2 Samuel 12:1-14

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. ¹⁴ Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.

At least nine months had passed between the events of 2 Samuel 11 and 2 Samuel 12. Before we think that this period was leisurely and easy for David, Psalm 32:3-4 reveals the turmoil of his own heart: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.” For nearly a year of his life, David had to live with the agony of covering his own sin. It is not possible for a true born-again child of God to sin and be happy in that sin for very long. Charles Spurgeon once said, “God does not allow His children to sin successfully.” 2 Samuel 11:27 ended with the bleak note that “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” Despite all that David had done, the Lord loved David and had a covenant with David. While David suffered for that year and would endure many severe consequences for his sin, 2 Samuel 12 shows that the Lord loved David and what made David “a man after His own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). Rather than leaving David to himself and giving him over to the way he had chosen, the Lord lovingly corrected and restored David by bringing him to humble brokenness and true repentance. In 2 Samuel 12:1-14, we see through Nathan’s confrontation of David and the Lord’s correction of David the answer that the Lord has provided for sin. In this passage, we see four things that we must accept if we are to understand God’s answer for sin in our lives.

First, we must consider that genuine love confronts us for sin. Proverbs 27:17 tells us, “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” In such a way was the prophet Nathan a friend to King David. When no one else that knew about what David done would do anything about it, Nathan came to the king with perhaps the most difficult task of his prophetic ministry. How hard must it have been to stand before the king who had just murdered a friend and faithful servant to cover his sin and confront him about that very sin. Most of the people that we consider “friends” in our lives are people who flatter us or tell us what we want to hear, but that is not a friend. Proverbs 27:5-6 tells us “Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” A “friend” (Hebrew ahev) in Scripture describes someone who loves us. The same root word is used to describe God’s loving correction (Proverbs 3:12). Nathan bore a risk in going to David with the truth. David could have had him killed just as he had Uriah killed. But Nathan, a faithful friend to David and an obedient prophet of the Lord, faithfully went to David and confronted him. His confrontation came in the form of a simple parable regarding a wealthy man with many flocks and herds who took and killed a poor man’s one little lamb to feed a stranger. When asked about what punishment the rich man deserved, David hypocritically declared that the man deserved to die and payback fourfold for the little lamb. In one moment of sobering rebuke, Nathan revealed that the parable was an illustration of what David had just done by declaring to David, “Thou art the man.” True love for another brings with it a willingness to confront sin. The New Testament is full of instructions to the body of Christ about confrontation, correction, and mutual accountability. In fact, Paul tells us that “the law of Christ” (love) is fulfilled in this matter (Galatians 6:1-3). Flattering someone or affirming someone in is just about the most hate filled thing a person can do, yet we sadly often regard this as being “loving.” Meanwhile, lives are destroyed, churches are divided, and Christians witness with little power or effectiveness all because we have substituted biblical love and grace that leads to deliverance from sin for a false kind of love that affirms people in their sin. True love confronts for us.

Second, we must remember that it is the Lord who convicts us of sin. The Spirit of God must have taken Nathan words and driven them directly into the heart of King David (Hebrews 4:12-13). Nathan proceeded to remind David of the manifold goodness of God in his life. God had taken him from the sheepfold and made him shepherd over His people. Yet, rather than being the shepherd the Lord had anointed to serve His people, David had taken the wife and life of one of his most loyal servants and put his sinful desires above the Lord’s people. God had blessed David in every way imaginable, but David had “despised the commandment of the Lord.” As we saw last week, David violated the entire second half of the ten commandments in sinning with Bathsheba and trying to cover his sin. A parallel phrase shows up in verse 10 and says that David had also “despised” the Lord Himself. The parallel in that they are essentially the same. To despise the Lord’s commands is to despise the Lord. In order to do all that he had done, David had to step across the boundaries that God had clearly drawn against such things in His Word. In so doing, David showed greater regard for himself than the Lord. The Word of God convicted David as guilty. It serves the same purpose in our lives today in that the Holy Spirit uses it to reveal and convict us of sin. The key to avoiding sin is to learn a lesson David learned and hide God’s Word in our hearts so that we may not sin against Him (Psalm 119:11).

Third, we must accept that there are consequences for sin. After convicting David of his sin, the Lord delivered some certain consequences that would come as a result of David’s sin. We often forget this are unwilling to accept this in our time, but we must always remember that sin has consequences. While those consequences can be severe at times for us as children of God, we must remember that they are always less than we deserve. The Bible promises us that “sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:15). God promised three essential consequences for David’s sin. First, the Lord told David that he would never know peace in his own household. This would be true. In just a short time, his oldest son Amnon would rape David’s daughter Tamar and then another of David’s sons named Absalom would kill Amnon. Absalom would lead an outright rebellion against his father and nearly take the entire kingdom from him and then another son named Adonijah would lead a rebellion near the end of David’s life and try to take the throne from the heir, Solomon. David would really never know lasting peace again in his own household. Second, was the specific event mentioned in verse 12 carried out by his son Absalom when he would lay with David’s concubines in public in broad daylight. This was an act of treasonous humiliation against David and, in some ways, mirrored what he had done with Bathsheba, only more public in nature. The final and most immediate consequence was levied in verse 14 and that was that the child that David and Bathsheba had conceived would die as a result of his sin. Sin can bring dire consequences and one of the marks of true repentance is a willingness to accept whatever those consequences may be (Psalm 51:4).

Lastly, we know that we must confess our sin. Rather than excusing or trying to hide or cover his sin any longer, David owned up to it before Nathan and the Lord. Psalm 51 records the extended prayer of repentance from the broken heart of David in which he acknowledged that his sin was ultimately against the Lord (Psalm 51:4). He entrusted himself to the mercy of God and trusted the Lord to do what was just and right. David knew that whatever punishment the Lord sent his way would be far less than he deserved because he knew the Lord to be merciful and gracious. The gracious promise came from Nathan in response to David’s confession saying, “The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.” Instead of David dying, his son would die essentially in his place. The significance of this beyond the horrible consequence of the death of the infant was that this foreshadowed the greater Son of David to come who would lay down His life for David’s and our sin. The basis on which God forgives sin is and has always been the death of Christ. Sin is not just overlooked or dismissed. It must be atoned for and David’s sin would be atoned for, not by that baby, but by His descendant to come. Christ would be “wounded for our transgressions” and “bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). Today, you and I have that sure promise that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Ultimately, the answer for sin is the Lord Jesus Christ. The child that would die as a result of David’s sin with Bathsheba would be a foreshadowing of the greater Son of David who would come and willingly lay down His life on a cross for David’s sin and ours. It was on that basis that the Lord forgave David’s sin and it is on that basis alone that the Lord forgives sin today. Christ paid the price for our sin and the blood of Jesus is God’s answer for sin. The only way that you and I are saved and forgiven today is to come to Christ by faith. In His love, the Lord has confronted us and convicted us of our sin, He has shown us the dreaded eternal consequences of our sin, and He calls us to confess our sin in faith. Thank the Lord that He has not left us to ourselves, but has sent a Nathan to us to point us to Christ where there are mercy, grace, salvation, and forgiveness. That is God’s Answer for sin and He has answered it once and for all.