Nathan's Confrontation

King David sinned against Bathsheba, her husband Uriah, and the people of Israel, and God confronted him. David did know who God was, and though he strayed so radically, as soon as he heard the unvarnished Word of God, he saw it.

I have sinned against the Lord. He doesn't try to lie his way out of it. He doesn't try to negotiate it.

He admits it immediately. David is one of the great heroes of the Bible. In his Psalms, he wrote some of the most beautiful praise music ever written. He's called a man after God's own heart, and yet he sinned egregiously with devastating consequences. But even in his fall, we have much to learn from David.

Here's Dr. R.C. Sproul. Whenever we discuss the use of parables, it's inevitable that we think immediately of the teaching of Jesus, because Jesus made the use of parables an art form. And we remember that a parable, the very word parable, comes from two different words, from the Greek root maleo and the prefix para, or para. Maleo means to throw or to hurl something, and the prefix para means alongside of.

We have paramedics, paralegals, parachutes, and so on. And so a parable is something that is tossed or hurled or thrown alongside of something else. And the way it was used as a literary form or a device of communication pedagogically by teachers in biblical times was this.

Jesus would want to communicate a particular truth, and He would explain it in the normal didactic terms of the teacher. And then in order to illustrate it so that its truth could be crystallized, He would tell a story, like the parable of the Good Samaritan or other such parables. But Jesus was not the only person in Scripture to use parables, infrequently to be sure, but there are occasions where in other portions of Scripture we find parables.

And one of the most famous and most effective of all parables ever found in the Bible is the parable that I call the parable of the greedy rich man. And it was a parable that was told to David after his sin with Bathsheba and his setting up of Bathsheba's husband Uriah to be killed in battle. At the end of the eleventh chapter of 2 Samuel, after the message comes back to David and to Bathsheba that Uriah has fallen in battle, we read this in verse 26, when the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband.

Now, just think of that for a moment. Bathsheba wants to be with David. Bathsheba is carrying David's child. Bathsheba does not want her husband to find out about her adultery. But then the message comes to her that her husband has fallen in battle, and in many ways, it solves all of her problems. But yet she goes into mourning. We don't know what kind of mourning it was. We don't know whether it was a mourning that was genuine because she suddenly felt a pang of the loss of this one whom she at least at some point in her life had loved, or whether it was a mourning that was motivated by guilt.

The Scriptures don't tell us, but there is a hint in the text because of what follows. Immediately after we read the text that she mourned from her husband, it says, and when her mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. Her period of grief was not a long one.

She got over her mourning in a hurry and moved out of her humble home across the street and became the bride of the king and the mother of his child. This is the historical situation. These are the circumstances that prompt the visit of the prophet Nathan to David. But before we get to that, let's look at the final line of chapter 11, but the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. Now, you notice in this story of David and Bathsheba, David is sending people everywhere. He sends messengers to Bathsheba. He sends messengers for Joab. He sends messengers for Uriah, and then he sends Uriah into battle and then sends another messenger to announce the news of his death later. David is orchestrating it all, sending people where he wants them to be and where he wants them to go.

Now there's a shift in the story. Now it's not David who does the sending, but now it's the Lord who sends someone. God sends the prophet Nathan to David.

Chapter 12 begins with these words. Then the Lord sent Nathan to David, and He came to him and said to him… Now before I read what Nathan says and Nathan's parable, sometimes I like to guess and speculate of what people were thinking and feeling in real human circumstances in the ancient world. Probably the most unenviable task in all of Israel was to fulfill the role of the prophet. Prophets rarely volunteer for missions. One of the things that's characteristic of prophets in the Old Testament is that they were men who were sent, and usually they were sent for a task that no sane person would volunteer to do, because normally they were sent to bring messages of divine judgment.

And nobody likes to be the bearer of bad news. But now God speaks somehow to Nathan and tells Nathan, whispers into Nathan's ear, however He communicates to Nathan, the gravity of the king's sin. And He says, Nathan, you go to David, and you confront him. In the New Testament, elaborate procedures are set forth by Jesus in terms of instructions to the church for how to handle cases of church discipline. How if one person is overtaken by a sin and that one person goes to them and admonishes them and they do not repent, then you go with two people to this person to try to plead them to repent, and you know how the procedure goes in the New Testament. In fact, one of the most misquoted verses in all of Scripture is the text that when two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in the midst of them. Now, I don't mean to suggest for a moment that when we're gathered together in prayer, two or three people, that Christ isn't present.

He's certainly present. He's promised to be with us always even to the end of the age. But the specific context in which Jesus made that specific promise was in the context of church discipline, when He was saying, when you two or three go to reclaim a fallen brother and to confront that person with their sin on a mission of church discipline, I promise you that I will be with you. Because if there's any time the church needs to know and have the security and awareness of the presence of Christ is when they're doing this very unpleasant business of rebuking and admonishing and of calling a person to accountability. So I don't know what Nathan was thinking, but Nathan, humanly speaking, had to go to the king, not to some fallen parishioner in the church here. He's going to the king, and he's not going with two or three elders.

He's going by himself to confront the king for an unspeakable crime. Now, I want to say this about that crime before we examine the parable. We will look in our next lesson at David's response in the penitential Psalms, and particularly in Psalm 51, where in that Psalm, David cries out, against Thee and Thee only have I sinned, O Lord. That's a puzzling statement from the lips of David. Maybe it was hyperbole, or David perhaps was thinking in ultimate theological categories and realized that the ultimate person who is violated and betrayed by human sin is God Himself. But when David says, against Thee and Thee only have I sinned, there's some kind of overstatement here, because David did not simply sin against God. David sinned against Bathsheba. David sinned against Uriah. David sinned against his general Joab by ordering Joab to be involved in this conspiracy, and by extension, David sinned to every citizen of the nation that put their trust and confidence in David as their king.

The extent of David's sin knew no bounds. But in any case, it's in these circumstances and in this situation that Nathan comes to David with his parable here now, the words of the parable that Nathan spoke. He said to David, there were two men in one city, one rich, the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished.

And it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him. Instead, he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. Almost sounds like a story of Nabal that we've already encountered in the life of David. Remember that the terms of this parable tell the story of a wayfarer who is hungry, who has no food.

And keep in mind that there was the law among the Jewish people, the law of hospitality that required that you fed and housed for a minimal period of time those who needed shelter and food, who were strangers and pilgrims or aliens in the land, those who were wayfarers. And so when Nathan tells the story, he tells the story of a man who's fabulously wealthy. He is untold sheep and flocks and so on, and a wayfarer comes. And this wealthy man who could well afford to take one of his lambs and slaughter it and feed this hungry traveler instead goes over and seizes the sole possession of the poverty-stricken peasant who had reared as if it were his own daughter the single ewe lamb that was his pride and joy.

And the rich man took it for himself and used it to feed the stranger. Now what's David's reaction to this story? David is furious, the Scriptures say, so that David's anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, as the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die and he shall restore fourfold for the lamb because he did this thing and because he had no pity. Now notice how David expresses himself. He's outraged that anybody would do such a wicked thing as to steal another man's sheep, a rich man taking a single lamb from a poor man, and David's wrath is kindled and notice that he swears a vow. He utters an oath so that there's no question about David's sincerity as he rings his judgment as the king of the nation upon this evildoer. As the Lord lives, this man shall surely die, and that's not enough. Before he's executed, he has to make restitution, and he doesn't just have to give the man back one lamb but his fourfold restitution that has to take place. I decree that you tell me who this fellow is, and I'm not only going to execute him but I'm going to take four of his sheep and give it to the poor man who lost the only one that he had because he did this thing and because he had no pity. Do you hear what David is saying? What kind of insensitive sociopath would do this that had no mercy whatsoever for this poor man that he would just come and just grab all the riches that the poor man had in his meager existence?

Well, you know the punch line. As soon as David stops his ranting and raving and screaming about the radical injustice of this crime that Nathan has just described to him in terms of a parable, and David didn't recognize it as a parable. He thought he was getting the sober truth, a simple account of something that had taken place in his kingdom, and when he hears this and he ventilates his anger, as soon as he stops to take a breath, Nathan looks him in the eye. This is a prophet speaking to the king. And he said, David, thou art the man. Years later, a similar expression was made that has become famous in church history and in the annals of theology, and the words come down through our own Christian tradition in their Latin version.

They are two words, echa homo, behold the man. Those words were uttered not by a prophet or at least not by a willing prophet but an unwilling prophet, Pontius Pilate, when he displayed the scourged and humiliated Jesus before the screaming crowds who wanted his blood. After Pilate had said, I find no fault in the man, he brought forth Jesus dressed in the garments of mockery with the crown of thorn upon his head, and he said to the assembled multitude, echa homo, behold the man. But unwittingly, Pontius Pilate, when he used that expression, was making a phenomenal affirmative judgment about Christ because there stood man in absolute purity, in total contrast to what Nathan was beholding before David.

Nathan's echa homo is shorthand for behold the guilty man. David, thou art the man. And thus says the Lord God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master's house, I gave you your master's wives into your keeping, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And this is God speaking now, David, David, I've given you the kingdom. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more. Why have you then despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in His sight? God is saying to His servant David, David, how could you do it?

What do you need? I've given you everything a man could ask for, but it wasn't enough. You seized for yourself the object of your lust. You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword. You have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon, now therefore, David, listen to the consequences of your sin.

The sword shall never depart from your house. If one would listen to the rest of the story, the revolt of Absalom, the intrigue of the court, the violence that attended the house of David the rest of his life, you would hear the utter truth of this foreboding prophecy. Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house. God is not saying, I'm going to let bad things happen to you, David, and I'm just going to step out of the way and let your children rebel against you. No, David, I'm going to make it happen.

I'm going to orchestrate it. 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 the sun. You did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun. And David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. This is his first act of repentance. This is the second time in this portion of redemptive history where we see people who at one time in their lives were godly, who got into serious trouble, who were rebuked and awakened from their sin. And as soon as they were awakened, they recognized the voice of God. Eli, when he heard the message that God gave to Samuel in the darkness of the night in which God said that he was going to destroy the sons of Eli and destroy his house, Eli's response to that terrible, terrible news was, it is the Lord. You see, David did know who God was. And though he strayed so radically, as soon as he heard the unvarnished word of God, he saw it. I have sinned against the Lord. He doesn't try to lie his way out of it.

He doesn't try to negotiate it. He admits it immediately. And Nathan said to David, the Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die. However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die.

And Nathan departed to his house. I'm going to forgive you, David. Your eternal guilt has been remitted, but temporal punishments will follow. There will be consequences to your house, to your kingdom, and to the fruit of this illicit union.

The child will surely die. Place yourself in David's shoes that day. Imagine what it was like to hear that. Imagine the regret that gripped David that day. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Saturday.

I'm Lee Webb, and I hope you'll stay with us because R.C. has a final comment about the need to view our sin accurately. Every week we return to Dr. Sproul's series On David's Life. We have watched David go from a young shepherd with impeccable morals and ideals to a man and leader who has fallen in a most shocking way.

In each case, though, David has taught every generation what it means to live our lives for God. That's why I'd like to recommend our resource offer today. When you contact us with a donation of any amount, we will send you Dr. Sproul's series Dust to Glory. It examines every book of the Bible in fifty-seven messages and helps us see the narrative of Scripture.

This special edition set provides an extra disc containing the study guide for the series, so request Dust to Glory when you go to RenewingYourMind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. Renewing Your Mind is the listener-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. It is our desire to encourage you to grow in your faith. To that end, we produce or publish resources like the Reformation Study Bible, Table Talk magazine, along with video teaching series.

We also host conferences here and abroad. All of these resources are designed to help you articulate what you believe and why you believe it. So thank you for partnering with us in this worldwide effort to proclaim the holiness of God to as many people as possible. In our Coram Deo thought for today, I want to remind you of a distinction that we make in Christian ethics and Christian behavior that has to do with judgment. There are harsh judgments that can be made, and then there are those judgments that we call the judgments of charity. The judgment of charity is a best-case judgment, when perhaps you have done something to injure me or to wound me or to offend me.

It is my duty to look at that action in the best of all possible lights. I mean, if you think about the people who have hurt you in your lifetime, I assure you that the vast majority of cases where people have seriously wounded you and hurt you, that in the vast majority of cases, those people did not plan it in advance. But we have a tendency when somebody sins against us to impute to that person the worst of all possible motives. And yet when we are guilty of injuring another person, of wounding somebody, we generally give ourselves the judgment of charity. We'll say, well, I didn't really mean to do that.

I didn't mean to hurt you in that way. And we color our own sin with the best of all possible motives. That's human nature to do that. We blind ourselves with rationalizations of our sin. And exhibit A for that is David the King, for David to see the truth of what he had done required nothing less than a personal visit from a prophet of God.

As R.C. mentioned, David faced severe consequences for his sin the rest of his life, but because of Nathan's faithful confrontation, David followed through on the most important task facing him. He repented.

I hope you'll join us next Saturday for Renewing Your Mind. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.