God Restores in Grace • 2 Samuel 12

50:19 Teaching begins

Notes

When we last saw David he’d gotten himself into an unsolvable mess.

He quit doing his job as king, he got himself into an adulterous affair. He tried to cover it up by arranging for the husband to get killed in action in the war with Ammon.

His solution is familiar to all of us, which is, run away from God and avoid Him. If I face God in my sin He’ll kill me.

But this chapter is not about God killing David in justice. It’s about God restoring David in grace.

Let’s read in 2 Samuel 12 (vv. 1-15).

1. God confronts David, vv. 1-15.

A. David has been avoiding God for up to a year and a half.

1. Outwardly he looks okay. Inwardly he’s having the worst time of his life.

2. This is what he wrote in Psalm 32:3-4 When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.

B. Though he knew God’s hand was heavy upon him, David was making no moves toward God. He avoided God continually and would have kept doing so if God had not intervened. He was stuck in his sin.

C. So here is grace in action: God made the first move towards David. God was the offended party, David was the offender. Because of His goodness God broke the silence that was going to destroy David.

D. He sent Nathan the prophet to David to expose David’s sin.

1. Nathan tells David this story. A poor man loses his little pet lamb that was like a daughter to him. The rich neighbour is too greedy to sacrifice any of his flock or herd, he takes the pet lamb from the poor man, and he cooks it and he eats it.

2. That’s David’s own situation but he doesn’t recognise it. He is outraged at this rich bully and pronounces a correct judgment upon this terrible person. He is a son of death—he deserves to die. And he must repay fourfold what he stole, because he showed no compassion. That’s the penalty in the law of Moses if a man steals a sheep. David has correctly judged himself—he deserves to die and he must repay fourfold what he did.

3. Nathan says you are the man. And he lets David know that God saw everything and He knows everything. God has exposed David’s sin.

E. What Nathan says here shows how trying to please and satisfy ourselves can never work.

1. Here’s God who says, “I called you with a great purpose, I saved you from Saul, I made you king, I gave all kinds of good things, and I would have given you much more.” I have done all these good things that should have been enough. But they weren’t enough for you.

2. You decided what would satisfy yourself, and you have ruined your life and the life of others.

2. So David’s sin is laid bare in the open. Now God pronounces judgment.

A. And there are four judgments. Remember that the penalty of stealing a lamb is to repay four times what you stole.

B. The sword shall never depart from your house. You will experience conflict and bereavement in your family continually.

C. I will raise up evil against you from your own household. Someone will come from your own family against you.

D. I will take your wives and give them to your companion and he will lie with them in broad daylight. Everyone in Israel will see that.

E. You gave opportunity for the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. If God is good, how can His representative be so selfish and wicked? The child born to you shall surely die.

3. In the midst of judgment God shows amazing grace.

A. Even as Nathan is pronouncing the word of the Lord David breaks. He confesses the truth. “I have sinned against the Lord.”

1. God knew already. David knew that God knew.

2. When he confessed the truth, he switched sides, from avoiding God, to returning to God.

3. He began by agreeing with God against himself. You are right, I am wrong.

B. In that place where David turns around and confesses the truth, God meets David.

1. This is not what we would expect God to do. We expect God to agree with us and say, “Now that you have confessed your sin, I’m going to give you what you deserve!” You have earned this. David even said so—the man who did this deserves to die!

2. But in the midst of judgment Nathan stops to say, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You shall not die.”

C. That means that God is disciplining David.

1. If God were to punish, He would inflict the penalty, and that penalty was death.

2. Discipline has a different purpose than a penalty. Discipline is training that corrects, molds, and perfects the moral character.

D. Discipline will humble David, make him rely more on God, teach him to be close to God, to not be independent of God. The purpose of discipline is not to destroy but to humble and to teach.

4. That’s why David submits to God when his child becomes sick, vv. 15-23.

A. This is the first part of the Lord’s discipline. The child becomes sick and David fasts and prays for him for seven days, lying on the floor before God.

B. But on the seventh day the child dies. The servants don’t know what to do. David would not get up off the floor. When he hears about this, what’s he going to do? He’ll flip clean out!

C. David is aware that the servants are all whispering and he figures it out: the child is dead, isn’t he? They say, “Yes…..”

D. David gets up, washes, dresses, goes to the tabernacle and worships God. Says, I’d like to have food. Eats for the first time in a week. His servants can’t figure him out. He was so focused, would not get up off the floor. Now he’s calm, he’s not mourning, wailing with grief, throwing himself out the window. What?

E. And David explains himself, and you see that he is submitted to the discipline of the Lord. He sought the Lord because God is gracious, who knows if the Lord might relent? But David submits to the death of the child because God said it was going to happen. He trusts in the Lord that He is right and what He does is right. He submits to the chastening of the Lord.

F. And David has peace. He is not fighting with the Lord. He did that for a long time and he’s super done with that. He’d rather be at peace.

5. David comforts his wife and they have a son, vv. 24-25.

A. You wonder what Bathsheba is thinking in all this. How is she able to be intimate with David? David is the guy that messed her life up, ruined her marriage, did she have any children with Uriah? If she didn’t, her first child died because of David’s sin.

B. The answer is, this is another miracle of grace. David comforts her with the comfort he received. God made the first move. He’s not going to kill us. He’s disciplining us to share His holiness. It’s going to be okay because God is for us. You and I are going to make it because God said we will.

C. And so they can be intimate and in the course of time she bears a son. The name is important because God named him twice.

1. It’s not so clear in the text who did the naming. The Masoretic text says “he named him” with a note in the margin that it should be read, “she named him”.

2. 1 Chronicles 22:9 Behold, a son will be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days.

3. David and Bathsheba probably agreed that their son’s name should be what God decided—“Peace”, or “Peaceful”.

4. He has another name from the Lord. God sends word through Nathan that He loves that baby. So that name is “Beloved of the Lord”.

5. That child is a sign of God’s grace, giving His love and peace to David and Bathsheba.

6. By God’s grace David gets back to his job of being king, vv. 26-31.

A. Joab sends David a snarky message: “I’m just about to take the city. You need to get over here to personally finish the job or else I’m going to get the credit.” In other words, David needs to get back to work and do his job.

B. So David gets back to his job of getting rid of Israel’s enemies so that the temple of God can be built in peace.

7. So what?

A. Let’s say that you have fallen into sin this morning. Your natural instinct will be to cover over your sin and run away from God. It’s really hard to face God when you have sinned and you know you are wrong. It’s scary. You know you have to die.

B. God doesn’t want to kill you, He wants to save you and restore you to Himself in His grace. Grace is God doing for you what you don’t deserve. Here’s what He does in His grace.

C. Just like He came to David first, He comes to you first and He convicts you of your sin.

1. You cannot get yourself out of sin. You can’t fix it. You are weak, without resources, without strength. You are helpless.

2. So because God wants to save you He must always come first to you. And He faces you with what you did and says, “You did this.” That’s not pleasant, that’s humiliating. But it is the truth. God starts to save us with the truth.

3. It’s right there that you can respond to God and say, “I did that.” You are communicating your need to God.

D. When you confess your sins God forgives you. He forgives you in just the same way that He forgave David: He looks at Jesus dying on the cross and says, “Your sins have been paid for. I do not condemn you. Go in peace.” Jesus made peace by the blood of His cross and even now He says to you, “Peace, be still.”

E. God will continue to discipline you because He is your Father and He disciplines you as His son or daughter. That’s the proof that He is your Father.

F. You humble yourself and accept that discipline, because that proves that you are His son or His daughter. If you don’t receive that discipline it proves that you are illegitimate and not His son.

G. Comfort yourself with this: God does not want to kill you. He wants to bring you out of sin. He convicts you, He forgives you, He keeps you close to Him. He restores you in grace.

H. Then you can comfort anyone in any trouble, just like David comforted Bathsheba, and they had the courage to carry on and not give up in shame.

I. Grace means God is for you. If God is for you, who can be against you? This is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it.

Let’s pray.