2 Samuel 11

Well, good evening everyone.

How are you?

It's a bad question to ask from up here.

You can't really answer.

I love the parable of the unforgiving servant.

Parable of the unforgiving servant.

It's one of my favorite parables.

So it kind of goes like this.

There's someone that owes a lot, a lot of money to someone very important.

And someone very important drags the someone that owes bags and bags of gold and money to court.

And the servant throws himself on the mercy of the court.

And the important person forgives the entire debt.

And the unforgiving servant walks out of there a free man.

But then he encounters someone that he knows that owes him money.

And instead of bags of gold, it's just a pittance, some small amount of money.

And he chokes the man and demands repayment and wants to press full charges.

And of course, the important man hears of this and gets very angry and throws the unforgiving servant into jail.

And the reason I love this parable so much is because it's about sin.

And it's about underestimating sin.

It's about undervaluing the debt that we owe to God.

And tonight we have a passage that's all about sin.

We're going to be looking at 2 Samuel chapter 11.

2 Samuel 11 · chapter mention

It's the famous passage about David and Bathsheba.

A quick note, by the way.

Next week's passage is chapter 12.

Isaiah 12 · chapter mention

And that's where all the repentance happens.

So this week we're not going to be talking too much about repentance.

Of course, it's a very important subject and I would love to preach a whole sermon about it.

So our passage is on page 262 in the Pew Bible if you want to follow along.

And let me pray for us as we get started.

Our Father in heaven, I simply pray that you would be here by your spirit tonight.

That you would be at work in each one of our hearts.

And that your word would accomplish what you have for it.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So as we approach the text tonight, I'd like us to keep in mind that David was not just an ordinary Israelite.

He was God's anointed.

He was specially chosen by God and called by God to a particular task.

And he had several responsibilities as God's anointed and as the king.

Such as to save the people from their enemies.

And to protect the people.

And to establish and uphold God's law in the land.

And to judge the people.

The kings back then, they would hear people's cases.

And they would discern between people's arguments.

And they would also execute justice.

When David was faithful, the people were blessed.

And when David was unfaithful, the people suffered.

So David was also a representative of the people to God.

Okay, so with that in mind, let's read this familiar passage.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel.

And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Graba.

But David remained at Jerusalem.

It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house.

That he saw from the roof a woman bathing.

And the woman was very beautiful.

And David sent and inquired about the woman.

And one said,

Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

So David sent messengers and took her.

And she came to him.

And he lay with her.

Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.

Then she returned to her house.

And the woman conceived.

And she sent and told David,

I am pregnant.

So David sent word to Joab,

Send me Uriah the Hittite.

And Joab sent Uriah to David.

When Uriah came to him,

David asked Joab,

David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going.

Then David said to Uriah,

Go down to your house and wash your feet.

And Uriah went out of the king's house and there followed him a present from the king.

But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to the house.

When they told David,

Uriah did not go down to his house.

David said to Uriah,

Have you come?

Have you?

Have you not come from a journey?

Why did you not go down to your house?

Uriah said to David,

The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths.

And my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field.

Shall I then go down to my house to eat and drink and to lie with my wife?

As you live, as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.

Then David said to Uriah,

Remain here today also and tomorrow I will send you back.

So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next.

And David invited him and he ate in his presence and drank so that he made him drunk.

And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord.

And he did not go down to his house.

In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.

In the letter he wrote,

Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting and then draw back from him that he may be struck down and die.

And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men.

And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab and some of the servants of David among the people.

Uriah the Hittite also died.

Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting.

And he instructed the messenger,

When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king,

Then, if the king's anger rises and if he says to you,

Why did you go so near the city to fight?

Why did you not know that they would shoot from the wall?

Who killed Abimelech, the son of Jerubbosheth?

Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall so that he died at Thebes?

Why did you go so near the wall?

Then you shall say,

Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.

So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell.

And the messenger said to David,

The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field.

But we drove them back to the entrance of the gate.

Then the archer shot at your servant from the wall.

Some of the king's servants are dead.

And your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.

David said to the messenger,

Thus shall you say to Joab,

Do not let this matter displease you.

For the sword devours now one and now another.

Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.

And encourage him.

When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead,

She lamented over her husband.

And when the morning was over,

David sent and brought her to his house.

And she became his wife and bore him a son.

And the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

Or literally,

But the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.

Well, if the charges were brought against David,

Here's how it might read.

Stealing another man's wife.

Committing adultery with her.

Betraying a close friend.

Murdering innocent men.

Commanding other people to commit sin.

And then belittling the whole thing as no big deal.

And you know, when we read it, we say,

Ah, these are the real sins.

These are the big ones.

Adultery and murder and plotting and scheming and lying and covering it up.

And this is what, now we're talking.

This is real sin.

But I'd like us to take a closer look, a deeper look tonight.

The first move of the heart in sin

Is a dethroning of God.

Off of his rightful position in our hearts.

As our number one love.

And enthroning ourselves.

So to use familiar language from 2 Samuel,

David has become a man after David's own heart.

He has stopped loving God in this period of time.

And is now living by a different set of values.

All sin is vertical first before it's horizontal.

And by that I mean all sin is sin against God first before it's horizontal.

And that's an interesting thing to observe when we have a passage like this.

Because it's all these sins as they come at us in the passage are horizontal sins.

It's lust.

He sees.

He takes.

It's adultery.

It's pride.

And now I have to cover it up.

And all these things are happening against other people.

But it's interesting if we look in chapter 12 and we see the way God responds.

I'm just going to read a couple.

I'm going to paraphrase a couple verses from chapter 12.

And God says through Nathan,

By what you have done, you have utterly scorned the Lord.

And David says in Psalm 51, his famous Psalm of repentance, he says regarding the sin,

Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

And I'd like us to see that not only for David, but for all of us, this is the dynamic of sin.

This is how sin works.

If we go back to the law, if we go back to what God wants from us, here's how Jesus puts it.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And a second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

In other words, we love God.

We see his goodness.

We see his, for Christians, we see his grace.

We see his undeserved mercy and love for us.

And then we turn to other people and we live out of that paradigm of love and grace.

So all sin in its first instance is against God.

And that's why I think that when we hear Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, when we hear Jesus say things like this,

when he says, you say it's sin to commit adultery.

I say it's sin to even look at a woman lustfully at all.

You say it's sin to commit murder.

I say it's sin to even be angry with your brother and call him a fool.

Now, how is Jesus saying that?

What is the dynamic?

If you are in a state of heart to look at a woman and lust, you haven't done anything, but you've lusted.

God has been dethroned off out of your heart in those times.

You have taken God from his rightful place as king of your heart, love of your life.

You've put him down and you've enthroned yourself.

If that makes you a little uncomfortable, the ramifications of that are pretty dramatic.

Because the core of the sin is that we've take the God of the universe who created everything out of nothing,

who is all-powerful, all-knowing, infinite, eternal,

on top of that gracious, loving, merciful, kind.

And we have put him in a position subordinate to us.

If I can put it that way.

When you pull God down off of his throne and erect yourself,

you are putting God in a subordinate position to you.

And what I want to argue, what I want to try to get us to think about tonight,

is that that sin is the sin.

That's the root of it.

That's the heart of sin right there.

Then it blossoms into actual evil that we do.

And I think that if we don't see that, we're on the path to undervaluing sin.

We're on the path to being able to read a passage like we just read and go,

that's not me because I don't go that far.

And we know we're not supposed to say that.

I know no one's sitting in this room.

But deep in our hearts, we minimize the standard.

It's an inclination of our heart to pull the standard down so that we squeak under it.

But when we actually see the standard, that it's a heart issue,

and that we all know what it's like to just turn our heads,

and all of a sudden God's down off the throne.

And when we do that,

that's the root of sin.

So I want to talk a few minutes about the consequences of sin.

The consequences of sin.

Here again, I think, so often what we look at is David's and Bathsheba's baby died,

okay, as a result of this.

David's whole career now takes a turn for the worse.

David starts making other mistakes, sinful errors.

He begins, his rule begins to spiral down.

God has, as we'll see next week in chapter 12,

has responded by removing some of the blessings that he'd been giving to David

and enacting some consequences for David that are temporal,

that are in the here and now, as it were.

In fact, as a result of David's sin,

the people end up suffering.

The people that David represents, they end up suffering

because down the road, David starts making other bad choices and sinning.

And further down the road, David's descendants,

not too far after David, the wheels come off.

And even though God had promised to bless David

and set his steadfast covenant love on David

and had promised that an heir of David would be on the throne forever,

even though that promise was there in chapter 7,

just three chapters later, four chapters later,

we have this fall.

And the descendants of David don't last long in their faithfulness to God.

In fact, as we know, Israel ends up in exile.

And there is not only no Davidic king on the throne,

there's no king on the throne at all.

The people are dispersed.

Now, what I would like us to be careful about

is that we do not view the temporal discipline of God on David

as David paying for the sins that he committed in chapter 11.

The temporal judgments of God

are never payment for sin.

The reason is because no temporal punishment

can cover the sin of us dethroning God

from his place as God of the universe.

Us, created human beings,

rising up in rebellion against God

and putting him down.

None of these temporal disciplines or punishments

pay for that sin.

Those sins are out there.

God is infinite.

The offense against God is infinite.

The price to be paid,

if it were to be paid by a person,

could not be paid in space and time.

And that's what hell is.

Hell is us paying for our sins

against God himself.

And it never runs out

because God is that holy.

He is that

majestic.

However,

David doesn't die.

Nor does God revoke his covenant promises

that he made back in chapter 7.

I would like to suggest

that when we're thinking rightly

about God and who God is

and when we're reading the Bible

through the lens of seeing God properly,

questions like,

how is David survive this?

Like,

how is it

that David

goes on to be

blessed by God,

continued to be loved by God,

established by God,

forgiven by God?

In other words,

how is a good judge

going to just pass over

our offenses of sin against him?

Well,

the answer is

that God himself

has to come

and become a man

and pay for our sins

by dying in our place

himself.

He is the only

payment

that will satisfy

that kind of debt

for David

or for us

or for any human being.

And I'd like to go back

and

I've been trying

to move along

because I have

several segments

of scripture

that I want to read to you

and I'm just going to tell you up front.

It's going to be

a little bit of reading

but I want to drop this on you.

It's so beautiful.

It is so

as bad

as the bad news

of sin

is.

This is better.

This is

the good news.

Okay.

So God made a covenant

promise to David

to love him forever.

When he made that promise

he knew what he was getting into.

He knew

all of David's sin

past,

present,

and future.

He knew what was going to happen

in chapter 11.

And I want to read

from

Psalm

Psalms 89 · chapter mention

chapter 89.

You just listen along

with me.

It's about

the covenant.

God's covenant

with David.

I,

God,

will maintain

my love

to David

forever.

And my covenant

with him

will never fail.

I will establish

his line

forever,

his throne

as long as the heavens

endure.

If his children

forsake my law

and do not walk

according to my rules,

if they violate

my statutes

and do not keep

my commandments,

then I will punish

their transgressions

with the rod

and their iniquity

with stripes.

But

I will not

remove

from him

my steadfast

love

or be

false

to my

faithfulness.

I will not

violate

my covenant

or alter

the word

that went

forth from

my lips.

Once for all

have I sworn

by my holiness

I will not

lie to David.

His offspring

shall endure

forever,

his throne

as long

as the sun

before me.

Now,

what I want

to say

is that

when God

says,

if his

offspring

disobey

my covenant

and do not

meet the terms

of faithfulness

that the covenant

demands,

I will discipline

them.

But as

we've seen,

what sin

demands

as a price

is not

temporal

discipline.

So God's

talking about

some other

kind of

discipline

to some

other

son of

David.

Listen to

this from

Isaiah,

about 300

years later.

It's Isaiah

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

chapter 53.

This is

talking about

Jesus.

This is

familiar,

but it's

so beautiful.

Surely

he has

come to

bore

our

griefs

and

carry

our

sorrows.

Yet

he was

esteemed,

yet we

esteemed

him

stricken,

smitten

by God

and afflicted.

But he

was pierced

for our

transgressions.

He was

crushed

for our

iniquities.

Upon

him

was the

chastisement

that brought

us

peace.

And with

his wounds

we are

healed.

All we

like sheep

have gone

astray.

We have

turned

everyone

to his

own way.

And the

Lord has

laid on

him the

iniquity

of us

all.

Jesus

is the

one that

took

the stripes

of the

rod of

God's

wrath

against

the sin

of our

unfaithfulness.

We see

that

the promise

to David

is fulfilled

in Jesus.

I'm going

to read a

short

passage

from Luke.

It's the

angel Gabriel

speaking to

Mary.

Behold,

you will

conceive in

your womb

and bear

a son,

and you

shall call

his name

Jesus.

He will

be great,

and he

will be

called the

son of

the most

high.

and the

Lord God

will give

him the

throne of

his father

David,

and he

will reign

over the

house of

Jacob

forever,

and of

his kingdom

there will

be no

end.

I think

that if

you're a

Christian long

enough,

you begin

to see

how God

is not

just forgiving

our sins.

That's just

the beginning

of what

God's

doing.

God is

restoring

us,

renovating

us.

He is

taking

even our

sins and

turning them

into things

that he

uses for

his good

purpose.

And do

you know

that Jesus

was a

fulfillment

of God's

promise to

David,

God's

love.

And it

came,

and so

Jesus,

the line

from David

to Jesus

includes

Bathsheba,

the very

person that

David went

and stole

and committed

this horrible

sin with.

But through

the fruit

of David

and Bathsheba

comes the

savior of

the world.

So we're

not only

forgiven,

we're being

restored.

The bad

things are

being turned

into good

things.

And I have

one more

passage to

drop on

you.

Back to

Isaiah

Isaiah 55 · chapter mention

chapter 55.

this is an

invitation

from God

to us.

Come all

you who

are thirsty,

come to

the waters.

And you

who have

no money,

come buy

and eat.

Come buy

wine and

milk without

money and

without cost.

Why spend

money on

what is

not bread

and your

labor on

what does

not satisfy?

Listen,

listen to

me and

eat what

is good and

you will

delight in

the richest

affair.

Give ear

and come

to me,

listen,

that you

may live.

I will

make an

everlasting

covenant

with you.

My

faithfulness,

my faithful

love promised

to David.

The same

covenant

love,

that God

set on

David,

we are

all invited

to

partake

of.

And I

want to

add one

more thing

and then

I'll close.

When we

see sin

for what

it is

and when

we see

the magnitude

of it,

faith

as a

response,

faith in

Christ

as our

substitute

becomes

a

joyful,

wonderful,

logical,

reasonable

thing to

step into.

When sin

isn't sin,

when sin

is not

an offense

against the

God of

the universe

by us,

but it's

just,

oh,

bad things

we do,

everyone's,

no one's

perfect.

You know what,

no one's

perfect,

you know how

many people

are probably

going to hell

right now

because of

no one's

perfect?

It's true,

no one is

perfect,

but we

need to

see how

bad sin

is and

let it

drive us

to Jesus

and if we're

already trusting

in Jesus,

we need to

see how

bad sin

is and

see what

we're being

saved from

and let

that grace

grow in

our estimation

of it and

let it

fuel

are

living for

God

and a

life of

loving other

people

as we

love

ourselves.

Let me

pray for us.

Our Father

in Heaven,

we pray that

you would

grant us

eyes to

see

reality.

We pray

that you

would not

let us

diminish

the debt

that our

sin creates

and Father

we are so

thankful

and grateful

that you

came yourself

to pay

this debt

for us.

I pray that

you would

break our

hearts.

I pray that

you would

help us

to love

you

in response

and that

you would

help us

to love

other

people.

Thank you

for your

word.

In Jesus'

name,

Amen.