2 Samuel 11

As you know, we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

We have some extra copies.

If you didn't happen to bring one with you and you'd like one to follow along, uh just raise your hand up real high.

Somebody will uh find you and and bring one your way so that you can follow along in the text, this ancient uh library of 66 books, a variety of styles of literature, poetry, historical narrative, letters, uh, all kinds of different uh literature.

And we're in the middle of uh historical narrative uh book that we call uh 2 Samuel, and we're calling our study of it the story of unlikely redemption.

God continues to surprise us with uh the people that he chooses, the people that he uses, and as he's unfolding his redemption story down through history, uh 2 Samuel, of course, is rich in a bit of uh uh that kind of surprise, that kind of uh beauty, if you will.

As with all of our Bible studies, I want to remind us that we're not necessarily here to be taught something novel or new, but to be reminded of things that are uh really important that we must never forget.

The kinds of things that on an ongoing basis I personally need to be reminded of, perhaps you as well on any given uh Sunday that we gather together.

Uh for those of you who may be familiar with chapter 11 of 2 Samuel, and you would just like something extra to do, so that as you're paying attention, you know, you're able to sort of dial in and you don't sort of let that familiarity breed some kind of indifference.

Look for how many times the verb sent shows up.

I'll try to emphasize it as I read.

I think it's a clue to the meaning of the chapter and uh and what we'll find here.

This is certainly uh one of the darkest points in David's life.

Uh we just sang about uh how our sins they are many, his mercy is more.

Uh but here's a God that welcomes the weakest, the vilest, the poor.

Um and I don't know where you're at in that that little trio today, uh, but I'm in and out of that trio all the time, and and and David certainly is as well, and and you may identify with some aspect of that.

I think we'll see the weak, the vile, and the poor in this chapter uh as we study through.

It happened in the spring, verse one says, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah.

Rabbah was a city that they had left untaken in the last battle that we read about.

And then the narrator of 2 Samuel says this, which I think is interesting.

It's a word of contrast.

But David stayed at Jerusalem.

It was the time when kings and nations go to battle.

But the narrator says, But David didn't do that.

He stayed at Jerusalem.

Now when evening came, David arose from his bed.

He walked around on the roof in the king's house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful in appearance.

So David sent and inquired about the woman.

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

And David sent messengers and took her.

And when she came to him, he lay with her.

And when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.

And the woman conceived.

A lot of time passes here.

The woman conceived, and she sent and told David and said, I am pregnant.

Two words in the Hebrew, three in my English Bible.

I don't know how many it is in yours, but it's I'm pregnant, basically.

The only two words that Bathsheba says.

In the whole thing here.

David sent to Joab saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite.

So Joab sent Uriah to David.

Uriah, we find out the chronicler in First and Second Chronicles tells us is one of David's mighty men, one of the 30 mighty men.

David knew this man personally.

This was no stranger to him.

And yet he took his friend's wife.

So Joab sent Uriah to David.

Uriah came to him.

David asked concerning the welfare of Joab.

How could he do?

You know, this enters right into a conversation.

How's Joab doing?

How are the people?

How the state of the war?

David said to Uriah, go down to your house and wash your feet.

Some Bible commentators actually say that that wash your feet is not just about his feet, but it's actually a kind of another way of saying, lie with your wife.

Be with your wife.

David knows Bathsheba's pregnant, but Uriah doesn't, supposedly.

So you go down and sleep with your wife.

Uriah went out of the king's house, and a present from the king was sent out after him.

Unusual bit of live body detail.

I have no clue what it was.

I think in our day and time it would be a bottle of wine and a candle and a romantic music C D in hopes that something brilliant would happen in the home.

So he sent the gift.

And Uriah, though, it says in verse 9, and this is a real, you know, sort of a pivot point, because it says, But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his Lord and did not go down to his house.

Now when they told David, when they told David this, saying, Uriah did not go down to his house, David said to Uriah, Have you not come from a journey?

Why did you not go down to your house?

What's wrong with you?

You know, essentially.

Uriah said to David, The ark.

And Israel, this is the ark of the Lord, and Israel and Judah, in other words, the men in the armies of Israel, are staying in temporary shelter.

They're in tents out in the field.

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

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

By your life and by the life of your soul, I will not do this thing.

In solidarity with those who are really, really paying a heavy price for being among the children of God and the people of God out in the battle.

Out of solidarity, Uriah, who didn't stay in Jerusalem, Uriah, who went with the soldiers but was called back by David, isn't going to take that moment to break his solidarity with his brothers.

If they can't eat at home, if they can't be at home with their wives, he's not going to do that either.

And his integrity, which I think is brilliant in verse 11 here, his integrity is only overshadowed by the darkness of David's duplicity.

David says to Uriah, Stay here today also.

And tomorrow.

So he's a sort of a torn a little bit.

You know, it's the king that brought him back.

It's the king that wanted to report on how things were going out there, and seems strange to Uriah, I'm sure.

Why would he ask me these questions?

Here, go down, spend the night at your house.

I can't do that.

He's just, his heart is with uh his calling, and his calling is to be with his brothers.

And if they can't rest, he's not going to rest.

But here David says, one more day.

And David called him, verse 13 says, and he ate and drank before him, that is at the king's table, and he made him drunk.

David made him drunk, and in the evening he went out to lie on his bed with his Lord's servants, but he did not go down to his house.

The point is, David attempted to maybe if I get a little bit of booze, maybe I get a little get him, you know, ginned up with alcohol, perhaps then he'll go to his house.

And the matter will be in some way concealed that this one his wife is pregnant.

Maybe he'll lie with his wife, and everyone will think it's his child.

Verse 14, it came about in the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.

And he had written in the letter saying this, place Uriah, he's writing to Joab.

David says, Place Uriah, who's carrying the letter, by the way.

He's carrying his own death warrant.

Place Uriah in the front line of the fiercest battle and withdraw from him, so that he may be struck down and die.

Can you imagine that David could even pen those words?

How dark does a soul get?

So it was as Joab kept watch on the city that he put Uriah at the place where he knew there were valiant men, the tough place of battle.

And the men of the city went out and fought against Joab, so that's the Ammonites coming out to fight against Joab, and some of the people among David's servants fell, and Uriah the Hittite also died.

Then Joab sent and reported to David all the events of the war, and he charged the messenger, saying, When you have finished telling all the events of the war to the king, and if it happens that the king's wrath rises, and he says to you, Why did you go so near to the city to fight?

Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall?

Who struck down Abimelech?

He's reaching back in history a little bit here, the son of Jerubasheth.

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

Why did you go so near to the wall?

Then you shall say, if that happens, you shall say, Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.

Joab knows that will be music to David's ears.

To hear that Uriah is dead.

So the messenger departed and came and reported to David all that Joab had sent him to tell.

And the messenger said to David, The men prevailed against us and came out against us in the field, but we pressed them as far as the entrance to the gate.

Moreover, the archers shot at your servants from the wall.

So some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead.

David said to the messenger, Thus you shall say to Joab, Do not let this thing displease you, for the sword devours one as well as another.

Make your battle against the city stronger.

Overthrow it, and so encourage him.

Encourage Joab, in other words.

And David's essentially saying, Joab, I got your message.

I understand what you said.

Now take the city, finish the job, and in the great story of victory that you'll bring back, no one will even notice this little event that happened.

When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband, was dead, she mourned for her husband.

When the time of mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife.

And she bore him a son.

And then, in a really unusual move, the narrator, whoever the narrator is at this point in 2 Samuel, not sure who it is, because it's not Samuel.

Samuel, his death is recorded in 1 Samuel 25, so it's not Samuel writing this.

Might be Nathan the prophet, might be Gad the prophet, don't know who.

But in an unusual move, this has not happened often, the narrator typically is just doing reportage, just giving the facts of what happened.

But in an unusual move on the narrator's part, the narrator narrator is now going to give a moral and spiritual assessment of what he just wrote.

And he says this but the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.

And uh we close that out.

The chapter breaks in our Bibles put in somewhere along the 12th century, the verse breaks somewhere along the 15th, 16th century, right in there.

So the scroll just keeps on going.

The ancient writer would have continued to say, one more cent.

Kidnapping, rape, murder, adultery, lying.

I got away with it all.

I covered it up.

I got away with it all.

But the narrator says what David did was evil in the sight of the Lord, and then there's one more scent, which we'll get to next week, and I'm gonna read it anyway this week because I just have to.

And the Lord sent Nathan to David, Nathan the prophet.

The Lord sent Nathan.

It's as if at the end of 11, you know, David's doing all the sending, he's got all the power.

Joab's got some power.

The only power Bathsheba has is to send and say, I'm pregnant.

Everybody else is sending.

And they've got all the power, and they're people are just doing whatever they want them to do.

But there's much here for us to learn.

Um let me just, if you didn't catch them, verse one, David sent Joab and the army to finish off the Ammonites.

Verse 3, David sent to inquire about the woman.

Verse 5, Bathsheba sent, uh, or excuse me, verse 4, David sent to have the woman taken.

Verse 5, Bathsheba sent news of her pregnancy.

Verse 6, three times the word sent.

David sent a message to Joab.

He says, Send me Uriah.

Joab sent Uriah to David.

Verse 8, the royal gift was sent after Uriah.

Look at how thought out and detailed this manipulation is.

Verse 14, David sent a letter to Joab by Uriah, effectively carrying his own death warrant, as I said.

Verse 18, Joab sent messengers with news of how things had gone.

Verse 22, this sent news confirms that David's treachery had been accomplished.

Verse 27, finally, David sent for Bathsheba to take her as his wife.

In our own day and time, the voices of a thousand modern minds, after that last verse, verse 27, but the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord, the voices of a thousand modern minds would say, Who are you to tell me what's evil?

Who are you to tell me what's wrong?

Who do you think you are?

And yet the narrator of 2 Samuel just steps right out there and goes, And the thing that David, this thing that David had done, he was evil in the sight of the Lord.

It's unequivocal, it's not ambiguous, it's very clear.

And I like that.

I like our Bibles are like a mirror held up for us to be able to look in to see uh exactly what we're doing, where we stand, how we're messing up, how we're the weakest, the vile, and the poor.

Yet the Bible continues to tell the story.

It's as if we're looking at a mirror, and across the top of the mirror rolls this scroll of text that reminds us that he welcomes the weakest, the vile, and the poor.

Including David.

Including me, including the weakest, Bathsheba or her baby.

Including the poorest among us, those with no position, those with no power, those who are simply answering orders like Uriah.

And he welcomes us and he offers us redemption, and I need that just as much as anybody else.

I'm eager to get to chapter 12, as you might imagine.

It will be uh uh a fascinatingly rich, full full of grace uh Sunday.

Next week, I hope you'll come back.

Um but there's so many lessons we can learn from chapter 11 here as well.

It overflows with human passion, it overflows with tension and treachery, mayhem manipulation.

Um there are lessons of wise warnings, there are lessons that are reality checks, there are lessons that are examples to avoid.

There's a positive example as well, verse 11, with with Uriah and his commitment, his dedication, his integrity stands in such stark contrast to David's duplicity.

So, what do we learn here?

I'm gonna give you three things, and and uh, and then we're gonna lean in the direction of chapter 12 here uh uh as we set ourselves up for next week.

But first, complacency leads to vulnerability, for sure.

Uh our vulnerability to temptation, enticement, and sin.

Idle time is often the devil's playground.

We must not allow glance to turn into a gaze.

Um complacency leads to vulnerability.

The author made something of the fact that it was the time that kings go to war and made something of the fact that David didn't go to war.

Kings go to war.

He's not really acting like a king then, is he?

That's the inference of verse one.

He should have been leading.

Would that have prevented him from lusting after another woman and committing adultery?

No, no, that's in his heart.

What's missing in the story of David at this point as we've moved from 2 Samuel into the middle of 2 Samuel is here's what we're not hearing anymore.

And David inquired of the Lord.

We used to be hearing that a lot.

In 1 Samuel chapter 13, we heard that David was kind of uh, it's inferred that he would be the next king, and that God was looking for a man after God's own heart.

1 Samuel 13 · chapter mention

And so David gets called that throughout Scripture.

He's a man after God's own heart.

Well, in chapter 11, David is a man after David's own heart.

David is following his strongest passions.

What happened to him in his complacency, lounging around while everybody else was off doing the work?

What happened to him is a glance turned into a gaze, turned into an action.

And because he had the power and the authority, he the verb, the verbs really do tell the story, don't they?

David saw, David sent, David took, David lay with her.

The verbs are there.

That tells the whole story, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Now, um, the glance that turns into a gaze.

I, you know, he doesn't have some of what we've got in our own day and time.

I mean, I don't know if you guys haven't noticed, but you can't drive down Hillsborough Road through Green Hills without there being some kind of a commercial, some kind of a billboard or some kind of an ad that is very suggestive, essentially, okay?

I mean, I don't know how many of you have bought cars before.

I've bought cars before, and they never come with a woman on the hood.

And yet the billboards keep having women on the hoods of cars, you know?

Uh and so we're just pummeled all the time with uh glances.

Uh the question is, do they turn into gazes?

You know, when do they turn into gazes?

And for all of us, we need to be asking that question.

Um complacency leads to vulnerability.

That's true.

Um, um he noticed she was beautiful, nothing wrong there.

Okay, beauty is a good thing.

Uh as Matt Pearson always says, he's teaching over at the other campus, but he's he's the one I always quoted on this one.

He goes, man, the first look is free, and on the second look, the meter's running.

That's the way Matt puts it.

You know, I think he's right.

It's on the second look, the meter starts to run now.

And you're starting to sacrifice your integrity through vulnerability and complacency for not having control or exercising self-control when you ought to exercise self-control.

Now, it's not just, by the way, lust is not just about sexuality.

There are many ways to lust.

We can lust for power, we can lust for control, we can lust to be the center of attention in the conversation.

Is your conversation always about you?

Do you ever ask, how are you doing?

How can I help?

How can I serve?

Or is it always about what you get or didn't get?

See, David's part of David's problem was everybody else was going off to do the work that he probably should have been doing and should have been involved in.

And boredom led to complacency, led to this vulnerability, led to this glance that turned into this gaze that turned into this seeing and sending and taking and all of that.

And one thing falls like a domino just after another.

And it's interesting to at least watch, and I think it's important for us to watch.

Some of us would hear a story like this and go, that's not me, I don't have that problem.

You know, and I would say, you know, in this particular moment, uh, you might not have that problem.

Um, but uh the apostle Paul put it beautifully.

I'll throw it up on the screen for you.

I love this.

Therefore, let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

The Apostle Paul, you know, who used to be Saul, uh who used to be given to all kinds.

Of violence against the church and all that sort of thing.

And God transformed him.

And he's the Apostle Paul, and he's smart enough to know that if you think you're going to stand, if you're proud, you're self-confident in a way, over-self-confident, take heed, because you might fall.

I like some of you and I read G.K.

Chesterton a bunch, and I love Chesterton's comment about falling.

He says there's a thousand angles at which a man can fall, and only one at which a man can stand.

Where are you standing?

What are you standing on?

What's drawing your attention?

What's drawing your affections away from the Lord or away from the things that God would be pleased with in his sight?

So that verse 27b isn't your story all the time over and over and over and over again that the thing you did or the thing I did was displeasing in his sight.

It's important for us.

It goes all the way back to Genesis as well.

If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?

If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.

It is a desire it's for you.

You must master it.

When we were in Sunday school as kids, did any of you ever have that?

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.

Watch your words, for they become actions.

Watch your actions, they become habits.

Watch your habits, they become character.

Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

And the entire thing is just about watchfulness.

Something we've lost sight of.

It's so important, I think.

One of the lost spiritual disciplines, I read a book, Kim and I have, and some of our staff have.

I highly recommend this book to you.

Hedges does a great job.

It's called Watchfulness.

It's about that long-forgotten spiritual discipline.

He says to go through the motions is to read scripture without applying it to your life, to sing the hymns in church with little love for Jesus, to mutter cold prayers with a heart far from God.

To cherish a secret sin is to persist in a deliberate pattern of ongoing disobedience, despite the warnings of conscience, the Holy Spirit, and the Word.

See, all three of those will warn you if you are listening while pretending at the same time to others that everything is okay.

That's the way of us in the South, isn't it?

How you doing?

Oh, fine.

Come to church, carry a 97-pound Bible.

Make sure you got that big Bible and that big Cheshire cat smile.

How you doing?

Praise the Lord.

Hallelujah.

Good.

Everything fine?

Yeah, no, perfect, man.

Everything's good with me.

And we just pretend.

And we what happens is we learn to pretend and pretend and pretend.

And what we're doing is lying to ourselves, lying to others.

And I don't mean we should walk in here and everybody start going, oh man, life is horrible for me.

I'm just to see if we can top one another with our stories of wretchedness.

I'm not talking about that.

But I'm talking about being watchful.

And I think this is a good thing for us from chapter 11.

David had many opportunities to not have verse 27 be, you know, the thing which he did was displeasing the son of that.

What were the opportunities you said?

How could it have happened?

Well, the same steps that led up to the roof led down from the roof.

The glance might not have turned into a gaze, it might turn into an about face, and it walked down the steps.

Could have.

When the inquiry about that beautiful woman is answered by someone saying, Well, she's the daughter of Elam, Eliam, rather, and she's the wife of Uriah, that should have been the end of the story.

David surely knew the Ten Commandments because he broke four of them in this chapter alone.

Discuss over lunch.

But he breaks four of them over lunch.

You know, he really does in this one chapter.

At least four.

You could maybe argue for five.

But he certainly knew it was wrong to take another man's wife, and that it would be displeasing in the sight of the Lord.

His son, Solomon, writes about 3,000 of these things we call Proverbs.

And one of his Proverbs, which I love, is so beautiful here, it says, Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.

Okay, so here's what you can't say.

Nobody told me.

Yeah, you've been told.

I've been told now.

I've been told over and over again.

Every time I open that book, I've been told.

And reminded.

Not of something I hadn't heard before.

Again, you come to church, this is what you're going to get.

Reminded of the things that matter.

Why?

Because we forget the things that matter.

And all day long we're hearing voices telling us, hey, you should put yourself at the center.

If you just don't get caught, that's all that matters.

Obey the 11th commandment, thou shalt not get caught.

Well, that's not really the 11th commandment.

There is no 11th commandment, okay?

Even though out there they might tell you, as long as you don't get caught, it's okay.

No, no, no, no, no.

If a thing is wrong, it's wrong.

If it's displeasing in the sight of the Lord is the measure of whether it's wrong or not.

Not, is it displeasing in the sight of culture?

Not is it displeasing in my personal preference list?

Because I got a ton of personal preferences.

And they don't include some of you guys in the way you drive.

My personal preferences?

I mean, just try to order pizza with a group of people that you think you know in the office or something like that.

You're going to learn everybody's got personal preferences.

You know?

And it's sometimes hard to order pizza.

Much less to get along in life, much less to live in a culture like this where the acrimony is flowing.

The river of rancor itself is drowning people and enraging people.

Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow springs of life.

Jesus himself addressed this issue too.

He said, That which proceeds out of the man is that which defiles the man.

For from within, not from without, but from within, out of the heart of men proceeded evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit sensuality.

Did he just read what we just read about in chapter 11?

Because that whole list is there in chapter 11.

All of that stuff.

Deceit, lying, murder, adultery, fornication.

That is, somebody who isn't married sleeping with another person.

Those are real words.

They really, you know, it's Jesus is making it real clear, right?

Wickedness and as well as deceit sensuality, evil slander, pride, and foolishness.

Listen, if you aren't on that list, it's just because you're kind of got your head buried in the sand.

I'm on that list.

We're all on that list, at least the last item on the list.

Right?

Because if you don't think you're one of the other items on the list, you're definitely the last item on the list.

It's pretty simple.

It's the fool who says, I ain't on that list.

We're all on that list.

We're all potentially with one kind of just one little moment where we decide, you know, I'm just gonna, you guys take care of it, I'm gonna relax a little.

And in our sort of kicking back and not taking things seriously, in our complacency, it leads to a vulnerability that is likely to ruin us in some way or someone else.

Secondly, nothing we do in private is ever merely private.

That's just a little proverb, uh, if you would like, if you if you want to call it that.

Um, there's no such thing as private affair.

Uh, there are no purely private sins.

I'm gonna argue for that today.

You may not agree with me, but I'm gonna argue for that.

Every sin separates us from God, every sin separates us from other persons, other people, some especially that we say we love, every sin separates us even from our true selves.

The true you, the flourishing soul that God wants you to be, with a clear conscience.

It's my sin that separates me from myself in that regard.

It's my sin, my flirtation with temptation that leads to my participation in sin.

Um, that's what separates me from myself, separates me from others, separates me even from God.

Um 2 Samuel 11, the collateral damage of David's sin affected Bathsheba.

The collateral damage of David's sin uh affected Uriah, affected Joab.

I mean, listen to this.

His number, Joab's uh David's nephew and his the commander of his armies.

What is Joab learning from the king, from the leader in chapter 11?

That it's okay to take, to see to take, to want, it doesn't matter.

Absolute power corrupts, absolutely, in this particular case, it has done so, and he's acting out on it.

And Joab is learning that, and Joab's also learning how to cover things up.

What an awful thing for David to be teaching and modeling for Joab.

So the collateral damage of David's sin, this is no private affair here, folks.

Bathsheba's life is ruined.

Joab's life is at least twisted.

Uriah dies, but what of the baby?

What of the other 15 or 16 men that died at the wall that Joab pushed Uriah up to, and the archers came and shot.

What of them?

You see the havoc that's created by this private affair or this attempt at hiding up, covering up this whole thing?

And all of us sitting in this room, we've all got friends, and some of us may have, some people in this room or watching online may even themselves have been involved in the kind of stuff that they thought was a private affair, but yet it had a horrible impact on other people's lives.

I I know that all of us have made some choices that either, even if it's just on a minor level, ruin someone's day or really hurt someone's feelings.

Are we even aware of the fact that our actions that we think might just be private, it's just not going to hurt anybody?

You know?

And listen, if any of you fellas are drawn in by pornography, and it's mostly to the males, I I get it.

Do you realize every time you put a coin in the machine of that industry, and it's a multi-billion dollar industry, every time you put a coin in that machine of that industry, you're financing some of some some of the at least some of the aspects of human trafficking.

Do you understand that?

When David was said, that that beautiful woman on taking the bath on that porch or in that courtyard, whatever, she's the daughter of Eliam.

It should have been enough.

Right there.

That's someone else's daughter.

And it's the wife of Uriah the Hittite.

Oh, David should have registered.

He's one of my mighty men.

He's one of my very best elite soldiers.

That should have been enough.

Nothing we ever do in private is merely private.

And it's important for us to know that.

I think it's really important for us to know that.

What is done in private will eventually be brought into the light because it was displeasing in the sight of the Lord.

And because chapter 12, verse 1 says, and then the Lord sent Nathan, a prophet.

And I'm getting ahead of myself, please forgive me.

But I'm very excited to talk to you about redemption, you see.

But you have to be able to talk about this part before we get to that part.

Why?

Because my sins, they are many.

His mercy.

Yeah.

So chapter 12 is his mercy is more, but we gotta get there first.

We gotta be able to deal with what matters in God's sight before we get to the other side.

Um I love the way Beth Moore said this on Twitter the other day.

There's an enormous difference between privacy and secrecy.

We all have a right to some individual privacy.

Our private lives can still fully function in the light.

Secrecy, on the other hand, is where we hide in the dark.

It's where the duplicitous us thrives.

The duplicitous us.

How exhausting it must have been for David to kind of connive this whole thing and work this, manipulate this whole deal and do this cover-up.

Even back in his time, without emails, without Twitter, without social media, without everybody commenting on everything.

Still hard for him to figure that out, you know.

But to live a duplicitous life, to live a lie, means you have to tell another lie and another lie and another lie.

And then you've got to manipulate all kinds of circumstances, and you're hurting all kinds of people all of a sudden, not just one, and certainly it's not just a private affair.

Nothing that we think is done in private is ever merely private.

Thirdly, finally, God may remain silent.

This is such good news, but God is never absent or idle.

This is really good news.

The fact that verse one is, and then the Lord sent.

After all this sending has been done, here's the Lord, and he sent his prophet.

And that's the that's that's like sending the doctor.

You know?

We got a problem.

We need a proper diagnosis.

Um, and then we need a proper sort of plan for how to deal with that thing, right?

Whatever that is.

And I love it that God is silent.

Matter of fact, not mentioned at all in chapter 11 until we get to verse 27b, where what is said about God is what God said about what was done.

And God said it was displeasing in his sight.

Martin Luther King Jr., some of you know this quote.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?

Expediency asks the question, is it polite?

Or politic, rather.

Vanity asks the question, is it popular?

Conscience asks the question, is it right?

We need to ask that last question more often.

We need to nurture a healthy conscience.

It's a gift from God.

Um C.

S.

Lewis said uh somewhere every time we make a moral choice, we make we it's like making a mark on our soul, on our conscience, that conscience part of our soul.

But the part that speaks to us and said, that's displeasing in the sight of the Lord.

That God-given capacity to discern right from wrong, even though all the voices out there are telling you, it's up to you, it's up to the individual.

Sleep with whoever you want to sleep with, take whoever you want to take.

Do whatever you want to do, recreate yours, all that stuff, and putting the heaviest weight and and and a weight that you can't bear on me and on you.

It's a weight we cannot bear.

The weight is the weight of glory, the weight is the weight of the last word, the weight is discerning what's right and wrong.

We can't do that on our own.

We need the Holy Spirit.

We need God's word.

We need the work of the encouragement of brothers and sisters in the community like this, where people will work for reconciliation and restoration together.

Remind each other of the redeeming power of our God.

That he welcomes the weakest, the vilest, and the poor among us.

And that though our sins are many, and his mercy is more.

That's a powerful message for all of us.

I'm so glad that we got to sing that song, Stutt, who's one of my favorites, as you know.

He said, a guilty conscience is a great blessing.

I love the way he said that.

A guilty conscience is a great blessing?

Yeah, if it drives us to come home.

Where's home?

It's not home to I swept it all under the rug and now no one's gonna find out.

That would have been a horrible ending to this story.

I reframed it in pop psychology terms.

It's not really me being wrong and making a wrong choice.

It's some filling in some void in my life, and so I needed to do that, and so therefore, I could justify and rationalize this whole thing.

Even though, look at the wake of collateral damage.

It's as if people just deny that when they start reframing it in terms of some kind of you know psychological uh massage that I needed for the moment.

No, I've done wrong things, and the best way to deal with them is for, as we sang earlier, for the blood of Christ to be applied to my sin and to your sin.

In other words, forgiveness.

What a beautiful thing.

Um that's the best way to deal with my sin and with your sin.

We must lay all of our cover-ups before the one who was lifted up so that we might be gathered up in his arms of forgiveness.

All our cover-ups were exposed and expunged when the Savior was lifted up on the cross.

Someone here may say, I am guilty, I cannot bear the shame of acknowledging my sins on top of it.

And I want to say to you lovingly, that's exactly what you're gonna have to do.

If you want to get out of the weight of that guilt and shame, which I think you really do, because I've been there too.

And I think you want to be out from the weight of that guilt and shame.

And it will not work for you to just sweep it under the rug.

It the first step is turning around.

This is called repentance in the Bible.

It's it's it means basically a twofold turn.

We turn away from our sin and selfishness and we turn toward God and his redeeming mercy, his grace.

Away from and to.

Sometimes I've got to say goodbye to people, props, places that lead me away from God.

And I don't know what they are for you, only you know that.

But sometimes I've got to turn away from those because they lead me away from God, and I've got to turn toward God.

It's a double turning, if you will.

It's not just turning away from them, it's actually turning toward God, who's rich in mercy, who sends his word of redemption through his prophet in the next chapter as we'll read Nathan.

David saw, David lusted.

David was carried away by his lust.

David's immediate response was coveting, taking, abusing, murdering, following up with deception and cover-up.

But afterwards, after, and I'm just giving you a little hint about what's next week.

Afterwards, there is an honest remorse and a humble repentance.

And we're gonna joyfully join David in repenting for our sins because we know the outcome.

That is, God is willing.

He's lavished us with his grace and mercy in Christ.

Some of you know this old hymn.

I'll just say a couple lines, and if you know it, jump in.

Come, thou fount of every blessing.

Tune my heart to sing thy grace.

Streams of mercy never never ceasing.

Call for songs of loudest praise.

There's an unverified legend about that hymn.

Um, whether it's true or not, I cannot say.

But it's a fascinating little story that the guy who wrote it, Robert Robinson, late in the 18th century, found himself riding in a stagecoach with a young woman he did not know.

And evidently to pass the time, she began to hum this same hymn, not knowing who he was, sitting right there across from her in the stagecoach.

Um, she began to say something about, evidently, about how this was one of her favorite hymns.

It brought her much comfort.

He replied, supposedly, madam, I'm the poor, unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I'd give a thousand worlds if I had them to enjoy those same feelings that I had back then.

And it said, the legend is that she responded by telling him, Sir, the streams of mercy continue to flow.

Streams of mercy never ceasing, yeah, continue to flow.

And I don't know where you're at with the Lord today.

I have no clue.

I don't know how many of you are flirting over and over again with a with a with a glance that's turned into a glaze.

Could be in so many different categories of our lives.

But why not turn to him?

He loves you that much, he loves me that much that he sent his son to die for you, to die for me on a cross.

Knowing full well what fools we are, how much we flirt with sin and temptation, how much we have been weakened and abused, that's true, some of us.

At the same time, knowing that many of us have been vile in the vilest of ways.

Knowing all of that, he still sent his son.

And knowing that all of us are impoverished spiritually.

We got nothing when it comes to a conversation with the holy God, the Almighty God, I got nothing to offer, nothing to bring to the table.

But he brings it all.

He sent his son to die for me, to die for you.

Why wouldn't we turn to him in our time of great need as we realize our great need of his redemption?

Let's pray, Lord, thank you for who you are.

Your kindness in the midst of our foolishness is humbling and um uh shocking in some ways, surprising in so many ways.

And I look forward to next week as we uh unfold the way that you responded to all of this darkness in David's life.

Uh realizing the great king that David was, we really need his greater son, the greater king Jesus in our lives.

Because he could actually take our sin from us to the cross, pay the price for it, so it's not just ignored or swept under the rug, but actually the price paid.

Uh, and that we could be free, we could be forgiven because your mercy is more.

And even though we are prone to wonder, Lord, draw us back to yourself, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.