By Simon ManchesterSunday 8 Dec 2024Christian Growth with Simon ManchesterFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
Heavenly Father, we ask that you would open our mind and our eyes to your word, and that you would open your Word to our mind, eyes and heart, for Jesus’ sake. Amen. Please have a seat, everybody. This morning we’re going to focus on a very famous sinner. And we’re going to focus on how God turned him around. We’re talking about David, king David.
This is our theme for four Sundays, God turning people around. It’s a very important theme. It’s, uh, technically called repentance, which is not normally a subject covered much in church today because it’s looked upon as unfriendly. But it’s actually the most wonderful thing that God can do to turn a person around and back to himself.
And today we’re going to do the case study of David. And next week we’re going to do a case study from the New Testament. Uh, again, our purpose in this series is not to be negative or crabby, but it’s to see how God brings people home.
Our last week or two weeks ago, we saw how God used John the Baptist to turn people around through John’s preaching. And last week we saw how God used the Apostle Paul to turn a church around through Paul’s writing. Today we come to the sins of David, which, if you remember, include adultery and murder Very, very public sins. But we, I think, will not be sitting here feeling superior because we have sins of our own.
Uh, the man who wrote Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, once sent a brief note to 12 men in the city, and the note simply said, I know your secret. I know what you do. And apparently half the men who received the note left the city for a considerable amount of time. Now, the wonder of this case of turning David around by God is that David had gone into terrible recklessness and without being turned around and brought back, he would perish. And unless people do turn back, repent and return to God, they perish. So this is not a weird subject for church. This is a crucial subject for every person. Everybody you will see this week in the streets and on the shop, in the shops and on the television. Everybody that you will see has either ignored God or disobeyed God or avoided God and needs to turn back to God and they need to throw themselves onto the lifeboat. Who is Jesus Christ?
We’re going to follow David’s decline and return in a series of steps, and the first step is called transgression, and it’s recorded into Samuel, Chapter 11. Now there’s lots of ways to describe sin. We could call sin a failure. Remember how Jesus said that we are to love God with all heart, mind, soul and strength, and none of us have done that We failed in that area. Or we might talk about, uh, sin as transgression or trespassing, stepping into area that we shouldn’t. Uh, J I Packer has defined sin as us playing God.
And, uh, we discover, of course, that this sin is deep in our hearts that our hearts are factories of sin and it emerges in a kind of a recklessness or a carelessness or a selfishness. It’s what is com commonly called living life on my terms well into Samuel, 11. David was the king of Israel. He had been extremely successful and victorious. He’d won many battles. He’d very wonderfully brought the Ark of God. That is the sign of God’s presence into the centre of the city, as if to say to the whole of Jerusalem, the centre of the city is going to be God himself.
And we discover in two Samuel Chapter 11 verse one that he had just sent his Army off to battle. Kings didn’t always go into battle, and he sent his army off to battle and you might think to yourself, Well, they’ve gone off to battle and David is going to have a peaceful time at home. But David is going to be in a battle of his own, and one evening as we know the story pretty well. He’s standing on his roof and he sees a very pretty woman, and he wanted her.
And like a king, he sent for her, and then he slept with her and she became pregnant. How is the king going to deal with this? This is going to be a scandal. Her husband happened to be one of David’s finest soldiers, and so David very cunningly said, get him back from the battlefield and I will send him home to his house. He’ll undoubtedly sleep with his wife, and nobody will know the pregnancy is mine.
But the man, the soldier, the husband of the woman, has standards, and he refuses to go back to his wife while his fellow soldiers are missing out on all the pleasures of home.
And so David, who’s very cunning, like I am very cunning and you are very cunning, decides that he will send the soldier into the thick of battle into a most dangerous position where he’ll be killed. And that’s what he does. He sends this soldier into the thick of the battle, and the soldier is killed. So now, David, you see, he’s free. He can take this woman and, uh, wonderfully care for her. And the whole thing will be covered over.
Except we read in the last verse of 2 Samuel 11 that God saw. And it displeased him. Now we know this account pretty well, I think, and, uh, I hope you find yourself as you hear this little summary of the chapter. I hope you find yourself in the mirror as I do. We may not necessarily have committed adultery or murder. Uh, this is the boast of the secular man, isn’t it? I should be fine. with God. I’ve never murdered anybody. But, uh, here’s the question, my friends do we identify with the practise of insisting on doing what we want to do and finding ways to cover our tracks. Uh, cos I think the answer for myself is yes.
And I suspect the answer for yourself is yes as well. Do you remember the hymn that says, prone to wonder, prone to wonder Lord, I feel it is that not you? It’s certainly me.
The minister that I worked with in London was a very godly man, and he was a very honest man. And he said in a talk once, I never forgot this, he said, Even when I’m repenting, he said, it’s as if I’m taking the phone number down of the sin, and I’m saying to the scene, Let’s keep in touch. I may want you later down the track.
And when we all looked kind of shocked that he would admit to saying this. He looked at us and he said, Is this not you? If it’s not, he said, why don’t you collect your wings and go straight to heaven, which is a nice way of saying we’re all in the same boat. So David, you see, has committed very real and very public sins. But every person on the planet has committed very real and fatal sins. Romans three says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And there is nobody who naturally seeks God.
So every person as I say that we will see this week is actually in need of hearing what we’re hearing this morning because every single person that you will see has turned their back on God has either ignored him, avoided him or disobeyed him, and needs to be forgiven. That’s the transgression. The second step in the process of King David is what I’m going to call oblivion, and that is to be in a fog of carelessness, a fog of sleepiness. I’ll give you two evidences that David was trapped in the sin of oblivion and for quite a long time as well. We read in 2 Samuel, Chapter 11, Verse 27 that eventually the woman gave birth to a son and this baby arrived before David was challenged or confessed.
In other words, it was at least nine months with David in the fog of oblivion, not confessing, not being forgiven, not walking faithfully with God. And the other is that in Psalm 32 Verse three, he says. When I was silent and I did not confess anything to God, he said, I was like a brute beast. I was like an animal without understanding my friends. This is what sin does to us. It blinds us and it deadens us, and it separates us so that we’re no longer in close fellowship with God. And if it’s ever unconfessed and Unforgiven, it will destroy us. So we may think that we’ve sinned safely, But sin is never missed by God.
He’s the god of justice. We might be calling it harmless. We might call it fun. We might even call it essential, but God does not. I noticed on the news recently that after the guilty verdict came down for the former US president that there was a man of course, protesting the guilty verdict in the streets. And, I noted what he said in defence of the former US president. He said this – so he slept with a prostitute and he gave us some extra money. What is your problem?
Now there’s a man you see without a moral compass or a biblical compass, because the answer is that God finds it a problem. God, you see, upholds justice. We may not uphold justice, but God does uphold justice. Thank God for that and again this morning. Friends. I’m not looking down on anybody. I’m not even looking down on the man in the street. I’m simply saying all sin and especially mine needs to be confessed and needs to be forgiven.
When the church speaks about sin. It’s not that we’re inventing sin so that we’ve got a business to run. This is what Nietzsche, the German philosopher, said he hated the church because, he said, the church has invented sin so it can dole out forgiveness. But no, no. We’re taking a leaf out of Jesus book who helped people be aware of their sin. People who are unaware of their sin in order that they would turn to the doctor who would cure them of their sin sickness.
It was extremely kind of God, therefore, to bring David out of the oblivion and the carelessness as everybody needs to be brought out of the oblivion. So it’s the kindness of God that he would deal with David’s transgression. It’s the kindness of God that he would deal with David’s oblivion. And thirdly, we come to what I call conviction.
Now I’ll tell you a true story. A minister said to me once that he was once visiting a man in his church, and the man told him that he was in the midst of adultery. And the minister said to the man, You must break off with this and you must call me when you have before you return to church and simply and carelessly take communion Well, the man completely ignored the minister, and he turned up the next Sunday and there he was, sitting there and it was communion.
And so the minister stood up and he said to the congregation, Today is communion. But there is somebody here who is in deliberate disobedience, and I don’t want to draw attention to them, so we’re not gonna have the communion at all. During the week, he received four or five contacts from parishioners, saying, I don’t know how you knew about what I was doing, but I have decided to break off from the sin.
It’s a solemn thing, isn’t it? It’s a solemn thing. This conviction, which God brings home to people, is part of his kindness. And it came to David as we heard in our first reading in two Samuel, Chapter 12. It was very painful for David. It was very humbling, but it was also very crucial. And God, we remember, sent the Prophet Nathan to David. You remember David had done his sending send for the woman, send the soldier back into battle, and now God sends a prophet.
And the reason that God sent a prophet to bring the word of God over David is because David had not placed himself as he should have under the word of God. That’s why the prophets in the Old Testament came at the time of the Kings because the kings were so powerful, they would often set themselves over everything, including the word of God.
And so God had to send a prophet who would stand over the King and remind him that he was to be under the word of God. And God did this, of course, because he loved David. He loved David better than David loved God. Where would David be. If God had not sent the Prophet Nathan, where would we be if God had not sent to us a message?
You remember how God went looking for the couple in the garden because they were hiding? And do you remember how God came like a shepherd looking for lost sheep? And you remember how God as a Saviour comes to us and says, Although you’ve turned your back and although you’re running away, I will bring you back.
So Nathan came to David with a very skillful message. He didn’t just walk in and say King Repent and he didn’t just walk in and say We know what you’ve done He said, King, I would really value your wisdom. And then he told this very skillful message. There’s two men, one’s rich, lots of sheep, one’s poor, one little sheep and the rich. One wants to have a feast, and he needs a sheep to be killed.
And he doesn’t take one of his own. He goes and he takes the one sheep of the poor man. What do you think? King David and David boils with anger. Irrational anger, he says. The man must die. This is way beyond the law of God. The Law of God never said that you would die for taking a sheep. But here’s David, you see showing I’m a very righteous man covering his unrighteousness. It’s like a preacher who’s always hammering away about some particular sin, and then you discover secretly that he himself is committing that sin.
And Nathan spoke the famous words to David, You’re the man, you’re the rich man because God gave you so much and you went and took the life of a man and the wife of a man. And David wonderfully is cut to the heart. And he says, I have sinned against the Lord with crystal clarity. He sees that what he’s done is primarily done to God again. This is God’s kindness. You see, God could have left David.
God could have left David to go downhill to spiral away in his sin, but he brought this word to rescue him. Dale Ralph Davis says in his commentary on this passage. What immense and genuine comfort every person should find in the first six words of 2 Samuel 12.
The word was sent to King David.
So transgression oblivion, conviction and now, fourthly, we come to confession and we discover what David confessed in Psalm 51 the famous Psalm 51. The prayer of great repentance. And if you want to know what honesty looks like if you’re confessing to God, have a look at Psalm 51. This is one of the phrases of Psalm 51. David said: against you Oh God, you only have I sinned. And we would say What a strange thing to say, David, you’ve just killed a man and you’ve abused a woman. And you’re saying you’ve just done something to God. But you see, David sees that behind the sins is the greater sin of defying God and disobeying God.
That’s why, as we saw last week, the real mark of true repentance is that you go back to God. You go back to his throne. You don’t just apologise to the person you need to apologise to. You don’t just comfort yourself and say, I’ll get over this. You trace your sin all the way back to the throne of God and you say I did it. I did the evil.
CS. Lewis says that when we confess, we should peel back the seal and expose it all to God and tell him exactly what we’ve done because then he will cover it. There’s no point in us trying to cover it. He will cover it.
The other thing, David says in Psalm 51 is he says, Oh God, wash me, blot me, cleanse me. The only person who can do this was God. Real biblical Confession is saying to God, you’re the only person who can solve this. You’re the only person who can wash me. You’re the only person who can cleanse me. And when we go to God, believers today in Christ knowing that Christ has died and has paid for all our sin we go to him with great confidence and great thankfulness and great joy.
David, of course, knew nothing about the cross to come, but the answer to his sins would be the cross. We understand something of the cross and the answer to our sins is the cross. The other thing that David says in Psalm 51 is a broken heart. Oh God, you’ll not despise you see, he didn’t go to God and say, Ok, God, So I’m not perfect.
He didn’t go to God and say, OK, God, I’ve been under a lot of pressure. He didn’t go to God and say, Um OK, God, I’m sorry if I upset you, he went and he said, You are full of compassion and you will not despise a broken heart. He didn’t mean I’ll pay for this sin with a broken heart. But he meant, I’m coming to you with a broken heart, and I know that you’re full of compassion.
The last thing this morning is, then there is reflection. So we’ve had transgression, oblivion, conviction. And then there’s confession. And finally, there is something called reflection, and this is in Psalm 32 sometime down the track. David wrote Psalm 32 and he reflected on the beauty of being forgiven.
And he said in the psalm, How terrible to be Unforgiven and still have the burden of sin on you and one day to be in God’s courtroom with your sin on you and how wonderful, he said to be forgiven. We know, of course, friends that our world celebrates sin. We ourselves are being cooked in sin and so we can’t even work out often what is sin and we become ourselves careless of sin. But it’s a very destructive thing, especially in the long-term. But even in the Short-term, there’s a book by a man called David Myers. It’s called The American Paradox, and he documents very carefully from 1960 which was probably a big turning point where the American people in the western world turned their back on following Christ and began to follow their own, as the prayer book says, Devices and Desires. And David Myers says in this book that after 1960 America doubled, the divorce rate tripled, the teen suicide rate quadrupled the violent crime rate Quintupled, the prison population, septupled, out of wedlock births septupled and the rate of cohabitation without marriage led to multiple divorces per capita.
The real price of sin, however, is not just in the short term. The real price is in the long-term. It’s to arrive with God and be separated from God forever. And that’s why returning to God and being forgiven by God in this world is so crucial. David had tried to cover his sin, absolutely hopeless when he brought it to God. God covered the sin, we would say with the blood of Christ.
Without God, without Jesus the Saviour, someone might come to me and say you’re the man and I would have to say yes, I am – but because Jesus has died and has risen.
You remember Pontius Pilate brought him out and said, here is the man. I have a substitute, a Saviour. And you do too. If you’ve put your trust in him. I hope this morning those of you who are listening will be able to say, in the words of Galatians 2 Christ lives in me and the life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. And if you can say that, my friends, it sounds like you’re somebody who God has brought home.
And if you can’t say that, do take up Psalm 51 and you’ll know exactly what to say to God.
Let’s pray
We thank you, our gracious God, that you not only will tell us of our need, but you also bring us the wonderful news of Christ and we ask that our need and the news would come together with great thankfulness and joy and in your goodness, faithfulness, we ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.