II Sam. 11:

II Sam. 11:

1 And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem.

2 And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.

3 And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

4 And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house.

5 And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with child.

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

7 And when Uriah was come unto him, David demanded of him how Joab did, and how the people did, and how the war prospered.

8 And David said to Uriah, Go down to thy house, and wash thy feet. And Uriah departed out of the king's house, and there followed him a mess of meat from the king.

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

10 And when they had told David, saying, Uriah went not down unto his house, David said unto Uriah, Camest thou not from thy journey? why then didst thou not go down unto thine house?

11 And Uriah said unto David, The ark, and Israel, and Judah, abide in tents; and my lord Joab, and the servants of my lord, are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? as thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not do this thing.

12 And David said to Uriah, Tarry here to day also, and to morrow I will let thee depart. So Uriah abode in Jerusalem that day, and the morrow.

13 And when David had called him, he did eat and drink before him; and he made him drunk: and at even he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but went not down to his house.

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

15 And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die.

16 And it came to pass, when Joab observed the city, that he assigned Uriah unto a place where he knew that valiant men were.

17 And the men of the city went out, and fought with Joab: and there fell some of the people of the servants of David; and Uriah the Hittite died also.

18 Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the war;

19 And charged the messenger, saying, When thou hast made an end of telling the matters of the war unto the king,

20 And if so be that the king's wrath arise, and he say unto thee, Wherefore approached ye so nigh unto the city when ye did fight? knew ye not that they would shoot from the wall?

21 Who smote Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? did not a woman cast a piece of a millstone upon him from the wall, that he died in Thebez? why went ye nigh the wall? then say thou, Thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.

22 So the messenger went, and came and shewed David all that Joab had sent him for.

23 And the messenger said unto David, Surely the men prevailed against us, and came out unto us into the field, and we were upon them even unto the entering of the gate.

24 And the shooters shot from off the wall upon thy servants; and some of the king's servants be dead, and thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.

25 Then David said unto the messenger, Thus shalt thou say unto Joab, Let not this thing displease thee, for the sword devoureth one as well as another: make thy battle more strong against the city, and overthrow it: and encourage thou him.

26 And when the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband.

27 And when the mourning was past, David sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and bare him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

II Sam. 12:

And the Lord sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.

2 The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds:

3 But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.

4 And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.

5 And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die:

6 And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.

7 And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul;

8 And I gave thee thy master's house, and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.

9 Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.

10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.

11 Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.

12 For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.

13 And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.

There is much in this powerful prophecy by the prophet Nathan that I could get into, but for now I only want to focus on the part about David's confession of his sin. I want to make a point here today that is as simplistic as it can possibly be, but carries eternal weight. That point is about the power of forgiveness, and the simplicity of how to obtain it. The reason that Nathan told David that he would not die is because David was worthy of death three times according to the very law of God that he lived by and trusted in. He was worthy of death for taking his neighbor's wife in adultery, and he was worthy of death again for having Uriah put to death unjustly. He was also worthy of death because he pronounced death on the guilty man in Nathan's story, and he was the man. David did a WHOLE LOT wrong in this circumstance, along with the adultery and the killing of Uriah. He shamed Bathsheba, who was left without much choice about being involved in the matter. He entertained her husband in his presence, and entreated him well while knowing he had done this to his wife, and to him. He forced Joab to put one of his most valiant and trusted men of war in a position where he had virtually no possibility of survival. Then he married Bathsheba, and proceeded to sit on the whole rotten egg for several months. But all the while David had one thing going for him, and that was that he was truly a man after God's own heart, even as the Lord had said spoken of him (I Sam. 15:28; Acts 13:22). So am I saying that David was a man after God's heart even while entrenched in all of this scandal and wickedness? Yes I am, and I will tell you how I know that. When Nathan confronted David with the story about the selfish rich man who took the poor man's lamb, David was angry at the rich man and pronounced the judgment of death on him. When Nathan delivered the shocking rebuke of, "Thou art the man," David had but one response, and it wasn't something he took any time to get to: "I have sinned against the Lord." There it is, the evidence that David's heart was still honest and true, in spite of the damage he had done to that heart by all of his great misdeeds.

David instinctively knew that there was only one way of dealing with this calamitous word against him from the Lord. Agree with it. Agree with it fast, and agree with it with all the heart. He agreed with that word with his heart, and he agreed with it with his mouth. But his instinctive knowledge of how to go about this matter was not just about getting himself out of trouble, but rather his instinct was that he was not happy at all with the burden of these things remaining on his heart for months; and his instinct was that he loved God more than he loved his own life, though he did not demonstrate that with the misdeeds he had committed. He DID however demonstrate it with his confession, knowing he was worthy of death. I am persuaded that everything David did about the situation after he had committed the adultery, was done with the best motivation possible under the circumstances. He was obviously overtaken with a fleshly weakness upon unexpectedly seeing this ridiculously beautiful woman taking a bath, and he basically just 'lost it.' He also had the power and the means to take her for himself, and that demon of lust compelled him to do just that. That's not an excuse for his sin, but nonetheless it is what happened. There is no excuse for such a thing in fact. Ever. For anyone. That is why adultery was punishable by death in the law. But the overall point I'm wanting to make is that what David did upon being confronted about his sin, is the ONLY thing any of us can do if we have sinned in any way to any extent. The Bible is very, very clear on how to be forgiven, as a believer who has erred in something: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us" (I Jn. 1:8-10). The truth of the matter is in verse 9, but I want to say something about verses 8 and 10 as well, because these verses have been vastly misunderstood by many to mean that we all have sin as born again believers in Christ. That is NOT what those verses mean in fact.

This passage is talking about how to get rid of guiltiness IF we have sinned. If we have sinned, and we say that we have not, then we are doing exactly the opposite of what David did, and exactly the opposite of what verse 9 here tells us to do. That is simply what verses 8 and 10 are saying, and the very next verses afterward confirm that: "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye SIN NOT. And IF any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (I Jn. 2:1,2). But if we have sinned, all we can do to obtain forgiveness is what David did; which is to say that we agree with the conviction of our conscience and of the holy Ghost, and confess that agreement to the Lord. And we do it with the intention of not repeating the sin. In that case we are as forgiven as we can be, and we need to move forward with God as being clean and new in his sight. Nothing more and nothing less than this will get us anywhere with God as far as being forgiven and having a clean slate. There are no 'works' that anyone can do to obtain forgiveness, as Jesus Christ has already done all of the work that could be done, and has paid a price sufficient to forgive every sin that has been committed by everyone in the history of the world, and then some. We in fact have a much larger scale of forgiveness available to us than David did, because Christ had not yet died for his sins. Nonetheless the mercy of God for the honest and repentant was sure in his time as well. Because of the magnitude of the cross of Christ, and the totality of the price Jesus paid there, there is no such thing as 'going to far' to be able to be redeemed, or be redeemed again. The only way to cross that line is to completely omit faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus from our hearts after we have believed and obtained forgiveness by the new birth experience. Only in that case is the saying fulfilled which says, "there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins" (Heb. 10:26). As long as we actually believe that Jesus is who he is, we can be forgiven by the same means that David was forgiven for so much, so long ago, in a moment's time. More so in fact. So once again it is such a joy to present the simplicity and beauty of the Gospel of Christ to all who believe.