Israel’s great king, David, has sinned greatly, as we’ve seen in the previous two posts in this series here and here. But with some creatively devious evil thinking, he has covered his sin, and has just one more detail to care for. This is how the story continues in 2 Samuel 11, verses 26-27,
“When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.”
Done. David can breathe a sigh of relief. His lust, adultery, lies, deceit, drunkenness, and murder is all covered up tidily. Or is it? Here’s what the narrator writes in the last phrase of verse 27:
“But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.”
David may have covered it up, but God knew. God cared. God cared for David, Bathsheba, and Uriah. While it seems David’s heart has gone stone cold, that’s not acceptable to God. God is a God who cares deeply about our hearts. Our actions show what is in our hearts, and God has seen quite a lot of troubling sin from David. So God will not allow this horrible evil to stayed covered up.
As we continue into chapter 12, verse 1, we read that God sends Nathan to David. Nathan is a prophet. He doesn’t show up very much in the Bible, but he plays a major role in this episode. Nathan has a story for David, a parable. Look at verses 1-4,
“There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”
What a great story. So much emotion in its telling of greedy, cold-hearted injustice. But David thinks Nathan is reporting a true story, and as king, David goes into righteous action mode. Look at verses 5-6,
“David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”
David is incensed because the rich man in the story demonstrated a callous heart. Nathan looks David in the eye and says in verse 7, “You are the man!”
How long did it take David to realized, “Oh, Nathan’s parable is about me”? We don’t know because Nathan keeps talking, sharing with David a very cutting word from the Lord. Look at verse 7 again,
“Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’ “This is what the Lord says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’”
Whew. It’s all out there now. God knows the truth, as he always does, and God has directly told Nathan the truth about David. The cover-up is revealed. David is the man with numerous wives, power, position, wealth, and success. David is the man who wanted yet another woman, another man’s woman. David took what wasn’t his, committed evil, and thought he got away with it. Now the secret is out in the open.
In these moments, when there is no more hiding, no more running, no more lying, it is really anyone’s guess what will happen next. The guilt and shame feel massive at this point, and some people choose to end their lives. Some lash out against the bearer of truth. Some try to gaslight and blame everyone else for their bad behavior, as if it really wasn’t their fault.
David, though, takes a different approach. This is where I think the story of David’s sin relates to Psalm 32, which we began studying in this first post this week. I know that I have been saying that David, the man after God’s own heart, was demonstrating a stone cold heart, and he was. But I suspect there was another side to this story that we only hear about in what we already read in Psalm 32, the agony of carrying sin. The fear of getting caught. The heaviness of sin. The reality that we have hurt not only ourselves and our reputation, but our sin always, always, always hurts others.
What David says next shows us that his heart had not gone completely dead. It was still tender in there. Look at verse 32:
“Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die.”
And that’s what happened. David mourned and fasted and pleaded with God, but God did not intervene. The child died.
Now turn back to Psalm 32. David has been agonizing about his sin. Finally, he speaks up. See verse 5:
“Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.”
Our God is a forgiving God. We can confidently confess our sin to God because he is gracious, merciful and forgiving. We can confess to him because Jesus has won the victory over sin, death and the devil through his birth, life, death and resurrection. Our sin is already forgiven! So when we confess to him, we are receiving anew forgiveness that he has already bestowed on us in Christ.
Engaging Scripture 