2 Samuel Series - Week 10: Sin Tornado

  From late July into late August of 1883, a series of tornado families swept through the southeastern potions of Minnesota. In this month of destruction, the first two tornado’s, one being an F4 killed four people. One month to the day later, another series of tornado’s landed in the Rochester area. The first landed and did some destruction. It swept through the area, hitting 40 farms, completely destroying 10 of them. An hour later, two tornados, with one being a massive category F5, swept through the northern part of Rochester, and in about five minutes, destroyed 135 homes, and damaged another 200. In the end 37 people died and over 200 were injured. An hour and half later, another tornado touched down, killing one more person, and injuring another 19.

The series of tornados carved a 10 mile wide path of destruction, and is considered one of the most devastating tornados to ever hit Minnesota at the time. But that’s what tornados do. They don’t attack certain people, they move, indiscriminately through an area, destroying whatever’s in their path.

And its this idea of indiscriminate destruction that brings us back to our series in Second Samuel, where we’ll be picking it back up in Chapter 12, verse 15. And as we open up to Second Samuel 12:15, let’s look back on the last few weeks.

As we entered into the second section of Second Samuel, we started seeing the dark days of David rise up. From his point of being on top of the world, his eyes lingered and led him to adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. Through David’s sin, we talked about how, God uses extreme language to call us away from sin, so that we understand that sin is not something to play with. If David would have listened to God’s word, then things might have turned out differently.

David’s coverup of his sin led God to send Nathan to confront the king. Through an allegorical parable, David condemned his own sin by rightly judging the sin of another. When the sin was revealed, Nathan told David of God’s judgment upon his house. From this interaction, we walked away with the understanding that, God will not allow sin in our lives to go unpunished, and will expose sin publicly if necessary. Instead, God is calling us to a life of confession, repentance and cleansing.

Finally, we looked at David’s repentant Psalm 51. Through this psalm, David shows us that confession does not try to sugar coat the sin. It also shows us that repentance is seeking God’s cleansing, not just saying we’re sorry. We walked away from last week with the understanding that, God is calling us to a Psalm 51 attitude of confession, repentance and cleansing so that we would bring right sacrifices to him. Because only when we are right with God, can we bring a right sacrifice of our lives to him.

With these things back in our minds, we can look to the next part of the story as David’s sin begins to affect the people around him. Let’s read Second Samuel 12:15-23.

15 Then Nathan went to his house. And the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah's wife bore to David, and he became sick. 16 David therefore sought God on behalf of the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. 17 And the elders of his house stood beside him, to raise him from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. 18 On the seventh day the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, “Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spoke to him, and he did not listen to us. How then can we say to him the child is dead? He may do himself some harm.” 19 But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David understood that the child was dead. And David said to his servants, “Is the child dead?” They said, “He is dead.” 20 Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes. And he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. He then went to his own house. And when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate. 21 Then his servants said to him, “What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive; but when the child died, you arose and ate food.” 22 He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ 23 But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”

From Nathan’s confrontation of David, the story moves straight into divine judgment. The word, “afflicted,” is used numerous times in the Old Testament in connection to God’s act of judgment upon a person. The most notable of these divine judgments is against Egypt, where God instructs Moses to tell Pharaoh that he will “plague” Egypt (Ex. 8:2). So there is no mistake that the consequence of the child’s affliction comes from divine punishment of David’s sin.

Because of this divine punishment, we must stop and ask the question, why would God afflict a child for the sins of the parent? We might even go to Ezekiel 18:20, where God states, “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.” In fact the whole chapter os Ezekiel 18 is about how a person’s sins will only be judged to them and no one else. So why is God holding David’s sin upon a child?

We need to remember a few things here: First, Israel is under covenant with God. National covenants are a trickle down agreement. As the king goes, so does the nation. The child’s affliction comes through the actions of the father. Within the covenant, God states in places likes Deuteronomy 5:9, “… for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” Judgment within the covenantal frame work can affect those who did not sin. However, if a person repents, God restores. Yet, in this case, David’s sin has already infected multiple people, and so God has to deal with it on a larger scale. This shows us how devastating our sins can be for others. Children are affected by their parents’ sins all the time. They will feel the affects and be under the same judgments as those in authority over them. It’s a hard reality, but sin isn’t a game, and we need to realize how much our personal sins can destroy others.

Secondly, a concept arise from this passage called, the age of accountability. Within theology, there is this idea that a child, or even an adult who does not have the ability, or who has yet to come to an understanding of good and evil, is not judge by God to eternal separation. In other words, every child who dies before they are able to understand good and evil, and every person who is mentally unable to understand the concept, are seen as righteous in God’s eyes. This concept comes from David’s words at the end of the passage, that, “… I shall go to him, but he will not return to me. (v.23)” David has an understanding that the child is with God, and when David dies, he will be reunited with his child in eternity. 

Another verse that supports this idea is Deuteronomy 1:39, which reads, “And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it.” In this passage, God did not hold the sin of the parents which kept them from the promise land against their children, because the children did not understand the difference between good and evil. 

So even though David’s child was afflicted through divine judgment because of David’s sin, it did not receive an eternal punishment, but rather entered into God’s presence when it died. John Lenox, a Christian mathematician and apologist was asked about the suffering of children and his response was that, “God will compensate” that child for the suffering it has endured. That answer reminds me of Paul’s words in First Corinthians 2:9, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” Any person who dies before they understand good and evil, will not face the wrath of God. This is because Jesus’ payment on the cross, covers them in their position of not being able to understand good and evil, and they are ushered into the great presence of God, which is greater than any amount of suffering in this life. So even though David’s child suffered because of David’s sin, that child experienced a greater prize than any of us could imagine.

Yet, though God is gracious towards those who do not understand good and evil, it is the affects of sin that is the focal point of the passage. David’s sin is what caused the child to be afflicted and die. The weight of the pain falls upon David as the cause of death. His lustful eyes led to the death of Uriah and several unknown soldiers, and now his own flesh and blood. And this is a core teaching throughout the Bible that God wants us to understand: There is no personal sin, all sin affects the world around us. This is clearly seen in what God says to Adam in Genesis 3:17, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you …”

God created us as interconnected beings, whose actions affect the world around us. When we understand that our sin can affect those around us, it puts the burden of consequences back on to us, where it should be. 

Through the death of David’s child, he realized these deeper truths that God shows us. Psalm 32 is considered to be the Psalm David wrote after Psalm 51. In it he writes, 

“1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
     whose sin is covered.

2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
     and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

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

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

5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
     and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
    and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

6 Therefore let everyone who is godly
     offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
     they shall not reach him.

7 You are a hiding place for me;
     you preserve me from trouble;
     you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah

8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
     I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
     which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
     or it will not stay near you.

10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
     but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.

11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous,
     and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

Psalm 32 is a recognition of God’s love even for the sinner, and how God’s people need to call out with rejoicing because of God’s love for us. David accepts the blame of his sin, and see that God is good even in the judgments of that sin.

My challenge for you this week, as we did in the previous one, is to recite Psalm 32 everyday. Take time in the morning and read it out loud and thank him that, though we have sinned, he has forgiven that sin through Christ Jesus. We are only forgiven, because he placed our sin on Jesus. And because of that saving work, his steadfast love surrounds us even though our sin has effected so much. God brings good even out of our most heinous sin, which is what we will talk about next. 

But for now, let us be a people who recognize that without the Lord, we would be tornados destroying the lives of others. But through Jesus, the twisters of our lives can see good things happen through them. Amen

2 Samuel Series - Week 9: Psalm 51 Attitude

  If you’re any type of student of history, then the horrors of World War II are etched into your mind. Millions of civilians and soldiers killed. Whole countries decimated. Families torn apart, and we’re still feeling the effects today of decisions made then. One of the stories that came out of World War II was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, where Jews resisted the Nazi’s transportation to gas chambers. In the Polish Ghetto, ruffly 56,000 Jewish people died. But as the Nazi came in, the people fought back. It need up being the single largest Jewish revolt in WW II, and led the Polish resistance to begin supporting the Jewish people. 

After the war in 1970, West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, was in Warsaw to sign a border treaty with Poland. He visited the monument to the Ghetto Uprising, and laid a wreath. All of a sudden, he fell to his knees in silence. Afterwards he was asked why he did it and he said, “At the abyss of German history and under the weight of millions of murdered people, I did what humans do when speech fails them.” Brandt’s gesture was a sign of repentance for all that the German people had done to the world. That same year he was named Time’s Person of the Year, and a year later he would receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in reconciling West Germany with it’s eastern neighbors.

And it’s this idea of the act of reconciliation that brings us back to our summer series, where we’ll be looking at David’s response to the prophet Nathan over the sin of Bathsheba and Uriah. Today, we’ll be focusing on Psalm 51. As we open up to Psalm 51, let’s look back at what got us here. 

As we began section two of the Book of Second Samuel, we talked about how David was on top of the world. Everything God had promised, everything that we, as the reader, had been waiting for, finally happened. David was king, the people were at peace, and the surrounding nations had been subjugated. 

However, it was at this moment that David let his guard completely down. This gave his sin an opportunity to begin the destruction of all that had been hard fought to achieve. David allowed his lustful desire for Bathsheba to lead to adultery, and then to murder. This sin, unbeknownst to David at the time, would eventually lead to major strife in his home, the death of his sons, the defilement of his daughter, and the destruction of his nation. As we walked away from that week, we talked about how, God is calling us away from all sin, with extreme language, so that we understand that sin is not something to play with.

Then, even though David tried to conceal his sin, God could see the whole thing. He sent the prophet Nathan to confront David over his sin. The prophet does this by telling David a parable, where the twist was, it was an allegory of David’s own insatiable thirst. David condemned himself by acknowledging that the rich man in the story must give recompense for his sins. It was then, that God revealed the judgment that was upon David, and the king finally realized what his sin was about to unleash. From this, we walked away with the understanding that, God will not allow sin in our lives to go unpunished, and will expose sin publicly if necessary. Instead, God calls us to live lives of confession, repentance, and cleansing.

But, to David’s credit, when he was called out by Nathan as the man who had sinned, David’s response was, “I have sinned against the Lord. ( 2 Sam. 15:13)” And from this initial confession, David writes Psalm 51. Let’s read it now. 

1 To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

Have mercy on me, O God,
     according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
     and cleanse me from my sin!

3 For I know my transgressions,
     and my sin is ever before me.

4 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.

5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
     and in sin did my mother conceive me.

6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
     and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
     wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
     let the bones that you have broken rejoice.

9 Hide your face from my sins,
     and blot out all my iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
     and renew a right spirit within me.

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

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
     and uphold me with a willing spirit.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
     and sinners will return to you.

14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
     O God of my salvation,
     and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

15 O Lord, open my lips,
     and my mouth will declare your praise.

16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
     you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
     a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
     build up the walls of Jerusalem;

19 then will you delight in right sacrifices,
     in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
     then bulls will be offered on your altar.

v.1-5 - As I read through David’s confession, repentance and seeking cleanings, I see three parts to it. In the first five verses, David is no longer hiding his sin. He fully accepts it. He opens by throwing himself upon the mercy of God. He’s crying out for the mercy and steadfast love of God to be poured out on him. David recognizes that only God can wash him from sin. That he couldn’t hide that sin. And here, in verse 3 we learn that even though David had tried to cover his sin up, even though he had tried to try to no longer remember it and trick himself into acknowledging it, he had been struggling with it. He tells God that, “… my sin is ever before me.” He couldn’t outrun it or hide it. The sin was there, it never went away, because the only person who can get rid of sin, is God. So all David’s hiding ended up failing.

Then David says something interesting, “Against you, you only, have I sinned …(v.4)” and we should shout at David, “No you sinned against yourself, your wives, your children, your people, against Bathsheba, Uriah, and the other soldiers.” David has sinned against so many people. But we must understand that David isn’t dodging here, he’s going before the judge who is the Convictor of sin. And this word that David uses, is the Hebrew word, bad (bahd) which combines both the physical sense of being separated from something, and a theological idea of being set apart. In the context of Psalm 51, David’s sin sits before God for judgement. God is the only one who judges clearly and without prejudice. So before God David’s sits in sin. It is only the God of Israel who can truly judge what the king of Israel has done. And because of this, God’s judgment is justified and blameless.

It is in verse 5 that David then says something interesting, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” This has two interpretations: First, that David was born in an adulterous or an abusive sexual manner; this could be why David is left out of Jesse’s original presentation of his sons to Samuel, or why he is relegated to the fields. The second is that all people are sinners, therefore David is conceived in a world of sin, as we all are. However, the first interpretation fails because David is connected directly to Ruth through Jesse, and there is no other indication that he was adopted. So the second interpretation is the more likely one. Just like all of us, David’s life has been surrounded by sin from his conception to the day he embrace sin’s allure. 

v.6-15 - It’s then, after his confession of sin in verses 1-5, that David turns his attention on God for cleansing. This is combined with David’s plea that his desires change as well. David tells God, that he knows the Lord delights in truth, so he wants that truth in his heart. To bring this truth in, he must be cleansed of falsities. So David calls on God to “Purge me with hyssop … (v.7),” which is a small plant that was used in cleansing rituals.

David realizes that in his present state, he is joyless and he is broken. He desires God to turn his face from David’s sin to blot them out so that a new heart and a right spirit might be placed in him. David doesn’t want to be cast away or have the Holy Spirit removed from him like it was removed from Saul. David seeks to have a restored and willing spirit within himself.

And when God does these things, David will teach others about the restoration of God’s mercy and he will sing about it to the world.

v.16-19 - David ends his Psalm with a focus on what God desires of his people. Not simply sacrifices of animals, but hearts that desire him. David recognizes that God isn’t after a bunch of animals going to the slaughter, but rather that his people would seek him with their hearts. Because when the people of God desire him with their hearts, the acts of sacrifice are then given meaning. Our sacrifices should flow, not to earn salvation, but in response to salvation being bestowed upon us.

And this is where David ends his Psalm, on a triumphal focus on bringing a great sacrifice to God that is propelled to do so by a restored heart.

Samuel once told Saul, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. (1 Sam 15:22)”

It was Jesus who said, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. (John 4:23-24)”

Paul would later write, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom. 12:1-2)”

Our heart condition is the first thing God is interested in. Sacrifices are only acceptable when the heart of a person worships the Lord in spirit and truth. When are hearts are being cleansed by his work, then the sacrifices of our lives become acceptable to him. Yet, while we are in rebellion, we cannot please God.

From Psalm 51, we can see what confession, repentance and seeking cleansing looks like. Confession is not holding back our sin, but recognizing that God is right in judging it. Repentance is crying out to God, not just saying sorry, but desiring a change in that area of sin. Seeking cleansing follows on the heals of repentance, because we are to no longer live in the state we were before. And so we seek God to cleanse us of all sin, not just the ones that get us into trouble.

The Lord is calling us to have a Psalm 51 attitude. That when sin is revealed in our lives, we do not hide, but lay it all out. We are to be people who accept God’s judgment of our sin, and we must be willing to have it cleansed from us. When we walk in this attitude, sin is put in its place. The believer lives in a place where they recognize sin only has the power we let it have. Because Jesus has full authority over us, sin has no power in the believer’s life. 

My challenge then for you is to recite, not merely read, Psalm 51 this week. If in the midst of that recitation, God brings to mind sin that has not been confessed, then stop and confess that sin before moving on. Once it has been confessed, repented and cleansing sought, resume the recitation until all nineteen verses are said daily. 

God is calling us to be confessors, repentant and seekers of cleansing. So let us take the example of David when it is the right example, and call out to God with a Psalm 51 attitude. Amen.

2 Samuel Series - Week 8: Renewal, Not Displeasure

  We divide our time working with the youth in Quartzsite into different sets. The first set were those teens who were under the youth pastor before we got here. When we first got here, the youth group was in disarray. The youth pastor had been fired for several reasons, and the intern when we arrived was about to head out. I was told by the teens that they had teen leaders that would help out with the youth group. Developing young leaders is something I believe is important and so, if they wanted to stay on as leaders, I had them fill out an application. Then Marika and I interviewed them and told them what we expected of them. There were six leaders in that first batch, three girls, and three guys.

However, my style of leadership was very different than the previous youth pastor’s. His leadership was taking the teens out to meals and treating them differently from the other teens. My form was to make them work. They had to clean up after the teens, scrub throw up off the ground. Basically do all the nasty parts of youth ministry. The reason for this was so that they would learned that if they wanted to be the leader, they had to serve. The people we elevate to leadership, should be the ones who are our greatest servants. 

I also held them to a higher standard than the rest of the teens. The average teen who came into the youth group, might smell of smoke, or cuss, or say inappropriate things. But the leaders had to be different. They should be seeking to be examples of Christ both at church and at school. They were to seek to live holy lives up and above their peers. And that’s were we ran into our first problem.

One day, after picking up teens for youth group, one of the girl leaders was sitting in the front row with one of her friends, gossiping and bashing one of the other girls in youth group. After we arrived at the church, I asked her to stay as the other teens were getting off. With Marika there, I confronted her about being a leader and how it wasn’t okay to gossip and bash other teens. That ended up being her last day in youth group. She never came back. She had agreed to the standard that we had for all of our teen leaders, but chose to break that standard. And when confronted, she decided to leave the youth group entirely. 

Being confronted with our sin isn’t something that’s fun, but our response shows where we stand with God. And it’s confrontation that brings us back to our sermon series in the book of Second Samuel, where we’ll be picking it back up in Chapter 12, starting in verse 1. As we pick up our text in Second Samuel 12:1, let’s look back on where we are so far.

Last week we began the second section of Second Samuel, the section we’re calling the Dark Days of David. These dark days began with David’s sin of lust. He stayed behind, while his troops went out to battle. While there, his eyes lingered on a woman, Bathsheba, taking a bath. From there, he slept with her, she became pregnant, and David tried to cover it up by having her husband come home from war to sleep with her. But her husband, Uriah, was seeking to live righteously before the God of Israel, and he chose not to lie with his wife. Because David couldn’t cover his sin this way, he conspired with a wicked man, Joab, and sent Uriah to the frontlines of battle to be killed. After this, David took the women to be his wife. This whole situation displeased God, and today, we’re going to see the confrontation of that displeasure. 

We walked away from last week with the understanding that, God is calling us away from all sin, with extreme language, so that we understand that sin is not something to play with.

With this fresh in our minds, we can turn to Second Samuel 12, starting in verse 1.

12 And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had very many flocks and herds, 3 but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. 4 Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” 5 Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, 6 and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”

7 Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. 8 And I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. 9 Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ 

11 Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 12 For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’” 13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.” 15 Then Nathan went to his house.

Today, we’re only zeroing in on the confrontation between David and Nathan. This is the same Nathan that earlier we saw give leeway to David in building the temple, just to come back and reveal that God hadn’t intended that task for David. 

From these fourteen and a half verses, I’ve divided them into four parts. This first part is the parable. Nathan describes a situation where an rich man has everything, and a poor man has very little. The ewe lamb is a baby sheep. The closeness of the sheep to its poor master is revealed in the fact that it eats from his hand and lays in his arms. The terminology here reveals that the lamb sleeps upon the master. It’s even described as being, “… like a daughter to him. (v.3)”

For us, the parable is obvious, because we know the behind the scenes situation. David is the rich man with the many lambs, or wives, while the poor man is Uriah, with his one wife. We could sit here and wonder, how David doesn’t know Nathan is talking about him? But this is what sin does to us. When we have justified our unrighteous actions to ourselves, and then are confronted with the obvious problem we have created, it goes right over our head. We’ve convinced ourselves that we’re not in the wrong, so we cannot not see, even the obvious.

This leads into the second part, David rages against the rich man. As David listens, detached from the issue because of the justification of his own sin, David sees the sin of another and is rightly mad. David is right, the rich man has committed sin. He has all that he needs, but there’s still a desire for more. This is what sin does. It always wants a little more. David’s is right that the poor man should be give four times what he lost as compensation, which is a command given by God in Exodus 22:1, where it states, “If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.”

But in part 3, the parable comes home when Nathan states, “You are the man! (v.7)” Nathan brings the parable home to David. The rich man is not some guy out there, whom David can judge from his palace, but the king himself. David can see clearly that the rich man has sinned, yet he cannot see that he himself has sinned. On top of this, David knows what the punishment for such an act is, yet cannot see the need for his own punishment. David has cut himself off from the consequences of his own sin, justifying it in his own mind, though he knows the word of God. This is why Nathan tells him, “Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? (v.9)”

David knows aspects of God’s word, but he glosses over the parts that would pertain to him, because he wants to be justified in what he has done wrong. 

But God won’t let David’s sin slide, and in part four of the interaction, Nathan reveals God’s judgment on David. Though, God will not punish David directly with death, David’s kingdom will be affected. The child that was born from this sinful union will die. The house that was to be established will face turmoil from within. David will sit and watch as his sin germinates and destroys the people around him. And the words of God, “For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun … (v.12)” reveal that what David tried to cover up, God will make known to everyone. And the judgment will be seen by the whole nation.

And though David comes to a realization that he sinned, it’s too late, judgment has been passed. David will see all the good that God has done, begin to crumble. It’s almost a worse punishment to not be directly punished. But rather to see the people around you be hurt because of your disobedience.

This is a simple lesson, God will not allow sin in our lives to go unpunished. People see other people doing wicked things, and will say things like, ‘Why doesn’t God do something about that?’ He is. On May 27th, 2026, Pastor Treva Edwards and his wife were indicted on sex trafficking and forced labor charges. Bishop Jerry Maynard Sr. and two of his children are being sued because they were committing pharmaceutical fraud. Back in November 2024, a youth leader was arrested for child pornography. There are thousands of cases that God has and is revealing, because God will bring evil to light. 

I’ve shared before, that at my first intern position as a youth leader, there was a lady music leader who would say almost very week, “Your sins will find you out.” After Marika and I moved from the area, we were told by one of the congregants that she ran off with the pastor. Your sins will find you out, because God won’t allow them to be hidden in the dark. Especially if you claim to be following him. 

So what are we to do? How can we avoid being publicly embarrassed by our sin. First, we need to take Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:1-5, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.”

We begin by simply taking ourselves before the Lord daily to have him reveal the sin in our lives, confess it, repent of it, and seek him to cleans us from it. All the while being very slow to cast judgment on others until we have a thorough time before the Lord searching us. We cannot be like David who was quick to judge another’s action, when he himself was steeped in his own sin. Next week we’re going to see how David responds to this with his Psalm 51, but for us today, we are being called to a simple step: We go before the Lord with a desire to be shown where we fall short. We cannot hide it, because either we face it now with God, or God will have us face it with the whole world. God is calling us to be truthful with our sin, and willing to have it dealt with. 

So my challenge for you this week is simple, for one week, ever time you see the sin of another person, ask “Lord, am I doing that?” If you are, confess, repent, and seek the Holy Spirit to work in you to overcome that sin. Instead of judging other people because of their sin, let us seek the Lord to reveal what we have justified in ourselves that he is displeased with.

Let us be a people who seek the Lord’s renewal and don’t justified what displeases our Savior. Amen.