The 13^th Sunday After Trinity

SERMON

Text: 2 Samuel 12:1-13

Then the LORD sent Nathan to David. And he came to him, and said to him: “There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb, which he had brought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom; and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” So David’s anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I have given you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you more. Why have you despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun.’” So David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD has put away your sin; you shall not die.”

In Christ Jesus, Whose Word reveals spiritual truths for our learning and living, dear fellow redeemed:

This past weekend our Nolting family enjoyed a brief two-day reunion in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Saturday afternoon we all sat out in my sister’s back yard under a huge maple tree and talked about old times. We reminisced about the sentimental and at times the slightly embarrassing. At one point when talking about memorable father-child discussions, my father asked one of my sisters whether she remember their “birds and bees” talk. She quipped back, “Yes, that’s why I didn’t get married until I was forty!” I’m sure that there are a number of people here today who can remember either giving or receiving a “facts of life” talk. Those talks tend to be a bit nerve-racking, in part because they are so personal and can be somewhat embarrassing. They are talks, however, which are so very important, because they deal with information we need to know and apply properly as Christians in this sinful world. Today I would like to have a talk with you about a different topic, which at times can also be both personal and embarrassing, but a proper understanding of which is absolutely essential for us as Christians in our world. Let us talk about THE SPIRITUAL FACTS OF LIFE!

I.

The first spiritual fact of life that we need to know is that we cannot escape the responsibility of our sins! That may sound simple, and it may sound obvious, but it sure is not practiced in our world. Beginning with Adam and Eve and continuing into our day, we humans have been denying responsibility for our sins and blaming others, rather than accepting responsibility, which is the first step towards dealing with sins. Everyone always seems to be a victim! You remember Adam, do you not? “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:13). Eve was not any better, placing blame on the serpent, with both of them implicating and actually placing the blame on God, for God had given Eve to Adam and God had created the serpent!

While we do not find David in the situation under discussion blaming others, we surely find him trying to escape personal responsibility. David’s underlying sin was unfaithfulness to his duty. We are told in 2 Samuel 11 that when it was time for David to lead his armies into battle, he decided to stay at home and play hooky. It was in the midst of this period of shear laziness, that Satan first tempted him with the sight of Bathsheba bathing. When David discovered that Bathsheba was a married woman, he should have ceased all considerations of a relationship, but he did not. He committed adultery with her resulting in her pregnancy. At that point David should have accepted responsibility for his sin, confessed it to Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, and dealt with any consequences, but he did not. He began playing the game of cover-up, which ultimately led him to responsibility for Uriah’s death in battle. What a tangled web we weave, when we first plan to deceive! Such are the words and thoughts of a poet, who understood this first fact of life!

God, however, to Whom we are all responsible and from Whose omniscient eyes we cannot hide our sins, would not allow David to succeed. He sent Nathan the prophet with the delicate task of having a spiritual facts of life discussion with the king. Nathan began with a story—a parable of sorts—something to which David as a former shepherd would relate. Two men lived in the same city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had many flocks and herds, the poor man but one ewe lamb. When a stranger came to the home of the rich man, he refused to slaughter one of his own animals, but in his greed took the poor man’s single ewe lamb and prepared it for his guest. David, of course, reacted as Nathan assumed he would—as he should have reacted as the chief judge of his land. He condemned the rich man and promptly suggested rather strong measures by which to “remove the speck from his brother’s eye” in spite of the fact that he had a “plank” in his own (cf. Luke 6:41-42). Nathan’s condemnation must have sounded like thunder to David as it rolled over his soul and shook his conscience, “You are the man!…Why have you despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon.” David, who later would confess that during this time of spiritual cover-up, “My bones grew old through my groaning all the day long,” had to learn this first spiritual fact of life the hard way through direct confrontation!

My dear friends, we all sin—you do and I do! We all need to recognize our personal responsibility for our sins, for it is only then that we can be led to repentance and receive remission of sins. We cannot escape our personal responsibility for our sins. At times in our lives God arranges, as He did in the case of David, to have someone—a pastor or some other Christian acquaintance—come to us to talk to us about sin. Let us not react with resentment or with denial. Rather, let us recognize in that person our “Nathan” sent by God to help us understand that sin can and does separate us from God and everything He seeks to do for and to give to us! It is a spiritual fact of life that we cannot escape the responsibility of our sins. The writer to the Hebrews tells us, “It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (9:27). St. Paul confirms this when he writes, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Do we want to fuss and fume, blame and deny the responsibility of our sins in this life, only to stand before our Savior God at the end of time with those sins unconfessed and unforgiven? My dear friends, such an attitude is unfortunate now and unprofitable then! Let us learn the spiritual facts of life and know without a doubt that we cannot escape the responsibility of our sins!

II.

The second spiritual fact of life is that we cannot evade the consequences of our sins. Nathan’s words to David were strong words, and they needed to be for God wanted to soften his heart and lead him to repentance. Not only did those words condemn David’s sin, however, they informed David of the unfortunate consequences he would later endure because of his sin. Oh yes, as we shall see later in this address, when David confessed his sin, he was forgiven through Christ. His Savior would bear the eternal consequences of David’s sin, but he would unfortunately have to live through the temporal consequences that always accompany sin. For you see, once you or I have sinned we cannot undo that sin. If we say unkind and hurtful things to people, we cannot “unspeak” them. When we do things that are sinful and thereby “despise the commandment of the LORD” we cannot “undo” them. When we take what is not ours, when we break our marriage vows, when we strike someone in rage, when we fail to use our money wisely—we will live with temporal consequences in spite of the fact that those sins can and will be forgiven when we repent.

What happened in David’s case? Nathan informed David, “The sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun.” Nathan’s predictions came true with alarming accuracy, for if you study the remainder of David’s life it was filled with sorrow in large part because of family problems. It is said with reason that a picture is worth a thousand words. David wrote many beautiful, penitential psalms under the inspiration of the Spirit after these incidents in his life. But it would appear that in the lives of several of his sons, it was the example he set that made the greatest impression upon them. His son Amnon would later rape his half-sister, David’s daughter, Tamar, and in turn be murdered by Tamar’s brother, Absalom. Absalom would lead a rebellion against David and publicly commit adultery with ten of David’s concubines. How sad is this spiritual fact of life, and yet how true—we cannot evade the consequences of our sins!

III.

But take heart, dear friends, for the third spiritual fact of life is that God can and does erase the guilt of our sins! The most comforting and truly amazing part of Nathan’s conversation with David takes place in the final verse of our text. We read, “So David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the LORD.’ And Nathan said to David, ‘The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die.’” These words are so very instructive on a number of levels.

First of all, we can take comfort in the fact that God sent Jesus into this world to save sinners, not saints! St. Paul tells us, “Christ died for the ungodly” and “God demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6,8). David sinned, we sin, but God has still loved us in Christ. God did not determine to save us, nor did Christ die for us because we deserved such a salvation. No, They did so out of pure grace—undeserved love bestowed upon each of us as a gift! St. Paul says, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15). It is by God’s grace through faith that we, who by nature are sinners, become saints of God and heirs of His eternal salvation!

Secondly, notice that when David makes his confession, he recognizes that his ultimate responsibility is over against God Himself. He confesses, “I have sinned against the LORD.” In Psalm 51, written after these events had occurred, David writes in similar fashion, “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight” (Psalm 51:4). How could David even suggest such a thing in view of the fact that he had sinned with and against Bathsheba and certainly against her husband, Uriah? Let it be said immediately, that by these words David is not denying that his sin involved other people and in tragic ways. Rather, he is recognizing that whenever a person sins, that person is sinning primarily against God. Consequently, David’s words and action are instructive, for they reveal to us a proper pattern for repentance. When we sin, dear friends, let us turn to our God first and foremost. Let us settle the matter with Him, confessing our sins and grieving over the fact that by those sins we have despised our God and His Word and do deserve nothing other than His judgment. Sin is not in any of its forms to be considered mere harmless pranks. No, sin is serious and grievous, and, therefore, it needs to be dealt with openly and honestly in the presence of our God.

Thirdly, notice that after David made His confession and reveals a heart struck down by its sin and guilt, that Nathan immediately announced God’s grace and remission of sin. Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die.” The death concerning which Nathan speaks, of course, is the eternal death David merited in view of his sins. He would not endure that death for his Savior God removed his sins—all of them by grace and for the sake of Jesus. Nathan did not exact from David certain works of penance prior to announcing God’s forgiveness. No, he announced to a sorrowing David the most amazing and blessed news a sinner can hear—God has forgiven your sins. They are erased from His memory. You no longer stand condemned. In the private communion liturgy, St. John’s words are quoted to comfort those approaching the Lord’s table. He says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9).

Hearing about and learning THE SPIRITUAL FACTS OF LIFE may not be the most comfortable situation, but is should prove comforting to all who are led by the Spirit of God to repentance and faith. May we learn our lesson well, as did David, and join him in praying, “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You” (Psalm 51:12-13). Amen

—Pastor Paul D. Nolting