Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: 2 Samuel 11-18 | Date: May 14, 2023 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

David and the Sad Consequences of Sin

We are going to continue our series on through the Psalms. But today, we’re going to back up. Our next psalm will be Psalm 3, which you may have noticed in looking ahead. It’s the psalm of David when he fled Jerusalem from his son Absalom. So we’re going to back up. That kind of thing will come up quite a bit in the psalms as we work our way through. So we’re going to back up and look at the life of David this morning in broad stroke and what led up to that. So if you would, take your Bibles, please, and turn to 2 Samuel chapter 11. 2 Samuel chapter 11. We might title the message today, “David and the Sad Consequences of Sin.”

2 Samuel chapter 11. I’ll begin reading with verse one. We will read into chapter 12 as well.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, his servants, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of his king’s house that he saw from the roof a woman bathing. And the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman, and one said, “Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. She had been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Then she returned to her house, and the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David and when Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king’s house and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths and my Lord and Joab and the servants of my Lord are encamping in the field, in the open field. Shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.”

And David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also and tomorrow and I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. And David invited him and he ate in his presence and drank so that he made him drunk. In the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his Lord but he did not go down to his house. In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting and then draw back from him that he may be struck down and die.” And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men. And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite also died.

And Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting, and he instructed the messenger, “When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, then if the king’s anger rises and if he says to you, ‘Why did you go so near to the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? Who killed Abimelech for the son of Jerubbesheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall so that he died at Thebez? Why then did you go so near to the wall?’ Then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.'”

So the messengers went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. The messenger said to David, “The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king’s servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” David said to the messenger, “Thus shall you say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it, and encourage him.'”

When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband, was dead, she lamented over her husband. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house. She became his wife and bore him a son. The thing that David had done displeased the Lord. And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up and it grew up with him and his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”

Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die and he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity.” Nathan said to David, “You are the man. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul, and I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel in Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. 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 this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.'”

David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.” Then Nathan went to his house.

Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, we pray that you will help us to learn from this famous and so important passage from your word. Help us to learn from the life and the experience of David, both the greatness of your grace and the awful consequences of sin. Open our hearts to it, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

King David was, of course, one of the giants of biblical history. He is the leading character of 1 and 2 Samuel here in these books. He also has a prominent role in 1 Chronicles as well, and of course his name comes up over and over and over again throughout the Old Testament scriptures. He’s the great king that strengthened Israel. He’s the great king who expanded Israel’s territory. He was a mighty king. He was also one of the major writers of the Old Testament. Fully half of the Psalms that we have in our Bible are written by David. 2 Samuel 23 calls him the sweet psalmist of Israel, the premier psalmist of Israel, widely recognized for it.

He was recognized in the Old Testament and the New Testament as a prophet of God. In fact, David himself said that in 2 Samuel 23, at the end of his life: “The spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was on my tongue.” In the New Testament, we find David’s Psalms cited over and over again, most overwhelmingly with reference to Jesus himself, establishing the doctrine of justification by faith in Romans 4. Most importantly, David was the father of the great Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. He was his ancestor. We’ll have more to say about that as well.

David was also a remarkably gifted man. And I’ve made a list here of some of his great accomplishments and what made him so great. He’s introduced for us in 1 Samuel 16 with these kinds of words: He was ruddy, had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. He was skillful in playing, that is playing the lyre. He was a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence. He had it all, and here’s the list: He was a shepherd. He was a rugged outdoorsman. He was athletic; with his own hands, he killed a bear. With his own hands, he killed a lion. He was very good with the sling, as you know. He was a fierce warrior in battle, and a feared warrior at that; he had a reputation that preceded him. He was a brilliant military tactician. He was a successful king, a successful administrator. He was a man’s man. Women wrote songs about David, and those songs were very popular and heard in the neighboring nations around Israel as well.

He had a brilliant creative mind, a deep heart, very passionate. He was a master poet. He was a skilled speaker. He was an accomplished musician, both composing and performing. He was something, as we’ve said before in this series, like the Mozart of his day. He transformed the whole atmosphere of Israel’s worship, taking the Mosaic system of worship with its sacrifices and accompanying it with music, composing songs, writing the script to go along with those, adding the musical instrumentation, making the worship center now a grand drama of praise. David was a remarkably gifted man.

He was also a man who was greatly blessed and greatly used by God. We are first introduced to him with an anticipatory remark in 1 Samuel chapter 13, that this next king, unlike Saul, this next king will be a man after God’s own heart. And we find that with David, that he was a man after God’s own heart. That is, he had a heart that genuinely pursued God. We find that in 2 Samuel 6; after he becomes king, he brings the ark into Jerusalem. He is elated with the event that this ark now has been established and God has been given his place for worship, and he’s so elated that his wife, Michal, was a little embarrassed by his behavior, and he thought, “Well, if you’re embarrassed by it, be embarrassed.” He’s excited for what he is doing on God’s behalf.

We find it in 2 Samuel chapter 7 as well, with David’s heart for God shown in his zeal to build the temple for God. That’s a plan that David didn’t get to realize, as his son Solomon would build that temple instead, but it shows David’s heart. We find it throughout the Psalter, his fervent heart for God in all of his Psalms of praise and worship. And I think it’s capsulized well in Psalm 27 where he shows his affection for the temple and for the presence of God where he writes, “…one thing I have asked of the Lord that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.” This is the heart of David, even though he was deeply flawed, as we have read now in 2 Samuel 11, and capable of great sins. This man had an obvious heart for God, and we see it also in chapter 12, in his repentance for the sin, and in his record of that repentance in Psalm 51.

Three Main Divisions Of David’s Life

This incident in 2 Samuel 11, with Bathsheba and with Uriah, is a major turning point in the life of David. David’s life can be divided into three main divisions.

We have, first of all, David’s time of election and exile. This is 1 Samuel 16 through 31. So he’s a shepherd boy. Samuel comes and anoints him that he will be the next king. He’s brought into Saul’s army. He defeats Goliath. He becomes a hero. The ladies start singing about him. Saul becomes jealous. He has to flee from Saul’s presence. He’s remarkably protected, and he’s astonishingly patient and trusting in God through that whole period.

The second period of his life would be the time of blessing, and this is 2 Samuel chapters 1 through 10. Here we have him finally taking the kingship for which he was anointed, securing the kingdoms both north and south, and bringing them together. In 2 Samuel 6, as I have said, he relocates the ark to Jerusalem, making it the new capital city. In 2 Samuel chapter 7, we have God making this promise to David, which becomes an overarching promise for the rest of biblical history: that God will make his son to reign on his throne forever and forever. Throughout this period of his life, he shows himself honorable, trusting, and faithful to God in every way, expanding his empire. No enemy could withstand him. This is the time of David’s blessing.

And then chapter 11, we have this horrible sin. And then chapters 12 through 20, we have the third period of David’s life, and that is his time under God’s displeasure, which we’ll survey here in a moment.

The Major Turning Point

2 Samuel chapter 11, then, is the major turning point in the life of David. It was the spring of the year, a time when kings go out to battle. We’re told that. Why David did not go out to battle, when this is the time when kings go out to battle, we’re not told. He just sent his commander, Joab, to lead the army against the city of Rabbah Amman. This is the modern city of Amman, the capital of Jordan, where King Hussein reigns today.

Verses two and following, chapter 11: one evening he’s home out on the rooftop and he looks and he notices nearby a woman bathing on her rooftop. He inquired about her. He’s told that she was the wife of Uriah. Uriah was a Hittite by birth, evidently then a proselyte to the Jewish faith, having come to recognize Israel’s God, the Lord. Uriah was a soldier in David’s army, a valiant soldier and a leading soldier evidently. But David is a king; he can have what he wants to have. So he sends and has Bathsheba brought to him, he has his fling, he sends her home and that was it. He got by with his adulterous act, so he thought.

Verses five and following now: Bathsheba sends word to David that she’s pregnant, and so David concocts this great scheme to cover up his sin. David writes to Joab. He sends Uriah home under the guise of getting a battle report from him. He asks Uriah to go for the report. He gets it, sends him home. Uriah, more honorable at this point than David himself, refuses to go home, sleeps with the king’s servants out at the door. He’s asked, “Why? Why did you not go home to your wife?” He says, “The Ark, Joab, all my soldiers, fellow soldiers—they’re all out there living in tents. I don’t deserve to be home living in the luxury of home. I won’t do it.” And David thinks, “Yes, you will. Stay here a couple of days.” David makes him drunk and sends him home to his wife; still he doesn’t go home.

And so finally, verses 14 and following, David drafts a letter to Joab. Battle instructions. He ordered Joab to drive up against the walls of the city and then just set Uriah at the front of that battle and just at the heat of the moment of battle, back away so that Uriah will be killed. And Uriah then takes the letter to Joab and unwittingly delivers his own death warrant. Verses 18 and following, Joab sends word to David, and David piously, but just callously, responds, “Well, you know, in war, people die.” And verses 26 and 27, after Bathsheba’s time of mourning, David takes her now to be his wife. He had successfully covered up his sin. So he thought. Virtually no one knew about it but his trusted advisors, and David continued on as the respected king that everyone knew him to be.

But God knew. And we read the narrator’s very important interpretive comment at the end of the episode, where the narrator just sneaks in his own words at the end of verse 27, chapter 11: “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”

David’s sin was wicked in the extreme. You might think, well, initially at least it was a moment of passion caught up in the heat of the moment, but it was much more than that. It was compounded by deceit and premeditated murder. This is wicked sin, and God was angry. And in fact, we find from elsewhere, not in this narrative, that David knew what he had done also. And he knew it in a very serious way. We read of it in Psalm 32 and Psalm 38, when he writes about the event. And he speaks of it in words like, “Day and night, God’s hand was heavy on me. My lifeblood was wasting away.” We get this picture of David just reeling with guilt over what he had done. Groaning, he says, daily.

Well, the child is born. Doubtless, that brought some comfort and joy to David’s heart. New babies have a way to do that. You reach down and you grab that little hand. Somehow they reach back and grab ahold of your heart and they never let go. And no doubt this was a comforting thing for David. And yet, and yet, every time he looked at the child, he’s reminded of the sin that brought him there.

Perhaps this continued a year, maybe a little more. And then we have chapter 12, and God sends his prophet, Nathan. And this is an interesting situation in ancient Israel, where you have the king, who is the head of state. There’s no one above him. But the king was not a law unto himself. The king was to administer God’s justice as dictated through Moses’ law. He was to be ruling in God’s place. And then you have the prophet who has no official capacity in the state whatsoever, but he speaks for God. And he comes to the king, who’s head of the state, and he confronts him now.

And he reports to David this terrible injustice that has happened in his kingdom. He says, “We have this poor man in our kingdom. He has only one ewe lamb.” Or as one city boy, when he was preaching on this, said, “one iwi lamb.” Just one iwi lamb. He has one ewe lamb. And he said it was like a daughter to him. It was not so much a source of food. It was like a pet. It slept with them. It ate from their plate. It drank from their cup. It grew up with his children. And there, Nathan says, it was like a daughter to him. And then nearby, there’s this rich man who has all kinds of herds, hundreds of flocks, and he has a visitor come, and to feed the visitor and have this feast, he doesn’t want to take one of his own, so he goes and steals this poor man’s only sheep. And he dresses it out, slaughters it, dresses it out, and feeds his guest.

David is just enraged over it, such an abuse of power. And David says in verses five and six here, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall die. He shall restore fourfold for the lamb because he has done this wicked thing and had no pity.” He deserves to die and he shall restore fourfold. And then verses seven and following, Nathan speaks again. Turns out the story was true, but only as a kind of parable. And Nathan said to David, “You are the man.”

“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel. I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house, your master’s wives into your arms, gave you the house of Israel and Judah, and if this were too little, I would have added much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.'” Interesting, isn’t it? “You have killed him with their sword.”

Well, Nathan no sooner speaks and David breaks. He was king. He could have had the prophet killed. But despite his sin, despite the awfulness of it, and despite the year or more of covering it up, his heart was still after God. And he breaks, and in verse 13 he says, “I have sinned.” Frank acknowledgment of his sin. No excuses, no mitigating circumstances. And of course, as you know, Psalm 51 records the repentance that he makes at this time when David writes this psalm of lament over his sin. David, according to Moses’ law, deserved to die. And David as much as positions himself that way before the prophet, but mercifully, God spares him. And in the aftermath of it all, we read in Psalm 32, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the one against whom the Lord does not count iniquity.”

Choices Have Consequences

But of course, there’s more to the story, and here we enter this third section of David’s life, beginning with chapter 13. Judicially, David is a forgiven man. He would not die. God would accept him. That’s sheer mercy. In his Psalm of Repentance, Psalm 51, David pleads for mercy. It’s all he could plead. And God gives that mercy, and he rejoices in that mercy in Psalm 32. And judicially, David is a forgiven man.

But choices have consequences. Things that we do, they have consequences. If you blow up at your friends when you’re not happy, you repent, God will forgive you. But you may not have any friends tomorrow. You fail to bring up your children for God, as you should, and nurture them in the admonition of the Lord, as you should, and afterwards you repent of it, God will forgive you. You may lose your children to the world. You steal from your employer and you repent. God will forgive you. You might not have an income tomorrow. You go out and get drunk and you repent. God will forgive you. But he might not spare you from the jail time. He might not spare you from the broken home. He might not spare you from injury or injury to your family, injury to others. He might not spare you from a lost job. You fail to overcome your temper, your lust. You give vent to it another time. And you repent, God will forgive you; but it may cost you your marriage.

One often overlooked dimension of the doctrine of sin is this category of the effects of sin or the consequences of sin. Very seldom talked about. You look in systematic theology books or books on the doctrine of sin; rarely does this come up, and I think it’s something that deserves extensive exploration to go through the scripture and just chart out this matter of the effects of sin. Often innocent people are caught up into it. Lives are ruined. Your happiness is ruined.

And more than that, even the king needs to learn submission to God. And in fact, we find that if you would like to look back a few chapters in 2 Samuel chapter seven, when God makes this great promise to David that his son will reign as king on his throne forever, he is reminded again that the king is not a law unto himself. Look at starting with verse 12:

“When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him as I took it from Saul.”

God says, “I’ve made this promise. But the king must be an obedient king.” And now we come back to 2 Samuel chapter 12, where Nathan the prophet is speaking, and he says in verse 10 to David—David has sinned, David has repented of that sin, but he says now in verse 10—”Now therefore the sword shall never depart out of your house.” Remember that expression. “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house.'” Remember that. “I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. 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 this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun.”

Verse 13, David repents outright. Verse 13, the end of the verse, the prophet continues, “The Lord has put away your sin. You shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.”

In verses 14 and following, the Lord struck the child with illness. The child was not at fault. But God is sovereign in the dispensing of life and death. He doesn’t owe life to anyone. The child is struck with an illness. David puts on sackcloth. He goes up to his bedchamber. You remember the story. He pours out his soul before God, and he pleads with God for the life of the child. But the child died, and you can only imagine the grief.

But there was more to come. We come to chapter 13. David has a beautiful daughter. Her name is Tamar. Mirroring his father’s lust, her half-brother, Amnon, looked at her and lusted for her. His somewhat conjecture probably made some advances to her that were rejected. Finally, he pretended sick and requested that David send his half-sister, Tamar, to come and help take care of him. When she came into his bedroom, he raped his own sister. David grieved again, but he failed to deal with Amnon decisively as he ought. Tamar’s brother, Absalom, wanted to kill Amnon for what he had done to his sister. David caught wind of it, intervened, wouldn’t allow it, and then later on in a festive occasion, again mirroring his father, Absalom had Amnon slain.

Chapters 13 and 14, David did not deal with Absalom as he ought to have. But there is a significant rift between them. Absalom is forced into exile. He’s finally allowed back, but there’s never a true reconciliation. There’s kind of a standoffish relationship now between David and his son Absalom, and Absalom grew increasingly resentful against his father.

We come to chapter 15, and Absalom finally leads in a revolt against his own father. He would stand outside the palace when people would come to judgment and say, “Too bad my father didn’t give you what was coming to you. When I become king, I’ll give you what’s coming to you.” He turned the hearts of the people away from his own father and then led in a rebellion against him. And to save his own life, David had to flee from Jerusalem from his own son. He writes a psalm about it during that time, Psalm 3, that we’ll see, Lord willing, next week—a lament psalm.

Absalom even took David’s wives. He put up a tent on top of the palace roof and one by one brought David’s wives in and raped them. He did it in the sight of all Israel before the very sun, as Nathan had said. Over beyond the Jordan, David was forced to flee. His faithful men gathered to him. They were veterans of his earlier wars. Although they were far outnumbered, they were men of great skill in warfare and they went back against Absalom. In chapter 18, Joab persuades David to stay back at the city while they go out to do battle against Absalom. And David pleads with Joab as Joab leaves for battle, “Show mercy to my son Absalom.”

They went out to do battle. Absalom was riding on a mule and he rode under a large oak tree. And he somehow got stuck in a branch. Now we’re told that Absalom had long flowing hair. Maybe his hair got caught in the branch and he’s left suspended there from his hair. Maybe his neck got caught in the crotch of a branch. He’s left hanging there. The mule passes by from under him and he’s left there helpless. David’s men come by. They see him hanging there and they’re thinking, “I don’t think I want to kill the king’s son.” Joab comes by and he runs him through with a javelin.

David is waiting back at the city at his apartment, looking out toward the battlefield. He sees a runner coming with news about the battle. He can’t wait to hear. And finally the runner gets within earshot and David says, “Is my son Absalom alive?” The runner says, “I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s a lot of commotion. We’ve won the battle. I’ve seen the commotion, but I don’t know what happened.” David looks and he sees a second runner coming over the horizon and he waits till he gets in earshot. “What of my son Absalom?” The runner comes before David and says, “I would that all of the king’s enemies were even as your son.” You know the story: David turns, walks back up the stairs to the apartment above the city walls. And from there they could hear him wailing, “Oh Absalom, Absalom, my son Absalom, would God I had died.”

The life of David is really a strange, strange story. It is on the one hand, a story of greatness and a story of faith. And then that last section of his life, it’s the story of the devastating consequences of sin. Actions have consequences. They have entailments, and God does not always spare us from them. He just might let our sins teach us again that sin is not worth it. The gratification that sin promises is blinding. And when we’re tempted to sin, we would do well to think it through to the end and let it serve as a deterrent to us. Sins carry consequences. And often those consequences are ruthless, entail infecting innocent lives, people that love us, people that we love. And David’s life stands as a warning of it. God calls us to live for him. He enables us by his spirit to do it. And we dare never mistake grace as an excuse for sin. We must pray every day, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

The Big Picture Of David’s Life

Thankfully, there is more to see in this big picture of David’s life. He also stands as a picture and a testimony of God’s grace. In Psalm 51, David pleads for mercy. In Psalm 32, he exults in the wonder of God’s mercy and forgiveness. And he writes, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity.” David sinned greatly. God forgives him; he doesn’t condemn him. That is sheer mercy.

Paul, as you know, the Apostle Paul picks this up, Psalm 32—picks that up in Romans chapter four—and he holds it up as an illustration of the way that God saves. “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the one against whom the Lord does not count sin.” The great hope of a Christian is not that somehow at the end of life our good works will outweigh our bad. The whole hope of a Christian is that God will not count our sin. He won’t count it against us. And Paul develops that in terms of this double imputation. He doesn’t count our sin against us; He counted it instead to the Lord Jesus who suffered in the place of sinners and through whom by faith we may be joined and have salvation. And David’s experience shows us vividly that He, God, made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we who have sinned would not bear the consequences of it. And David’s experience illustrates for us very well that God is merciful to forgive. Even great sins can be forgiven because Christ is an all-sufficient Savior.

There’s more mercy to be found in David’s later story. God gives David and Bathsheba another son, Solomon, through whom the kingly line and through whom the Lord Jesus comes. And there’s still more to learn from the big picture. Despite his sins and despite the consequences of his sin, David is a man whom God used greatly. Not only on behalf of ancient Israel, but for all of us still today; this is the man who gave us at least half of the Psalms, several of which come from this latter period of his life. His Psalms are favorites of Christians universally. And when we read the Psalms and we sing the Psalms, we are reading and we’re singing the words of a man who had sinned greatly and was forgiven. And it’s David who prophesied as graphically as any of the coming of the Lord Jesus—his incarnation, his crucifixion, his death on behalf of sinners, his resurrection from the dead, his ascension to the throne of the universe. David tells us of all of this in his Psalms.

And it’s the words of this man whose life in so many ways is so sordid—it’s the words of this man that encourage and lift the hearts of God’s people in worship still today. And as such, then, David is a representative sample of the greatness of divine grace, that God’s grace is not limited by our sin. He forgives, and he uses forgiven sinners effectively in the service of his kingdom. All of this will crop up again and again as we work our way through the Psalms. But from David’s life, we should learn both the kindness and the severity of God. And we should learn the awfulness of sin on the one hand, the greatness of God’s grace on the other, and we should take the warning from the one and we should rejoice in the other. We should recognize, on the one hand, the sobering reality of the awful consequences of sin, and on the other hand, rejoice. As Paul would write, “where sin abounds, grace abounds more.” Amen. Let’s pray.