SPEAKER_00: We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.
SPEAKER_00: We have extra copies if you didn't bring one.
SPEAKER_00: Would like one to follow along.
SPEAKER_00: Raise your hand up real high and we'll get one to you.
SPEAKER_00: Here's one on the front row right up here.
SPEAKER_00: And uh anybody else in the back there, all the way in the back.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, those of you that are passing them out.
SPEAKER_00: Just keep your hands up real high until somebody sees you, and uh then you should be able to uh get one there.
SPEAKER_00: So here I'm gonna get my notes going.
SPEAKER_00: And uh you heard Kim pray in her prayer um that this was a difficult passage and for God to help me uh as I as I uh uh walk us through it, and and that that is very uh very much true.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the only thing that that uh compounds it and makes it a little more interesting is that I'm on cold medicine.
SPEAKER_00: So so because of that, I I might stay a little closer to my notes than normal just to make sure I'm tracking, you know, and we're we're in the right place.
SPEAKER_00: But uh uh uh this is uh the ongoing story of uh God's uh pursuit of a people he can call his own, as we find it in 2 Samuel.
SPEAKER_00: So what I'd like for you to do is if you turn in your Bible or swipe there on your device, 2 Samuel chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: We're right where we left off before we came to the Advent season uh and before that stir up Sunday, uh we finished in chapter 12, and at that particular point what had happened was David had really crashed and burned.
SPEAKER_00: We stopped hearing that David was inquiring of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Um uh we found out that it was the time of year when the kings go out to battle, and yet David did not.
SPEAKER_00: He remained in Jerusalem, he was on his couch, then he walked out onto the palace roof uh where his eyes fell upon a near neighbor, uh a woman who happened to be bathing, and um and he he looked more than once, he he began to gape at her, and he he lusted in his heart for her, he uh uh sent his men to get her.
SPEAKER_00: So he's essentially kidnapping, dragging her to his palace.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he have he has his way with her and then uh uh sends her home.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it turns out she comes up pregnant, and uh all the while her husband is off at war under the command of David's nephew Joab in a town called Rabbah.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the uh the reason I tell you some of this is because it's all gonna come first full circle here.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna end up back at Rabbah at the end of this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Uh in the meantime, though, what happened was she came and told David, I'm I'm pregnant, and it's, of course, with his child.
SPEAKER_00: He develops this uh elaborate scheme to cover this thing up, uh, which includes calling Uriah, the husband, home from battle and attempting to give him an opportunity to sleep with his wife so that he could then be seen as Uriah's child with Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: That does not work.
SPEAKER_00: He ends up sending Uriah back to the battlefront where he arranges for Joab, his nephew David does, arranges for Joab to put Uriah in the heat of the battle where he will surely be killed.
SPEAKER_00: So David is guilty of coveting another man's wife, he's guilty of adultery, uh, he's guilty of murder, uh, and in any number of different ways you could look at it, multiple other uh breaking of God's laws and some of those capital offenses.
SPEAKER_00: Um is confronted because God is seeing all of this happen.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he's confronted by Nathan the prophet earlier in chapter 12, and uh Nathan uses a prophetic kind of a parable approach and and uh and and essentially gets David to see just how outrageous it is that he would have done this kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: And uh uh then uh Nathan says to him, Well, you are the man.
SPEAKER_00: You're you're like the person in this story, you're the one that did this, uh, to which David offers up a complete mea culpa.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he does not uh uh offer up excuses, he confesses that he sinned before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And um uh and I think we made the points as we were studying that all of our sins are before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Some of our sins are against other persons as well, um, but all of our sins are against the Lord, and so an offense to God is the way that we look at sin.
SPEAKER_00: We turn our back on God, we essentially say, God, you're not enough.
SPEAKER_00: You uh you you you have it wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we would rather be in charge ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And uh essentially what happens is is David uh goes into full uh repentance mode, and um, and then we found in chapter 12, you could look there if you would like to with me.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you could look at uh uh uh as he uh uh as Nathan kind of uh confronts David, uh, and David says, I've sinned against the Lord, verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: Nathan says to David, The Lord has also taken away your sin, you shall not die.
SPEAKER_00: Again, these were capital offenses, capital sins according to Jewish law.
SPEAKER_00: And so David deserved to die for some of these things.
SPEAKER_00: However, Nathan says, because by this deed you've given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you're the one, and through these actions of yours, your sins will be forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: However, because you've given cause for the enemies of God to blaspheme.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, God's name has been sullied, God's name has been dragged through the mud because of the way you've behaved.
SPEAKER_00: So there will be attending consequences, essentially what happens.
SPEAKER_00: The child also that's born to you shall surely die, and uh the sword will not be taken away from your house.
SPEAKER_00: And uh so there are going to be attending consequences, but David himself will be forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: And so we pick up uh right there in verse 15, if you'll join me there, and and this is what happens.
SPEAKER_00: Nathan goes back to his house, and the Lord struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David.
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting that the narrator continues to call Bathsheba, not by her name, but as uh he's only done that once, but but has has called her multiple times Uriah's wife, or Uriah's widow.
SPEAKER_00: And the narrator is reminding us over and over and over again that David has taken another coveted and taken another man's wife here.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh he's called that, and that will change in in a little bit at the end of this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: But for now, uh the Lord struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David so that he was very sick.
SPEAKER_00: David therefore inquired of God for the child, and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: So, what is the what is the response of David in verse 16?
SPEAKER_00: He begins to plead to God for mercy for the child.
SPEAKER_00: The elders of the household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
SPEAKER_00: And and and and so he's he is owning this, uh, he's owning it personally, and he's saying, No, leave me alone.
SPEAKER_00: Don't don't don't don't try to come from.
SPEAKER_00: I've got to wrestle with God over this.
SPEAKER_00: I've I've got to go before God and plead for mercy for this child.
SPEAKER_00: Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.
SPEAKER_00: And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead.
SPEAKER_00: For they said, Behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to our voice.
SPEAKER_00: How then can we tell him that the child is dead, since he might do himself harm?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, they're they're afraid he would actually commit suicide or that he would try to hurt himself because of his uh uh contrition and the conviction uh of it in his own heart about this and that this was his fault, and they're they're concerned about that for him.
SPEAKER_00: But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David perceived that the child was dead.
SPEAKER_00: So David said to his servants, Is the child dead?
SPEAKER_00: And they said, He is dead.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, then they've got to come clean and tell him he's seen them whispering.
SPEAKER_00: That happens to us all the time.
SPEAKER_00: We we can we uh many of us will see people whispering and talking and we'll think they're talking about us or talking about something about us.
SPEAKER_00: And so David does that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he understands that these people are concerned for him, uh, but he wants to know what has happened.
SPEAKER_00: David arose from the ground, verse 20 says, He washed, he anointed himself, he changed his clothes, and he came into the house of the Lord and worshiped.
SPEAKER_00: And he came to his own house.
SPEAKER_00: And when he requested, they set food before him, and he ate.
SPEAKER_00: And you you can imagine this would stir up some questions.
SPEAKER_00: And it, you know, I'm already a guy who has sat with this passage all week long, and I've got all kinds of questions that actually still aren't answered and probably won't be answered for a while myself.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're here today with questions as we read this, it it that's quite normal and understandable.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, we're reaching back 3,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: These events are taking place somewhere around 1,000 BC, right near there.
SPEAKER_00: So we're reaching back 3,000 years across cultures.
SPEAKER_00: We all have our little Western uh sort of postmodern mindsets and norms and all that sort of thing, and we're reaching all the way back into ANE, ancient Near Eastern culture and time frame and practices.
SPEAKER_00: We ought to be puzzled a little bit by a lot of things from time to time.
SPEAKER_00: And here we're we're we're puzzled, we're not sure what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: We and theologically we're puzzled as well, because what's God up to in all of this, you know?
SPEAKER_00: So his servants said to him, What is this thing that you've done?
SPEAKER_00: While the child was alive, you fasted in a web, but when the child died, you rose and ate food.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, his response to his servants now is, While the child was still alive, I fast in a web, for I said, Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: The Lord may be gracious to me that the child may live.
SPEAKER_00: And now he's died.
SPEAKER_00: Why should I fast?
SPEAKER_00: Can I bring him back again?
SPEAKER_00: And then this is really interesting right here, verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.
SPEAKER_00: And boy, that just opens up another world full of questions, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: I will go to him, I'm gonna go to this child, but he won't come back to me.
SPEAKER_00: And David comforted his wife, Bathsheba, and he went to her and he lay with her, and this is all happening, I'm sure, over weeks or months or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: And she gave birth to son, at least nine months, and named him Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon, whom we're all familiar with, his name means peace.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord loved him, we're told in verse 24, verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: And so David sends word through to onto Nathan the prophet, and he, Nathan the prophet, named him Solomon, Jedediah.
SPEAKER_00: So that's he's given a second name, very common back in their time, Jedediah.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and which is which is beautiful because in some of your English Bibles it'll say in the margins what that name means.
SPEAKER_00: Beloved of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's beautiful, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Beloved of the Lord, and the Lord loved him.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so he named him Jedediah for the Lord's sake.
SPEAKER_00: Now the camera changes, and the and the story, uh uh, the scene changes quite a bit here, and it it comes back to sort of, like I said, it's gonna come back around full circle.
SPEAKER_00: Joab fought against Rabba, the sons of Amon.
SPEAKER_00: And these are the Ammonites, these are perennial enemies of the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they're a vicious, wicked uh group of people.
SPEAKER_00: They uh they're in their warfare practices, it was nothing for them to pluck an eye out of their enemies, it's nothing for them to literally rip open the stomachs of pregnant women, uh, killing the women and the babies to you know, in some way try to uh uh stop that that race of people from from uh uh propagating.
SPEAKER_00: It's nothing for them to sacrifice their own babies, their own children, the Ammonites, to sacrifice their own children.
SPEAKER_00: So their god Molech, M-O-L-E-C-H, has various spellings.
SPEAKER_00: M-O-L-O-C-H is also one of them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh in some of your translations, it will be called the the deity known as Chimash.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it was common practice for them to sacrifice their own children to Molech.
SPEAKER_00: And so these are wicked, dark, uh, vicious people.
SPEAKER_00: And um, and so there they are, and they're at battle, and Joab has been there at battle, and Uriah died there at battle, and David never went there uh to the battle until now he'll he'll go.
SPEAKER_00: Joab sent messengers to David and said, I've fought against Rabah.
SPEAKER_00: I've even captured the city of waters, and that that must be some indication of a significant place in the city from which they would draw their water to sustain the city.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's captured a vital part of the city.
SPEAKER_00: Uh therefore gather the rest of the people together, camp against the city, capture it, lest I cap Joab is saying this to David, lest I capture the city myself and it be named after me.
SPEAKER_00: So the glory for the victory went to whoever was commanding the forces assailing the city.
SPEAKER_00: Joab sees it's about to be giv that glory is about to be given to him, and he knows it properly belongs to his king, his uncle David.
SPEAKER_00: So he sends for David.
SPEAKER_00: David should have been there all along, would have avoided quite a bit of pain and misery for a lot of people had he done what he was supposed to be doing.
SPEAKER_00: It was the time when kings went to war, but David didn't go.
SPEAKER_00: This time, though, David gathered all the people together, went to Reba, fought against it, captured it, he took the crown of their king from his head, and its weight was a talent of gold.
SPEAKER_00: Uh talent of gold would have it's a it's a measure of weight, uh, and it's estimated to be somewhere between, listen, 75 pounds and 90 pounds.
SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty heavy hat.
SPEAKER_00: That's like putting a junior hire up on your head or something, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: And just walking around with that junior hire up there, you know.
SPEAKER_00: So he took that crown, right, from his head, weighed a town of the gold, and in it was a precious stone.
SPEAKER_00: On top of that, it was placed on David's head, and he brought out the spoil of the city in great amounts.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think he wore that hat very long.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, there's there's a ceremony, a victory ceremony of something like that that's going on here.
SPEAKER_00: He also brought out the people who were in it, that's the town of Rabbah, the city of Rabbah, and set them under saws, sharp instruments, uh, iron axes, and made them pass through the brick kiln.
SPEAKER_00: Uh thus he did to all the cities of the sons of Amon, and David and all the people returned to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: So, uh, what's that describing there?
SPEAKER_00: Um I think the best uh description I got from uh the nine or so commentaries that I typically will study in a passage like this is that David literally set these folks under hard labor, not under saws and sawing them in half, but he set them under saw, in other words, put made the gave them the burden of these tools and set them about the business of serving uh the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So um, all right, so so now some of you are going, hey, I'm so glad I came to church on the first Sunday of the year.
SPEAKER_00: This is awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is really great, and uh this is gonna be inspiring, and I got a pastor on a Bible teacher on cold medicine should really do an awesome job with this, right?
SPEAKER_00: So I'm seeing things right now over here, you know, it's really crazy.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Um there's so much here as I as I've uh marinated in this text.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, because see, the big story is really about uh the the life of this person, David, and his relationship with God and all that's going on there.
SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of side road questions, and you do too, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00: I I I want to know what happens, you know, uh uh uh with babies when babies die.
SPEAKER_00: I want to ask those questions.
SPEAKER_00: I want to explore all of that, and I need to do that across the entire landscape of Scripture and not just lift out one verse or two verses here or there.
SPEAKER_00: I I want to know all often why God does certain things certain ways.
SPEAKER_00: Is that you?
SPEAKER_00: If that's you, please raise your hand or say amen.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, most of us, right.
SPEAKER_00: And and but I don't always get the clarity or the answer that I'm in pursuit of.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's your experience as well.
SPEAKER_00: I was I would assume that it is.
SPEAKER_00: And yet I would still suggest to you that there's much here for us to learn.
SPEAKER_00: It at least begins, I think the summary by Peterson as we as we Eugene, by this, this sage pastor who's gone home to be with the Lord now, he reminds us that David's just emerged from an episode in which he's been all but oblivious to God.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Attempting to assert his own mastery of life, in which he's been cruelly indifferent to the people around him.
SPEAKER_00: Bathsheba was an object.
SPEAKER_00: Uriah was an obstruction.
SPEAKER_00: Joab was a tool.
SPEAKER_00: Just he used to use Joab over and over again to work the cover up, to, to, to, to find a way to get Uriah to the front lines where he would die and all that.
SPEAKER_00: And I think Peterson's right about this.
SPEAKER_00: Um there's much here still that as we look at the life of David and we see him go through this repentance in chapter 12, and after doing all of those heinous things, after being uh oblivious of God, after after being completely indifferent to others, after using people over, you know, this is a great dark moment in his life.
SPEAKER_00: And and then today, as we're reading it wrap up, what we see more in chapter 12 is more about God's response to David's repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm drawn in by that.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm a repenting sinner as well, and you are too, and I'd kind of like to know along the way, as I'm a repenting sinner, how does God respond to my repentance?
SPEAKER_00: Um, what is it?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, most religions will suggest it's a scale, and if you can do enough good things to outweigh your bad things, that's how you appease the deity in some way.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how you can, you know, as a as a sinful human.
SPEAKER_00: The problem with that, of course, is that none of us can balance out the scales.
SPEAKER_00: We're all horrible at that, if we're honest.
SPEAKER_00: And then you're always on pins and needles wondering if you, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, because we're repeat sinners, right?
SPEAKER_00: We continue to fall and to fail.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and so we we see in David's life here uh this fellow who has done some really, really dark things.
SPEAKER_00: How does God respond to him after he repents in this first half of this chapter?
SPEAKER_00: And we look in the second half, and here's what we start to see.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes God must use extreme measures to bring us to repentance and realign our affections.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: There really is something wrong in the world, and we we see it here in this ancient scenario, as well as we see it here in our own world as well, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's really something wrong in the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just them.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of us will think, oh yeah, it's them, or it's him, or it's her, or it's those people, that little gaggle of people over there.
SPEAKER_00: And you might think it's your neighbors, or you might think it's your mother-in-law, or you might, I don't know, you might, there's lots of people you might think it is.
SPEAKER_00: But the real critical truth that the Bible continues to hold up like a mirror to our faces is that that's in me too.
SPEAKER_00: This problem of sin, this this problem of self-deification, this problem of wanting to be my own king, of wanting what I want and wanting it now, and and and of becoming oblivious to God in a in a, you know, whether that's how infrequently or how frequently, yeah, I still keep doing it from time to time.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm simulustus at peccator, even though I'm a believer and a Christian, and I believe my sins, the price for my sins have been paid for once and for all, I still, at the same time that I'm a justified, I'm a believer who's been justified by faith in Christ, I still fall into sin from time to time until he returns and takes that all out of the way, sets things right.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we gotta struggle with.
SPEAKER_00: This is the world we're struggling with.
SPEAKER_00: This kind of understanding should help us with some of the other questions that we have as we go along studying a passage like this.
SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes God will use extreme measures, and he is uh attempting sometimes to simply get us to the place of repentance, to realign our affections.
SPEAKER_00: As smart as we might all think we become, a lot of us believe in the sort of nonsense that's out there, you know, the ascent of humanity, that we're all just continually ascending to higher heights and moving on up and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: As smart as we may think we've become, as sophisticated as we may have become, as convinced as we might feel about the ascent of humankind, in spite of all the disnefied, Oprah-ized views about the goodness of every person, the Bible tells us straight up that we've got a basic problem.
SPEAKER_00: And the problem is sin, as the Bible calls it.
SPEAKER_00: You can think of it as self if you would like, that we're putting the self first before God, before others.
SPEAKER_00: But the but but the additionally, you know, additional bad news on the whole thing is that the current state of the problem is so great that it's not something that we can work our own way out of.
SPEAKER_00: Um we're not gonna be able to get out of this on our own.
SPEAKER_00: And so when I see David here and I see him crying out for mercy for this bit this child, or when I see him going into the to the altar uh to worship after after the child dies and all that sort of thing, he the the one thing that's happening is he's back to, which he has not been doing, he's no longer oblivious of God, he's back to in pursuit of God again.
SPEAKER_00: And I think.
SPEAKER_00: It's because during the course of his repentance, he became aware again of his great need for God.
SPEAKER_00: And part of our job as a church and part of our job as believers in the community of faith is to remind one another of how much we need a savior.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we come to this table.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds us of how much we need a savior.
SPEAKER_00: We come for another reason as well, to say thank you to Jesus that he is our Savior and that he's already accomplished everything necessary for our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: But the entire Bible, like I say, is like a mirror held up for us to get to see the reality of who we are.
SPEAKER_00: Our own sense of outrage at some of the things that we read in the Bible, our sadness about some of the ways people get abused in this Bible, or people in these stories in this Bible, that tells us that we agree that there's something wrong in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Because those stories are real and honest and truthful, and it actually describes some of the similar problems that we're reading about in the world today.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's gratuitous evil.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's gratuitous uh suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh some things like the fires in Australia or or uh when there's a natural disaster of some sort.
SPEAKER_00: I understand that.
SPEAKER_00: But there's also much of the evil, pain, and suffering in the world that's perpetrated because we are wicked, we are foolish, we are sinful persons, and the Bible is trying to tell us the truth about all of that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm convinced that this baby who died is both safe and uncondemned in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: Why am I convinced of that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because even David here, who is the one wrestling with all of it in verse 23, says those beautiful words I will go to him, but he won't be able to return to me.
SPEAKER_00: And it seems to be throughout our Bibles that God has preserved for us the revelation of a distinction, for instance, Deuteronomy 139, where there is, there's clearly a distinction between those who are old enough or aware enough of good and evil, of right and wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Even to Romans 1, uh, that all to all the people that God has revealed himself to literally everybody through all of creation, all that sort of thing, they have no excuse.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because they can perceive all of this, they could understand this.
SPEAKER_00: God is through general revelation, making himself known.
SPEAKER_00: And so thinking people, aware people, people that are older than seven days old, find themselves going, how did everything get here?
SPEAKER_00: How did I get here?
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, what's going on with this world must have been designed?
SPEAKER_00: This is really awesome, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And yet, even as the Bible draws distinctions between those who can think and perceive, and whether you're talking about um Jonah 4.11, where where God is, where Jonah's been wrestling, you know, the reluctant prophet, he's wrestling with God a little bit, and uh and God kind of calls him on it and says, Oh, so you want 120,000 people who are so young they don't even know their right hand from their left.
SPEAKER_00: You you would just rather those people be smoked into oblivion, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And again, just all I'm making is the point that the Bible draws a distinction between those who know the difference and those who don't.
SPEAKER_00: Um, some uh schools of of uh study and and some denominations will call it the age of accountability.
SPEAKER_00: That phrase does not appear in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But I think the concept or the idea that Genesis 18, 25, we're Abraham pleading for God to be merciful to the to these little cities, just for if there's just one or two or three people that are that are righteous, would you, Lord, would you, Lord, would you spare?
SPEAKER_00: And will not the judge of all the earth do what is right?
SPEAKER_00: That question that's asked of God?
SPEAKER_00: And I think it it reminds us, keep looking to God's heart if we want to understand his ways.
SPEAKER_00: I do not know, I can't answer the question why this child died, why God deemed it necessary for this child to die.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't got a clue.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I think David's saying in verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: One day he and Bathsheba will be reunited with that child.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that same thing can be said for everyone that's lost a child.
SPEAKER_00: Even those who've aborted a child.
SPEAKER_00: I think that can be said that they're under the age of understanding anything whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00: And while they are not born innocent, they're born into original sin.
SPEAKER_00: God, to whom all of salvation belongs, Psalm 3.8, is the one who will determine these things, not a bunch of philosopher theologians trying to come up with their little system of the way things have to go.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll trust his heart, I'll trust the God who's revealed himself this way, and I'll suggest that David's got something going right here as he's begun to seek the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That no matter what, I'm I'm crying out for mercy for this child, I'm crying out uh for God to save this child's life, but God chooses not to.
SPEAKER_00: Why did God do that?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I can posit all kinds of ideas, who knows what might have we get, but we're just speculating.
SPEAKER_00: But we rest in the love of God, we rest in the justice.
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is so true.
SPEAKER_00: This child took the shortest path to the presence in of the one in whose presence there's fullness of joy.
SPEAKER_00: See, and and I I I know that doesn't change the the pain of it for Bathsheba or for David or for anybody here or for anybody listening.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I know that doesn't change the separation, but in the scale of eternity, oh my goodness, give us eternal perspective, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Um because while that child didn't get to play football on the high school football team or get married or drive a car or whatever, he also didn't have to suffer through all the annoyances of this world.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and the annoyances of aging and the annoyances of being sick and the annoyances of being rejected and the annoyances of all that, and he was ushered into the presence of God, and that's where I think he is, and that's why David can say, I'm gonna go to him one day.
SPEAKER_00: God sometimes uses extreme measures to get us to a place of repentance and to help us to realign our affections toward him.
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament law tells us that David should have gotten the death penalty for these sins.
SPEAKER_00: Leviticus 20, Deuteronomy 22.
SPEAKER_00: The truly extreme measures God took to assure David that his sins would be forgiven, that his punishment would be transferred to another, that's radical grace at work.
SPEAKER_00: We must be careful if we object, wishing he would get what he deserves, David.
SPEAKER_00: Because trust me, I don't want to get what I deserve.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to get what you deserve either.
SPEAKER_00: You're a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: What you want and what I want is God's radical grace.
SPEAKER_00: See?
SPEAKER_00: And that's what's being shown to David, and again, our the bulk of this attention is on the relationship between David and the Lord here, and so I want to keep it that way.
SPEAKER_00: It may sound simple, uh, but it doesn't mean it was easy.
SPEAKER_00: It may sound simple, it doesn't mean it isn't hard.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's hard to understand some of this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: We are so uh uh deluded about our own self-sufficiency as David was.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we have difficulty humbling ourselves, even as David did, uh, but he finally came to that place and God used radical measures to get him there.
SPEAKER_00: The great paradox of the gospel of grace is that forgiveness is both free and costly, and that's a paradox.
SPEAKER_00: See?
SPEAKER_00: It's free to you that Christ died for your sins, but it was costly to Jesus, and we must never forget that.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we come to this table every single month like we do.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes God will use extreme measures to bring us to repentance and realign our affections.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the God of the Bible loves broken sinners, just like us, see?
SPEAKER_00: And he'll go to great lengths to bring us back to himself.
SPEAKER_00: I love the way Spurgeon put it.
SPEAKER_00: He says, How many hundreds of times have I said from the pulpit that if you cannot come to Christ with a broken heart, come to him for a broken heart.
SPEAKER_00: If you cannot come as you should, come anyway that you can, in order that you may be taught to come as you ought.
SPEAKER_00: It is quite true that your condition is bad, but then Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody say amen.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: I agree with that wholeheartedly.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, I think we also see here that true repentance becomes a way of life.
SPEAKER_00: With David, there was no blame shifting, no excuses offered.
SPEAKER_00: Um the definition was not soft, the definition of sin was not softened.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he didn't do any cloaking, he didn't look for loopholes, he didn't plead about the difficulties of his own past or make some claim to victim status and it happened to me and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: No, he said, I've sinned against the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He abandoned the twin privileges of position and power, and his repentance was unequivocal.
SPEAKER_00: A complete meaculpa.
SPEAKER_00: The kind of admission and change of mind and heart that resulted in the change of direction.
SPEAKER_00: How do I know that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, look at his response.
SPEAKER_00: He goes from being oblivious of God to worshiping God.
SPEAKER_00: He goes into the temple.
SPEAKER_00: He gets cleaned up first and goes into the temple and he worships God.
SPEAKER_00: That seems weird to me when I read it.
SPEAKER_00: I was going, what's that about?
SPEAKER_00: How can you do just go to prayer meeting or just go to worship or whatever after this?
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he does.
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what he's he's changed.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because of the amazing and radical grace of God in his life.
SPEAKER_00: He went from asserting personal sovereignty over his subjects to subjecting himself to the sovereign God.
SPEAKER_00: He moved from indifference toward others to objectifying and abusing Bathsheba from manipulating uh Joab.
SPEAKER_00: He went from all of that to starting to care.
SPEAKER_00: And how do I know that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, look, look at what it says right here.
SPEAKER_00: When he went into uh verse 24, David comforted his wife, uh Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: The narrator changes now.
SPEAKER_00: The narrator uses her name and calls her David's wife now.
SPEAKER_00: That's significant.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because even in the brokenness of her life, her husband's dead, her child is dead.
SPEAKER_00: And now the narrator is saying, God is beginning to rebuild and restore her life.
SPEAKER_00: And she's now the wife of David in this.
SPEAKER_00: And they're and they're gonna have a child.
SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna be one that God will provide for them in all of this.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this turn, this transformation in David's uh response toward God.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when when you cry out and you and you you cry out in your prayers and you're hoping for the outcome to be X, and it doesn't turn out that way, what's your response to God?
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: Mine isn't always like this.
SPEAKER_00: But but his response to God is, okay, I'm gonna get cleaned up and I'm going to worship.
SPEAKER_00: And then he then all of a sudden toward people that he had been indifferent to, he all of a sudden begins to care for them.
SPEAKER_00: He's comforting Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's he's responding to Joab and Joab's call for him to come and help.
SPEAKER_00: He's he spent the time with his his servants, uh people in his household, to explain to them where what his thinking was throughout this whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, his his experience with repentance led him to write prolifically about God's grace and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: The the seven penitential psalms, as they're called, Psalm 6, 32, 38, 51, Psalm 102, 130, and 143, all have the story of repentance and redemption in them.
SPEAKER_00: And so this guy, David, as dark as he had gotten, is now able to help you and all of us get to the place where we can find a way to confess our sins.
SPEAKER_00: He gives us words, the Lord inspires him, and we get words that we can use to respond to the Lord and to express our repentance as well.
SPEAKER_00: It's been said that when Augustine was dying and was confined to his deathbed, he had these seven psalms actually written on the walls around him.
SPEAKER_00: Because what he wanted to do is as he was dying, he wanted to make sure that what he had before him was the words he could use to be confessing his own sins to God and be reminded in those psalms as well of God's grace, mercy, and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: When Martin Luther put together the 95 theses that he nailed to the door in Wittenberg some 500 years ago, 1517, the very first one of them says this.
SPEAKER_00: I'll put it up on the screen for you.
SPEAKER_00: When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.
SPEAKER_00: See, to be a man or a woman after God's own heart, and that's what David is called by God, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: He's called by God a man after my own heart, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So to be a man or a woman after God's own heart is not to live a perfectly sinless life, it's to live a life of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And we can joyfully repent.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we know God's response.
SPEAKER_00: We even see it here.
SPEAKER_00: God will forgive our sins.
SPEAKER_00: He's promised, if we confess our sins, that he'll be faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And this is really wonderful and good news to us.
SPEAKER_00: But there is yet one more thing that we do need to say about this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Um that is this that not all prayers accompanied by sincere repentance are answered on our terms.
SPEAKER_00: And we see that here as well.
SPEAKER_00: David was not certain how God would respond, but he cried out with passionate prayers that mercy would be shown to the child.
SPEAKER_00: There was both remorse for sin on his part and at the same time a resolve to God's sovereign will in the manner.
SPEAKER_00: And it reminds us that passionate prayer and remorseful repentance for sin, even after having received forgiveness for sin, do not negate the sometimes far-reaching consequences of sin.
SPEAKER_00: Extraordinary prayer and fasting, which he exhibited here, are not a talisman to help us escape the consequences for our rebellion against God.
SPEAKER_00: As we learn here with David, the kind of passionate prayer may, however, be a demonstration of authentic, radical submission and surrender to God's mercy and to God's will.
SPEAKER_00: Those of us who believe the gospel of Jesus are reminded here that we can contribute nothing at all to our salvation or our experience of God's mercy and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's all of grace.
SPEAKER_00: David didn't deserve to be forgiven, he just repented, and God, in his amazing grace, forgave David.
SPEAKER_00: Because of God's great love for us, he does the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: And even more completely, another person, another human soul that was born but was going to die, came and laid down his life for us.
SPEAKER_00: Took our place, took the penalty for my sin, much like this child took the penalty for David's sin in some ways, not in all ways, but in some ways.
SPEAKER_00: But at least there's a sort of foreshadowing of what comes from King David's greater son, King Jesus, who comes and lays down his life and takes our place in death on the cross that our sins might be forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: But there are some times where consequences remain, and some of you know that better than others.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are very clever at maintaining control in even our prayers.
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to control God and get what we want out of him.
SPEAKER_00: So much so that we begin to point out what we think God ought to do.
SPEAKER_00: We think of God as a vending machine.
SPEAKER_00: He ought to, if we put in this coin, we ought to get out this result.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us have been sort of schooled in performance-based living and in lots of different categories, but that's not the way it is with this.
SPEAKER_00: See?
SPEAKER_00: Grace is undeserved.
SPEAKER_00: And it's given to those who are guilty and undeserving.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it's it's God's love for us, but it's offered to us by grace, not because we earned it or manipulated God into giving it to us because we cried, because we worked up some emotion, rolled around on the floor, or whatever we might do, or put extra money in the box, or whatever we tried to do to balance out the scales.
SPEAKER_00: That's scale thinking again.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the gospel at all.
SPEAKER_00: The predetermined death of this baby for the sins of another did foreshadow the death of another who was born to die for the sins of others.
SPEAKER_00: This time the baby would grow up to become a man.
SPEAKER_00: His name is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: His death would bring about life since it was given to secure our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: David's fall, that we have read about here, should put those of us who have not yet fallen or aren't aware that we've fallen, should put us on guard.
SPEAKER_00: It should be a warning.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the great things about the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: God's wise warnings fill the pages.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul said it this way in 1 Corinthians 10, 12.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, let him who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of you know that, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard that before.
SPEAKER_00: God's response to David's repentance here should save us from despair for those of us who have fallen before, those of us that are aware of the fact that we've fallen before.
SPEAKER_00: And that should save us from despair because of the way God responds here and throughout the pages of Scripture to our repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness remains.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there are consequences that attend, but God's forgiveness in terms of our standing before God, that is on offer through faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Because of God's grace, David's sin did not condemn him to despair.
SPEAKER_00: God forgave David.
SPEAKER_00: God preserved his own plan and purposes to bring Messiah through the line of David in and through this whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: God also restored and recommissioned David when he has this opportunity at the end of the chapter to go back to the battlefield.
SPEAKER_00: And to begin doing what he should have been doing all along, wherever you're at, the same thing could be true for you.
SPEAKER_00: It's never too late to start doing the right thing right now.
SPEAKER_00: What's the next step that you can do that will honor God, that will bring about God's glory, that will uh be an expression, not of you following the rules, but of you saying, God, I love you so much.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful to you.
SPEAKER_00: I want to live my life in such a way that it would delight your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And so we begin to, like David, we begin to change.
SPEAKER_00: We're no longer oblivious of God, but we're not only aware of God, but we're worshiping God.
SPEAKER_00: We're no longer indifferent to others that we might harm through our sinful activity, but now we start to consider others and how we can do them good and how we can serve them, how we can love them as God would have us do so.
SPEAKER_00: Our need for redeeming grace is the same as David's.
SPEAKER_00: We all wrestle with wanting to be autonomous, to be our own God, to be our own king, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: We all struggle because of selfishness and pride, and that's why the New Testament calls us to the cross, where Jesus paid the price for our salvation, and where we can know the redeeming love of God in full measure.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is not just a symbol of a tragically fallen hero.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a piece of jewelry.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus went to the cross, the wrath of God against sin was satisfied in the death of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Along with Augustine and Martin Luther, by faith, we can know that Christ has taken all our sin upon himself.
SPEAKER_00: And now our repentance can be motivated not merely by shame and guilt, but by the joy of God's salvation and his free offer to you and to me.
SPEAKER_00: Before we begin, as uh John Stott says, before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, leading us to faith and worship, we have to see it as something done by us, leading us to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's so important that the Bible, the mirror of the Bible, holds up for us the reality of our inescapable predicament, sin.
SPEAKER_00: We can't get out of it ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We need outside help.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the Bible tells us.
SPEAKER_00: And then the great news of the Bible, of course, is it doesn't stop there.
SPEAKER_00: Because if it did, I'd just be, you know, we'd all go home and pummel ourselves and just despair the whole time.
SPEAKER_00: But the great news, and that's what we're here to remind ourselves of over and over and over again, is that the aim of the laws of God, as Christopher Ash has said, is not to make religious leaders feel better about themselves because they followed the rules, but to move us all to repentance and faith, humbled under grace together.
SPEAKER_00: Let's begin that way this year, humbled under grace together.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll see in this passage a call to repentance and faith.
SPEAKER_00: I hope it will stir you from within a cry for your own personal revival, restoration, and renewal.
SPEAKER_00: More than all of that, though, I hope that you will receive a greater assurance of God's love for broken people like David, like Jim, and like yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord, for the cross, paying the price for my sin, our sin, in full, that we might be able to walk in the joy of the salvation you put on offer as a free gift to us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for paying the costly price.
SPEAKER_00: This paradox of grace is oh so amazing to us.
SPEAKER_00: That you would do that for us.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't owe it to us, we didn't have a claim on you, but you generously, because of your great love for sinners, came for us to rescue us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jesus, for doing that.
SPEAKER_00: As we begin this year, I pray, Lord, that we'd all learn to walk in the light of this good news of grace, that we might uh have a clearer vision of your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love toward us.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of Jesus we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.