep for the child while it was alive, but when the child was
dead, thou didst rise and ate bread. And he said, while the
child was yet alive, I fasted and wept. For I said, Who can
tell whether God will be gracious to me? And the child may live,
but now he is dead. Wherefore should I fast? Can
I bring him back again? No. I shall go to him, but he
shall not return unto me. One man said that David here
was speaking of the grave. The child is in the grave, and
I'll go to him. The brothers and sisters, what
comfort could David ever have gotten in that? The comfort that
he seems to find in the death of his child that this infant
is with the Lord in heaven. The Lord has taken my infant
and now he's in glory with the Lord. And I can't bring him back
from that place. It's impossible to do that. But
I can go to be with Him. I can go to be with the Lord
and to be with this child. I preached a message one time.
If you ever want to look it up, dying infants, it is well with
the child. I deal with these things. But
some ask this question. How can a dying infant be saved? Are they not little sinners?
Well, they are little sinners, aren't they? And we don't plead
for their salvation because they're innocent. I know they're not
born deliberately striking out against God. They don't think
like you and I do. But they're little sinners, aren't
they? They were made sinners in Adam. By one man's disobedience,
many were made sinners. So if infants are saved indeed
when they die and go to heaven, it cannot be because they're
little innocent creatures, because they're sinners. Well, how can
they go to heaven? How can they be accepted with
God? Well, how are you accepted? If the blood of Christ atoned
for you, can it not do the same for infants? What effort did
you put forth? Was it not all dead outside of
you? Could Jesus Christ not have made
an atonement for all nine infants when He died? That's the only
way that I know of a little infant could go to glory. Somebody says,
what about regeneration? Well, let's be honest. What did
we have to do with our regeneration? How much did you have to do with
your first birth? How much did you have to do with
your second birth? Was it not from heaven? If infants
must be regenerated, all right. Can not the same God who regenerated
you regenerate them? I don't know if faith and knowledge
is essential for them to go to heaven. I don't know. That's
God's business, isn't it? The Bible doesn't say much about
this. But I tell you, if knowledge is essential, And if faith is
essential, can not the same Lord who gave us knowledge give knowledge
to them? Can He not give them faith if
it's necessary? You remember reading that scripture,
With God all things are possible. For with God all things are possible.
How many times have we quoted that? You know where that's located
at. And you know what that pertains to. In Luke chapter 1, verse
57 is where you'll find that phrase. And you know what it
pertains to? infants. You shall conceive in your womb,
and bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He
shall be the Son of the Highest, for with God all things are possible."
He was speaking of John the Baptist, for this is the sixth month with
your cousin Elizabeth. And you remember what John the
Baptist was going to do while he was still in his mother's
womb? Leap for joy when he heard the name of his Redeemer mentioned.
For with God all things are possible. If these infants are so loved
with a redeeming love, and if David's infant was so
loved, cannot we assume that all infants dying in their infants
are so loved? One man, and he was a Presbyterian,
and not all Presbyterians believe this. He said this infant was
saved because he was David's son. Did David have the merit
to save this infant? He didn't even have the merit
to save himself, did he? Some tell us that only the dying baptized
infants of believers are saved. Well, Abraham had several sons,
didn't he? A bunch of them. And a lot of
them weren't saved. David had Absalom. I don't think
he was saved. I think there's a lot of baptized
Davids that grow up to be lost among the Presbyterians, don't
you? Neither David nor any other believer has any merit to give
to his dying child. Show us where the Lord ever saved
anyone for another's sake except his own namesake. and for His
own glory and by His own merits. But if the Lord saved David's
infant and took him to glory because he was the object of
God's elected and redeeming love, then you and I can live in the
hope and in the faith that all infants dying in their infancy
is with the Lord God around His throne. And their mouths and
their hearts are full of His praises. Out of the mouths of
babes and sucklings He has perfected praise." I think one of the glories
and joys of heaven, there's a lot of infants there praising His
name. And if these infants are so loved
of heaven, how will anybody on this earth ever be justified
in killing one of them? Inside or outside the womb? I was reading one book and it
said, right before Rome fell, they estimated 5,000 believers
a day were killed in the Roman Empire. Can you believe that?
5,000 a day. But you know something that's
more unbelievable than this? We kill about that many infants
a year. A day. There's close to two million
unborn infants now that are being killed inside the mother's womb. Ain't that unimaginable? We've never seen in the history
of the world that we've got record of where so many unborn children
are being murdered by doctors, by nurses, by mothers, by dads. I tell you, If God values these
infants, if God has a great love for them, if Christ prayed a
great price for them, we best be careful how we think and how
we treat infants, inside the womb or outside the womb. Isn't
it amazing that here's a man who fasted and wept for seven
days, that his infant may be saved, his life may be spared,
and yet people in our society For convenience chooses to murder
them. You say, Bruce, you're off on
a political... No, I'm not off on a political issue. This is
a moral issue, isn't it? It's a moral issue. Lastly is this. What can we learn
from this baby's death? That only God can bring such
great good out of such great evil. Only God can bring such
great good out of great evil. God could have killed Bathsheba,
couldn't He? He could have did that. But what did He do? He blessed them to have a son. His
name was Solomon. He was beloved of the Lord. Now isn't that amazing? Have you ever committed some
awful sin, and you repented of it, and you knew the Lord had
mercy upon you and granted you forgiveness, and you went on?
You went on softly and slowly, but you went on? And then you
look back, and out of that evil that you did, great good had
come out of it. And who can do that but God?
What good came out of this? You know who came out of this
new baby's lineage? Christ our Redeemer. He came
through this man. And it calls Him in Matthew 1,
the wife of Uriah. And yet out of this woman, through
David, came the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, praise
God's blessed name when He takes our evil and brings such good. Let's pray.