2 Samuel 12:1-14

So we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

We have extra copies of the scriptures.

If you need one, you don't have one to follow along, and you'd like to just have a paper copy to follow along, please feel free to raise your hand.

Somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle.

Hello to everybody.

I think at the 1015 service, they may or may not.

No, see, I think Matt's over there, so they're not watching us.

I'll say hello to them anyway.

That's good.

We're studying 2 Samuel in the Old Testament.

We're calling it the story of unlikely redemption.

Just stressing over and over again, as we see in the scriptures, that God continues to choose those no one else would choose and to use those that no one else would use.

God is remarkable and gracious and kind and loving in his grace and mercy extended to the to all of us.

Especially where we're at right now in chapter 12.

If you'll turn there with me, you'll remember that King David had fallen into what may have been the darkest season of his life.

He was tripped up by the temptation of the lust of the eyes and of the flesh.

He found himself taking another man's wife, forcing her to sleep with him.

He found out that she had become pregnant, and David attempted to mask his treachery by calling the woman's husband Uriah to come home from the battlefield and then trying to manipulate him to spend some time with his wife.

And when that didn't work, David arranged for Uriah to go back to the battlefield and be killed in battle.

David posed as the noble king when he, quote, did the right thing by taking Bathsheba as his own wife.

She now widowed and a single mother, acting as if his life motto was, We take care of our own.

At the end of chapter 11, for all intents and purposes, David thought he had gotten away with murder.

David thought that he had the last word.

Twelve times in chapter 11, the verb sent or to send is used, and it's always some person sending, exercising their power to send someone or a message.

And the interesting thing is that God isn't mentioned anywhere in chapter 11 until the very last line of what we call chapter 11.

And there, the narrator of 2 Samuel does a very unusual thing.

He gives an assessment or an evaluation.

He hasn't been doing that in 1st and 2 Samuel.

We don't read much of that.

Usually it's just reporting on history.

But here at the end of chapter 11, the last line of chapter 11, leading into our chapter 12 that we'll study today, the last line of chapter 11 was the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.

And so here this assessment is given.

And here, 12 times we've heard this verb descend, descend, descend.

And now it seems like David might be thinking to himself, I got away with it.

And even though God, in his sight, said that was evil, David might have been thinking to himself, among the body politic, I got away with it.

Among the nation, I got away with it.

But the verb sent is going to be used again now, the first verse of chapter 12, but it's this time God that does the sending.

So in chapter 11, it seems to be the camera lens and the storyline is all about humanity doing the sending.

And now here in chapter 12, God will be mentioned 13 times, not abandoned and left out of the chapter altogether, but mentioned 13 times.

And the very first verse, the narrator, just uh launches this, it's it's almost uh uh uh starkly clear that it begins with the Lord sent Nathan, and Nathan is the prophet, and the Lord sent Nathan to David.

So we'll start there.

Um, and I want to I want to emphasize that this chapter is about a turning.

It's about uh uh someone who is quite dark uh in their soul, and someone who has uh used and abused others, and used and abused their position, their privileges, and their power in a very dark kind of way.

And people have died and people have been abused, uh, and and there will be a lot of collateral damage for this man's actions, David.

This is, as I say, his darkest, probably his darkest uh season.

But chapter 12 is really about a turning, it's about a repentance, it's about redemption, it's about God's pursuing grace, and that's the way we'll uh look at chapter 12 together.

One theologian, I won't put this up on the screen, it's a bit lengthy, but uh a few sentences too long for a slide.

But uh, one theologian, David Ray, says, Grace is God's kindness shown to those who don't deserve it, and yet we tend to be surprised by the sorts of person God chooses to bless.

It's very unlikely, isn't it?

We perhaps still assume it is the good and worthy people whom God favors, but this makes grace meaningless.

By definition, it is not a reward for good conduct.

This is good news for us who fall short in so many ways.

Our falling short will take its own toll on us, but does not cause God to turn his back on us.

God does not approve of lying and cheating and betrayal, he rather has condemned it when Jesus died on the cross.

Which means God is free then to show mercy to those who can never earn it.

Really, really beautiful.

Let's read chapter 12, and uh I'll just uh wrap up with a few comments after that.

All right, chapter 12 begins like this the Lord sent Nathan to David, and he came to him.

And here's what Nathan says to David.

It's a probably in some of your English translations, it's set off a little bit graphically, and uh sort of like a story or a like a pull quote or something like that.

And uh some Bible commentators think this is a parable.

I tend to lean in that direction because no one is named, but the story seems real.

There's no place that's named.

He says, There were two men in one city, the one was rich and the other was poor.

The rich men had a great many flocks and herds, as you would expect a rich man too.

The poor men had nothing except one little you lamb.

That's E W E for those of you who are just listening and not reading.

That's not Y-O-U, it's E W E, one U lamb, which he bought and nourished, and it grew up together with him and his children.

It would eat of his bread and drink of his cup and lie in his bosom, and was like a daughter to him.

So this you lamb that this one poor man had was like a house pet.

More than that, like a daughter to him.

I don't know how many of you have had pets that you have given names to and you personify every single thing they do.

Kim and I have done that.

Our last two dogs that we had, uh, Rosa Violet, we used to get them to sing Ave Maria with us.

We'd go, Ave Maria, and then they'd start going, woo.

And both of them sounded way better than me.

I mean, as far as singing goes, they had it down.

I did not.

Um, but the this Ulam was like a pet to this poor person.

Now, this is interesting because he's giving us a sketch.

A lot is made of that.

But a traveler comes to the rich man, verse 4 says, And the rich man was unwilling to take from his own flock or his own herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him.

Rather, he took the poor man's ew lamb, and he prepared it for the man who had come to him.

Then David's anger burned greatly against the man, meaning the rich man.

And he said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die.

He must make restitution for the Lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and had no compassion.

You see how outraged he is in this particular moment.

Even the darkened soul of David, who has just committed kidnapping, rape, adultery, stolen another man's wife, broken four of the Ten Commandments minimum, depending on how you count them.

Coveting the Tenth Commandment, definitely coveted another man's wife, stole her, lied about it, committed adultery, and committed murder.

You might say he did five or six of the commandments, all in this one storyline.

He broke all of that, and yet he in this moment, with this story, is able to see the injustice of it, and even has outrage about the injustice of it.

Very interesting to note that, I believe.

Nathan said to David then, after David recognizes this injustice, after David responds and reacts to this injustice, Nathan can now say to David the king, you are the man.

And that's not you the man, that's not you're cool.

That's not you are like Kanye or something.

That's not you, the man.

That's you are the man that you're mad at.

You are the one who has committed this kind of thing.

Thus says the Lord God of Israel.

Verse 7.

It is I who anointed you king over Israel.

It is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul.

I gave you your master's house, that means Saul's house.

In other words, I put you in the palace and your master's wives into your care.

I gave you the house of Israel in Judah.

In other words, I put you over the whole nation.

And if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these.

Because evidently one of David's problems was in answer to the question, How much is enough?

As he looked at Bathsheba, even David with all of his wives and all of his concubines, how much is enough?

Just a little bit more was his answer.

And so he took what was not his and was not to be his, shouldn't have been his.

Why have you despised, verse 9, the word of the Lord, Nathan, uh God speaking to David through the prophet Nathan?

Why have you despised the word of the Lord by doing evil in his sight?

In other words, it's still what really matters is what God thinks.

It's God's sight that matters, the way God views these things.

And why have you despised the word of the Lord?

In other words, literally, all four, five, six, however you count them of God's commandments from his word.

You have despised, you've literally hated, set aside, abused, made fun of God's word, as if it, as if God was trivial, as if God didn't matter at all, and what God thinks didn't matter.

And see, this is what I do when I sin.

I literally say to God, I don't care what you think, I want my way.

I want what I want, and I want it now.

And just like David, we often, all of us, when we sin, will step over top of other people or trample other people to get what we want or what we think we deserve in this particular moment.

Um so this is convicting as we read this, isn't it?

Now, therefore, uh, no, verse 9, I'm sorry.

Why have you despised the word of the Lord by doing evil in his sight?

You've struck down Uriah the Hittite, and he articulates all of this with specificity with the sword.

You've taken his wife to be your wife, you have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.

And the use of the term the sword, and we had read in the last chapter it was it was the archers that likely killed Uriah.

What does this mean?

Is the Bible contradicting itself?

No.

The sword is another way of saying the military power of the Ammonites.

You literally put Uriah out there and hung him out to dry and allowed him to be killed by their military machinery.

Okay?

Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house.

This is um this is the kind of justice that David himself, just a minute ago, was calling for when he said, Surely that man deserves to die, and surely that man should pay back fourfold for stealing that you lamb from the poor man.

What's going to be the judgment on David?

The sword shall never depart from your house, because you've despised me.

This is God speaking through Nathan, and you've taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.

Thus says the Lord.

And I love it when the prophets use that sort of preamble to what they're going to say.

It's not always fun to hear what they're going to say, though, is it?

Somebody say amen.

Yeah.

Because they're not always just predicting the future.

They're calling out sin so often in the Old Testament.

And why is that?

Well, because all of us think we're all basically good.

We all basically think everyone ought to cater to our needs, just like David thought.

And we all let our position and our power and our privileges go to our heads all the time.

And we use it to justify all kinds of things that are evil in the sight of the Lord.

I have to admit, that's me too.

That's all of us.

Therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because of what you've done.

Thus says the Lord, behold, I'll raise up evil against you, verse 11, from your own household.

And God's going to do that.

We know those of us who've read ahead know the coming story.

Absalom, one of David's sons, will literally kick David out of the palace.

And David and some of his men will run for the hills, run for the wilderness, actually.

And so your own household will enact evil against you.

I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion.

This is his companion, meaning his son, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.

That which David had done, tried to do in the secret, and tried to cover up with Bathsheba, it's going to happen to him.

All of his wives and concubines are going to be taken by his son Absalom.

And Absalom's not going to worry about what anybody thinks.

He's just going to do it in broad daylight.

And it's going to be a way of saying, I kicked my dad out of the palace, and I'm done with him.

And I'm victorious.

And don't anybody ever come against me or say anything bad about me.

And so it's an affront to anybody that would side with David as it comes to be in David's household that this judgment of God comes upon him.

Verse 12, indeed, you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and under the sun.

In other words, out in the open.

Verse 13, then David said to Nathan, and this is fascinating.

David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.

And that is that is such a short, straightforward response.

It's not, you know, it wasn't really my fault.

You know, I mean, it was her fault.

She shouldn't have been bathing out there in front of everybody.

It's, you know, and it and it was it was it was the Joab, the military guy, he he's the one that told Uriah to go up against the wall like that and fight and all that.

It's not my fault.

This all happened to me.

I'm a victim.

This happened to me.

It's not my fault.

And uh, you know, in the 60s and 70s, it used to be used to be the phrase, you know, the devil made me do it.

We we we find if we can't find a human person to blame it on, we find the devil would be the one that we would blame back in the 60s and 70s.

About four of you know of that phrase, yeah.

And I'm all alone up here.

But we find somebody, just like all the way back in the garden, we find somebody else to blame.

Blame shifting is the art of the skillful and willful sinner to say somebody else is fault, not mine.

And you can see in our culture, you can see how that's all sort of trickled down into the culture.

It's never anybody's fault.

It's always somebody else's fault.

It's always something.

And they they they we never make a moral choice that we're culpable for, it's always something else that's responsible.

And yet here he is in a refreshingly honest and simple statement.

I have sinned against the Lord.

And Nathan then responds to David and says, The Lord also has taken away your sin.

You shall not die.

See, some of those Ten Commandments that David broke were actual capital offenses in Jewish law system.

Adultery, murder, these are capital offenses.

David himself would typically have had to pay the price of giving of his life being taken for these offenses.

But here, Nathan is giving him a word of grace.

He's receiving, he's guilty and deserving, but he's receiving something here and mercy.

He's not getting something he does deserve.

Um, and and so the Lord has also taken away your sin.

You shall not die.

However, there's a caveat, verse 14, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of God or the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die.

This is the the baby that will be born to Bathsheba as a result of David's adulteress uh and uh and his his his, I would, I would say, his rape of Bathsheba.

Um, that child will die.

This will cut him to the quick.

We'll read that when we come back to our next study of 2 Samuel.

For now, what we're focusing on in chapter 12 is actually David uh being confronted, uh, the conviction that God uh places on him and his own confession and repentance.

And for now, what Nathan is telling him is that there will still be consequences that attend, because by this deed, and here's why, he even says why, because by this deed you've given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.

That is, because of what you've done, David, you who represent Yahweh, you who represent the people of Yahweh and the word of Yahweh and the Ten Commandments of Yahweh.

You have broken five or four or five or six of them.

And you've basically dismissed God and trivialized God's word and God's ways.

And because of that, you've given ammunition to the critics of Yahweh.

You've given them just cause to blaspheme against Yahweh.

And that's why this is so grave and so important.

Most of us, if we don't take God and God's holiness seriously, we also won't take our sins seriously.

Conversely, I can say it this way: if you don't take your sins seriously, you probably won't take God's holiness seriously.

Some of us might be sitting here thinking, man, that's pretty severe.

I mean, come on.

He he apologized.

Shouldn't we just let him go and just apologize?

Just, you know, kind of sweep it under the rug?

And uh sweet Joyce Alfrey sitting right here.

She came up to me last week and said, When you sweep stuff under the rug, the only thing you get is a lumpy rug.

And then you just trip over it over and over and over and over again.

David says to Nathan, I've sinned against the Lord.

Nathan says to David, the sin will be taken.

You'll be forgiven, but there will be consequences.

However, because by this deed you've given occasion to the Lord, uh, to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child will die.

So Nathan went to his house, is the first part of verse 15, and we'll come back and pick up in our next study right after that.

As I say, for now, what I'd really like to do is focus in on this process that we see in chapter 12, where it's the the camera and the storyline is back now on God, and he's the one doing the sending.

He's the one that has the all the last word, if you will, because at the end of chapter 11, where it says, and what David did was evil in the sight of the Lord, for most of that chapter, David thought he had gotten away with murder, literally.

And yet the narrator says, Oh, but not true.

What he did was evil in the sight of the Lord, and it's the sight of the Lord that matters.

And then he moves right into what we call chapter 12.

And remember, our chapter breaks probably put into our Bibles in around the 12th century, the verse breaks in around the 15th century.

So when the narrator of 2 Samuel, the writer, is writing, he just keeps right on going.

He doesn't stop and say, hmm, what shall I say for chapter 12?

He's not thinking that way.

He just keeps right on rolling.

He says what David did was evil in the sight of the Lord, and then he goes right to, and the Lord sent the prophet, Nathan, to David.

And I'm gonna suggest to you today that's because God was pursuing David with grace.

And I'm gonna suggest to you today that God's doing that to you and to me as well today.

He's pursuing us with grace what we desperately need.

Here's what I don't need.

I don't need religious rules to follow.

Why?

Because I fail all the time at following rules.

Somebody say amen.

Not about me, about you.

Yeah.

I fail at following rules.

I really do, and we do.

I need Jesus to be more than just an example to me.

Why?

Because I'll never be able to follow Jesus' example completely on my own.

I need Jesus to be more than an example.

I need him to be savior, redeemer.

See?

And that sets him apart from every other religious figure that's ever lived before.

Jesus, who is King David's greater son, Jesus, who's the greater king than King David, comes and dies for me in my place on that cross, takes my sin to the cross, pays the price for my sin, and then offers me the gift of salvation by grace, through faith, in Christ.

And uh what a beautiful um uh gospel we have.

All right, now some of you have these.

Uh who's got who's got a dog?

Raise your hand.

You got a dog or you've had a dog?

You know?

All right, who's had a cat?

Cat?

Cat people?

Look at you, proud cat people.

Yeah, I love it.

It's awesome.

Um the the anybody that's had or been around dogs and cats knows that they're really different.

Somebody, yeah?

They're really different, yeah.

There is a there is this thing that I found online I thought was really funny, is where they talked about dog theology and cat theology.

Maybe some of you heard this before.

Look at that dog up there, though.

That dog, if you put a little bubble in what he's thinking, you house me, you feed me, you pet me, you take care of my every need.

You must be a God.

That's what the dog's thinking about his owner, you know.

The cat, on the other hand, is thinking, you house me, you feed me, you pet me, you take care of my every need.

I must be a God.

I think the cat owners are the ones that are laughing the hardest right now.

Yeah, yeah.

I must be a God, yeah.

That's the way it's going.

I think David had adopted some cat theology.

It's all about me.

It's all about what I want in this moment.

She looks attractive.

I've got a palace full of wives and concubines, but how much is enough?

A little bit more.

Always a little bit more, always a little bit more.

Oh, she belongs to somebody else.

I don't care.

I can justify this.

I'm the king.

I will take her.

And he sent.

And he took her.

Um, and then things went south from there.

And over and over and over again, he's falling deeper and deeper into the darkness of his cat theology and his wanting everything his way and him, wanting everything to be all about him.

Notice how relentless God's grace is in 2 Samuel chapter 12.

2 Samuel 12 · chapter mention

In spite of all of that darkness, all of those dark deeds, all of that that did not please the Lord.

It was un, it wasn't it was evil in the Lord's sight.

In spite of all of that, the next sentence is God sends a prophet, sends a word.

You may succeed in unfaithfulness, Dale Rolf Davis says, but Yahweh will come after you.

Not that God's pursuing grace is enjoyable, but what if grace did not pursue?

What if Yahweh abandoned us when we succeeded sin?

What if God had not pursued David and just allowed him to go completely deeper and deeper into the darkness of his own, sort of thinking he's little gee God, he's the kid, he's the one that deserves everything.

Think of how horrible, how many more lives would have been destroyed and ruined.

Yet God intervenes and God comes with his pursuing grace, in spite of all of that darkness.

And I would suggest to you that God has pursued us as well.

It's a story of unlikely redemption, that's true.

But God is so kind in the way that he does it.

And so, of the three or four things I want to say today, the kindness and clarity of God's conviction is the first one.

God did not send a lightning bolt, God did not send a, you know, a some kind of laser beam and just completely disintegrate David.

Um, he he didn't even send a prophet with a very harsh opening line, you know?

Like that pulled into town, made a big spectacle of the whole thing, and then publicly shamed David for all his misdeeds and all the injustices perpetrated by David.

Instead, he sends a prophet, and the prophet comes with a parable.

And I love the way the Lord Jesus spoke in parables.

I love the way he said, you know, there was once a man that had two sons.

And he doesn't name them.

And he says, one son demanded his entire inheritance, kind of disowned his father, ran off to a distant land, and spent his inheritance in riotous living.

The other one stayed at home.

And he tells these stories of these two prodigal sons, not one, but two prodigal sons.

And then if the word prodigal could mean extravagant, this prodigal father who comes out and runs to see and to receive the younger son who has returned home.

He sees him in the distance, we're told.

And the prodigal father runs to him and bears his legs, which he wouldn't do in that culture in that day and time, as he lifts up his robes to run.

He puts a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet, a robe on his back, and kills the fatted calf and has a party to receive his wayward son home.

Wow.

That's the kind of God though the God of the Bible is.

And because of what Christ has done, what we see is an incredibly kind and clear method of conviction for each and every one of us as well.

And it's foreshadowed here in this little old story here.

And we see with great clarity the story is told, and which is kind to me, and then with great clarity, we see Nathan say, You are the man.

And he applies it directly to David, in David's heart and David's misdeeds.

And that is really powerful.

Um, as well, I think it's really powerful to notice how David recognized justice and injustice.

I think we're wired for justice.

I think people who don't even believe in Jesus, don't even believe in God, have a sense of justice and injustice in this world.

Why?

Because we're all created in the image of God, and we bear that image, whether it's distorted or not, but that's deep inside of us, and we know there's something wrong out there.

And for now, David's in his darkest season, but he still, when he hears that story, he still has the capacity to see injustice and to get outraged at it, right?

And so he says, That man deserves to die.

He should pay that back four times.

And Nathan says, You're the man, and then he says, I have sinned against the Lord.

We have a love for justice.

That ought to say something to us, even though anybody in the room or listening by way of internet, even if you're not a believer, where does that come from?

Where why do you have a sense of justice?

I don't understand.

What's the basis for any kind of justice?

If all that exists is the physical world, if there is no God, if there's no moral lawgiver, what in the world gives you any right to say that something is right or something is wrong?

You'll not find this in a microscope, you'll not find this in the telescope.

The answer isn't there.

If there is no God, all things are permissible.

If there's no ultimate authority to whom we have to answer, everything is permissible.

And everything David did in chapter 11 is permissible.

But because there is a God, and we're told quite clearly that the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of God, we now have some standards that God has given us to measure something is just, something is unjust.

We now have an informed conscience, and that's good.

We need that.

Why?

Because my conscience will deceive me just like David's conscience deceived him in chapter throughout chapter 11.

With every move he made, he was lying to himself, trying to rationalize and justify his sinfulness.

And I did the same thing, and we do the same thing, and it's important for us to know God's wired us to love justice.

That ought to be a clue to all of us.

That there is something about God that we long for and hope for, that he will one day set all things right.

The third thing is the freedom of confession.

Um we've heard that, we've heard the phrase before, you know, confession is good for the soul.

All right?

And there's a reason for that.

Because there is a freedom to come into the place where you actually recognize your sinfulness.

Not sweep it under the rug, like I said earlier.

Not just hope everybody will understand.

They should just, they should be patient with me.

No, the burden isn't on them.

I need to go before God because all of my sins are sins against God.

Some of my sins are sins against people, but all of my sins are sins against God.

So I need to go before God with my confession.

And here we see with David this great freedom that he starts to realize and experience when he, as part of an honest, authentic repentance, he actually acknowledges his sin.

Doesn't sweep it under the road, doesn't try to explain it away, doesn't blame it on somebody else.

He owns it in a very simple, straightforward way.

I've sinned against the Lord.

I I don't know about you, but I feel I feel like we live in a day and time where everybody is blaming somebody else.

We know how to blame shift really well in this world.

It's always somebody else's fault.

It's never my fault.

It's never our fault.

It's never whoever's done some foolish thing or done some heinous thing.

It's never their fault.

We find some way to excuse bad behavior over and over again.

I think there's real freedom in confession.

I think confession is really good for the soul.

And I think it's the doorway to repentance and redemption.

And I love seeing it right here in chapter 12 so clearly, so boldly said, in a very simple kind of a way.

All our sins are against the Lord, as I said, some are against others.

You may need to confess something to God, you may need to go to somebody else and confess somebody that you've hurt or that you've done damage to or that you've abused in your position, your power that you have, your privileges.

You may need to do that.

Your sin may be against them as well, and you might need to go and do that.

But there is true freedom, make no mistake, there's true freedom in uh in confession.

Um it was said that Augustine, when he was close to death, the room that he was in, he asked them to write all six of the penitential psalms on the walls.

He wanted to go out repenting, just repenting for his sin.

Really beautiful story.

Don't know if it's you know 100% right or not, but it is the way I want to go out.

All of life is repentance, said Martin Luther.

I think he's right.

I think we don't spend enough time with that.

We're programmed all the time to blame shift and to blame it on others.

And the one little place that you might hear that that's not the way to deal with it is is going to be in your Bible.

And the Holy Spirit speaking to you.

So let's indeed pay attention to the scriptures.

Forgiveness, number four, doesn't necessarily mean avoiding all temporal consequences, but it does open the door for redemption.

You see, God's rebuke does not simply pass over or sweep away or excuse David's sin.

It is forgiven, that's true, but some very real troublesome consequences attend.

A price will be paid.

The collateral damage would bring deep cuts to David's heart and soul.

Bathsheba, Uriah, all the soldiers standing next to Uriah.

Joab, his leader, failed right in front of him.

And it sh it taught Joab something.

See.

He saw something, and it probably mimicked some of what he learned.

See.

Um this leader should have been leading righteously.

Instead, he was leading from his palace, he wasn't participating, and he had withdrawn.

We we don't even hear of him inquiring of the Lord anymore.

And so he now is going through this very shocking experience as a result of some of his own choices.

And we all are like that.

We want a predictable justice for others, but when it gets right down to it, we prefer a surprising grace for ourselves.

Good news: present and full forgiveness is available through faith in Christ.

But full and complete restoration is the promise of a future and coming kingdom.

As Dale Ralph says again, Yahweh forgives the guilt of sin but inflicts the consequences of sin.

He cleanses sin's defilement, but may continue its discipline.

Yahweh's forgiveness was both marvelous and costly.

There are some of us who know this paradox of forgiveness that is both free and costly, because a son of David has been our substitute.

And I hope that's you today.

I hope you're the one that knows the redemption that Christ has brought here to this world for us.

As we will enter the Advent season, we will we will we will read the stories, we will hear about how the world lay in darkness.

Because as John's gospel tells us, the world actually preferred darkness to light.

And that's my story until Christ came.

See?

That's my story.

I love darkness rather than light until he changed my affections, until he transformed my heart, until he transforms your heart.

What happens is we're slaves to our greatest loves.

And if our greatest love is to satisfy self, to put self first, to take from others that which is not ours, to be dismissive of God, to completely detach from God and try to run our own lives, then we're gonna pay a price.

His likeness will soon fade from our hearts.

And we don't want that.

And so we're gonna we're gonna stir everybody up next week.

It's called Stir Up Sunday.

I'm excited.

We're gonna stir it up, okay?

And uh and and some church calendars, that's what they call it, stir up Sunday.

So we're gonna do that.

We're gonna take a look at one of the Psalms and stir you up, not just to you know answer some kind of Jesus cheer.

Give me a J! We're not doing that, that's not it.

It's not that.

It's not it's not just a Jesus pep rally, it's a redemption song that we're gonna sing.

And I'm I'm very much excited about that, and I hope you'll come and be a part of uh our study together.

Scripture has a high view of the sacredness of conscience, Stott said, but conscience is not infallible.

It needs to be taught.

That's why we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

Because our conscience, like David's, can justify all kinds of evil.

And we'll fall into the darkness that David fell into, doing evil in the sight of the Lord as well as damaging all those folks around David that he did.

And I look, we're all guilty of this in some different level.

You know, all kinds of different forms.

And that's why I'm so glad to be able to say, just like David, we can come to this God who has this pursuing grace that has been in pursuit of us.

We can turn to him, turn away from our sin.

It's called repentance.

We can turn to him in faith believing and receive this pursuing grace that he has sent for us.

While uh out of all of this comes the David was a songwriter, a lot of you know that.

And Psalm 32 and Psalm 51 are two of the penitential Psalms where he confesses his sin.

And I just thought it'd be great for us to read these.

Sometimes, I don't know about you, but sometimes I don't know the words, I don't, I don't know what to say, I don't know how to say it.

And it's so beautiful the way he's put it in Psalm 32 and 51.

These are excerpts.

Read aloud with me.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.

Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

Look how practical that part is.

When your conscience is healthy and alive, and you've done something to offend God or to offend another and sinned against someone, or certainly all sins are sins against God.

But when we're trying to sort of manipulate that and justify that, we roll it over and over and over again in our minds and our hearts, and our bones literally waste.

It has a physiological impact on us when we're trying to live under this burden of guilt and shame.

When what is on offer to us is a complete freedom of God's redeeming love, his forgiveness based on the finished work of Christ, not based on us being good southerners, but based on him and all that he's done.

Let's continue to read.

For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit away from me.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God.

You will not despise.

That last little bit is here's what God wants.

He doesn't just want you to bring another animal to the altar and you know, slit its throat and shed the blood and all that sort of thing, like they did in the ancient times.

He doesn't want you to just do something religious.

You know, doing some religious things is good.

I'm not saying it's not good.

I'm just saying that's not what saves us.

So showing up here on Sunday, being in this building on Sunday, that doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to McDonald's makes you a hamburger.

Okay?

And you've heard that's an old joke.

I get it.

But being here is about whether or not you're here, you're gathering with the people of God to worship God, to confess your sins to God, to receive his grace and his mercy anew, and be reminded of the word of redemption and of the gospel and to to respond to him in faith.

And see, that's that's what that's why we gather.

That's why we want to remind ourselves of all that stuff.

Sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, not a haughty, hypocritical spirit, not a religious rule-following spirit, but a broken.

I blew it this week multiple times.

I need God's redemption.

So do you.

And uh broken and contrary heart, oh God.

It's like a magnet to the Lord, you see.

Let me free you up.

Some of you think, oh, I've done that same thing so many times, he'll never forgive me.

Guess what?

Don't limit this God.

I want to invite you to believe in the God of the Bible, not just the God of your own imagination.

See, when you say that, what you're saying is that there are there are there's a certain number that God has in mind.

When I hit 150 times this same outburst of anger or this same bit of greed or this same bit of lust or whatever it is, when I hit 150, there's no way he could forgive me anymore.

No, no, no, no.

That's not the God of the Bible.

The God of the Bible in 1 John 1.9 says, if you will confess your sins, he is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and to cleanse you from, say it?

All unrighteousness.

See, that's the offer.

How do you respond?

How do I respond?

We should respond like David.

These are beautiful words.

I'll close with this thought from Brian Hedge's book on uh called Watchfulness.

If you haven't read this, I highly recommend it's a great, it's just a short read.

Really great book on the sort of one of the forgotten spiritual disciplines called Watchfulness.

He said, This is the only bomb for a wounded conscience, the only hope for a sinful soul.

This is the only way to deal with our hearts.

You must run to Christ.

And once you're there, at his feet, stay there.

For your only safety is found in him.

Amen?

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for your word.

May the good seed of your word take root and bear fruit in our hearts and minds today.

I pray for uh all of us, Lord, that we would hear the your call to us, um, the kindness of your conviction at work in our hearts.

We would we would bow before you, um, recognize our need of redemption.

Lord, give us the faith that leads to repentance.

Um, help us to get right with you, Lord, and thereby also return to our neighbors who we need to, and and set things right there as well.

Lord, work uh your work of redemption both in us and through us, we pray.

Uh, to the glory of your name.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen and amen.