King David No.8 Sin - the only cure

Thank you. of God and King, and crowned with glory, we praise our God and King, and crowned, with glory, we Hittite also died. David said to the messenger, say this to Joab, don't be upset about this.

The sword kills everyone the same. Make a stronger attack against the city and capture it. Encourage Joab with these words.

When Bathsheba heard that her husband was dead, she cried for him. After she finished her time of sadness, David sent servants to bring her to his house. She became David's wife and gave birth to his son.

The Lord did not like what David had done. The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to David, he said, there were two men in a city.

One was rich, but the other was poor. The rich man had many sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little female lamb he had bought. The poor man fed the lamb and it grew up with him and his children.

It shared his food and drank from his cup and slept in his arms. The lamb was like a daughter to him. Then a traveler stopped to visit the rich man.

The rich man wanted to feed the traveler, but he didn't want to take one of his own sheep or cattle. Instead, he took the lamb from the poor man and cooked it for his visitor. David became very angry at the rich man.

He said to Nathan, as surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this should die. He must pay for the lamb four times for doing such a thing. He had no mercy.

And Nathan said to David, you are the man. So the Bible tells it really as it is. I mean, cosmetic surgery didn't exist in those days.

And we're glad that when we come to the words of Holy Scripture, we find a book that we can identify with because it's not been doctored, it's not been censored. It's well known that Cromwell, when he was being painted, because in those days there were no cameras, told the artist to put it on canvas as he really was. What's and all, and that's how the Bible tells it.

What's and all. David's a remarkable man. He lived yes to year and yet there's a sense in which because of the fulsome narrative we get from Scripture and the common denominator between his circumstances and ours, it's as though we know him.

And not that knowing David would really be of great help to you if you only were aware of him and not of one of his greatest relatives. And that is our beloved Lord Jesus. For if you make a pedigree of our Lord Jesus, that is if you look at his ancestral tree, then you find yourself going back eventually to a man named David.

That's why David, or our Lord Jesus, is referred to as great David's greater son. What happens when you blow it? I use the word, it's a colloquial expression. You know what I mean? I mean there is a sense in which this world is in the condition it is in because we've messed it up.

Collectively, corporately, individually. You've made your contribution, I've made mine. Now in the face of that, what does God do? David, in a mad moment, engaged in a series of actions which not only knocked out the seventh commandment, but with one bowl, he really sent the lot flying.

For the 10 commandments are very much like skittles in the local bowling alley. Knock one, and there's such a sort of interdependence, you find that most of them have actually collapsed with one ball. It wasn't just what he did in respect to Bathsheba, it was a cover up.

That led to murder. It wasn't just the theft of a wife and the elimination of a life. It was also the crass loss of self-respect.

My biggest problem faces me every morning I shave. You see, there is within the heart of each one of us, I think if we're honest, a sort of self-disgust, a sort of self-loathing that we know what we should be and how we should behave, as did David. The standards of our beloved Lord Jesus, David's greatest relative, are very high.

They're higher than the standards of the Old Testament. For when the beloved Lord sets down his understanding of sexual morality, he says that what is in the mind before God is as indictable as what is actually, physically worked through. Which means that impurity of thought, and the acceptance of that impurity, the willing acceptance, is clocked up as sin before God.

So when we're dealing with David, and indeed with any of the men and women in the Old Testament or the New Testament who blew it in one way, we also recognize in many fashions our own inadequacy, our own failures. What does God do when a man has taken so many blessings and selfishly asked for something that he had no right to? What does God do when a society gets itself into an absolute mess because it refuses to live by the laws that God has set up? It's your kindness that leads us to repent and so long. Breaking in on the court of David was his best friend, certainly one of his closest colleagues.

He was a pastor. His name was Nathan. He knew that David was in a mess.

And Nathan comes alongside David because, well, he is the only man who at this particular juncture can help David. There is in Scripture a record of God going through a sort of conundrum, not too sure, or so it would seem, in the way that it's presented almost in a human fashion so that we can enter into it and understand it. God is looking down upon the earth, and he sees the difficulties that ordinary people are in, and he puts up a question, what shall I do? Who shall I send? Who will go for me? And a voice is heard, here am I, Lord, I'll go.

And a baby is heard crying in Bethlehem's manger, and 33 years or so after, a man's voice is heard from the cross, that same babe, now a full-blown man. When men and women are in a mess, God, in his grace, sends someone to help them. There's one thing about God that some of you here do not know, and it is this, that God is so loving and so gracious and so kind that his immediate response to sin is not judgment.

His ultimate response to sin has to be judgment, but there is a distinction between the immediate and the ultimate, so when Jesus comes into the world, God's greater than Nathan, he comes and says, I have not come to condemn the world, but that the world through me might be saved. Conviction is one of the most horrific experiences to go through. Conviction is a state that you're in when you loathe yourself, you know that what you have done is wrong.

You can't get any sleep. You pace up and down. Nobody breaks into the privacy of your thought and you feel like you're on an island.

Loneliness, to some degree, is occasionally an acceptable thing. But when it's an imposed loneliness from which you cannot break out, and your mind is all in a whirl, and your undisciplined thoughts and your worries constantly break on the shore of your mental beach, then it is a horrid experience. That is conviction.

For nine months, David, the sweetest singer that Israel has ever known, a man who can do wonders with his harp, never plucks the harp, never goes to the songs that he's written, never moves into the book that he largely composed to sing praises to God, because David is on his own, in his own personal nightmare, knowing full well what he has done, and unable to get himself out of the dilemma into which he has found himself. And so God sends a man, as God later sends Jesus into our world. Nathan sets up a parable.

Actually, it's not a parable. It's a story which may have had some element of fact. Certainly, in the application David eventually was forced to make, there was not just a degree of fact, it was completely true.

It was a man who had been very exploited. He'd just got one sheep and a rich man who had got many, many hundreds, thousands of sheep. He throws a party and the poor man's pet lamb is taken and sacrificed.

Now, the task of David, because he's a king, is actually to adjudicate. I mean, he was the one who really laid the law down and he was constantly dealing with this sort of situation. And David, he's a hot-blooded man.

He's basically a fair man. This is the problem about sin. Sin can affect a man who is actually quite decent, really.

And David, who's put aside the things that he has done wrong, he listens to the narration of what seems to be crass injustice in Israel, and he says that man ought to die. And God puts an arrow into Nathan's bow and Nathan lets it go and it hits David. And Nathan says, David, you are the man, not a sheep, a wife, not a rich man, you, not just an impoverished man, but one of your most faithful soldiers in your crack troops, Uriah.

You had him done to death. You took what was not your own. I'll tell you something.

Now, hear me, you young people, if you never hear anything else from me again, your best friend will be that person, those people who one day perhaps with tears in their eyes will put their arm around your shoulders and they will tell you where you are wrong. They will do it not because they're enjoying doing it, but because they love you. Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

Nine months, David needed his chaplain. Nine months of mental agony, nine months of torment. And Nathan came and told him just what the situation was.

You are the man. And you know, our beloved Lord Jesus does that. He doesn't do it as a sort of super cop having dropped down from heaven's constabulary.

He comes alongside you and sometimes he will use someone else to be his voice, to point out the things that are wrong in your life. And you will perhaps as a result of this feel like David, a sense of relief and yet a sense of even greater hopelessness. For the law has laid down that a man who behaves in the way that David behaves ought to forfeit his own life.

But there is another law. There is another factor that can be introduced into this situation. You see, what the scripture teaches is this, that when a man acknowledges his sin, the immediate reaction of God is to forgive him.

I have sinned. The Lord has dealt with your sin. God rushes to be merciful.

God is quick to pardon. God does not wish David to continue month after month in the state in which he finds himself. God sends Jesus into this world.

He sends a man. He sends a man with a message and distilled into that message is mercy. Christianity says someone is the religion of the forgiven.

So the hymn writer can compose an old-fashioned hymn from yesteryear, who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich, so free? Don't misunderstand me. Sin is not something that God considers lightly. Sin is serious.

Sin hurts God. Sin hurts you. But the good God wants to deal with your sin.

A woman is taken in the act of adultery. It's a sort of reverse situation in the New Testament. It's a woman, whereas here it was the man.

Then it was Nathan speaking on behalf of God. Now it's Jesus who's speaking in his own authority. First of all, he deals with her accusers, with her detractors.

They melt away. You can read the story in John's Gospel, chapter eight, one by one, from the oldest to the youngest. And Jesus looks up, having written something mysterious, we're not told what it was, on the ground.

And he sees that all her accusers have gone away. And he says, where are they, those who accused you? And she says, well, they've gone. And Jesus says, neither do I accuse you.

Go and sin no more. A friend of mine, a colleague in the ministry, tells a story. The scene is that of the Baptist, and he's eventually going to immerse Jesus in the Jordan.

But there are certain people who form a queue. And they are examined by one of John's staff. Mary comes along.

What is the greatest sin that you have ever committed? And she indicates that she has such an insatiable desire for material things. So they write on a sticky label, covetousness, and put it on her chest. Someone else comes along, and he's fiddled the accounts.

What is your greatest sin? I have made myself wealthy at the expense of others. So they write on the label, embezzler, and put it on his chest. Another comes along, what is your most heinous sin? I've had an affair.

So they write on the sticky label, adulterer, and put it on his chest. And so the story continues. And then passing down the line comes Jesus.

He's going to be baptized. He's going to submit himself to the ministry of John. And as he goes by, these people are invited to take their labels and put them on him.

And he wears them, embezzler, adulterer, coveter, and so on. John takes Jesus, and he immerses him in the waters of the Jordan. And the water deals with the ink on the labels.

And when our Lord Jesus is raised from the water, there is no further indication of sin whatsoever. The ink has been absorbed into the waters of the Jordan. Spin the story on three years later.

There's a bloody river. It flows from Calvary, and on the back of our beloved Lord Jesus, on his shoulders are the sins of the world. The sun can no longer shine its light on this scene.

And there is a dramatic eclipse. The whole drama engulfed in a mysterious blackness. And at that moment, the Bible says, the sins which you and I have committed have been passed onto our Lord Jesus Christ.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to his cross, and I bear it no more. Bless the Lord, bless the Lord.

Oh, my soul, David, he goes to his room, his little prayer closet in the palace. He picks up his scribe, and he starts to write against you. Oh, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.

If it was a question of animal sacrifice, I could have them slain by their thousands. If there was just something that I could do, then I would do it, but I acknowledge your mercy. I acknowledge that operative in my life, there is a higher law, the law of love.

Cleanse me with hyssop, wash me so I am white as snow. Take not your Holy Spirit from me. Acknowledge me still as your child, not because I deserve it, not even because of my repentance, but because of your great mercy, because of your great love.

Forgive me, and then I will take up the cudgels once more. Forgive me, and within your grace, I will be a monarch again, and I will teach transgressors their ways, and I will show them something of the love and the compassion and the holiness of God. No one speaks more convincingly about the mercy of God than the man, than the woman who has been forgiven.

Thus our Lord Jesus says on one occasion, she loved much and has been forgiven much, and one of his greatest followers who was there courageously, faithfully by the cross was none other than Mary Magdala, who when others had left our beloved Lord in the hour of his great need, she stood by weeping, faithful, and in the garden when he's raised from the dead, almost God in his kindliness, compensating for the fact that woman first sinned, she receives the first indication as to how God has dealt with human sin. Mary, the voice of Jesus recognizes her. Mary, it's me, and you, together again, your sin having been pardoned, relationship with me established throughout eternity.

It's your kindness that leads me to repentance, oh Lord, knowing that you love me whatever I have done. Ours is the religion of the pardoned. Let's pray.

You know, one of the great difficulties is having received his pardon to live in the light of it. If you should clock up our sins on your computer, then who would stand? But he didn't. He pressed the delete button.

Now you need to receive and to apply it. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. Yes, my sins are gone.

Buried in the deepest sea. Lord, that's good enough for me. Gone, gone, gone, gone.

Yes, my sins are gone. If you want to receive his mercy, right now, nobody's looking, even my eyes are closed. Just lift your hand or your hands up, just extend them, open the palms of your hand, the physical movement, and say, Lord, I really do want to be cleansed.

River of God, wash over me. Lord, I've been crazy. Things I did I shouldn't have done.

Lord, forgive me through the blood of Christ and enable me to feel forgiven. A new start because of him. Lord, I come before you on behalf of this congregation.

There are all the people here who have never entered into the good of your forgiveness, who are still despising themselves for yesteryear's sin. I ask you right now to release your spirit and let them know that you have accepted them as your sons and your daughters. You've wiped the slate clean.

They are beloved of you. You have restored their dignity. You have set them as new creatures on a pathway that leads to heaven.

Father, there are some here who committed their lives to you but later on still made a mess, guilty of compromise. And as a result, they're tormented in their souls like David was. Father, absolve them through the blood of Christ and may your spirit set them at ease, accepted by you.

May they accept what you have done for them. Lord, bless all of us here and help us to realize afresh the wonderful mercy and grace of our God and that the greatest dignity is the dignity that comes through having our sins forgiven. Keep us close to you.

Having burned our fingers, may we never get burned again. Lord, help us to turn our eyes from the Bathsheba situation. Whatever the context of our sinning might be, stiffness, give us a resistance.

Lord, we choose to be holy and pure by your grace. Amen. ♪ Is your blood that cleanses me ♪ Is your blood that gives me life ♪ Is your blood that took my place ♪ In redeeming sacrifice ♪ And washes me ♪ Whiter than the snow ♪ My Jesus, the precious sacrifice ♪ Is your blood that cleanses me ♪ Is your blood that gives me life ♪ Is your blood that took my place ♪ In redeeming sacrifice ♪ And washes me ♪ Whiter than the snow ♪ My Jesus, the precious sacrifice ♪ No excuse, no one to blame ♪ Nowhere to hide ♪ The eyes of God have found my failures ♪ Found my pain ♪ He understands my weaknesses ♪ And knows my shame ♪ But his heart never leaves me ♪ It's your kindness that guides me ♪ To repentance, oh Lord ♪ Knowing that you love us ♪ No matter what we do ♪ Makes us want to love you too ♪ It's your kindness that leads us ♪ To repentance, oh Lord ♪ Knowing that you love us ♪ No matter what we do ♪ Makes us want to love you too ♪ Waiting for the angry words ♪ To seal my soul ♪ Knowing I don't deserve another chance ♪ But suddenly the kindest words ♪ I've ever heard ♪ Come flooding from God's heart ♪ It's your kindness that leads us ♪ To repentance, oh Lord ♪ Knowing that you love us ♪ No matter what we do ♪ Makes us want to love you too ♪ It's your kindness that leads us ♪ To repentance, oh Lord ♪ Knowing that you love us ♪ No matter what we do ♪ Makes us want to love you too ♪ If you are for us ♪ Who can be against us ♪ You gave us everything ♪ Even your only son ♪ It's your kindness that leads us ♪ To repentance, oh Lord ♪ Knowing that you love us ♪ No matter what we do ♪ Makes us want to love you too ♪ It's your kindness that leads us ♪ To repentance, oh Lord ♪ Knowing that you love us ♪ No matter what we do ♪ Makes us want to love you too