Turn to 2 Samuel 11

We are in a series called Dave where we are looking at the life of David.  So today we are engaging in one of those low times in David's life: this scandalous sin of him and Bathsheba.  We are going to look at kind of the story in four different acts if you can imagine it in sort of a play. 

One of the things that is really hard to understand is that the story takes place after so much of David's life that we look at has been amazing or so God-saturated, he has been so humble or so worshipful.  He starts out this young boy who has been anointed by God and has this high point of military victory when he beats Goliath.  He spends years in the wilderness being formed by God and the Spirit of God, he enters into the centerpiece of the story when he is the king and the whole kingdom is under his reign.  During this time we see David placing God, if you will, in the center of the spiritual and political life of Israel. 

So much has gone on in these twenty years. 

We come to 2 Samuel 11 and David has been king for some time and the kingdom has been established at this point.  There are skirmishes and battles that rage up from time to time, but for the most part the kingdom is at peace and the kingdom is established.  And yet this is the time where his spiritual if gets the worst, where sin sort of takes this really tragic toll on David's life. 

One of things that you learn if you journey with Christ for very long is that it is much easier to start well than it is to finish well.  When we are younger and starting out we say to ourselves, "This is going to be great and we are going to figure this all out and then it will just be this coast for the rest my life.  Me and God and God and me just in this shekinah glory kind of thing." And then we look out at reality and we see David who is this kind of hero of the faith as we see in Hebrews 11, and we see friends and people who later on in life sort just abandon their faith and walk away from it. 

You look at it and wonder:  How does that happen?  I don't think that they planned on it back here when they said, "I am going to follow Jesus and walk in his dust and chase after him, but when I am 28, or 38 or 48 of 58 I am going to chuck it and go bankrupt."  That isn't intentionally laid out for them, but there is this slow drift that occurs. 

It isn't just a sin in the sense that it is a behavior but it is a sin in the sense of the root of sin. And when that goes on unnoticed and when we fail to pay attention to what is going on in the depths of our heart, we likely will be headed for something that is disastrous.  So as we look at the life of David, we aren't going to get four steps to quit sinning out of this message, but hopefully we will get some indications or what are we supposed to pay attention to, how does sin work? Where does it show up? And ultimately what do I do when I find myself in the midst of it?

That is where we pick up in 2 Samuel 11:1. This is the first Act of the story which is the sin of David. 

READ:              2 Samuel 11:1 - 19

Word gets back to David and Bathsheba morns for a week. David takes her as his wife.  It looks really clean and like he has pulled it off.  He did what he wanted to do.

ACT ONE: SIN

So Act 1 is this act of Sin, but what is really going on? When we look at this and I have heard it 100 different ways that his problem was lust and he is a sex addict and he has all these problems, but the truth is that his problem isn't sex.  It is a completely different sin.  Sex is just a manifestation of this different sin.  Murder is a manifestation of this different sin. The cover up is manifestation of this different sin.  They are all manifestations of some deeper or core rooted sin. 

The writer of this passage gives us a clue as to what the sin might be.  He uses this verb sent. To tell us what David's sin is. 

Examples:

• Verse 1:
• Verse 3:
• Verse 4:
• Verse 6:
• Verse 14:
• Verse 27:

David is playing God

Sent. Sent. Sent. What is going on here?  What is going on is that David is playing God.  At the core of David's sin he believes that he playing God.  He is acting like he is God.  Somewhere along the line this humble shepherd boy whose identity was this humble worshiper before the God who is in control, somewhere along the way, his identity slipped and he started to believe that this story was really all about him.    All these things had come about because of him.  It was about David. 

So David could send people.  If there is a problem, we can just send someone to kill the husband.  Not only does he think that he is god in that he can control the stuff in his life, but he also thinks that can control everybody else's lives.  This is always how sin works.

It really is a story that repeats itself all over the place.  Lying and murder and adultery and greed and lust.  There are only so many ways that we can get creative with this root sin that says that I can be like God and I can control my life and I can control other people.  And every time that we embrace that as our world view we are on the road to disaster, on the road to sin.

People always seem shocked when the come into my office and they confess something to me and its big.  If we were going to do that today and I would put it up on the screen in about ten minutes, that changes the room a little bit doesn't it?  We always think it is the biggest and darkest and the most crazy thing.  The truth is that after awhile we just see the same things going across the screen.  Oh yeah we saw that way.  There are only really about 4 - 5 ways that we can sin and they all come back to this root sin where I am trying to be God, or I am trying to control my life or I am trying to control someone else's life.  That is what the sin is.

Sometimes when people confess stuff to me, I think they want me to react shocked.  They almost want me to do "Wait, what did you do?  You got to be kidding me! I have never heard of that!  Could you write that on the board? I am going to hop onto my blog and tell people about this horrible thing." 

We don't want that but what we want to know is that this human journey that we are in has got to take into account this issue called sin.  We are so good at trying to reframe the story, so we look at stories by saying David is the bad guy in the story and Uriah is the good guy.  We look at the stories and say those are the moral people and those are the immoral people. 

SLIDE:  But the issue is that Jesus was not born on this earth and crucified on a cross and rose from the grave so that you could be good moral people! He died on the cross and rose from the dead so that you can be worshiping children of God, which is radically different from behavior modification.

It's getting to the root of the sin that says He is God and I am not and I am going to worship him.  When I fail to do that I am on the road to sin and it is going to show up somehow and someway. 

Sin always has a ripple effect.  It is never done in private.  We think that out sin is just between me and God or if it doesn't hurt anybody what is the big deal.  But it always hurts people.  For starters it hurts God because you have moved from a position of a worshiper to a competitor.  Now I am vying for a throne next to yours.  I am trying to play God and it is so obvious that we are not! But we don't know that, we seem to be blind to it.

The other thing is that when we are in the act of sin, we never feel like sinners.  We feel really, really good.  David felt like a king.  He was sending people here and there, making this order and that order.  That doesn't make him feel bad.  It was a great experience.  He felt like a lover.  This is the king's bed and you get to share it.  He's a lover and a poet and a artist.  This is a great thing for you.  He wasn't ashamed of it after all he had a thousand other wives out there.

When you sin it feels good, it feels god-like and that is why you do it: It feels god-like.  The problem is that it is absolute deception because David is only a king because God has allowed him to be one.  David is only a lover when he is giving himself away not when he is taking. So when he thinks he is a lover, he is actually a murder.  When he thinks he is being a king, he is actually being a demon. It is a radical reversal and a complete deception.  Sin always deceives us and so for that moment we think we are God-like and it really feels good, but it ends really bad.

So here he is in the wreckage of his sin, but he doesn't know it.  He doesn't really care.  In David's mind he has gotten away with it, which really is the saddest thing. There is such a difference between people who sin and come to the table and say that I have sinned, and people who have sinned and you have to convince them of it.  The difference is not that one is bad and one is good.  The difference is one is further down the road with losing connection with their heart and their God.  One is still in tuned with it enough to say, " What have I done?" and the other has been doing it long enough so that there is no "Oh my gosh" left.  Hopefully when we do sin, we are close enough to our hearts that we recognize that we were playing God and can say that is just evil and that we need to repent.

ACT TWO: CONVICTION

But when we move Act 2, we move to the Lord bringing conviction to David, making him aware of God again. In 2 Samuel 12:1 there is the greatest one liner if you are paying attention to the story.

READ:              2 Samuel 12:1

When God sends, it is something different.  David is sending here and there as if God was not in the building and thinking that he got away with it.  Here is the thing, God saw everything.  Sure the newspapers don't know about it and between him and Bathsheba it might have ended there, but in Heaven it was open scandal.  In heave it was on the big screen.  In the mind of God, David didn't fool anyone.

So God sends Nathan to bring conviction.  What conviction is "something from God enters into our life by the Holy Spirit to bring us to an awareness of God and sin."  Without that conviction we just keep going on playing God. 

God sends Nathan because he loves David.  He doesn't send Nathan to whop up on him, but he does it because I love him, I need to rebuke David, I need him to confess, and repent and be David again. I want him to be my worshiping king again.

I think sometimes when God convicts you of sin, you are like some many others who just misinterpret it thinking "God just doesn't like me".  That's just not true.  He convicts you of sin  because he loves you.  It is because he desires relationship with you.  It is because he knows that if you keep acting as if you are God, then your end will be destruction.

So he sends Nathan and Nathan is a great friend and a great pastor a great man to enter in to David's life.  Hopefully you will be able to be a Nathan to someone.  Now, not the kind of a Bible-thumping Nathan who really enjoys it way to much.  You know the type: they load up the Bible gun and shoot it at everybody. 

Nathan shows up and is strategic.  He shares a story to a man who thinks that he has been a king and a lover, so he helps David see his sin in a different context. 

READ:              2 Samuel 12:1 - 7

The truth is that you and I are the man.  We are the women. We are the ones who have sinned against God.  We have played God. We have tried to control our lives.  We have tried to control the lives of others.  And David all of a sudden is sent reeling when he suddenly realizes what he has been doing and that the gig is over.  To think that I was God or King or Lover, I am just humbled now.  I am just human.  I am the created. I am frail and I can't outsmart God and I can't scoot out of his sovereignty.

Nathan continues his rebuke.

READ:              2 Samuel 7b - 12

Now not only is there sin, but there is consequence.  Anytime we start to play God there are going to be consequences.  On this side of the cross, we have so cheapened our understanding of grace.  We think that if we sin, then God will forgive me and it's all cool.  It is cool.  You are forgiven and you can have relationship with God, God still loves you, but you will have consequence to your sin.  You commit adultery, it will affect your marriage, and it will affect your sons.  You get involves in certain things it will have ramifications and we can see that in David's story and I am sure some of you can testify to the same! 

The sad thing about David's story is that it never really recovers.  His sons all participate in these same types of sins. 

• Amnon à desires for his step sister and rapes her.
• Absolom gets angry and kills Amnon.  He sleeps with David's wives on top of the palace in front of all of Israel.

It makes you think twice and it is really the warning piece.  Anytime you start playing god, you have to remember that you can't deliver anything or anyone.  You can play God in the action, but you can't play God in the consequence. If you were God you could fix the consequence, but you aren't god and you can't fix it. 

So we all stand back with this warning that sin is bad that we want to avoid.  When I really come face to face with the fact that I am not God and my humility as a sinner comes to bear, I am ready to meet Jesus again. 

ACT THREE: REPENTANCE

In Act 2 God brings conviction.  In Act 3, David repents.  It is a very simple verse.

READ:             2 Samuel 12:13

It is really a simple statement.  He doesn't justify or back peddle.  He is aware of God and his own humanity.  He could have had a laundry list of people that he sinned against, but recognizes that his greatest sin is against God because he tried to play God. 

READ (IF TIME PERMITS):      Genesis 3:8 - 12 (Adam hides and blames)

What is great about God is that we get to hear the wrestling of his heart in Psalm 51.  Make these your words as God convicts you of sin.  Listen to the rawness of his words and authenticity.

READ:              Psalm 51:1 - 17

Learn from David how to confess, how to repent, how to embrace our own sin and lay it on your own heart. 

Can I encourage you to try something this week?  I know for some of you this may be a stretch, but how about as you wrestle with your own sin, write your own Psalm 51.    Let the real you get before God.  

READ:              2 Samuel 12:13b - 15

David morns and fasts hoping that God will relent and allow the baby to live, but the baby dies and Bathsheba and David later give birth to another son named Solomon.  In verse 29 we see David restored to David again.

He is David again. The humble, worshiping servant-king of Israel.  

So here are these Acts.

• ACT ONE:  We sin and we feel like we are god.
• ACT TWO: God brings conviction by his word, by his spirit into our lives.
• ACT THREE: Here we are given a choice as to whether we confess and repent and realize that he is God and we are not
• ACT FOUR:  And if we do we have this final act of restoration

God knew David would do this back when he anointed him as King.  God wasn't surprised that David was going to do this.  God wasn't happy.  God hates sin, but the end result was that God desired relationship with David.  You and I come to story finding ourselves in it because we are all David our own stories. 

But there is something beautiful in this Old Testament story that you have to look and listen closely to.  Throughout all of Scripture there are hints and shadows of Jesus. 

• Jesus is our innocent Uriah.  He is the victim who dies as a consequence of our sin. 
• But unlike Uriah who blindly goes into battle, Jesus comes willingly to the cross, and as the Father willingly backs away from him the son becomes sin and God pours his wrath out on him.
• So God can forgive David, because God left the sins that have David committed go unpunished so that he can punish all sins once and for all in Christ.

So when God convicts you and reminds you that you are not God, be very careful to pay attention to that. That that as an invitation to confess, to sing your song of repentance before God.  Receive mercy and restoration from God.